Intro to My Second Whole30

It’s been a crazy few weeks and I am very excited to start Whole30 again for the month of June. It could not be more perfect in that June started on a Sunday and has exactly 30 days to it, right?

I am even more excited that some of the most important and most influential women in my life are doing it by my side. This includes my mom for her second round, as well as both of my sisters, and My Dad’s fiancé for each of their first rounds. In my opinion, Good Health is the best and most important thing you can wish on your friends and family. With good health, your chances for a long, happy, healthy life dramatically increase, and of course we want our loved ones around as long as possible, but we also want them to have a good quality of life in that time and good health is the cornerstone to a good life.

Starting Photo - 06/01/2014

This time I have taken starting photos! I love my curves, but I would love to lose this gut by reducing my bloating. Here are my starting measurements:

Height	5' 7 "
Weight	207 lbs
Chest	42"
Arms	14"
Waist	35"
Hips	48"
Thighs	29"
Calves	18"

To be honest, I knew my birthday weekend was going to be rough but I did not realize it would be so easy to fall into my old habits of grabbing fast food for lunch often and mindless snacking, after a long weekend of partying and I do not feel good about it. I am craving good whole foods and very excited to get back into the Whole30 life after the last two weeks. On the upside, I will be able to feel a difference once again in the way my body feels.

On top of trashing my body for 4 days over my birthday long weekend, and slipping into old habits, I had another weekend wherein a completely gorged myself on fatty, high calorie, high carb foods in prep for a round of HcG. I will leave it to you to research HcG if you are interested. I have done it 3 times before with great results, under the care of a naturopath.

The HcG Gist: The first two days, you are required to eat as much as you can to fill your fat stores and this leaves you less hungry when you start, while the HcG builds in your system. Once the hormone builds, you no longer feel hungry and do not need to eat much, you then begin eating a very low calorie diet from a very short list of allowed foods. Then your body begins burning fat as fuel and of course, you lose weight that is mostly pure fat.

I feel this can be a good kick-starter only, for those interested in losing weight really fast and then switching to a healthy lifestyle for good. My naturopath will not allow people to use it for a crutch which is why I like doing it through her.

So, I did the first two gorge days, and started in on the low calories on the third day and then we got The Call. Unfortunately, Sean will be having a major surgery Mid-June. After careful deliberation, it was clear that adhering to the very strict protocol of the HcG diet would prove too challenging for this time and I decided it was not the right time.

Sean will be in the hospital for 4-5 days post op, and I will be back and forth to the hospital, and work, and home. I may need to eat on the go and there may be emergency situations, but hopefully not. Then there will be aftercare. Life will be spontaneous, busy, and challenging for up to a couple weeks it seems. I am up for the challenge with Whole30, but not HcG.

While I stopped the HcG, it doesn’t change the fact that I gorged for an entire weekend. I was bloated, gassy, and had a major breakout on my face. Despite feeling gross, I found myself wanting more and more fast/junk food and giving in more and more also. When I realized that June was the perfect month to do a Whole30, it was an easy decision and I made my commitment. I felt good about the decision when I realized I would rather feel healthy on the inside like with Whole30, than simply lose weight quickly, like with HcG. I feel this is a healthy thought process.

This new round of W30 will present some challenges, but like I said, I am up for them. I found eating on the go, or out, to be fairly easy with W30. I will be blogging along the way as before but with a few changes:

• My blog posts will be more structured (i.e. sections for “What I Ate” “How I Feel” “What I Did”)
• I intend to include more pictures and links
• I want to come up with and add more recipes
• Recipes are now on a separate tab so as not to make my blog posts soooo looong

And finally, on top of committing to 30 days of eating Whole Foods, I am also committing to 30 minutes per day, of moving my body, for the next 30 days. My building complex’s outdoor pool is now open and last year we were in it almost every day so I feel like this should be easy. I am sure there will be challenges here too, but I feel really good about the challenges both mentally and physically.

Thank you for following along in my journey and congratulations if you are doing Whole30 too! 

Here we go again!!! 

Round One Wrap Up

Before beginning to blog about my second attempt at Whole30, I wanted to close the circle on the first round.

I can happily say I made conscious decisions to eat Whole30 approved foods for 30 days. But I cannot truly say it was perfect. Along the way, I was inadvertently served meat that was pre-soaked in salt water and preservatives. I won’t say what, when, or by whom as it does not matter and I know this person feels bad enough. Plus it was an eye-opener to them as well and they are now doing a Whole30! So in my opinion, this mistake was meant to be.

It was really early into my Whole30 and I didn’t find out until halfway through. After much thought, I decided to continue on with eating as I was. I did not want it to become an excuse to give up and return to old habits and I had gone longer doing Whole30 after it happened, than I had before it happened, so I continued doing what I had been doing.

I will never know what, if any effect that small amount of preservatives had on my body so I choose not to sweat it. I still felt amazing through the program. By the end, I was telling people I had a whole new body.

As a bonus I lost 15 pounds in a month! As good as this feels, the way my body feels inside is far more exciting. I really felt new and clean on the inside. I did not take before photos for my first Whole30 and this is one of my biggest regrets. But my hands and feet do not swell any more. My face is not as puffy. I do not ever feel bloated or gassy. I did not have any stomach pains in the time I was on Whole30. My skin started to clear, but did not fully, but that just tells me, I need to keep going. And that I have not fully cleared my body of what is causing this ongoing breakout. There is so much more too but I think it will only get better!

For this reason, I am really excited to do this next round in June. 

Day 17 – This is “weighing” on my mind

So… today was uneventful…

Work, errands, typical day in day out stuff. I had a Banana and 2 boiled eggs for breakfast, a Salad from urban fare with salmon on top, which I could not finish, Sausages and left over brussels for dinner. Sean and I always get excited when we are able to find sausages that don’t have any additives. These ones were simply meat, spices, and salt. And they were so juicy and flavourful. 

I just wish we could find bacon that is compliant. We have come across bacon without nitrates, but it was still cured with sugar. 

I do want to mention one thing that came up this week. If you read the rules about Whole30 on their website, you should know that one slip up and you have to start over, from Day 1. But as far as I know that is only if you ingest (even a lick) of something that is not Whole30 approved. I bring this up because I have a friend who thought she had to start over because she weighed herself. I won’t say who to protect their identity but she nearly threw in the towel over weighing herself so I feel it’s important to bring up and ensure no one else make the same mistakes (plural because one is the act of weighing itself, the other is thinking you have to start back at day one because you did weigh in)

The rules do say to hide your scale, but only because it can wreck your W30 on a mental level. This is important too, but there is no need to start over, just put your scale away moving forward and don’t make a habit out of it. From the website: “This is about so much more than just weight loss, and to focus on your body composition means you’ll miss out on the most dramatic and lifelong benefits this plan has to offer. So, no weighing yourself, analyzing body fat or taking comparative measurements during your Whole30.”

 

And if you still find you can’t stop, you can find some support here. 

Lastly, if you need some tough love, here is 5 reasons to break up with your scale. 

In the spirit of Whole30-style tough love: If you are in this just to lose weight, you are not in it for the right reasons. You will lose weight, but you will also reap so many more, and more important benefits, so Just. Don’t. Do. It.