Xyngular 8-Day Challenge: Day Two

NOTE: This post is the third in a series following our experiences as my wife and I complete Xyngular’s “8-Day Challenge”.  You’ll find information about the challenge in the initial post, “Xyngular 8-Day Challenge: Preparation Day” here (Day 1 is here, Day 3 is here).  If you have any questions, are interested in giving it a try yourself, or have already completed the challenge and would like to share any experiences or advice, please feel free to comment below.

Starting Weight: 325.2 lbs

Morning Weigh-in: 322.6 lbs

Change in Weight: -2.6 lbs (Shawna’s: -2.8 lbs)

As I mentioned in my last post, Day 2 had an interesting beginning.  Both my wife and I had trouble sleeping the previous night, but neither of us were really tired in the morning.  As it turns out, Shawna did not need the extra Xyng she took with her to work.  In fact, I got the following e-mails from her throughout the day:

I haven’t had any coffee yet, but I do feel as alert as I would with coffee.  Don’t tell Jeannette yet b/c I don’t know how much is due to my sleep from the weekend or from her products.  We’ll wait and see how I feel tomorrow morning before coffee to be able to tell the difference. . . .

. . . I haven’t drunk the coffee or half & half yet, so I’ll see if I can hold off on that for now.  I just finished my first 20 oz of water for the day, and I’m going for my refill. . . .

. . . Mark me down for another 20 oz of water.  I’m going to dump the coffee since it’s cold and I never started drinking it…glad I didn’t put in any stevia. . .

. . . I took my Accelerate, but I’m going to hold off on the Xyng.

Sounds pretty good to me.  I also felt pretty good, but my day wasn’t as busy as Shawna’s.

As far as the Challenge goes, Day 2 was pretty much just a repeat of Day 1.  The main difference was that we tried to hit all the snacks and shakes at the right time.  That, and we didn’t spend the previous evening pigging out.

Shawna and I took our Xyng and Global Blend together.  I packed her 6 oz of turkey breast for her mid-morning snack and a couple hard boiled eggs and some smoked salmon for the afternoon.  After she left, I slung back about a quart of water before drinking my morning shake.

My goal for the day was to finish up the post for Day 1, do a load of laundry, clean up the apartment, and catch up on my reading.  I have several books that I’m trying to read through over the summer in preparation for the Fall semester.  On the schedule today was 30 pages of my Intermediate Greek grammar book, one chapter out of the Elementary Greek grammar that I’m reviewing, and the introduction to Exegetical Fallacies, by D. A. Carson.

I spent the morning knocking these out, not realizing how quickly the time was passing.  Surprisingly, I actually forgot all about my lunch shake and didn’t have it until about 2pm.  I would have expected the hunger to remind me earlier, but my morning snack of turkey breast seemed to keep me satisfied until then.

At about 5pm I had another 5 oz of turkey breast with 1 oz of shredded cheese melted over it.

After eating, I scurried about to get the dishes taken care of and the place straightened up before Shawna got home at 5:45.

Shawna and I drank our dinner shakes at about 7pm.  I decided to try something new for this one, so I added 1 teaspoon of unsweetened cocoa powder to mine.

Wow, those are three very effeminate pictures . . .

It was all right.  There was definitely a light chocolatey flavor, but I don’t know that it really improved the taste that much.  For some reason, I kept wanting to add a pinch of salt to it.

Throughout the afternoon I had several occasions of stomach growl.  Jeannette had explained to me that if your body is really hungry, you need to eat so that your body doesn’t go into “starvation mode”.  She suggested a 4 oz protein snack or another Lean shake when this happens.  My problem is that I’m used to letting my mind, rather than my body, tell me when I’m hungry.  It’s not easy learning the difference.  I often feel hungry when I’m bored, tired, bummed out, and such.  I figure that the stomach growl is probably a good sign that I am actually hungry.  One thing that I did today was to go ahead and drink about 20 oz of water when I thought I was hungry.  I would then wait about 30 minutes, and if I still felt very hungry, I would go ahead and take some food or a shake.  Fortunately, the water usually staved off the hunger pangs, so I think this might be a good way for me to learn the difference between wanting to eat and needing food.

Unfortunately, after we had taken our 2 Flush tablets and were relaxing with our pre-bedtime comedies, the growls started up again.  I drank another bottle of water, but I was still really hungry.  Not wanting to panic my metabolism, I decided to mix up another Lean shake.  I’m hoping that it was a wise choice.  I suppose we’ll find out at Day 3’s morning weigh-in.

Overall, it was a pretty successful day.  It definitely helps to start off having dropped two pounds.  It’d be great to have a repeat tomorrow.  We’re definitely looking forward to our real meals on Day 3.  I’ve got a pretty good idea of what to do for lunch but we’ve not yet figured out our dinner.  We were trying to think of all-you-can-eat buffets that serve a lot of protein.  Chinese is really tempting, but we’d probably only be able to eat teriyaki chicken.  I’ve been trying to get Shawna to agree to HuHot (there’s not a b.d.’s up here), but she’s not budging.  We considered Golden Corral, but $15/person for 4 oz of steak at a time probably isn’t worth it.  Hopefully, we’ll figure it out so we’re not stuck here stuffing our faces with more turkey breast.

Biggest Takeaways from Day 2:

• When you’re focused on something besides food, you don’t get hungry as often.  (This one’s a keeper; Shawna agreed as well)
• The Xyng seems to be doing a pretty great job of keeping us alert and energized throughout the day.
• There’s a fine line between “fat-burning mode” and “starvation mode”, and trying to navigate it can be a bit tricky.