Prep Day & Intro

Hi everyone!

 
As promised, I am blogging about my PQ Diet experience. It is important to me that my clients know I am not just selling a diet, but that I empathize with them and am prepared to go through the same challenges! I chose the PQ Diet because while healthy cooking is an absolute passion of mine I am simply too busy right now to spend time preparing 3 meals per day and 2 snacks. Whew, that’s a job in itself! 

Everyone who reads my blog will hopefully learn a thing or two about health and nutrition. As many of you know, my Mother is a dietician so I am fortunate to have a great knowledge base on the science of nutrition. One great thing I'd like to share with you right away is a fact about Cortisol. How frustrating is it to do all the "right" things to lose weight and not lose a pound?! Take a look at your lifestyle - if you're super stressed you are raising your cortisol levels. Why should we care about that? Cortisol loves fat and wants to keep it around! So, first thing is first, it is imperative that you do a few things to kick to cortisol in the arss!

Stop drinking coffee with caffeine. Yes, it is sad but true caffeine from coffee will raise your Cortisol levels and can totally wipe out your weight loss efforts. I have a client who took my advice. She was drinking a whopping 8 cups per day! She kicked most of the coffee and lost 8 lbs in a month and didn't change a thing in her diet or exercise.

Here are a few realistic suggestions on coffee replacements:

I have a client who owns a local coffee company. She is bringing me some samples next week of Organic decaf. I am big on decaf coffee being ORGANIC but that’s another blog that I am sure I will cover soon. Drink organic green and black tea to help suppress cortisol levels and studies have also shown green tea to speed metabolism.

Another suggestion is to take Univeras Xperia. I’ve been taking it for 6 months. I have chronic fatigue syndrome and this product helps me with focus, mental clarity and energy. Coffee can sometimes give me a boost of energy but in exchange I lose my mental clarity and can’t seem to focus on a thing! I should also point out that I started Univera because it has a 90 challenge. If you don’t feel like Univera has changed your life you get a refund. I had nothing to lose ;) https://www.newunivera.com/en-us/products-for-vitality/superfoodenergy/xperia-concentrate

This last suggestion is not a product that I carry but it works well for me when I am beyond stressed out. It’s from a company Solaray and it’s called “Sleep Blend SP-17 – Valerian-Hops”. You can get it at Sprouts. Yes, this is an herbal sleep supplement but when I have an excess of adrenalin from stress, I can take one of these and it helps balance me and calm my mood. If I don’t have high adrenalin it will certainly make me sleepy so, as with any supplements, I will suggest that you check with your doctor before ever taking my advice as that is out of my scope of practice.

There are 4 phases to this diet and you can check them out here: https://newunivera.com/en-us/products-for-vitality/protein-quotient-diet/stages The diet plan suggests to remain on stage 1 (3 Univera meals and 1 home cooked per day) until you loose 80% of your weight and then phase into stage 2 (2 Univera meals and 2 home cooked) and so on. I am sure it will take me more than one month to achieve my goal so, I will only blog for 30 days (again with the whole too much to do!)

Today is my “prep day”. I am planning my meals up through Saturday. I haven’t done this in a while so I’ve given myself half a day to remember how to organize. My plan is to have labeled baggies for each day of the week. In the baggies will be my Univera breakfast, lunch and dessert. I think I will also have a few days of fridge food lined up and prepared to ‘grab and go’. I’ll let ya know. :P

Best of luck to all who are taking the 90 challenge with me! And remember - if you decide this diet isn’t for you, you can get all of your money back! You can’t go wrong. http://lanata.skincaretherapy.net/