Wednesday was my fourth day on the 30-Day Alzheimer's Solution NEURO Plan. I started my morning with coffee (sweetened with monkfruit!), a bowl of pineapple, and a handful of walnuts. Then I did a Yoga with Adriene yoga video (I'm doing her 30 January challenge), followed by a 5-mile tempo run.
After my run, I had a Berry Cocoa Green Smoothie. This has unsweetened almond milk, strawberries, banana, cocoa powder, flax, spinach, monkfruit powder, and Complement protein. Not a pretty color but tasty!
Morning snack at work was a handful of Dried Apricots and Raw Almonds.
And lunch was the last of my leftover Pinto Bean Quesadillas with Steamed Kale. The quesadillas were stuffed with pintos, bell peppers, corn, spinach, red cabbage, and cashew queso. I'm sad to be out of quesadilla filling.
In the afternoon, I had more Dark Chocolate Orange Pistachio Truffles. And then dinner was more leftovers! I had some leftover Taco Quinoa on a salad.
Not as exciting of a food day, but it was definitely an easier day in the kitchen since my meals were based around leftovers. I'm trying to make sure I have enough of each dish to last for a few days because, in the past, I've done meal plans where I was cooking new dishes every night, and that was exhausting. I also go to bed so early now (8:30 pm) that there isn't much time to cook or meal prep on weeknights.
This challenge is not just about the food though. It's also focused on exercise, unwinding, restorative sleep, and optimizing the brain. For the unwinding part, I'm working on increasing my time in meditation. I've meditated for five minutes a day for several years. But I'd like to get up to 10 minutes before this challenge is over. So each week, I'll be increasing my meditation time a bit. I'm also committing to putting my phone away during meal times. Instead of scrolling through Instagram, I'm reading magazines or books during my meals.
The sleep portion is still a struggle. I get to bed most nights at 8:30 pm (and wake up between 4:30 and 5 am), so I'm working on putting my phone away 30 minutes before bed. I'd also like to invest in a better white noise machine. Right now, we use Alexa for fan sounds at night, but my wifi is crappy, and it typically cuts out for a few seconds in the middle of the night and shuts Alexa off. That always wakes me up. Definitely something I need to look into!
Thanks for sharing how you are approaching the Unwind and Restore aspects of the challenge. Those types of things are harder for me to commit so your strategy offers good pointers. It will be interesting to see how you FEEL after a month of all these great habits.
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