In case you were wondering how things are going on the Maker's Diet, it really depends. If you are a stickler, things are going medium-not-too-bad. If you are a free spirit, things are going great! Because Matt and I are at peace with our cheating :P

It started with us going on a youth retreat last weekend, which was awesome spiritually, but very out-of-our-control food-wise. So Matt and I had a chat on the bus up and decided to take the weekend off the diet. Of course, a whole month of different thinking about food can't be undone on a whim, and neither of us had much desire to gorge on all the carbs we've been avoiding. I personally greatly enjoyed the French toast fingers on Saturday! But I also got a salad at McDonalds on the way up, and I skipped a lot of bread/buns in the meals that were sandwich-based just because I wasn't interested.

At this point, I truly enjoy choosing vegetables/salad and protein over bread/potatoes/pasta. Of course, having the mentality that cheating was allowed slippery sloped into a couple cookies this week :) Oh, and I made a cheesecake! It was a little bit fail in that it's undercooked, and Matt is weirded out by the cinnamon flavour in the crust (I followed the recipe, and next time I will leave it out because it is weird) sooo I will be eating it all to myself :)

We haven't noticed any ill effects, although I realize how much cheating leads to more cheating! I crave cookies and treats way more when I've had just one than during the weeks when it was simply off limits.

If I were to do it again (and we've talked about maybe doing it once a year), I think I would do it similarly to how things have panned out this time around: I'd follow the first and second phases, then just go back to normal (normal being lots of cooking from scratch and healthy choices). I am even considering doing a fruit-grain-dairy fast for two weeks part way through the year as a mini-detox to see if the effects are as great as they were in January.

I'm not planning to post a meal plan for phase 3 since I'm only planning a day or two ahead right now, and it's just normal food. All in all though, I'd say this diet experiment was a success :)