Yesterday I kicked off my new fitness challenge, The 21 Day Fix Extreme.  Some of the challengers aren’t starting till next Monday so there’s still time to jump in and join us if you want!

This program comes with 7 workouts that are 30 minutes long. You complete them during the week and they use a combo of light weights and resistance bands.  It also focuses on nutrition, providing a meal plan and a set of containers that are portion sizes for different food groups like veggies, fruit, protein, and carbs.

Currently my focus is on the portions and not so much the “approved” list of foods.  Scott and I eat pretty clean so I feel like we’re good in that area.

There is a guide that helps you figure out the calorie amount you’ll need for the day either for maintenance or weight loss, and then that amount corresponds with home many containers of each food group you can have for the day.

My initial reaction was YIKES.  Because I can only have four portions of veggies in a day and that’s basically my lunch.

Yesterday was Day 1 and I documented my eats to give you an idea of what this whole thing looks like.  So let’s take a look and then we’ll discuss.

BREAKFAST

2% Greek yogurt + homemade granola + 1/2 a medium banana

1/2 red container + yellow container + 1/2 purple container

LUNCH

Kale salad + smoothie + smoked salmon

1.5 green container + 1 orange + 1 green + 2 purple + 1 red

DINNER

Zoodles + homemade sauce + Italian sausage + parm

1.5 green + 1 purple + 1 red + 1/2 blue

It was challenging working with these containers!  I’m a pretty intuitive eater and the containers left me feeling a little restricted which admittedly did make me a little cranky at first.  But it wouldn’t be a challenge if it wasn’t easy, right?

I am using this basic template meal planner as a way to keep track of the containers.  I printed out 3 copies for the 3 weeks of the program.  At the top I put how many containers we can have each day and then for the meals I make note of the containers and tally up the total after dinner.

This program does advocate three meals with some snacks through out the day.  I’m not a snacker and stick with three larger meals.

Scott says we are all in and that we need to try our best to stick to our allotted amounts.  That’s my goal for the rest of the challenge is to stick to the containers.

I’m not a calorie counter and I try and eat as intuitively as possible. I’m trying out the program because I would like to have first hand experience with it and to see what kind of results that I can achieve.

That’s a run down of Day 1! I’ll be checking in with more eats and progress reports as the challenge goes on.