Well, this is it. I’ve started my 30 day challenge yesterday as described earlier. (http://www.pgsnacks.com/2009/12/new-30-day-challenge-coming-up/)
I left most of the things I as described them, but practice turns out to be slightly different then you make it up in your head. I guess it did remind me that this isn’t called a challenge for nothing :p

Let me just start off by saying that it wasn’t any typical weekend to start with. As a surprise my girlfriend brought home two dogs (one being a 15 week old puppy) to take care of for a night & a day. The ones of you that have experiences raising a puppy knows that these need to go out and pee about every 4-to-5 hours. So all in all, I didn’t start this challenge particularly rested.  Having said this I can share with you my first day!

Sleep:
I went to bed at around 1:30AM because we went to see the movie Avater downtown. Also, after a dog-filled day, I actually slept like a rock. It must have been 7 hours before I woke up for the first time. And yes, it being sunday I rolled over and slept for another hour. So all in all, a very quality night’s rest.

Food:

• Breakfast: This actually didn’t start off as good as I hoped. This was because  I actually did’t make s smoothy, but started the day eating just fruits. I had a banana, two mandarins and green tea for breakfast. Content-wise it didn’t really feel wrong because wether I had blended it or just ate it, the nutritional value would be about the same I guess. But still, it felt like slacking off on the first day. Not a great start, but a good one nontheless.
  So for the record, I started the day off with a banana, two mandarins and an apple (Fuji-apples are really nice and sweet, with enough bite:)).
• Lunch: As I didn’t wake up very early, breakfast and lunch started blending together somewhat. What I did notice is that I liked eating the various nuts at that time of the day. I got myself non-salted ones which turns out have been a very good choice. (I can always add salt when I feel like it anway, right!?)
  For now I have a mix of Macadamia’s, Cashews, Walnuts, Almonds (with skin), Pecan-nuts and hazelnuts. I didn’t include the easy-to-get peanut because I’m not too fond of those.I really enjoy the variety of tastes these individual nuts have, and each mix of ‘m is a different sensation in your mouth. So I’m really glad this isn’t a let-down.
  What I’ve also noticed is that, because the nuts & fruits are always “there”, needing no preparation, I tend to eat ‘m in smaller portions throughout the day. Not so much one bulk-lunch but a few now and some more in an hour or so. To be honest, I really like this I have something to “snack” whenever I want, and it’s actually great nutricional value as well.
• Dinner-time: Although it is free for me to choose what I eat for dinner, I feel it’s very important to include because I think it might have a significant impact on my energy levels in the morning. I decided to have some very light mais-based pasta with tomato-sauce, low-fat ham and a bit of cheese, started off by some focaccia-bread with serano-ham. All quite light on the digestive system I think, since non of it was very greasy. One thing I did notice is that I didn’t eat a lot, just because I wasn’t that hungry. I was actually more enjoying the food for its taste then for the sensation of feeling “full”. And actually, while writing this I feel really good about that.

I talked about leaving myself open to snacks whenever I wanted to have them, but today I actually prefered eating some of the nuts instead of grabbing a cookie or piece of chocolate. We’ll just see how long that keeps up when I might get fed up with the taste of the nuts, but that’s something that’ll have to remain to be seen.

Energy levels:
As for my energy through out the day, after those 8 hours I did feel a bit slow to get out of bed. It might have been because I tried to catch another hour of shut-eye, who knows.. :s
But after breakfast things got moving quite easily. Eating only fruit really got my energy levels up in a short time. Besides being very light food containing quick sugars I also feel that the sweets and sours also sparked my awareness and got me “moving” so to speak.
As for the course of the day, I actually didn’t feel tired even once. Normally I get a bit of a dip-feeling around 4:00PM. (Sometimes refered to as the cup-a-soup-moment ) Also, since it’s the weekend I wasn’t at the office writing my thesis. The thing is, when I’m there I tend to drink more coffee then I do at home. (Normal for me is just one or two cups throughout the entire day) But as for a lot of people, I tend to pick up a cup of coffee when I feel like I’m getting drowsy and need a pick-me-up. I’ll just have to find out how this actually works out when I’m in the office environment again, but so far I have had no need for a pick-me-up, since my energy-level and awareness were pretty much up where I would like ‘m

I guess I’ll leave it at this for today. Also, I feel like I want to appologize for the writing I’ve done since I feel it’s still quite messy. The thing is, I haven’t quite figured out the best way to journal about this challenge. I’ll have to experiment with some different structures or styles to share my experiences as best possible.
For now I’ll continue to stick to the fruits and nuts, making sure I actually drink my breakfast-fruits as a smoothy instead of just eating them.

I will keep you updated, so until tomorrow!