#Eatpretty16 Week 1: Hydration

Happy Friday my friends! And happy EAT PRETTY kick off day! Although the actual challenge does not begin until Monday, I wanted to give you enough time to go grocery shopping and to mentally prepare yourself. In my opinion, the first week is the most difficult. Don’t get discouraged by this- I promise it will get better!

For those of you who are new to the challenge, you are probably wondering what exactly is this #eatpretty16? This past January I developed the first ever #eatpretty challenge to help start the new year right. The name of the challenge came from an amazing book I read last year called Eat Pretty, by Jolene Hart, where she gives detailed information on how food affects our beauty. Each week’s challenge has been inspired by her book and by the physician/dietitian recommended Mediterranean Diet.

As many of you know I have now finished my Master’s in Clinical Nutrition. I will be incorporating a lot of my education into this challenge as well. I truly feel well equipped to educate others on the beauty of healthy eating. My goal for this challenge is for you to come out feeling better about the way you eat AND ready to take on the rest of the year by developing new healthy lifestyle skills.

Here is the list of what the 4 challenges will be:

Depending on how much of a challenge you want, you can do this two different ways:

• Method 1: Do one week at a time. Do as much as you can handle and one weekly challenge at a time.

• Method 2: Do each weeks challenge, then carry it into the following week. For example, you would go all 4 weeks with only drinking water if you did this method. This is very difficult but if you are up for the challenge- YOU GO GIRL!

This challenge does not have the sole purpose of “cleansing” your bodies, like for example- a week long juice cleanse. This challenge is to get your body healthy by incorporating exercise and clean eating. Cleansing will naturally happen with your new clean eating methods.

Every Friday for the next 4 weeks I will present you with the coming weeks challenge. Along with nutritional information, I will also give you a few recipe ideas to get you going for the week. Remember to incorporate Pinterest and maybe even make a special board just for the challenge! Join in on the community of women who are doing this challenge by using hashtag #eatpretty16 on your pictures via social media.

We are kicking off the challenge with this weeks theme being- hydration. Did you know that according to the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, women are suppose to drink 9 cups of water per day? I don’t know about you but I definitely don’t meet that recommendation. Staying properly hydrated is essential for getting healthy. According to various studies, drinking just 2 cups of water before meals helped dieters lose an extra five pounds yearly. Additionally drinking the right amount of water daily can actually speed up your metabolic rate and help you maintain your weight loss.

So here is this weeks challenge- you can ONLY drink water for a week {Monday – Sunday}. For some of you this might be incredibly easy, while for others it might be the most difficult week. Rules:

• Carbonated water is allowed but cannot be flavored- according to the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics carbonated water is a healthy way to add flavor to your water.
• Adding fresh fruits, vegetables, and herbs to your water is allowed and encouraged.
• Tonic water is NOT allowed
• Coffee is NOT allowed. I know, I know- this might be a death sentence for some of you but this is a challenge not a walk in the park. If you absolutely cannot function without coffee- try drinking black coffee or even green tea instead. But try to challenge yourself to live without it for 1 week.
• Wine is unfortunately not water.

Pretty straight forward right? An easy way to figure out how much water you should be drinking every day is by dividing your weight by two. This number will show you how many ounces you should be drinking per day. For example, if you weigh 100 pounds, you should be drinking 50 ounces of water per day.

Instead of sharing a healthy recipe for this weeks challenge, I will just give you a few ideas for naturally flavoring your water. Try adding cucumber, strawberries, lemons, limes, watermelon, mint, and fresh herbs to create flavorful water. Make a big pitcher of flavored water at the beginning of the week to help you stay on track. I posted a few great ideas on my Pinterest if you want to re-pin them!

If you have any questions along the way, please don’t hesitate to e-mail me. My email address is peachestopearls@gmail.com. Although I cannot give you an individual meal plan, I can help answer any questions of what you can and can’t eat.

 

Good luck my pretty friends!

Xo,