The 28 Day Reset isn’t a challenge / product / ebook / program / diet I made or wrote but it is an experiment I ran in myself and that’s why I consider it a personal project and I would like to share the results with you.
28 Day Reset is a challenge to clean the body by eating nurturing food for 28 days in hopes to find food allergies or intolerances later!
I started this challenge because I like to ask myself one single question in the first day of the year and, conveniently, this year’s was: how my healthiest self would look like? (I don’t like to publish my yearly experiments without having results in hand but believe me when I say this challenge is worth publishing now, just after 4 weeks of trying it!).
I did the 28 Day Reset by Cassey Ho and Erin Woodbury from January 2nd to January 29th (the 28 days needed) and, after what I saw, I wanted to keep 90% of the time the rules to the challenge in my life and leave that tiny 10% open for whatever meal I want to have in special events or birthdays.
Even though Cassey announced the 28 Day Reset Challenge on December 28th (here’s the official announcement), I had my mind already set to find my healthiest self in 2017, so it was pretty convenient for me to find her challenge to kickstart my personal experiment!
Since the 28 Day Reset is about eating clean, you’d think you need to stay away from restaurants and only cook meals in your house but, surprisingly, I was able to eat at 5 different fast-food restaurants and still be 28 Day Reset – accountable.
These 5 fast-food restaurants were: Go Green, Pizza Hut, Quiznos, Subway and San Martín. I’d ask for the salads and ask kindly to the waiter if he could take out the cheeses, dressings and croutons and that was basically it (well, I also checked the ingredients of the salad in the menu so I have a salad with so much more ingredients than lettuce at the end!).
The only way to go through this challenge is if you change your mindset. If you see it as a diet (which Cassey says clearly is not!), you’ll get desperate and most likely not succeed. If you see it as a way to know a little more about yourself, to enjoy a little bit more or just to know what would happen in 28 days, you’ll amaze yourself.
My personal thoughts on this, besides the finding of my healthiest self, was asking myself: if a doctor said to me, right now, I need to change my diet in order to survive, will I be able to do it? A little bit extreme, I know, but it held me accountable for the 28 days I needed.
What I really loved about this challenge is that you have a list of all the food you can eat! You don’t have to think what to eat, you just need to pick the items you like or know how to cook from the list and you’re ready to start!
The 28 Day Reset Challenge I followed was the free version Cassey released in her blog. You can find it here! That’s all you need if you know how to cook or have the willingness to have fun in the kitchen or have the patience to read menus and find amazing salads you can take the cheese out.
Before I share my results, I want to get something clear. I got this results by eating only the things of the list for 28 days + 8 sessions of PIIT28 + a 5k I did on January 22nd. My main focus was eating well and that’s what got most of the results. I worked out just 9 days for less than an hour but, as PIIT28 is intense and a 5k I didn’t train to was also intense, it helped a lot even though I didn’t work out daily. Summary: 70% eating healthy, 30% exercise.
After the 28 Day Reset Challenge, I‘m happy to announce I lost 9kg / 20lbs and an average of 2.4cm on all my meassurements (except my height)!
It’s a lot! Although I was able to feel it on my posture and in some comments from my friends like “you look taller!” because my body was carrying a lot less so it felt lighter to walk without waving my back, I wasn’t able to see it at first sight on my mirror. That’s why I took some photos to track my transformation.
When I did the collage is when I could actually see how much I had changed! I was really amazed and I ended up sharing my transformation over Instagram.
Later, Cassey asked on Twitter who did the challenge and I replied with my information.
https://twitter.com/Queith/status/825837288542392321
She was amazed, too! She asked me for more details and I attached some more pictures and she replied I inspire her so much!
https://twitter.com/Queith/status/825848262594805761
https://twitter.com/Queith/status/825902436669878275
Sincerely, it was a great honor to get these tweets from both of them! This reminded me what I did on those 28 days it was a really big deal and I should be happy to accomplish this and more!
But this story doesn’t end here! Can you believe Cassey gave me a special shout out on her Instagram and Facebook!? Yes, she did! I’m so honored to be featured on her channels, it means a lot to me, it means I gave my best, it means she saw physical results of her creations in me, it means just wow! ❤
After this, a lot of girls asked me if 28 Day Reset is possible and if I had some tips to going through the challenge over Direct Messages. I tried to answer them all as fast as I could but I was going a little bit slow because behind my accounts there’s only me.
But I got a little time today so I’m more than happy to share my 15 tips for the 28 Day Reset Challenge so, keep reading! ❤
28 Day Reset Challenge by Cassey Ho and Erin Woodbury.
28 Day Reset Challenge is a nutritious way to clean your body to find intolerances and change your eating habits in less than a month by eating nurturing listed food without counting calories.
Its goal is to restrict some foods for a period to later add them one by one to notice how your body reacts to its consumption.
The 28 Day Reset Challenge started on January 2nd but, as the e-book is available to download any day, a personal challenge can be started whenever.
The ebook can be found here and it has the rules, the list of foods that can be eaten and the restrictions.
The 28 Day Reset Challenge can be seen as the free version of the 28 Day Reset Program in which you’ll find +150 recipes and it has a vegan version, too.
The 28 Day Reset Challenge is free.
The 28 Day Reset Program is just $69USD.
The 28 Day Reset Program (vegan version) is also $69USD.
Cassey Ho is a Fitness Coach, Pop Pilates Creator, PIIT28 Founder and CEO of Blogilates (also named Top 5 health & fitness influencers in the world, and Designer of POPFLEX).
Erin Woodbury is Blogilates Nutrition Coach, Cookbook Author, Editor and Fitness Instructor.
Tips that helped me through the 28 Day Reset Challenge by Cassey Ho and Erin Woodbury.
- Only buy the food on the list you like and know how to cook! There’s no need to buy the entire list!
- If you don’t know much about cooking, learn the basics: bake, steam, grill, boil or eat raw!
- If you bought only the things you like or the things you know how to cook, you’ll be fine. If you need recipes, get the 28dayReset guide or check all the Cheap Clean Eats videos!
- Remember that you’re trying to pamper your body through foods that will nurture it, don’t force yourself to eat things on the list that you know you dislike. That’ll be a bad experience and a waste of money.
- If you have food that’s not on the list, don’t eat it just to don’t throw it in the garbage can. Freeze it and keep it there to the end of the challenge. You might want to celebrate you did a great job with that pasta a la bolognesa you cooked this week.
- It’s so much easier to follow a list if you have food ready. So, whenever you cook, cook in big quantities. One day cook an entire cup of brown rice, another day cook the kilo of Brussel sprouts, other day cook the brocolies… Just serve what you’re gonna eat and save the rest on the fridge for the future.
- To add different flavours and enjoy a little bit more the process of cooking, I like to play with the condiments. If I’m cooking something with water, I add aromatic leaves like oregano, alcapate, peppermint, etc (they’re easy to grow in little pots in a home garden!).
- If I’m cooking without water, I like to add pepper and aromatic leaves but in their dried version!
- If you want to try something new for breakfast, add homemade tomato sauce to a pan and then add two eggs! The heat will cook the eggs and the sauce will give them flavour!
- If you bought a lot of fruit, cut half of it in chunks and put them in plastic bags with a zipper in the freezer. This will help you to have your main ingredients ready for your smoothie.
- Talking about smoothies, my blender cup is made of glass. So it was kinda heavy every time I washed it. Instead of washing it, clean it this way: right after serving your smoothie, add enough water to the blender cup, add a drop or two of soap and blend. This will clean the cup on the areas you can’t reach with your hand and most of the cup, as well. What you have to do after this requires no time in comparison with the traditional washing method.
- If you have a banana that’s too ripe, add it immediatly to a smoothie.
- Talking about bananas, if you live in Latin America, take advantage of the different types of bananas we have available. There are the normal bananas we eat as snack and the other bigger bananas we called plátanos. Well, the latter when ripe are delicious as dinner, you can boil it with cinnamon and voilà; when just before they are ripe (with the green skin), they are perfect to make banana toasts, cut them into julienne, add some salt and put them on a pan, then flipped them when golden and they’re done if they’re golden on both sides!
- If you live in Latin America, there’s a high probability you won’t find several items on the list on a typical supermarket hall. Don’t look for the brown rice in the basic grains aisle and don’t look for the low sodium soy sauce in the sauces aisle. Take your time to check the gourmet section. I found a lot of listed items over there!
- Track your results! You might not see it or have a hard time feeling it but tracking and numbers don’t lie! Take your meassures, take photos, write a diary, weigh yourself every Sunday, whatever you think is appropriate to track you!
I’ll review the PIIT28 1.0 program by Cassey Ho when I finish it, I’m currently on day 20. BUT if you just can’t wait to dive in, read all about it here.
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Katherine Montero 