8 2 Much Challenge – Bariatric Edition

Let’s do this!!

I was going to blog today about apple cider vinegar and it’s amazing benefits but then I got to thinking … Who ate too much last weekend? Who ate too much last month? Who ate too much this entire time we’ve been staying at home and social distancing ourselves from the world?

It seems like we are starting to open up slowly again. We are crawling out of our houses and starting to think about getting back to some sort of normalcy again. It will take time. Some of us are recovering more quickly than others. Some of us will stay in our homes longer because we are not ready to go out yet. Let’s be kind to each other. It’s hard enough without bashing each other online and trying to force our thoughts and feelings upon each other.

BUT GUYS – we all have something in common. WE ALL 8 2 MUCH!! I am pretty sure that the majority of us used this time to feel very stressed, pressured, concerned, worried and we ate all the carbs and candy, sugar and pies, chips, and pretzels. We overdid it and now we need to take a good hard look at what we have done and make some changes to our diets. 

I have seen your FB feed. You’ve seen mine. Who bakes cookies and cakes every week? I have seen more beautiful loaves of freshly baked bread on Instagram. I have also tried to buy flour and the supermarkets have been completely out of these types of ingredients. Why? Because we are all baking ourselves into a frenzy of cookies and pies and gorgeous buns. 

Now tell me how you baked cookies three times last week and never ate even one of them. LOL

(I don’t believe you)

So what are we going to do? Just give up and bake ourselves into oblivion? Of course not. I know that you are going to get back on the proverbial horse and join me in this next challenge.

I posted a nutritional plan a few weeks ago and some of you followed it and got some pretty awesome results. Let’s add this nutritional plan to that last one and build onto it. A few weeks ago I challenged you to a 6-day plan where we did some intermittent fasting and where we ate real, whole, live, natural, good quality food.

This week we are going to continue with the intermittent fasting. If you are not comfortable with intermittent fasting, that’s fine. What I am trying to create is a window of “eating” and a window of “not eating” each day. What I am trying to avoid is the constant grazing all day long and late into the evening. This is a habit that I find a lot of us have and when we sit back and see how much we consume this way, it can be a SHOCKER. 

If you are a breakfast person, great, eat breakfast. When breakfast is over, clean the kitchen and don’t eat again until lunch, please. Once lunch is finished, then clean up the area and no snacking your way to dinner. Now it’s time for dinner and we will eat dinner and then no snacking after dinner. This is the same basic principles for intermittent fasting. When we eat, we eat and when we don’t eat, we don’t eat. See what I mean? 

I am not forcing you into fasting mode. What I want you to do is to stop with the constant snacking here and snacking there.

Now, why do we snack all the time? I’ll tell you why … it’s because we are not using the bariatric tool as it was meant to be used. The sleeve or pouch needs to be filled up so that you feel satisfied. If you never fill your pouch, you will always feel hungry and you will want to snack or graze all the time.

I’ve seen my clients go for lunch and order the regular sized taco salad. Of course, the regular-sized taco salad sounds like it is meant for one person but when it comes it’s the size of a football. It’s a HUGE portion of food. It is for 8 servings. I see this all the time and wonder how restaurants make any money when they serve this GIANT sized plates.

Anyways, the taco salad comes and you eat some of the salad but you get full pretty quickly so you get a “to-go box” and head home. The box sits on your kitchen counter and between lunch and dinner you finish off that salad. You keep going back to it and grabbing a bite here and a bite there. Just one more bite. 

Then it’s time for dinner and you are not that hungry (because you have eaten a salad plate that was enough for 8 people) and then you proceed to get something for dinner. You don’t finish but a few bites of dinner but you manage to polish it off between dinner and 9 pm.

Can you see what has happened? You have bypassed your tool or your restriction and you just keep on feeding and feeding and feeding. 

Wouldn’t it be better to eat until you are truly full? It would be excellent if when that plate came, you chose one bit of solid protein and one bite of veg and ate until you were ready to stop. The fork goes down and then it doesn’t come up again until you are ready to eat again.

My clients are so afraid of stretching out their tool that they never eat enough to feel satisfied BUT they graze throughout the day and night so they are not going to make any progress this way. Plus that grazing … well, it’s an easy habit to get into and a HARD habit to break. 


So here is our plan on the 8 2 Much Challenge

We will …. 


Make a list of what we need, head to the grocery store, and get started with an easy and super effective plan. Let’s break that sugar addiction and get off the carb-crazy merry-go-round!!

Drink at least 8 glasses of water a day.
Weigh yourself on day one in the morning/ Weigh again at the end of the challenge
Add a bit of apple cider vinegar to the first glass of water of the day
One cup of tea or coffee is allowed
1/2 an hour of exercise per day please (walk, jog, bike, swim, do whatever you like)
Get 8 hours of sleep per night
Stress BE GONE – try to not allow yourself to do the COVID-spiral outta control …


What are we going to eat?? We will eat 3 meals a day for 6 days. No snacking, please.


Breakfast Choices

1 to 2 scrambled eggs with sautéed veggies 
1/2 a cup of greek yogurt with frozen strawberries (blended in the food processor)
1/2 a cup of cottage cheese with frozen berries (blended in the food processor) 
1 boiled egg, hummus, and veggie sticks


Lunch Choices

Lettuce wrap – tuna and a bit of mayo wrapped up in a large lettuce leaf
Chicken cesar salad
Chicken veggie soup
Beef burger with a lettuce bun


Dinner Choices

 small steak with green beans and a side salad
 4 ounces of grilled salmon, broccoli and a side salad
 4 ounces of baked chicken, cauliflower and a side salad
 saute shrimp with veggies of choice

How easy was that? You can pick and choose between the four different options and create your daily menus. You can eat the same thing two days in a row or even three days in a row. You can mix and match however you like.

If you want to make changes to my meals, go for it. If you want to grill the chicken instead of baking it, great. If you want to put the shrimp on the barbie – awesome! Feel free to make those healthy swaps in and out without any fear.

What do all of the days and meals have in common? They are all low in refined and processed carbohydrates. They are all low in sugar. They are all high in fiber and protein. They have a moderate amount of healthy fat.

Let’s get make a list of what we need, head to the grocery store, and get started with the easy and super effective plan. Let’s break that sugar addiction and get off the carb-crazy merry-go-round!!


Here’s to a healthier YOU!

Sheri