90 days to lean: part 3

Follow food and lifestyle blogger Sahar Aman as she takes on the Body Coach challenge in 90 days to lean: part 3.

Halfway into Cycle One of my 90 Day Shift, Shape and Sustain Plan from Body Coach Joe Wicks, I wish I could say I’ve broken bad habits.

You might wonder what a food blogger’s bad habits are. I wake up around 8am, plunge into emails and writing, three hours later remember to have a glass of water and then an hour later contemplate my first meal. I like to think of myself as one of the lucky ones who can have brunch every day of the week.

Yet breakfast is normally just a green juice or a homemade smoothie, something I can pull out of the fridge, consume without too much thought and feel nourished. Gone are the days where one could be lax with breakfast – the 90 Day SSS Plan is changing all that, I can’t just have any old smoothie.

My second bad habit is that I cannot eat or sleep when stressed out. Don’t get me wrong; I’m usually in the best of spirits. Next weekend is our annual cottage trip, which is always the first highlight of the summer. I love taking on the planning and cooking for the cottage trip but this time round I’m feeling really overwhelmed.

Because of that I didn’t sleep much last week. Normally it’s six to eight people, this year there are 12 of us, there’s a four-day menu to prep and between that, weighing out my own ingredients and preparing a ton of Bihari kebabs with my hubby, I had a minor meltdown.

Exhausted from lack of sleep, a day of ballet and grocery shopping, Saturday night I burst into tears. Because I’d had enough of food in general, I went to bed on an empty stomach.

I struggled with food on Sunday and ate what I could: a bowl of emergency granola and yoghurt that we are allowed to have on the plan one to two times a week, a piece of salmon with spinach for lunch and a boiled egg as a snack but thankfully I stuck to my workout of high intensity interval training (HIIT) because honestly, working out turned my weekend around.

Here’s the thing: we often take out our emotions on food. The 90 Day SSS Plan had nothing to do with my distress or feeling burnt out; in fact it helped me to work through it.

The plan is for three months but unless it becomes a lifestyle as opposed to something we do for 90 days for the sake of a dramatic external transformation, the results will stay at the surface. Humans are creatures of comfort and we love returning to familiar spaces that aren’t always good for us – old habits die hard.

Staying hungry when stressed can be as destructive as devouring an entire pizza for comfort. I’m realising the dramatic transformation has to take place within, which might be easier said than done, but it’s not impossible.

We are not machines. The plan encourages us to nourish the human body so we feel fantastic and can function at an optimum level while resting, being active and engaging in life, however hectic and stressful.

You know what helped me with my bad habits over the weekend, the usual ones I get into when stress is on the plate? Healthy habits. Working out and knowing exactly what to eat in order to give my body back what was needed to restore and nourish it once again. That and Keeping Up with the Kardashians on Sunday night.

Over the next 12 weeks I’m going share my experience of Joe’s plan. Stay tuned to the blog and follow me on Twitter  and Instagram to see how my transformation goes. Next week: staying lean and sticking to the plan at the cottage over the long weekend.