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Hello!

In 2012, my family has decided to do one Whole30 every quarter and I'm loving it. We did one in January and we just finished our second in April. I love the Whole30 times—I go into Whole30 mode and know exactly what I can and can't eat. And I feel really good, physically and emotionally.

It's the Riding My Own Bike that I struggle with. I want to basically stay Whole30, but if something is special I want to enjoy it.

Last time (the months of Feb and March) I started out good, but was totally off-track by the time April rolled around. I'd really like to stay more on track during these next two months! So I thought I'd start a log.

SO... the last Whole30 ended on Monday the April 30th.

I continued to eat W30 until Wednesday night, when I chose to have Thai food - a Chat Samosa (my favorite!) and spicy stir fried beef with brown rice. About two hours after I ate, I noticed that my stomach hurt a little, but not horrible. It was okay and worth it.

Thursday morning I intended to eat W30, but I accidentally ordered an omelet that turned out to have provolone cheese in it. If I was W30-ing I would have come up with some reason that I couldn't eat it, or scraped the cheese off or something, but since I wasn't, I ate it. I was frustrated that I went off again, so soon and unplanned, but my body felt okay with it.

Friday night my boyfriend and I thought that instead of buying a bottle of wine we would sit down somewhere and just have a glass or two. I had two glasses of Cab with my buffalo burger (no bun, no cheese, etc). Ugh! In the past I've been able to drink a glass or two of wine and be absolutely fine the next day, but this morning I have the worst headache! A I-can't-move-around-and-I-cancelled-my-morning-plans headache! I'm shocked and horrified and feel terrible.

All I can figure is that in the past when we bought bottles of wine they were always organic; this wine in the restaurant was likely not, and must have had sulphites (I'm not even certain that is the right word).

NOT WORTH IT!

Finally, as I look at my calendar, next week is a pretty normal week, so I don't plan to go off. The week after that, however, I will be traveling cross-country and I do plan to do some off-roading... mixed in with a lot of vegetables! I'll update more...

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I just had 2 squares of Lindt with sea salt. OOOhhhh, it was good after 5 weeks of no chocolate. Now I have to stay strong and *not* have it every friggin' day! I also had lunch in my mother in laws and her bacon & sausages were probably not w30 compliant.

Organic wine isn't all that common over here yet, I must try get some & experiment :) Sorry your morning was spoiled by sulphites, grr!

Enjoy your off road biking!

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Emily, your post couldn't have come at a better time. I need to hear this from other people who are post-Whole 30 and are dipping their toes into the waters. I want to ride my own bike, too, but I haven't reallly tried anything yet. Like Dervalc, I fear if I try the dark chocolate I will be thinking it should be EVERY night. And I've been afraid if I have alcohol I'll end up with a headache. So I have been eating Whole 30 until something just really calls to me.

I hope you keep posting. This is also a part of the Whole 30, and one we all have to experience, too.

Thanks!

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Dervalc, I feel better in general about organic wine - better for my health and the earth's health. We're getting to a good point where wine is no longer a regular item in our house. I miss the rituals with it and the Pavlov's Dog response of relaxing that I associate with it; but overall I can tell I'm better off without it. Recently we have had multiple events where we both said "thank goodness we aren't drinking right now, that would make all of this even worse."

CarmenS, thanks for visiting! I feel like I have the Whole30 down, it's the life part that I really struggle with and I would like to grow with.

So... having said that, I'm irritated with myself tonight. Through a complicated and somewhat stressful series of events, I ended up eating a late, unplanned dinner at Black Eyed Pea. As I was sitting down I checked in with myself... I wasn't excited about being there, there was nothing I really wanted to eat, so I decided to stay on plan. I made it past the rolls and cornbread, I struggled to order and ultimately ordered a taco salad with no cheese, sour cream, or dressing (I asked for a side of salsa). The salad came in a big fried tortilla which I told myself I wouldn't eat. I ate the ground beef, lettuce, and tomato with the salsa on it.

All good! But then... when I finished the salad I thought I'd have just one piece of the fried shell. Which I know that I cannot do—I either have zero or all, I am not just a "little bite" person. So, I ended up eating the %^&* shell, not really enjoying it and with a part of me aware that I didn't want to be eating it the entire time.

Now I'm super frustrated with myself! I can blame it on feeling stressed about tonight's events, not feeling good today, maybe the super moon... but this is the exact situation I want to get a handle on.

In terms of how did my body respond... my poor body still doesn't feel right from the wine, but so far so good after eating the tortilla. I'm coming to think that I can eat small amounts of anything without upsetting my system too much, but small amounts means small, rare amounts! Not off-plan everyday!

I'm going to attempt to stop beating myself up at this moment, but I'm frustrated. At least I didn't eat the bread.

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Ugh, I know precisely what you mean. I have (and occasionally still will) demolish a loaf of French bread, slice by slice, hating myself every minute of it, without being able to stop myself.

I've gotten better with it by just removing myself from the situation, but it took me a while to get there. I needed to enlist the help of others in the beginning. "please move that bread to the other side of the table and keep it there" and have even had folks pour the rest of their drinks over whatever it was I couldn't keep my hands off of. (yeah, I know)

I stopped the self loathing, because I realized that we suck at willpower and our brains are really working against us whenever we try to make a change for a healthier habit.

I've been reading this guy's blog for the last couple of days that looks at all the ways we do stupid things because our minds tell us to. This post seems relevant here: http://youarenotsosmart.com/2010/07/07/extinction-burst/

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The self-loathing has to stop. One of the biggest realizations I've had is that this is not about will-power. This is about addiction. Studies are proving that your brain reacts the same way to certain foods (like grains and sugars) as it does to things like narcotics. These foods effect opioids and dopamine in your brain so when you see that taco shell, it's not just a little devil on your shoulder saying "it's ok...have a little taste" it's a complicated chemical reaction in your brain saying "you're going to feel like shit until you eat a piece and if you don't you'll never feel good again". I'd even go as far as to say many foods are engineered (not maliciously to make you sick, but certainly so companies can sell more product) to elicit this reaction.

What I find really interesting about eating paleo or whole30 is when my diet has been clean, when I'm hungry, i crave food...usually not anything specific. Just something good and nourishing. When I'm not eating well, I crave specific things like ice cream, or candy, or potato chips.

Next time you're faced with the taco shell remember that it's not on your plate by accident...it's there because you will more likely eat it than not, and someone wants to get rich off of your addiction.

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I wholeheartedly agree with Renee and Johnny. We must learn to treat ourselves with kindness. Do we eat what we eat only because we want to look a certain way or belong to a certain group or to beat ourselves up for "doing it all wrong" when we make a mistake? We choose to eat the way we do because we want the very best for ourselves and our families. We choose the best for ourselves because only when doing so can we be of service to others. While a Whole30 is great for learning about how our bodies respond to food, it's much more useful if we also learn how we respond to what we are learning.

"In order to flourish, we need to learn how to be in compassionate dialogue with ourselves." Christiane Northrup, MD

Here's to flourishing. (I'll climb down off my soapbox now.)

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Thanks everyone for the feedback. Very interesting information, especially the blog about the extinction burst.

We choose to eat the way we do because we want the very best for ourselves and our families.

This is what bothers me so... I know the health and environmental reasons I want to eat this way... so why do I have these "mindless eating" events? I don't mind choosing to go off plan, but I do mind falling off without choosing.

I do think there's a lot to be said for the addicting nature of carbs and sugar... and I want to keep fighting that!

Glad to report, today has been good with no complications, other than running out of flower pots! :D

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As for the portioning bit...I suggest reading Gary Taube's book "Why we get fat" (if that's not the actual title it's something close to it). He spends some time talking about how flawed our dietary recommendations have been. We (the general public) historically have told tell people to eat WHATEVER they want but to just control it and use it in moderation. Would you ever tell an alcoholic they should just learn to drink less?...maybe just on special occasions? It made me want to hit someone in the face for all the years we've all spent internalizing our failed attempts at fat loss and blaming ourselves for not having the all elusive self-control we're constantly told is the key. It's not about control. It's about real whole food and when you eat that, everything else follows and you'll learn just that on the whole 30.

I took that quote from Mike's Whole30 log (it has a different name)... I wanted to put it somewhere I can read it again, so here it is!

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Chose to have an omelet with mozzarella cheese this morning. It didn't occur to me until later that this probably wasn't the best morning, because I've been fighting a sinus virus... but oh well. No unusual symptoms that I'm aware off... and it really did add something to the omelet!

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Tonight I had a bit of a challenge. It's always easier for me to deal with food related situations that I can plan for verses spontaneous ones... and tonight I was surprised to end up at a work related social gathering with food and wine! I was on the clock, so the wine wasn't an issue, but I felt trepidatious about eating anything...

Ultimately I ate a lot of veggies (cut up squash, zucchini, carrots, and tomatoes), some salmon, some fruit, and (here's the off-plan stuff) 2 dates stuffed with a cream cheese mixture (these were AMAZING!) and some hummus (about 1/4 cup). I drank water instead of soda and every time I went back I made sure to get lots of veggies on my plate.

I felt good about not going crazy over lots of free food (there was fried stuff and breaded stuff and very cheesy stuff and a high-end dessert table which I didn't even go near... you can imagine). I was really happy to leave and not feel ill--not feel that I gorged myself or that I was now going to have to go home and sleep off a carbohydrate hangover.

I don't have any actual physical symptoms from the dairy or the hummus. I am definitely fighting a virus (ugh!).

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What I find really interesting about eating paleo or whole30 is when my diet has been clean, when I'm hungry, i crave food...usually not anything specific. Just something good and nourishing. When I'm not eating well, I crave specific things like ice cream, or candy, or potato chips.

This! It's pretty interesting (and in some ways frightening) to notice and feel the difference. There really is a strong tug towards junk when I'm not eating well.

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Today has been on plan except I did eat a bit more of the hummus from yesterday (with yellow and red pepper strips). Learning to really like vegetables and to want to eat vegetables has been a big part of my Whole30... I now find myself often looking for another vegetable to add to a meal!

I'm really happy that I seem to be over my virus! I still got something this year with the change of seasons, but it was much milder and way less debilitating (I was still able to work) this time, so that is good.

Today a work acquaintance commented on my eating. His comment was "yeah, I just saw something on the news saying that people who choose to be gluten free but don't have an allergy aren't doing themselves any good." This person knows that I used to eat grains, so it was clearly a comment towards my eating style. It made me feel really weird... first I thought "really? Is that true?" then I realized that it was probably the way-behind-the-research-nightly-news. Then I wondered why I would question my eating habits based on this guy anyways?! It was an uncomfortable situation.

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I'm not sure why that comment bothered me so much... especially when one of the things he claimed non-gluten eaters weren't getting was fiber. There's no question in my mind that I'm eating enough fiber!

There's a part of me that really wishes we as a culture had a healthy, accepted way of eating instead of so many different ways of eating, healthy and otherwise!

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I cannot engage or participate in nutrition conversations at work any more. I care too much, and it's far too maddening to constantly try to point out inconsistencies in the positions of people that read things like Yahoo! Health for their nutrition needs. It wasn't doing anything good for my stress levels, which are already messed up. The number of times I've said, "Actually, that's a common misconception but a serving of ___ has two to three times as much fiber as a serving of grains do," and am just met with blank stares...it's a waste of my time and energy.

People need to be ready to hear something new.

Good luck, stay strong, and take a deep breath.

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Today has been on plan except I did eat a bit more of the hummus from yesterday (with yellow and red pepper strips). Learning to really like vegetables and to want to eat vegetables has been a big part of my Whole30... I now find myself often looking for another vegetable to add to a meal!

I'm really happy that I seem to be over my virus! I still got something this year with the change of seasons, but it was much milder and way less debilitating (I was still able to work) this time, so that is good.

Today a work acquaintance commented on my eating. His comment was "yeah, I just saw something on the news saying that people who choose to be gluten free but don't have an allergy aren't doing themselves any good." This person knows that I used to eat grains, so it was clearly a comment towards my eating style. It made me feel really weird... first I thought "really? Is that true?" then I realized that it was probably the way-behind-the-research-nightly-news. Then I wondered why I would question my eating habits based on this guy anyways?! It was an uncomfortable situation.

But isn't your personal experience telling you otherwise? Don't you feel that you are doing yourself some good? Isn't that "research" powerful enough? Just some thoughts that popped into my head when I read this!

I struggle with eating well, because I know - I KNOW! - the good that it does me, but psychologically, it is a big struggle to eat well anyway, and it is helpful to read yours and others thoughts on this, so thank you!

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Kellie, you are totally right, my n=1 experiment is clearly telling me that I feel way better this way. And I haven't changed my eating... I just really noticed how much this conversation bothered me and thought I'd include it here because it somehow seems to be a "riding my own bike" thing. Not getting blown around in my own food choices by co-workers, the nightly-news, or whatever else flashes up is part of riding my own bike for me... and harder than I thought. It's one thing to do it for 30 days... it's another to choose to do it most of the time.

On the food front, I'm happy to say I've been on plan. :) Last night I made a rough curry- spaghetti squash, collards, ground elk, coconut milk and curry powder (I don't really have many ingredients in crew quarters) and another (3rd) coworker ate it and really liked it!

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Remember one thing: The Whole30 is just the beginning. You have your whole life to dial this in.

Melissa

Took that from another thread... wanted to save it.

This week I'm traveling and visiting family all week. I've decided to ease off on food just for this week, basically to ease social issues about food. I'm not especially excited about it and I can tell that I'm still going to keep trying to get the veggies in. Today I ate multiple handfuls of corn tortilla chips (the salt tasted good), had a quality elk steak, sweet potato, and asparagus dinner (and I ate lots of asparagus), and then I ate a scoop of ice cream and a small piece of carrot cake (I lucked out - the person the cake was for requested it with no icing!)

That's the first (white, not in fruit) sugar I've had since the end of my W30 at the end of April... I'm curious to see how I respond. So far not much reaction (it was about an hour ago) other than I almost immediately started yawning. In the past I had horrible insulin-spike-lethargy relating to sugar. I also know that I can so easily get addicted to sugar that I really want to be serious about not letting much in (no big servings or seconds) and being very mindful about why I'm choosing to eat it (to honor someone who is special to me) and that I am not going back to eating it on a regular basis, unless I consider a few times a year to be regular.

More and more I just want to eat well. It is so nice to not feel horrible about my body, to be happy with the way my clothes fit, to feel like I can breathe when hiking uphill and just to generally feel good. I don't miss the massive numbers of cupcakes, pretzels, donuts, cookies, Skittles (there was like a three pound bag just hanging out at work the other day), that I've passed up.

I'm fairly certain that visiting family is going to involve lots of questions about whether I'm getting enough calcium, vitamins, carbs, fiber... to some extent I've tried to bone up on my science, but I think my basic answer is going to be "I feel better now than I have in a long time and that is enough for me."

I'll update if I can this week... I'm oddly calm and yet trepidatious right now. I just don't want to lose the amount of control that I have finally managed to have over sugar.

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One other thing I wanted to mention: I really don't have an issue with the scale (I swear!) and I only stand on it about once a month if I think of it. Just for the heck I stood on it today and saw one of the lowest numbers I've seen in close to ten years! Between that and the fact that I can now do the most real pull-ups I've ever been able to do (and with only a little kipping; I'm working towards a true dead hang) I'm thrilled!

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  • 2 weeks later...

I'm back! I had a great week and just wanted to put some notes in here.

I did off-road, but I was okay with that. I was very pleasantly surprised to see how my moderation skills have improved! I was able to eat only one or two of my Mom's awesome cookies at a time, instead of all of them. I quickly realized that things in wrappers (candy) were not special at all. I still found and ate lots of good veggies. I did indulge in both a high quality wine and an incredible cranberry-walnut bread, but I didn't overdo either.

Finally, at the end of our vacation we choose to have a fancy dinner that ended in a classy piece of carrot cake. We both enjoyed every minute of it.

I was happy that I was able to keep amounts of the off-plan stuff small so that I did still feel good the entire time. I also greatly enjoyed the sense of intentionally treating myself. In past years on vacation I've found myself frustrated with my body and how I was eating and trying to start a food plan right in the middle of vacation—that didn't happen this time.

Today I'm starting a Whole7 or so just to get back on track. I don't feel that off but I feel like I need to clean up just a bit.

One non-food thing I realized: I didn't miss being connected AT ALL! I only checked my email for five minutes a day and that was a quick and dirty put out fires only. I didn't miss Twitter, the online news sources I habitually go to, or the other mindless browsing I've gotten in the habit of. I'm hoping to incorporate less online connectedness and more real connectedness into my life. If only I can remember how I feel right now!

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"I'm hoping to incorporate less online connectedness and more real connectedness into my life."

Love this, I'm a total internet junkie. I usually have at least 5 tabs open all day....and then the iphone too...!

So...I had a piece of cake the other day, on Sunday. My husband had brought it home the previous day from a party he was at. My French sister in law baked it - a chocolate torte with a dark chocolate ganache icing. I had a 5k race on Sunday morning, late that afternoon my husband took the kids out & I enjoyed a small piece, cut into slim slivers, in peace. After the morning exhertions I must say I really enjoyed it.

I thought I would get a sore belly but I didn't, my tongue felt a bit sensitive (sugar I presume) but no strong reaction as I expected. I kind of wish I *had* so then I wouldn't be easily tempted to have cake again. But I'm glad this was a planned indulgence not a "fall in to cake" moment.

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Dervalc, I too often have multiple windows open and whenever I get the "bing" of a new email I feel the need to immediately see what it is. I've actually started completely shutting down my email program to deal with that compulsion—now I actually check email once or twice a day, but I don't leave the program open constantly.

Some reality about getting back on my bike... I really did have the best of intentions about getting right back on the good food wagon on Monday. But...for many excuses, some reasonable and some not, I haven't made it. And now I'm starting to feel crappy and to really eat crappy.

Planning! If I plan to go off then I have to also plan to get back on. For me that might mean cooking and freezing at least three good meals for my return (assuming I go out of town, like this time) or scheduling in immediate grocery store time for as soon as I get home!

So... now that the brushfires that started while I was gone are out, I am getting back on top of this food thing pronto! RIght now!

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Note to self: getting back on the bike is *much* harder than falling off.

Having said that, I'm finally beginning to clean up my act. I haven't strung together any days yet, but overall quality of food has increased dramatically and I anticipate getting on the back for multiple days this week.

I'm still trying to decide what to learn from this. It seems that once I'm off plan getting back on takes more time than I expect and I have to acknowledge/remember the actual amount of planning-shopping-cooking that I have to do!

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