WHOLE 30 Update

I am midway through my sixteenth day on Whole30.   According to the Whole 30 Timeline, my Days 9-12 were pretty common.  I did not have boundless energy come Day 12, however, that may be an artifact of my kids not having a great night of sleep :)

Challenges

Day 9 was the hardest day so far.  I grabbed the wrong pyrex container for lunch - so I had a pyrex full of grilled peppers instead of one containing a hamburger, portabello mushrooms and the peppers.  I was REALLY craving things that day and felt really hungry all day.

I am getting better at eating the recommended portions for portein and fat so that I feel full after meals.  Honestly, reading the meal planning section of It Starts With Food was really helpful for me in terms of letting go of some of my preconceived notions about how much I should be eating.  Eat more!!! 

I have lost some weight.  I'm not exactly sure how much because I don't own a scale but all of my pants are bigger on me.  This is something that I wasn't really trying to do, but I have also heard that it is hard NOT to lose weight on Whole30.

Surprises

This is the part of the post where I feel a little voodoo witchcraft.  Sometime near the end of college, I developed an oral allergy to several types of fruit (peaches, pears, strawberries and apples) and nuts (almonds, walnuts).  Periodically, I will test eating these things to see if I still have a reaction.  Several weeks ago, I ate some almonds in a trail mix at work and had a reaction (hives, itchy mouth).  I had to go buy some benedryl at our employee pharmacy.

I have been eating almonds and even ate several slices of apple last week with no effects.  HUH?!  Not sure if that was a fluke or what, but that was my biggest surprise of last week.

Cravings

I still had a lot of cravings all last week, again, all at night.  Mainly, I was craving Toppers Stix.  How disgusting is that!? Even my husband was a little grossed out by that one!

Chocolate.

Tortilla chips.

Chocolate Cake.

Popcorn.

Sparkling water is the antidote to my cravings.  So now I have a can of sparkling water when we sit down to watch TV.

Workouts

My workouts continued to go well.  After finishing It Starts With Food, I made more of an effort to eat something with protein post-workout than I had done in the past.  The RxBars have been good for that.  (Again, these contain almonds.  No reaction!)

I also had a race on Saturday!  BIG NEWS THERE (which I will reveal in a separate post).

Other

Reading It Starts With Food was really helpful during this week.  It made more aspects of Whole30 make sense to me and gave me some motivation to push through.  I think referring to the aforementioned timeline is also helpful because it reiterated that my cravings and hunger were very common for the stage I was in and thus, gave me motivation to keep going.

I will say though that not all Whole30 is rainbows and unicorns.  On a negative side, this is the first time I have ever tried a "diet" of sorts and I do not like how obsessed it makes me about food.  I feel like I am constantly thinking about food and planning what I can eat so that I stay in Whole30.  For example, last week Thursday was a really stressful day at work.  I picked my kids up from daycare and both of them were out of sorts and thus needy.  Prior to Whole30, that would have been a day where I would have said, "Screw the meal plan, let's go out to eat or have a pizza" and I was just really stressed trying to get the Whole30 approved dinner on the table.

Also, anxiety about going out to eat is annoying.  We like to go out to eat once a week and I am making us eat at home because it is easier for me to cook something that will be ok to eat versus going to our usual spots were literally nothing would be there.

So yes, there are psychological bad habits that Whole30 tries to help you with, but I kind of wonder if it is creating some bad habits as well!  Maybe once I get to the "tiger blood" stage (aka the stage were you have boundless energy and feel amazing) I will think differently.  Apparently Tiger Blood begins around day 16...I'm waiting!!!!