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Valerie's First Whole30


valliebeth

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Hi everyone! My name is Valerie, and January second I started my first Whole30. I'm reading through "It Starts With Food", probably should have read the whole thing before I started, but I just needed to change my eating habits and start feeling better.

 

I have been 'big boned' my whole life, and chubby/husky since 12 or so, and for many year the people around me insisted that it was just genetic. I came from a family of obese people, so it's fine, nothing was wrong. Funny, I remember looking at pictures of all of my aunts and uncles as teens, and they were all healthy weights, not an obese teen among them. I knew it was wrong to blame it on genetics, but I didn't know what to do about it. In my late teens I did Weight Watchers a few different times, and I've done the 7 day diet, and the 'lets see how little I can eat today' diet... all of which work initially, but the weight comes back as soon as you stop. Then, nearly two years ago I embarked on the journey that is the HCG diet. I didn't go into it blindly, I did a TON of research and talked to friends who had used it successfully, and I lost a whopping 25 pounds and two dress sizes in a month. The problem was, in the 'stabilizing' phase, when you still don't eat any sugar or bread, you are supposed to stay withing two pounds of your final weight. And I could not. The weight came back to easily, even when I was eating only what I was supposed to, that i did a second round as soon as I could. A few months later, a third, and about a year ago I did my fourth and last roung of HCG, always trying to get back to that weight I'd initially reached. I would continually obsess over how much I gained, because you are supposed to weigh in every day, to make sure you don't gain it back, but I always did. I would literally wake up stressed every morning, knowing that I had to weigh myself and it would not be good news. Through the whole year of torturing myself, I learned that wheat products made me bloat. I gave up wheat. I don't even miss it now. And too much fruit made me gain weight, so I restricted myself to one piece per day. And then I was noticing that dairy products make me bloat, too. This summer, I ate no grains, dairy, or sugar, and I felt the best I ever have and was keeping the weight off until I got sick. I was diagnosed with Lyme disease, and basically laid on the couch for a month. While getting better, I would watch TV with my sister and eat peanut M&Ms. And the sugar cravings came back. And cheese started showing up on everything again, and whipped cream... then Christmas cookies got me, and as you can tell, I was getting out of control. Again. Knowing full well what it would do to me. So here I am, bulging out of my clothes, mentally foggy and lacking energy of any kind, ready to kick food's butt once and for all. It's a bit of a challenge, because I am a life-long hater of many veggies... training myself to eat more, but it's not easy. It's like tricking your brain. Half way through a serving of stir-fry, your brain suddenly remembers that you really DON'T like broccoli or peppers, no matter how much you try to convince yourself you do... meh.

I'm on day 4, and while I haven't noticed any changes in energy yet, I have noticed two profound things:

 

1) after a meal, I do not bloat. There is no round puffy belly making my clothes look awful on me. (well, it's still a bit round, but that's not bloating... working on that bit ;) )

 

2) I have eaten nothing that I regret. This one is huge for me. I have not had a meal or snack in four days that I afterward wished I hadn't eaten. It was like a revelation after I realized that!

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