Only 1 more day left of the Beachbody Ultimate Reset!  I can’t believe that I am so close to the end of this amazing journey.

Day 20 started as it has every day this week – with the fruit plate of berries, apples, and melon.  When I first started week 3, I was skeptical of the ability of fruit to hold me over until lunch.  But much to my surprise, it’s doing the trick!  I’m definitely hungry by the time lunch time rolls around, but the fruit breakfasts seem to be satisfying me just enough to make it.

Lunch was a jicama-avocado salad.  The microgreens salad that you eat a bazillion during the Reset is supposed to have jicama in it.  But, since I can’t find jicama at every grocery store, I’ve been substituting it with other vegetables in the microgreens salad.  I’ve gotten into the habit of just not buying jicama.  So, this jicama-avocado salad was actually my first introduction to jicama.  I think I’ve had jicama before, but I’ve never bought it and prepared it myself.  Jicama looks kind of like a cross between a potato and turnip, and it tastes a little sweet – like a cross between pear and potato.  It’s not the most cooperative vegetable(…?) to cut.  I thought the salad was nice and refreshing, and I loved the cilantro in it.

Day 20 Lunch

I’ve rarely taken advantage of the snack option during the Reset.  I think I’ve snacked (on official Beachbody snacks, mind you – not Doritos!) maybe 4 of the 20 days total.  You can have a snack between lunch and dinner, but you only should if you don’t think you can make it to dinner.  Well, tonight, I had tickets to a hockey game, so I had a half serving of Chocolate Vegan Shakeology (one of two Shakeology flavors that you’re permitted to have during the Reset) shaken with some distilled water (nothing fancy) before heading out to the game, knowing that I would not be eating dinner until after the game.

Day 21 Snack

Shakeology did the trick.  It kept me full until around dinner time.

My husband made tonight’s dinner!  What a treat!  Dinner included two new recipes – Asian stir fry and a 1/2 serving of braised greens.  Unfortunately, I forgot that the reason I had two bunches of collard greens in the refrigerator was because I was reserving one of the bunches for the braised greens.  Since I had done a double serving of collards yesterday, all we had left to use was bok choy, which didn’t really create that much braised greens.  They were delicious nevertheless, and I was quite full after eating the huge serving of Asian stir fry, which was so good with the coconut oil!

Day 20 Dinner

Well, tomorrow is it!  The grand finale.  I have no idea what I’m going to do with myself post-Reset.  Better come up with a plan fast.

We’re counting down the days until we’re done with the Beachbody Ultimate Reset!  I forgot to mention that at the funeral that I went to on day 17, I had a couple of people who had I not seen in 4 months remark about how much thinner I looked.  One person actually did not recognize me at first.  Curious about how that was possible, since I had only lost 4 lbs. thus far on the Reset, I decided to weigh myself in the middle of phase 3.  Well, turns out that since day 1, I had lost 7 lbs!  So, the weight is starting to shred off, which is awesome!

On day 19, we spent a lot of time prepping meals for the final 2 days because our evenings over the next 2 days are jam-packed.  The meals for day 19 included the usual fruit plate for breakfast.  I swapped out the lunch for day 19 for the lunch from day 18 because I had all of the groceries already for day 18’s lunch (day 19’s lunch would have meant a grocery trip).  Since I didn’t get to enjoy day 18’s lunch yesterday, it worked out well.  Lunch included a spinach salad of avocado, cucumbers, and tomatoes.  The salad was also supposed to include jicama; however, I have gotten into the habit of not buying jicama.  I have not been using it in the microgreens salads because I can only get them at one grocery store – the less convenient one.  So, no jicama today.  I also had a baked sweet potato for lunch.  Baked sweet potato = heaven.  This lunch was pretty huge.  No pictures, sorry, I devoured this one pretty quick.

I stuck to day 19’s dinner, which was one of my favorites – baked tempeh!  Tempeh, it’s been too long.  Haven’t seen you in awhile.  But the tempeh was only a HALF serving, which means I have extra tempeh, which I would like to eat post-Reset.  However, the transition plan post-Reset says to reintroduce tempeh 2 weeks after the Reset, which confuses me because I am eating it on day 19.  Hmm…I’m waiting for an answer on when I can eat the extra tempeh from the Beachbody community.  Dinner also included the Mediterranean roasted beets and a half of a serving of coconut collard greens.  Unfortunately, I did not have enough beets for a full serving (it ended up being more like half of a serving), so I ended up doing a full serving of collards instead.

Day 19 Dinner

Well, day 18 required some creativity.  We had some family in town to visit DC for the first time, so we joined them for some sightseeing.  While I was able to enjoy my Beachbody Ultimate Reset breakfast (another fresh fruit plate), I had to deviate from the prescribed Reset recipes for lunch and dinner.  We were going into a number of Smithsonian museums, and most of the museums do not let you bring in water or food.  So, we were without our distilled water and food.  Also, at the risk of security confiscating my Himalayan pink salt (or worse, detaining me on suspicion that the powder was something else), I opted to keep the salt at home.  We survived.

After having my Mineralize, Optimize, and Revitalize supplements at home, I took a nice long walk on a beautiful day and joined the group at the National Museum of the American Indian’s Mitsitam Cafe.  For those of you unfamiliar with DC, the National Mall is where many of the standard touristy activities are.  The vast majority of dining options on the National Mall are garbage – hot dogs, pretzels, chicken strips, french fries, McDonald’s, and other processed wonders that your typical American tourists wouldn’t hesitate to stuff shamelessly into their faces.  The Mitsitam Cafe is a glorious exception to the artery-clogging wasteland of museum cafeterias.  It features American Indian cuisine among various regions, and it is one of the healthy alternatives on the National Mall.  Normally, I would have no problem eating healthy at the Mitsitam Cafe – there are lots of vegetables and healthy grains, like quinoa, fresh salmon, and other things to choose from.  However, this final week of the Reset is so strict that it was hard to find something to eat there.  A lot of the vegan dishes had grains or were prepared with a vinaigrette (which, to me, equates to sugar).  The only thing I could find that met the criteria was a side dish of grilled zucchini and stewed tomatoes – no butter or sugar or vinaigrette.  So, my husband and I enjoyed two side orders of the zucchini and tomatoes, and split a side salad of greens, carrots, cucumber, and tomatoes (no dressing), and a mixed berry fruit cup.  Success!

Our afternoon Alkalinize supplement wasn’t easy either.  Since we can’t bring our own water into the museums, and there was no distilled water in a 1-mile radius, we settled for gift shop Polar Springs bottled water.  I know, I know, it’s no distilled.  I’m hoping that one 16-ounce serving of nondistilled water won’t do any harm.  Considering that I was also very thirsty, I’d rather have some water to hydrate myself than no water at all.

For dinner, we made reservations at a local spot that we knew had great salads that would be Reset-friendly.  As an appetizer, we split an baked eggplant stuffed with tomatoes, garlic, onions, and green peppers.  For our main course, we each had a mixed salad of Romaine lettuce, onions, tomatoes, cucumbers, and carrots with oil and vinegar dressing on the side.  Seeing that some of their other salads had toasted pine nuts, and knowing we can eat toasted pumpkin seeds, I asked for them to add the pine nuts to the salad for a little protein.  It was delicious!

Day 18 Dinner

With all of the family leaving tomorrow, it’s back to the Reset recipe book for the final 3 days!  While it has felt nice to sit down in a restaurant again and be served for a change, I’m looking forward to preparing our own meals so we know we’re getting the right food and portions.  We’ve both been a bit more tired than usual in this final week, and I suspect part of that has to do with the compromises that we’ve had to make to our diet (I really think our portions out at restaurants haven’t been as big as we are allowed to have on the Reset).  Also, we may be more tired due to the emotional and mental exhaustion associated with the funeral service and all of the family in town.

And now, onto the final “challenge” of my Beachbody Ultimate Reset.  At the beginning of this process, I identified a number of situations that I would be in during the 21 days of the Reset that would be particularly challenging.  Today, I completed the final one – the Reset during mourning and a funeral service.

• Challenge 1 / Week 1:  The Reset at work.
• Challenge 2 / Week 1:  The Reset at a conference.
• Challenge 3 / Week 2:  The Reset at a retirement dinner.
• Challenge 4 / Week 2:  The Reset at a 24-hour Oscar-nominated best pictures marathon (in a movie theater).
• Challenge 5 / Week 3:  The Reset during mourning and a funeral service.

The morning started as planned – with a fresh fruit plate for breakfast.  Then, the family embarked on a very beautiful, sad, and difficult funeral service for a very close family member.  While pre-Reset, we most certainly would have comforted ourselves in this situation with alcohol and a heavy meal, we resisted pretty well.  After the service, we attended a late lunch/early dinner at a wonderful restaurant that had our whole party seated in a private mezzanine, with a slideshow to honor the deceased, an open bar, trays of appetizers (the largest shrimp I’ve ever seen, frankfurters with sauerkraut, crab cake sliders, cheese, bread), and trays of desserts (milkshake shooters, miniature flourless chocolate cakes, fruit tarts, and cream puffs).  Wow, did everything look amazing!  My husband and I didn’t touch a thing.  We ordered a market greens salad, hold the chicken, no dressing, with oil and vinegar on the side.  I had this salad in lieu of the day 17 lunch included in the Reset book (i.e., Moroccan carrot salad, 3 cups of greens, and dressing).  The salad was absolutely wonderful and absolutely Reset-friendly, though a little small; I think I would have gotten to eat more food on the Reset lunch.  Anyway, the salad came with local greens, carrots, fennel, radish, and herbs (dill, I think).  It was very hard to say “no” to all of the booze flowingly freely and amazing food floating around, which all smelled wonderful, but I kept reminding myself that I don’t HAVE TO have any of it, the only person who can break the Reset for myself is ME, no one is going to shove a milkshake shooter down my throat, so I stuck to it.  I can always go back to the restaurant some other day.  It’s just across the river.  Whew, what a challenge!

In general, during sad times, I find it best to avoid alcohol.  Keep it as a celebratory enhancer.  In times of sadness, alcohol has a way of either numbing your emotions so that you cannot properly deal with them, thus hindering you from fully grieving, or it amplifies your emotions so that they run wild and out of control.  I think it’s best, based on the Reset and past experience, to just experience the pain and grief fully.  It makes you stronger and helps with the healing process.

Back to the food – the salad was nice, but we were definitely hungry when dinner time rolled around (the others who indulged at the restaurant were not).  I cooked dinner for my husband and me – roasted acorn squash with green beans and lemon.  While the Reset recipe book calls for delicata squash, the only squash that my grocery store had were acorn and butternut, and the recipe book says that you can substitute any squash, so I went with acorn.  This was actually my husband’s favorite meal that he has had on the Reset!  The acorn squash was baked in the oven and then topped with lemon juice, olive oil, and Bragg’s Liquid Aminos.  I had some other curry spices to add some more flavor (pink salt, black pepper, cumin, red cayenne, and coriander).

Day 17 Dinner

Tomorrow is going to be hard.  We are going to be doing some sightseeing with some relatives who are here in DC for the first time.  I will be skipping both of the Reset meals planned for tomorrow (lunch and dinner), and instead searching for healthy choices.  Dinner should be fine – we have reservations somewhere I know can give us a great salad.  Lunch, well, that might be Challenge #6.

Tomorrow is going to be a very difficult day.  Today, we have a bunch of family coming in to town to attend a funeral.  Luckily, we are on home turf throughout, and we have plans to stick to the Beachbody Ultimate Reset.

I stuck to the Reset diet plan today.  Breakfast was a fruit plate for breakfast, and lunch was my good old friend the microgreens salad and only the microgreens salad.  No soup or anything to go with it.

For dinner, I cooked for three!  We hosted dinner at our place.  My parents visited, and my husband’s mother.  I made an extra Reset meal for my mother, who has a pretty healthy diet in general and doesn’t mind overindulging in veggies.  The other two ordered delivery Chinese.  The Reset dinner included curried cauliflower and lemon-pepper kale.  The cauliflower recipes calls for “curry powder,” but rather than go out and buy curry powder, which is really just a combination of other spices, I made my own – cumin, coriander, tumeric, salt, black pepper, and red cayenne pepper.  The cauliflower turned out excellent!  I am actually one of the weirdos of the world who loves cauliflower, so I really enjoyed this recipe baked in the oven with olive oil.  The lemon-pepper kale was not entirely kale.  We accidentally bought mustard greens at the grocery store a couple of days ago.  None of the Reset recipes call for mustard greens, but kale is pretty similar, so we had half kale and half mustard greens.  I’m not sure if you can really tell the difference in the picture, but the kale is the brightly colored green vegetable, and the mustard greens are a little gray.

Day 16 Dinner

I’ve come to realization recently (and I came to this realization pre-Reset) that I don’t really care for Chinese food.  I’ve never been to China, and can’t comment on authentic Chinese food.  But, what we get here in America at least isn’t really worth the calories to me.  I love Thai, Japanese (sushi!), Korean, Vietnamese, Indian – every other type of food the great continent of Asia offers, as Americanized as it may be, except Chinese.  Something about baby corn and water chestnuts.  Anyway, the Chinese food ordered included Hunan beef, fried chicken wings (Chinese?), and a Pu-Pu Platter, which included deep-fried wonders like crab rangoon, shrimp toast, fried chicken, ribs, and other questionable items.  I can’t say I was particularly jealous of the Chinese food meal the others were eating.  I was pretty happy with my cauliflower and kale, thanks!

We’re almost done with the week 2 detox of the Beachbody Ultimate Reset!  Only one more day to go, then we’re in the home stretch!

Throughout the program, I have been trying really hard to stick precisely to the meals that are planned for each day.  Until recently, I’ve done that.  I had to swap dinner and snack to accommodate the schedule of a coworker’s retirement dinner.  I had to prepare a full day’s meals to bring to a 24-hour Oscar nominated best pictures showcase.  The day following that (yesterday) was very short, and I had to skip dinner.  And today, I discovered that I did not pick up everything at the grocery store that I needed for the next couple of days’ meals.  I somehow just completely skipped over them when I was making my shopping list.  Ugh.  DC is currently snowed in, so rather than venturing outside, I made do.

Breakfast today was seasoned mashed chickpeas.  In preparation for the movie marathon, I had made an extra batch to take with us, but did not eat it at the movies, so we had it today.  No spinach or avocado (as planned for day 13).  I just didn’t have time for those simple tasks this morning.

Yesterday, I was supposed to have Mediterranean roasted beets for dinner.  I decided to have yesterday’s dinner today since one of the things that I missed at my last grocery visit was the Kabocha squash that I would need today and tomorrow.  Since I skipped dinner last night, I did not have the beets ready to go for lunch.  So, right after breakfast, I started getting the beets ready – washing, peeling, and chopping them.  Beets are a lot of work!  And the recipe actually says that 3 cups of beets is one serving.  That’s madness.  That’s a lot of freakin’ beets.  For two people (my husband and me), that is 12 cups of beets for lunch and dinner!  No way.  Not gonna happen.  So, I skipped the beets for lunch and just had the microgreens salad instead.  I got 6 cups of beets prepared for dinner tonight.  The red color still has not come out of my skin and under my fingernails…

For dinner, I had day 12’s dinner (since I didn’t have time for dinner last night).  Dinner was Mediterranean roasted beets, coconut collard greens, and toasted millet.  Before the Reset, I had never heard of millet.  Millet is a grain, apparently commonly used in bird seed, but when cooked up reminds me of couscous.  It is gluten free, unlike wheat, and has a lot of nutrients.  I ate 3 cups of beets tonight.  I do like beets, but 3 cups was a bit much, and I am told not to be alarmed by the colors in the toilet tomorrow.  I think my taste buds might be changing, because the beets were very sweet to me despite the fact that I had not added anything to them that would make them sweet.  The coconut collard greens were pretty good.  I’ve definitely had better greens, even vegetarian ones.  But it wasn’t bad.  And I actually bought a bunch of collards in the produce aisle, cleaned them, and chopped them up myself.  I’ve bought and cooked collards before, but this was the first time that I actually did all of the manual labor myself.

Day 13 Dinner

You may ask yourself how I get my grains like that.   Fill up a measuring cup (here, the 1/4 cup serving) with the grain, and flip it over.  That easy!

This was the aftermath of the 24-hour Oscar-nominated best pictures marathon.  This was a short day.

I went to bed around 8 a.m. and woke up around 2:30 p.m. because I knew I had to get to the grocery store for the week’s meals.  I had a fruit plate of berries, watermelon, and apple for breakfast, and got started with the day.

In DC, we can’t handle snow well.  We freak out when snow is in the forecast and run off to the grocery store to buy milk, toilet paper, and bread in bulk.  Unfortunately, the weather prediction for tomorrow brought out hoards of DC’s apocalytes, and what would have been a pleasant little afternoon grocery excursion turned into a war zone – dodging carts in aisles like landmines and racing to grab the last red bell peppers like they were being rationed.  One pleasant interaction involved a guy who looked at my cart spilling over and commented, “that is an admirable amount of produce.”  And indeed it was.

Since I started my day so late and spent most of it at the grocery store, I only had time for two meals today – breakfast and lunch (lest I have dinner at 1 a.m.  No thanks).  Lunch was the usual microgreens salad and something new!  We made a delicious hearty vegetable-miso soup, which was miso soup with lots of vegetables like broccoli, carrots, garlic, ginger, and onions.  It was great!  Sorry, no dinner.  No time.

Day 11 Lunch