when is too much too much?

[Norskie]

Me and my husband is on day 8 of our whole30. So far so (surprisingly) good.

that's means every meal & condiments/broth have been made from scratch.

3 meals a day +a handful of nuts mid-afternoon. We have taken it easier on our training. We are relatively fit&healthy but aim for optimum performance & fat loss.

I'm not counting calories, we are not afraid to eat until we are full, but now I do worry if I'm feeding my man too much. He says he doesn't feel different and is desperate to see the fat coming off.

in a week we have used well over 1/2 tub ghee in my cooking, 500ml olive oil for mayo, 1 1/2 avocado, maybe less than 1/2 tub coconut oil, 3-4 dozen whole eggs, a good few tbs EVOO for salads & dressings, 1 can rich coconut milk for our coffee..... Too much fat? Should we increase unsaturated fat & decrease saturated?

for every meal I think I give him at least 2 palmsizes of meat. He got big hands... And I'm using mine to compare, i eat 1-2 palmsizes. We have eaten chicken, venison, lamb, beef,haddock,salmon, tuna, organs, eggs, bacon rashers. The lot!!

One morning I had 3 whole eggs, he had 5 eggs, plus a couple of bacon rashers.... Though this morning it was a salmon fillet steak each.

vegetables I'm not worried about. We eat plenty og salad veg, root veg, fruit... In that order.

a couple of evenings my husband was hungry and had 1 pear/apple/clementine...

we eat 1-2 portions of fruit a day.

we are rarely hungry eating on this diet, but its a huge sacrifice for my husband and I feel I need to re-assure him that we will reap the benefits in the future. Getting lean & feeling good are his goal. Mine is feeling good, getting lean in that order...

are we still on track? Do I need to re-adjust something?

[jillian]

I view a Whole30 as a way to hit the "reset button" on my metabolism. It takes the full 30 days (for me). This means eating A LOT of fat until my body starts to adjust. My experience has been that I just need to focus on making sure I eat enough to feel satisfied with 3 meals a day (which means, at first, eating a lot at each meal). At some point - and to be honest this often happens at the very end and sometimes after the 30 day mark - I need less food to feel satisfied and pounds start to come off (I only have a few to lose). The best part, for me, about completing a Whole30 is that I can then trust my body to tell me what it needs (a voice I can't trust when I'm eating lots of sugar and wheat) - sometimes it's a lot of protein, sometimes more starchy carbs, sometimes less food, sometimes more food. As a result, I don't need to crazily obsess over what and how much I'm eating and whether or not I will lose weight and feel good.

 

This is all to say that you are only on Day 8! I'd drop weight loss as one of your goals for this first Whole30. The idea is that you continue with these eating habits after your Whole30 is complete. My goals during a Whole30 are to consistently eat 3 meals a day without snacking, stabilize my blood sugar, have more steady energy levels throughout the day, get back to feeling optimistic and resilient (rather than overwhelmed and moody when I'm eating sugar and wheat), minimize inflammation, and to reset my metabolism to optimize fat-burning for the long haul.

 

The "long haul" happens post-Whole 30.

 

Cheers! And good luck!

[Norskie]

Thank you Jillian. I guess what I needed is some reassurance that alot of food is OK... as long as it is the right stuff.

[Tom Denham]

The only thing you reported in your eating that is a cause for concern to me is snacking on nuts mid afternoon. The fats you are eating and the amounts of them sound just right. Snacking means that you are either not eating enough at meals - and you should eat more - or you are eating when you don't really need to eat - habit.