It's not about the weight loss...except when it is...

[baker-in-exile]

Well, to almost anyone who thinks "there is just NO WAY I could 'give up' x for 30 days" - I am here to tell you: you most certainly can. If nothing else, Whole 30 is a great opportunity to reduce your enslavement to food.

I started out 2013, 5'4 172lbs and not very happy with myself. To be sure, I have lots to be thankful for...beautiful children, a loving husband, a great life, but feeling slow and wobbly and very overweight made me feel awful on a very real and meaningful level. So I set out to change my life. With lots of positive affirmations, encouragement from the hubs and better eating (reducing my processed carbs, cutting out pitfall foods like chocolate, increasing my intake of healthy fats) - I lost about 12lbs between January-March. I came across w30 early on in that journey and thought "uh. heck no. I am not cutting out sugar and cheese - OMG do not TAKE MY CHEESE!" Slowly, my motivation waned and I fell off the wagon. I put back on 3lbs, started feeling depressed...like food was controlling the relationship.

And then a friend told me she was on day 21 of her W30 and feeling great. So I revisited things and decided "Why not?"

I stocked up my fridge with my favorite veggies and started the next day. I even resisted the urge to binge on all the foods I'd be giving up the day before, which, believe me, was progress already.

You can read through my log here...I kept it consistently at first and then hardly at all in the end. I should probably go back and read it...

So for people who don't feel like reading through a bunch of hapless navel gazing:

- I made it through with no restarts

- I feel basically the same as I did when I started in terms of physical health. No major improvements of note in terms of joint issues (still present), hormone-related mood fluctuations (no different - controlled well with supplements)

- I will continue to eat mostly w30 because when it comes down to it - weight loss was important to me, and in that respect this WAS a success:

I lost 9lbs in 30 days, which may be very little compared to some results seen here, but for me - it is the single most significant weight loss I've ever had in a 30 day period. It bumped me up to almost 18lbs lost for the year which puts me so much closer to a healthy weight for my height and build.

In the end, I wasn't out to improve my sick rip in the gym or run a marathon or conquer an autoimmune problem through better eating...I just want to be healthy and slim so I can play with my kids, feel sexy and eventually...add another baby! And in the end, this was a success because I proved to myself that I really can do so much more than I imagine if I just set my mind to it, and it put me on the road to a better awareness of my relationship with food and the scale, and a heck of a lot closer to my goal weight.

As far as the navel gazing goes...

In the end, and even in the middle...this was not nearly as hard as I expected it would be. I didn't feel terrible at any point, I never experienced much "carb flu" and didn't feel hungry - ever. I loved the food I was eating and even though no one else in my family was eating that way, I didn't feel any sense of deprivation, which for me is an important factor to success when it comes to food routines.

My clothes started fitting differently about midway through, but I never felt like weight was falling off. In fact, I felt all the same fluctuations I normally feel, bloating, water weight, puffy some days and slim and slender other days. I became increasingly skeptical of the whole thing, and I missed my scale more than I missed sugar. Sad, I know.

More than anything, after the midway point I just felt...annoyed by the dogma of the whole w30 program. It can be grating and at times all the pearl clutching over guar gum in my coconut milk just feels like eating disorder in different clothes.The thing is though, for some people (hi. over here.) who have trouble finding moderation and control with certain foods, the dogma is truly necessary and helpful in the beginning.

I am so glad I did this, despite my annoyance and my misgivings about certain aspects of paleo eating. I would recommend it to anyone, not because I think paleo is the One True Way to eat for health, but because it's a valuable exercise in self-discovery.

[pjena]

Great results! How we look definitely impacts how we feel about ourselves. And having the energy to chase around kiddos is worth its weight in gold. I don't know how old your kids are, but let me tell you... they just get faster! LOL

[kaiser179]

Thanks for sharing your story!

I can definitely relate to wanting to shed the baby pounds and just feel fit and healthy so you can do family activities. Losing 18 pounds so far this year is a great achievement! Of course finding a healthier lifestyle is pretty awesome too!