June 4, 2014 – Day 4

What did I Eat?

Meal 1

1 Boiled Egg

1 Banana

1 Larabar

Meal 2

everything in one bite

Salad

• Romaine
• Tomatoes
• Avocado
• Shrimp
• Walnuts

Meal 3

2 Italian Baked Eggs (Oeufs En Cocotte)

 The Day

I FORGOT TO BUY EGGS!!!!

I did not start the day off right. I forgot eggs when I did my grocery run last night. I grabbed some things out of the fridge that would enable me to make a salad for lunch at work. We have a decent kitchen in the office to if need be, salads and things can always be assembled on my lunch break rather than having to get up super early or make something the night before. Unless I need to make for Sean too, then he doesn’t have the luxury of a kitchen since he works outdoors. With his digestive issues of late, he has been sticking to mainly liquids and soft foods lately and I really only need to worry about me.

I got to work and stopped at that little café in the lobby. I grabbed a black coffee, banana, and apple and I asked the lady for 2 eggs. She says “oh no! They are just cooking now if you want to wait… otherwise there is only one left from yesterday.” I was already late so I take the one, pay and head up stairs to the office. I peel my eggs and eat it. I bite the apple and it’s gritty. I look at the apple and it’s bruised. I decide I better cut it up and I take it to the kitchen only to find, once I’d cut it in half, that the bruise surrounded the whole apple just under the skin. I have never seen that before but what a letdown. I pouted as I tossed it in the organics bin we have at work. I went back to my desk and started on the banana. This was relatively bruised also but most of it was salvageable so I ate what I could. I waited until I was hungry again to eat the Larabar which was a longer time than I thought.

Lunch rolled around and I chopped all my veggies and assembled my salad. I think I need to bring a decent sized bowl to work for my salads. Once I had all the ingredients in the bowl, there was no room for the shrimp. I put it on the side and ate them together as best I could. I opted for no dressing as I had an avocado as a fat and tomatoes, and avocados on salad kind of blend together to make their own delicious dressing any way. After eating in the lunch room (not at my desk) I went out into the sun, over to Urban Fare, to buy eggs.

When I got home I was excited to make the baked eggs dish mentioned above. I had pinned it for my first round of Whole30 and always seemed to be short one ingredient or another. When I went grocery shopping yesterday, I bought spinach purposely for this dish. Everything else, I had. I get home only to realize we forgot eggs and couldn’t make the dish. So tonight was the night! I was going to make them for breakfast for the next day. After prepping and making the dishes, I decided we would have them for dinner tonight instead. They were easy but made a few dishes and there were many steps. Once they were in the oven, I did not feel like making another meal for dinner so I thought, why not have these fresh tonight instead? I ended up making 6 instead of 4 anyway, I could serve 2 to each Sean and me for dinner and have 2 for breakfast tomorrow as left over. They were soft enough for Sean to eat, and probably the healthiest thing he has had all week. He was living off of Mr. Noodles and juice.

Sean has diverticulitis and has had 3 major flare-ups in 4 months. It is uncommon to have a second flare-up at all, let alone within a year of the first one. And it is uncommon for people under 50 or so to have this condition period, then it becomes increasingly common after that age. It’s the reason old people need to eat high fibre. You have to keep everything moving, or there is too much pressure on the large intestine and these pockets form. Then when they become infected, they cause a lot of pain. We’ve been told when he has a flare up, he should move to a liquid diet and get antibiotics. For the three major flare-ups, we have gone to the hospital, he has been on pain meds, diagnosed, and sent home with antibiotics. He is missing so much work and it’s causing him so much pain, so frequently that the doctors have decided to operate. This is the surgery that he is having Mid-June. It will not be laparoscopic like we had initially been told and had read. It will be a full invasive procedure, he will be in the hospital for up to 5 days, and then home resting and healing for up to 6 weeks. It’s kind of a big deal. This will hopefully be the best thing for the long run. He should be in less pain, less often moving forward. Unfortunately he has diverticula throughout his entire large intestine. The part the surgeon is focused on is riddled with scar tissue from past flare-ups and they want to remove it. They obviously cannot remove his entire large intestine. Well technically they could, but the benefits do not outweigh the cons just yet, and hopefully we never get to that point.

All in all, we are feeling nervous but optimistic.

How do I feel today?

The clarity I feel continues to amaze me. I had another small headache in the morning that went away pretty early on. I had more sugar and crap food before this round than the other so I fully expected some withdraw in the first week or so. I also have had cravings and small fantasies of cheating. I have asked myself things like “I know dairy isn’t my issue, so it wouldn’t hurt if I added cheese here and there right?” but I remind myself that I did not do a proper reintroduction after my last W30, so I don’t really know that I am ok with dairy. I also have been tempted to weigh in this round. This is weird to me because I was so set on not doing it last round. But I have really noticed a huge difference in my belly size from day 1 to now and it’s got me curious if that translates to pounds. Again, I remind mself it’s not about that. Who care if I lost 1 lb, 5 lbs, or no lbs? I am feeling great!!

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!!! 

Day 15 – Halfway!!

I am halfway done my first Whole30 today.

I feel great. My energy is up, my focus and concentration is better, I am developing good habits, and I am genuinely enjoying it all.

I am starting to wonder when my skin will clear up though. It was starting to and the bam! Breakout! The messed up part is I never got acne until I was about 24. Now I get it when I eat poorly, and hormonally, like that time of the month, which is starting now. It takes more than 2 weeks to fix your hormones though, which is why this is the Whole30, not the Whole15.

Between being away overnight and then having company, I did not get a chance to make pre-made breakfasts for the week. I chopped some lettuce, tomatoes, shallots, and chicken breast from the last of the three chickens, for Sean’s salad, then I ate a banana as I threw leftovers from the salmon dish and some leftover yams in my lunch bag, then went to work. I stopped in that little café in our lobby for a black coffee and boiled eggs and headed up to the office. The morning went by fast and before I knew it, it was lunch time. I actually stepped away from my desk o eat lunch in our lunchroom. I heated my leftovers and enjoyed the salmon dish, round 2. All in all, the day was uneventful, and my meals weren’t all that exciting.

Even dinner wasn’t amazing, or worth bogging about. We finished off the last of the three roast chickens, which a seasoned with an Herbs de Provence blend from Whole Foods (it has no additives). I made a sided of brussel sprouts for me, and a side of broccoli for Sean since he hates brussel sprouts. We ate dinner and I caught up on my blog. This might have been the most uneventful day since starting W30.

There is a part on the timeline called “Days 12-15: Boundless energy! Now give me a damn Twinkie” that talks about cravings being the most intense around the middle and let me tell you, I have that going on. I ate almonds and could almost taste the Hershey chocolate that I wished they were coated in. I wanted marshmallows yesterday and something like a Mars bar today. I have craved toast, Kraft Smooth Peanut Butter, Justin’s Nut Butters, and cake! I can’t remember all my cravings but I remember thinking they are random or funny – and so realistic, like I can smell it, or almost taste it. Can I please just have one bowl of gluten-free puffin cereal?

A highlight today was being asked if I have lost weight - but not because of anything to do with my weight, because I could confidently say “I have no idea… but thank you!” and genuinely not care. I realize that the Whole30 is genuinely not about losing weight, numbers, scales, inches, unrealistic beauty standards, or anything superficial. This is about getting healthy and being healthy and about how I feel. And I feel damn good!

I have known for a long time that if I was ever going to be successful in losing weight, I would need to adopt an outlook about being healthy, not skinny. But no matter how much I preached it, wrote it, said it, or thought I believed it, I didn’t. I fantasized about being able to slip into item of clothing and have it drape off me and look good like on a model. And when I “came to terms” with the likelihood that I may never be that thin, I ate whatever I wanted and pretended to be proud of my curvy body. But this was just a disguise to acknowledge that my waistline was increasing while at the same time, hide my contempt for it. This Whole30 and ISWF has changed all of that mentality. I just want to nourish my body, because I love my body – it’s the only one I have. How it looks will be reflective of how I feel and if I keep eating this way, I can only feel better and better.

I can’t believe we are halfway to the “end”. I feel like there is still so much to learn. I still have over half the book to read, but at the same time, I already have learned a lot and I am really enjoying the program. I have already decided there will be more Whole30’s in my future. Once I have read the whole book and understand fully the whys and whats, it can only get better.