One Week of Clean Eating

What an interesting experience!  I did not expect to feel quite the way I did after a week of clean eating.  As I alluded to in my previous post, I am not hell bent on compliance here, however, up until the evening of Day 7, I ate only Whole30 compliant foods.  I will confess that I didn’t stick 100% to the “spirit” of the program which is three meals, no snacking.  Most of the time I was OK, but as the week wore on, breakfast became more and more of a problem and I found myself snacking on cashews instead of eating a meal.  Even after making  this:

I still couldn’t summons up the enthusiasm to eat breakfast every day.  It is a meal I have always struggled with.  I was doing intermittent fasting and skipping breakfast altogether.  That style of eating actually worked really well for me but then I discovered the Chobani coconut and chocolate yoghurts and started eating those every morning for breakfast. Yum!  Back to the here and now, if I didn’t have a meal prepared, I also didn’t eat lunch on schedule. Yesterday for example, I didn’t get lunch until 3 PM because I didn’t have time to fix it.  This is on top of no breakfast.  Could I make this work?  Absolutely!  But I would need to change so much about my lifestyle to be 100% compliant and I am not feeling the motivation or the need to make these changes.

I woke up on day 2 of the Whole30 thing feeling great!  But that really was the last time I have felt great.  My head was less foggy than usual, but my stomach was a disaster.  And this was part of the problem with breakfast.  As soon as food hit my stomach, the gas and pain would begin.  It got progressively worse throughout the day to the point where I was miserable and in pain every evening. I looked to be 6 months pregnant.  This did not ease at all over the course of the week.  Yesterday I bought magnesium and what I hope is Whole30-compliant lactobacillis acidophilus.  I haven’t yet identified why I am having so many GI issues but I am guessing that either my soluble fiber intake is too low, or my stomach acid levels are too low, or I have an imbalance between the good and bad bacteria in my gut.

We were unexpectedly invited out to dinner last night.  I knew I had not the will power to get through a dinner out without breaking the rules.  So I compromised with myself. I’d order a salad and have a glass of wine.  Well, we all know that I don’t do just one glass of wine.  I was true to form and had two glasses with dinner.  I had a third when I got home.  I also ate a few corn chips with cheese dip.  Yup, if you are going to break your diet, might as well do it with style!  I am proud of myself for only having between 5 – 10 corn chips though.  If I’d not been on the diet, I’d have eaten the whole basket!

And that brings me to another aspect of the Whole30 diet that has surprised me. I haven’t been hungry at all. No cravings for anything.  I think the bloated stomach plays a big role there, but that’s OK.  My main objective for doing this was to stop the carb binges!

Luckily for me, my mother was an excellent cook and she turned some of those skills over to me.   Putting together meals without a plan isn’t that difficult for me.  I made this green curry from leftover stir fry chicken and vegetables:

 

My slow cooker has become a best friend and has allowed me to easily prepare meat that can be used in numerous ways, including my own version of southwestern pulled beef:

 

I have discovered some foods that I didn’t know existed.  This loaded sweet potato has a big spoonful of coconut butter on it.  This was one of my favorite meals to date.

 

I bought a spiralizer last summer and it really is the most practical diet tool in my kitchen.  I am not a big fan of spaghetti squash but I love spiralized summer squash or zucchinis.  I made this “pasta” dish and served over summer squash.

 

I also made myself a sweet potato shepherd’s pie using lamb from a roasted lamb that I fixed on the first day of the diet.  It was really, really good.  I also used the lamb in the breakfast casserole. I have yet to find breakfast sausage that is Whole30-compliant in my town.

 

I know that eating this way is not for me. I  don’t really enjoy it and the bloating impacts my life significantly.  After my intentional slip up last night, I woke with no bloat but with a wicked migraine that was resistant to all drugs.  I know the wine is the culprit and I am treating yesterday as a reintroduction day, of sorts.  That means that today, tomorrow, and the next day are pure Whole30 eating.  I will then add in dairy for a day, as detailed by the plan.

Many will criticize me for doing this for only 1 week.  I had hoped for 2 weeks but I just don’t see any point in being this miserable.  I find that the diet has too much meat in it for me.  I also feel nauseated at the prospect of a full meal for breakfast.  The last issue I have is muscle fatigue.  My muscles burn to a ridiculous extent when I do anything more than a brief walk.  Clearly, my muscles are not accustomed to drawing energy from much other than an immediate source.  On the one hand, it is probably a good indicator that my body is trying to use fat instead of glucose.  On the other hand, it sucks to feel so physically exhausted.

So there you have it.  My first attempt at a very dramatic dietary change.  Let’s see how the next 3 days go.

 

 

 

Trying Again

Well hello to my old friends. I bet you forgot I existed.  It has been so long that I couldn’t remember my password!  I fail to understand why, as much as I love to write, I cannot blog on a regular basis.  I guess it goes hand in hand with my inability to stick with anything!  Diet, exercise, resolutions, etc.  My weight yoyos like crazy.  When I exercise, it is down, when I am highly stressed, it is down.  Anything in between and I begin to look like a hippopotamus!  I don’t seem to be able to find a happy medium.  And so, I am starting to work on a new me all over again!  Is that a collective groan that I hear from my readers?  I don’t blame you in the slightest.  Nonetheless, I am going to give it a shot.  And since it is spring, this is an apt time for Springcleanedmom to do some spring cleaning!

What exactly are you doing, I hear you ask?  I don’t usually do things in half measures so I am throwing myself into a Whole30.  Yes, me, the anti-high protein, -low carb girl. Yes me, the anti-paleo girl.  I couldn’t care less what my cave-person ancestors ate and I don’t believe that today’s diet should reflect what they ate.  I know, I know, this doesn’t make sense at all.  Well, here is what I like about Whole30.  They are not advocating for a caveman diet.  They are advocating for a healthy diet.  A good deal of what they say makes sense to the scientist in me.   And a part of it is plain desperation.

It all started when I was a wee-little lass.  The “sick headaches”, the fatigue, the anxiety, the depression, and the insomnia.  And it only got worse through my college years, partially because I discovered alcohol (actually, that discovery was a little earlier than college).  My 20s were the worst years for depression, my 30s for migraine.  My 40s haven’t seen much in the way of depression, but pain has been my companion for a very long time now, as has insomnia.  I started running in my 30s and although this new-found love went hand-in-hand with a healthier lifestyle and weight, it also went hand-in-hand with chronic hip pain.  While surgery fixed some of the hip problems, it hasn’t been the complete answer to my troubles.   Every so often I have major flare ups which require steroids.  And in the past two weeks I have had shingles and debilitating back pain.  Out of shear desperation, I have turned to the internet and as luck (or misfortune) would have it, I stumbled across the Whole30 program!

Anyone who knows me, knows that I love to eat.  I am addicted to food.  While I am fortunate enough to enjoy healthy foods, I am a potato chip addict.  If it wasn’t so bad for me, I’d live on a diet of dips, chips, and red wine 🙂  Who wouldn’t want to do that?  As you can imagine, I don’t feel so good when my diet consists largely of fat and sugars.  It is time to detoxify.  I am also treating this as a migraine elimination diet. I have started many of these over the years but have a hard time sticking with them.  Why do I think Whole30 will be different? Because it has an end date.  They even have a plan to add foods back in to the diet after the 30 days.  The one problem for me is that I am scheduled to have surgery mid-way through.  I thought about starting the “eating plan” after my surgery, but why wait?  If I cannot stick to the diet during my overnight stay in the hospital, so be it!  Technically, the folks who developed the 30 day plan would require I start over.  I will wait and see.  I am highly unlikely to beat myself up about eating something “off-plan) while in the hospital.  The two weeks of healthy eating prior to my hospital stay can only be of benefit.

Today is Day 2 for me!  Day 1 was a breeze.  Today I am lacking energy but given that I am on pain killers and muscle relaxants, I don’t think the diet is soley to blame!  I am looking forward to the morning when I wake up with the “extraordinary energy” that so many Whole30 and Paleo folk describe.   I am not hungry.  That is a good thing.  I do want something sweet but I can handle that.  I am feeling rather positive about this new journey even though I have never experienced a diet-induced change in how I feel.

How about you?  Who has made a significant dietary change and reaped benefits?  I’d love to hear your stories!