I wrote about how we started the 21 Day Fix a few weeks ago and I’ll be honest, we didn’t finish it.

We were five stinking days away. Five!

There were a few reasons for our early end but here’s the biggest one: due to our traveling and then the overabundance of county and state fairs we had not been adhering nearly as strictly to the program as we knew we needed to in order to get the dramatic results. Instead, we decided to stop and take a break for a few days, before starting all over again and not make any compromises.

The day we ended our first round of the Almost 21 Day Fix I have to admit that I was quite excited. Pop-tarts! York peppermint patties! Caramel apple mimosas! We didn’t go crazy and we still ate lots of vegetables–really, all we did was reintroduce sugar and stop our daily workouts. Every night we went on a half hour walk and we ate tons of fresh produce. Basically, we went back to our pre-21 Day Fix basically healthy eating habits, which a month ago I would have felt perfectly confident calling healthy.

Alright, I’ll admit this whole “break” started when nobody came to my party last week and I had baked goods galore left over. I spent hours working on, not to mention taste testing, that essential oils-based deliciousness and I was not going to waste it. While the first few bites of peppermint brownie and lemon bar were heaven, I quickly started feeling sluggish and moody, and I found walking past the fridge and pulling out just one more bite of baked-deliciousness became all too easy. Still, I exercised self-control and didn’t have more than a few.

This continued over the next few days–a little sugar, a lot of produce, evening walks, occasional portion control. My energy began dwindling and I started experiencing a few, umm, digestive challenges, but most noticeable of all was how restless our sleep became. Interestingly enough, I also noticed a change in my son’s sleep after three nights of staying awake hyper, one time until 3am. God bless my husband for staying up with him. We might have reintroduced sugar into our own diets but I sure didn’t start feeding my son candy! He did, however, get sugar vicariously through me, and obviously his little body did not like it.

The terrible sleep, the constant sluggishness, the stomach issues, and the perpetual sick feeling soon started raising red flags.

There was no way.

We used to eat sugar before we started the 21 Day Fix and I never felt great afterwards but I surely never felt that terrible, except for that one time my dad caught me sneaking chocolate peanut butter balls out of the freezer and made me finish the rest of the plate to teach me a lesson. Oh, I learned that lesson after about three balls–out of a plate of twenty. That was not a fun day.

Yes, I felt that bad. 

One night after a particularly nauseous evening, I finally caved and pulled out my dollar store pregnancy test. I always have a stash on hand because “hey honey, I’m going to run to CVS and buy a pregnancy test” every time I start feeling consistently nauseous seems cruel for one reason: experiencing both terror and elation at the same time as stomach-turning anticipation is not something you want to be let down from (or intensely relieved by) and I try to minimize those feelings to myself. Pregnancy feels like everything miserable, so every time I am miserable my mind immediately jumps to pregnancy.

Mom, Dad–calm down. The rest of the world, let out your collective breath. I am not pregnant.

But seriously, y’all, reintroducing sugar made me feel so miserable I legitimately thought I might have another perfect little person in my stomach sucking the life out of me. I bet you can tell how wonderful my last pregnancy was; I obviously have great memories of the experience. Five days after ending our Almost 21 Day Fix, the bites of brownies and lemon bars no longer excited me. Instead, the thought that the next day we were going to be restarting the 21 Day Fix made my heart want to fly. Seriously. Those colored, portioned containers had never looked so beautiful and I actually wanted to my cardio fix workout! That is a miracle, people.

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Today we are four days into the 21 Day Fix and I haven’t felt this great since, well, the last time I was four days into the 21 Day Fix. My husband and I have already lost weight, my sugar cravings are quenched, I have more energy, our whole family went back to sleeping like rocks, I am no longer in a perpetual state of wanting to throw my son out the window when he claws at me with his sharp little nails during feedings (talk about moody!), plus my stomach issues have fixed themselves.

It blows my mind. I’ve always known sugar was bad and when I was a senior in high school I managed to cut it out completely. I’ve never eaten tons of it, at least not compared to the average American, and I’ve seen how our bodies build a tolerance to sugar. The first round of the Almost 21 Day Fix obviously detoxed us and our bodies no longer process sugar effectively–this is fantastic! Sugar is a poison, people. One friend recently shared with me that eating just one spoonful of sugar can cripple your immune system for up to six hours. Is it any wonder that so many of us spend so much time sick?

I sell Young Living essential oils because I believe in their power to change lives and turn a family’s health around, and when I started this Beachbody business it was because I love fitness and our family needed some extra income. I never dreamed that Beachbody’s programs, specifically the 21 Day Fix, would change myself and my husband’s lives so dramatically. Never have our lives been changed so much as they have with Young Living essential oils and Beachbody’s amazing programs, and I don’t say that because I sell the products, I sell the products because I believe in their power. 

At a recent business convention, the speaker told us that he thought often the thing that holds us back most is that we make commission on the products, and he challenged us to share like we don’t make commission. I don’t want to share how the products I sell have changed my life because I am afraid people I value and love and have relationships with will think I have an ulterior motive, so right now I am going to acknowledge that yes, if you buy Beachbody or Young Living products though me, I will make money, but that is not why I share.

My entire health was just turned around by a program called the 21 Day Fix and I think it’s too important NOT to share! With the results we have experienced, wouldn’t it be unloving not to tell others about it? Friends, I implore you–if sugar is a regular part of your diet, it is taking a toll on your energy levels and the quality of your sleep and your immune system, even if it’s been happening for so long you don’t even notice. I want to coach you and your family through a change that can turn around your health. I want to tell you about this superfood shake called Shakeology that has cut out my cravings and gives me the protein I need after a hard workout and has more nutrients than my prenatal vitamins (that I still take because I am breastfeeding) because it’s so good for you but also tastes fantastic! I want to help you make the change that you’ve been wanting to make for so long but have never known how.

Send me a message or just comment on here with an email address, or if I know you, I would be more than happy to reach out.

I will keep you all updated on the next 17 days of the 21 Day Fix! Happy hump day, everyone!