My friend Shannan has inspired me to go back to the Whole 30 for awhile - at least 30 days. Thank you Shannan! Here is her story.
So I finally decided to take the plunge and get rid of the grains and sweeteners for 30 days. I don’t enjoy cooking meat, I love gluten-free baking, but I don’t love my ADHD, the extra 25 lbs, and daily exhaustion. I recall Laura saying to me at one time “It’s only 30 days.” That seemed like way to long to go without my rice, potatoes, gluten-free pasta, almond flour cookies, honey sweetened almond milk lattes, gluten free pizza, and all the other healthy carbs that I loved to snack on. I figured they were healthy enough anyway. Turns out they were just healthy enough to inflame me, keep my scale at the same number or up 2 lbs given the day, and leave me exhausted with ADHD to the extreme.
So here I go. Halfway through the first day of the Whole 30, I thought to myself that this diet just might be too extreme for me. How would I make it through the rest of the day, much less the 29 after that? I was tired and irritable, so I took a nap. Now that in itself was a big improvement, as no matter how tired I was, I could rarely wind down enough to take a nap. I wanted a PB&J. I wanted to eat spoonfuls of rice as I was making it for my kids. I wanted to dip my sausage in ketchup. I soooo wanted that big scoop of honey in my latte. I drank my latte with unsweetened almond milk and that was a very non-delicious non-treat. I ate zucchini pan-fried, some organic sausage, and a couple salads and finally called it day. I so didn’t love it and I missed my food, but it was over.
When I opened my eyes on day 2, I felt more awake than I had felt since having my baby 16 months ago. I didn’t feel like jumping out of bed and I wasn’t looking forward to my latte, but I didn’t feel like I had been run over by a huge truck either. I woke up, took a shower, which I’m usually too exhausted to do right away. I realized my day had started an hour earlier than it usually does. I unloaded the dishwasher right away and didn’t begrudge doing it. Was I experiencing increased energy already? Well then I decided to do what I did the day before and ate salad with deli meat, sausage, zucchini and squash,and some eggs. I fell asleep before midnight for the first time in months. Again didn’t love the day, missed my food, and was glad that it was over.
Day 3- Woke up feeling a bit more fresh again. I made the kids spinach meatballs with rice for lunch and I had spinach meatballs with zucchini and squash pan-fried in olive oil. Oh my goodness, I devoured the veggies like I used to devour a huge bowl of icecream. They had never tasted that delicious before. I really felt my tastes changing for the better. I also felt more organized. My ADHD has always made tasks like packing my three kids in the car to go to the park seem very overwhelming. I didn’t feel overwhelmed. I had a list in my mind of what I needed to do, instead of having all six things scattered in my brain and feeling overwhelmed. I got to the playdate 12 min late. That sure beats the 20-25 minutes that I’m usually running behind. I was feeling very excited about this diet and ready to go grocery shopping and see what other options there were. I was hungry while shopping, as I forgot to eat dinner and felt the carb attack come on. I found a bag of sweet potato chips with no added sweeteners to satisfy my craving. Then I simply walked around the outside of the store and stocked up on shrimp, scallops, salmon, grass-fed beef, deli-meat, sausage, veggies, fruit, and nuts. Oh and some full fat unsweetened coconut milk and red curry sauce to play around with.
Day 4. Today I felt amazing. I made my latte with full fat coconut milk and that really felt like a special treat and I enjoyed it. It filled me up for the morning. I didn’t sleep much that night, as baby woke me up a lot, but I still had energy. I would normally feel tired, think about all the things I needed to do, but was too tired to do, and then desire the nap that I would never get. The unattainable nap. Not today. Today, I cleaned my house in an organized fashion, spent hours in the veggie garden, cleaned the bathroom when I came in from gardening, and made a nutritious simple red curry coconut stir-fry with scallops and veggies. I served this on rice for the kids and I ate it like a soup. Delicious.
I’m now loving this diet. I just know there are more delicious, easy to make recipes out there that I need to discover, and I’m feeling great. I’m not thinking much about food and not craving the carbs as much. I stepped on the scale and I’m down 4 lbs in 4 days. I’m not even thinking of how many days I have left. I'm thinking of how badly I want to put the Jillian Michael's video in and go for a run. This diet is amazing.
Do I still think this diet is too extreme? Yes but only because the American diet is so exteme. It is so extremely reliant on carbs that we don’t even realize how often we are ingesting them. I feel like this diet is ridding my body of what was ailing it and giving me energy and focus. Veggies are tasting better, my kids are more enjoyable to me, I'm more enjoyable to them, and I’m more enjoyable to me.
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