Week 3 and 4

[koa]

Hey team,

 

Week 1 was amazing. It was easy to transition into the program and I felt great.

 

Week 2 was awesome, but a little more rough. I hated eggs - loathed them and wanted nothing to do with them (which actually started around the day 4). Yet I was still waking up with lots of energy, and waking up naturally. I felt pretty happy and was really excited to post about my experience every day on my blog.

 

Week 3. I wanted to quit. I'm sure others have said the same thing, but it was more that I was very angry and upset, I was super depressed and very tired all the time. I couldn't wake up feeling refreshed and I couldn't even get out of bed on some days. I had to take naps at school, and the food just wasn't cutting it (I'll go into what I was eating in a different post). I started seeing my anxiety coming back, and was constantly worried that I wasn't doing something right. I experienced the carb dreams every night from about day 4 to day 20, and they were rough and super stressful.

 

Halfway through Week 3 I felt a little better. I got to talking to my friend who had done the whole30 last year and we talked about what my diet consisted of. We decided that I was having too much fruit and not enough carbs without the sugar (so I added in potatoes and took out oranges). This seemed to help. I didn't have any more carb dreams and even though I was super tired, I felt like I was a little more at ease with the program.

 

However, the anxiety continued, and I wasn't sure if I should quit.

 

Week 4: Day 28 (today). I am in pain. My joints hurt all over and I am unhappy with the way the program has gone. I haven't lost the cravings for things like cheese and donuts and especially bread with butter. I am having carb dreams again, but I'm eating the newly devised balance of veggies and fruit and meat that my friend and I came up with. But I just don't feel it. The dreams make me want to cry, even in the waking world, AFTER I've already had a stressful reaction in the dream (shouting, screaming, crying, angst...). What am I doing wrong?

 

I've read other people's blogs and forum posts elsewhere and some people are saying that the entire 30-day program just wasn't for them. Is that possible? I want to do this; obviously I'm only 2 days from the end (excluding reintroduction), but I just keep asking myself, "Why? Is this really working?"

[jmcbn]

Hey koa

 

I'm sorry to hear you're having a hard time of it.... It sounds like the composition of your meals might be 'off' so if you could post a few days worth of your food intake, indicating portion sizes & specifics (ie. types of veg), along with sleep, stress & activity levels we can hopefully help you troubleshoot.

Bear in mind that if this way of eating is a lot different from how you ate before, or if you've medical conditions of any kind it may well take longer than the 30 days to start seeing results. It's also possible that you have a sensitivity to smething you are eating which is causing these feelings of anxiety you describe, so have a think about whether or not there is anything new in your diet, or anything you are eating a lot more of....

[koa]

Well I'm very bad at measuring portions, so there's a problem with reporting it accurately. Lunch and Breakfast are usually leftovers. Dinners will be one of the major meals in the whole30 book to recipe and often with extra veggies. The last four days have been the Classic Chili on page 342 (using pasture-fed organic beef), some blended up cauliflower (oven-roasted with garlic cloves and ghee) at the bottom of the bowl, and a half an avocado on top.

 

At some point in the day I will have a snack of half an apple with my own home-made cashew butter on it (my recipe: raw cashews, sea salt, coconut oil, cinnamon).

 

That's been the gist the past week. For breakfast yesterday I had some of the egg salad (boiled eggs, 1/2 and avocado, 2.5 tbsp of the mayo in the book, 1 tbsp lemon juice, 1 tsp plain roasted-garlic-and-sea-salt. 1/2 tsp fresh cracked black pepper).

 

The worst of my issues have been before this, but last night I did experience disorientation, lethargy and listlessness, and general anxiety. I did not have coffee yesterday.

 

I will try to be better about cataloging my food (which is a good idea i think, since I will be doing reintroduction in a few days ?).

[jmcbn]

Can you be more specific about which vegetables you have been eating?

Also, try to give some indication of your portion sizes - how many serving spoons of the chilli are you having? Or how does a portion of meat look in relation to the size of your palm? The breakfast you detail for yesterday looks to be missing veg of any kind, and since a serving of eggs for most females is 3-4 you'd need to have had at least 4 eggs in there fro it to have been sufficient...

I'm guessing that you are just not eating enough, but difficult to tell unless you can be more specific, although given that you are eating a snack every day I'd hazard a guess that I'm right. If you are genuinely hungry between meals then increase the size of your next meal and try to make snack 2 out of the 3 main macros - so preferably protein & fat, or protein & carbs, or fat & carbs.