This is a guest post by my editor and husband who did Beachbody’s Ultimate Reset.
Ultimate Reset begins. I was very excited about getting started with my Beachbody Ultimate Reset! What kind of geek gets excited over spending twenty-one days taking supplements, eating veggies and drinking only distilled water? Well maybe not so much, but I was excited about the results I was going to get. I’m not a big guy but that flab around the middle – I’m 48 so give me a break! – has really been bugging me. My cholesterol is borderline high and I DON’T LIKE DRUGS! I am trying to find a way to bring it down without taking a Statin. That’s why I’m doing the Ultimate Reset, and THAT’S why I’m an excited Geek.
Beachbody Ultimate Reset: Day 1, Wednesday
So I woke up Wednesday morning (Day 1) all excited to start the Ultimate Reset, and the first thing I did was take 15 drops of oxygenize (you drop them right onto your tongue) and two optimize capsules along with about 20 ounces of distilled water in which I had put about four shakes of Mineralize (Himalayan Sea Salt). I weigh 152 pounds, so the program calls for me to drink at least 76 ounces of water per day: that’s about 20 ounces – four times a day. It might be easier to mix ½ teaspoon of the Mineralize with a gallon of distilled water than trying to figure out what the hell a pinch is. That is the amount you are supposed to put in a glass of water. I used four shakes. This part wasn’t too bad, except drinking all of that water on an empty stomach early in the morning just doesn’t feel right for a little while. It was around 6:45 am and what I would normally be doing right then was drinking my coffee.
The Beachbody Ultimate Reset calls for you to stop drinking caffeine for the duration and recommends weaning yourself off it slowly. For years my morning routine involved one strong cup of coffee, which was probably about the same as a Grande size at Starbucks. Over the previous week I had slowly reduced the amount of caffeine in my coffee by starting at half-caf and progressing to the point where the nice lady at Starbucks on Tuesday morning put a splash of regular in my decaf. It was more symbolic than anything else. Didn’t I say I was a geek?
I tried not to think too much about the tub of water in my stomach while working on the next step of the Ultimate Reset which was breakfast: whole-grain toast, scrambled eggs (not just egg whites), and steamed kale. I’m sure that this sounds strange to most people but my wife and I have actually eaten kale and eggs many times. Usually we sauté the kale with onions instead of steaming it, and cook the eggs right on top of the kale; there are less pans to wash that way. Not being sure how many changes are too many changes in order to still get the desired results, I went ahead and steamed the kale. Breakfast was delicious.
Before going to bed Tuesday night I had made a salad of mixed greens and blended up about a week’s worth of the Basic Vinaigrette (OK, you got me, it was actually my wife, Risa, who did it). The Ultimate Reset has three different salad dressing recipes. I couldn’t bring myself to make the Creamy Garlic Dressing, which is made with 3-5 cloves of raw garlic, and eat it at work, even though it did sound pretty good.
After breakfast I packed the day’s remaining capsules, the bottles of Mineralize and Oxygenize, and the dreaded Alkalinize packet into the Beachbody Ultimate Reset caddy. I say dreaded because everyone on the Phase 1 Facebook group was talking about how awful it is. Some of the comments were: “I gag when I try to drink it.” “I can’t keep it down.” “I have to hold my nose…” I was not looking forward to this.
I packed the salad and a little container of dressing into my bright neon green insulated VMASC lunch bag. You would have never caught me carrying a bright green lunch bag, except that my son who works at the Virginia Modeling, Analysis, and Simulation Center (VMASC) gave it to me. So I carry it to work every day. With my lunch bag, brief case and iPhone in hand, I kissed my wife and headed off to work. I don’t go anywhere without my iPhone.
Just in case you don’t have the latest iPhone or haven’t seen the commercials, Siri is the hot little iPhone personal assistant who is your beck and call girl. Siri reminded me at eleven-thirty to take my next dose of water and supplements. At noon I ate my salad, which I very much enjoyed. An hour later I started having pain in my neck and head, and by two o’clock I was headed home with a massive headache that was so bad that I was feeling very nauseous. I was almost completely incapacitated. I was full of toxins; they were like a bunch of little terrorists, all trying to get out and blowing up their suicide vests all at the same time.
It wasn’t a very pleasant drive home, but I finally made it and spent the next two and a half hours sleeping with the cats. I had completely missed the time that I was supposed to take the Alkalinizer. I wasn’t sure if I would have been able to handle it anyway in my current state, being about half recovered at this point, so I decided to skip it, under duress, for the first day. My iPhone wasn’t happy about being ignored either: Siri told me that she was looking forward to watching me try the Alkalinizer for the first time as long as I covered her in plastic wrap – just in case.
I did take the before-dinner water and supplements. I’m not sure, had I been home alone doing the Ultimate Reset, that I would have eaten dinner at all, but Risa made it for me so I climbed off the floor where I had lain since the cats kicked me out of bed. I was a little off schedule for the dinner menu, since knowing in advance that Day 2, Thursday night, we were going out to dinner and a play (scheduled four months earlier), we had decided to switch the dinner menus for days 1 and 2. Therefore, that night we ate the Black Beans and (brown) Rice, fresh corn, and guacamole. I made it through dinner, wondering the whole time if I would. The food was certainly not bad, but I was in such a pitiful state that I couldn’t be called upon to pass judgment properly. My wife enjoyed it. I didn’t stay up much longer after dinner; I had pretty much written off the rest of the day, so I took the plastic wrap off of Siri and went to bed. I was looking forward to a much better Day 2.
This is where the Beachbody Ultimate Reset Facebook Group really helped. I read several posts from people who had a pretty bad headache on Day 1. Others reported having them instead on Days 2, 3, 4 or 5. While not everyone had this type of reaction, I was happy to see that my experience was pretty normal. I was also happy that I had weaned myself off of caffeine in order to avoid another cause for a headache.
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