7 Things That Happened When I Stopped Eating Clean

As I told you guys last week, while traveling or on any vacation, I think it’s very important to live and to not be to hard on yourself when it comes to what you’re eating. To eat the pizza & have the gelato. Well, that’s exactly what I did. I tried everything there was to try on my trip and while I tired to make the best choices possible, I still wasn’t eating the foods off of my normal grocery list. Lets just say that I ate more bread and desserts in two weeks than I have in the past year. I was also drinking every day, which also made matters worse. 

Did I gain weight? No – I was following my tips on how to stay fit while abroad, but I did see seven noticeable changes. Which goes to the underlying fact that what you put in your body is so much more than about weight.  Food is fuel and effects every part of you from your skin, to your sleep. 

7 Things That Happened When I Stopped Eating Clean For Two Weeks 

1. My face started to breakout. I will be honest, I am very fortunate to have pretty clear skin. Yeah, I will have a pimple here and there, but by the second week of constant cheat days, I noticed a huge change in my skin. I for real started to break out, and break out badly. It didn’t matter that I brought my whole skin care routine with me, what I was eating was directly affecting my hormones, causing me to break out. 
2. I constantly felt like I had a rock in my stomach. With my normal eating, after a meal, I am usually what I like to call a “happy full.” Where I know I am full, but in a good way. After eating poorly, I constantly felt like I had a food baby which made me lethargic. It made me unmotivated to do anything & unmotivated to do the exploring we were there to do. 
3. My digestion became all sorts of confused. I won’t go into detail, but you are my people so I really don’t care. The bottom line is, when you go from eating very clean, to not, your body stops digesting your food properly and pretty much goes into a shock. It’s pretty miserable. 
4. Poor sleeping. The way I was eating, I know, 100% caused me to sleep poorly. I would wake up with cramps all night, the whole time I was there. Just feeling completely sick from the days splurging. Then even the nights I wasn’t in pain, I would have incredibly horrible insomnia. 
5. It caused me to eat worse and worse. By letting myself eat poorly, it caused me to make poorer, and poorer eating decisions throughout the trip. When in normal situations, I would never eat the bread on the table, because I made it a “norm” at the beginning of the trip, I continued to do it. Then from the bread, it made me think it was okay to have ice cream every night at well. Then so on and so on. The bottom line is, when you start off eating poorly, it makes it harder to choose the healthier decisions. 
6. It dried out my skin. Your skin is your largest organ, and what you eat put in your body directly effects it. The same way it made me break out, it also caused my skin to lose its glow. No matter how much of my lotion I was lathering on, my skin continued to dry out.  This was also probably due to the fact that I wasn’t drinking enough water nor the amount I usually do. 
7. It caused me to swell. Like I said above, I didn’t gain weight on the trip, but I did notice a lot of swelling from all of the sodium and alcohol. I mainly noticed it in my hands, my feet and my face. My rings weren’t fitting right, my sandals felt tight, and my face looked like a swollen balloon.  

Next time I go back, would I do it differently? Probably not, I had the time of my life! Maybe cut back on the table side bread at every meal -lol. But it did reassure me that the way I eat at home and live my life normally is vital to my body. That eating clean does so much more than keep my waist trim. It showed me just how much your body needs the right amount of nutrients to function and that food is nutrients. That living healthy is so much more than being thin and more about having a healthy body inside and out. 

Can you guys relate to any of these symptoms? 

xo,

Lauren