Did you find yourself sweeter and kinder after Whole30 reintro?

[MeadowLily]

[MeadowLily]

[MeadowLily]

[MeadowLily]

[MeadowLily]

[MeadowLily]

[MeadowLily]

[MeadowLily]

[MeadowLily]

[MeadowLily]

[MeadowLily]

Leptin levels.   The lower amount of calories you eat in a day the bottom will fall out of your leptin levels. 

 

When your leptin is low, there's no weight releasing.  Your body is in starvation mode.  When you eat too little food with dieting, you're going to have to boost your food and good dietary fats to boost your hormone levels back to normal.....and you have to stop dieting.  For real.

 

The closer you are to your target,  do not reduce your food.  Once again, dieting and reduced calories = burning muscle mass for protein.   The leaner your become the higher your protein levels need to be to maintain your muscle mass.

 

Smoothies and sports drinks for meals won't fix it.   Adequate protein, 3Xday is the way without weigh and whey.  If you reduce your protein down and only eat the fats,  the body creates an alternative fat metabolism pathway.  If you want to maintain your body composition and muscle mass you have to maintain eating your proteins every day with your vege and good dietary fats.  

 

The body adapts and learns very quickly exactly what you're doing to it.  You don't outsmart your body. It's 50 steps ahead of you.  

 

Bodies do not like dieting.  They never did.     Diets are perceived as famine.  If you do this enough times over the course of your lifetime and every few weeks for months on end and years and years of it...

 

You'll get a severe stress response.  There will be an appetite reckoning.   Stress hormones will skyrocket and the body will do everything to see to it that you get yourself into a better place so it no longer feels threatened.   The zero carb woes and without huge amounts of self-restraint,  the appetite reckoning and rebound abounds on your doorstep.  

 

Leptin levels have tanked.  It ain't the way to go.  Crawling back out of that post hole digging may take a good long while.  

 

You want Post Whole to remain intact.    Go back to yo-yo dieting to try and resolve is only digging a deeper hole.

 

If you revert back immediately to thrill eating - the body moves out of a fat burning fat adapted machine into predominately burning glucose for fuel.    The body then thinks it has just survived a famine. 

 

Budgeting  for "cheat meals"  of carbo/sugar loaded items and the body is going to restore the fat storage units.   It's going to bring in all kinds of furniture and set up a front-end office with bright lights on all of the time.   Yo-yo is on but you're coming undone with more dieting.  The body is going to fight you tooth and toenail to give up any of its fat storage units.  

 

Don't go back to dieting.  Stay Post Whole.   It's the only way to go.  

 

Maintain your muscle mass.

Eat the trifecta.  Protein. Fats.  Vege.   Adequate protein 3Xaday.  Real food proteins, not bars or shakes or smoothies.  That won't fix it either.  

[MeadowLily]

On the first part of the journey,  I was looking at all of life and the scenery around me.  

 

Finding exercise that you actually enjoy is very important.  If it's a have to rather than a want to..you are more likely to quit somewhere along the line.

 

I know in this day of extreme sports where people leap from helicopters onto snowboards and carve their way down Mount Everest, those who are embarking on a new routine we enjoy, we feel the need to put the word  "just" in front of our accomplishment.   I just walked down the road for an hour and I wasn't even walking fast.  

 

But let me tell you,  when you get dressed and walk or hike at some speed above completely still that's an accomplishment.  When you start where I started...there's really nothing easy about that on your feet or joints.  If I had been carrying a backpack with that amount....it was not a walk in the park. 

 

Give yourself a pat on the back.  You don't have to say "just".  

 

In the beginning,  I was lifting weight.  Later on, you can add free weights or find a gym you like for lifting more things.  You'll get a euphoria bump when all of the enjoyable exercise is done. We deserve it.  You may like manmakers and burpees.  Good job going.  

[MeadowLily]

Soda pop is going by the way of the dodo.  Less soda drinkers now than before. I hope it's the children that are edging away from it altogether.  If they could acquire the taste for Kombucha, think how far ahead of the game they'll be.  It has that fizz they're looking for and pop of flavor.  

 

I know someone who's healed their acid reflux by eliminating coffee and tea...using kombucha.  It's given them a Gut Reset with their Food Reset.  

 

Head Reset = not going back whence you came from and celebrating your success with a carb and sugar-fest.  Soda pops won't fix it.  Flip the switch and drink a kombucha.  It's fruit-y without the punch and TKO for your pancreas. 

 

When we purport to doing something...let's keep it real.  Really good. 

[MeadowLily]

I remember office greasy face.  If you live anywhere with constant wind blowing the dirt sticks to your office greasy face and it looks like soot.  If you try to rub it off,  you cannot get it off.  It schmears and you now have streaks.  

 

Unless you go into the bathroom, using soap and water to get the soot off removing all of your face paint in the process...you're stuck with office greasy face and soot streaks.  I haven't had office greasy face in a long time.  

 

In 30 days you will see your skin transform.  Your neck looks different.  Everything about you. When you take that waaay beyond 30 days,  people may not even recognize you.  Everyone knows that men and women are both beautiful.  Their inner glow begins to shine on the outside after 30 days.   

 

It cannot be helped or hidden.  So let it shine, shine, shine and I promise you it is not the office greasy face.   Office greasy face is from too many 9-5 office lunch plate specials over at the ole greasy spoon.

[MeadowLily]

Navigating your way with your coworkers for 30 days when they want you to go to the ole greasy spoon. That's a tough one.   I know someone with coworkers griping their heads off because of the meals that were reheated in the microwave for lunch.   We can't stand what you're cooking and don't do it anymore.

 

I've been in those sharky waters office situations and they have big teeth.

 

You may have to go out and sit in your car.  Carry a box of baking soda with you.  Mix it with water and put some on a paper plate into the micro for 30 secs.   Wipe all spills with baking soda and water.  Waft your arms around and open the window if you can.  

 

Then put some cinnamon with water (plate) back into the microwave for 30-40 secs.  I used to slice a green apple and sprinkle with cinnamon and 1/4 cup water.  I microwaved it for 3-4 minutes. The office aroma was quite nice.  If this doesn't keep the sharks from circling...you're going to have to find a different microwave on another floor and Run Forest Run. 

[MeadowLily]

There is no better cure than laughter.  Side-splitting, booch coming out of your nose, hard to breathe laughter.  It cleans out all of the stagnant water in your body and brain,  like a day old stale glass of water.  It's hard not to feel better after laughter. 

 

I have people I can call on when I want to laugh like that.  Within minutes we can hardly talk because we can barely speak.  A cheerful heart does good like a medicine.  

 

How do you find sustained happiness with a positive food management plan that you create after a Whole 30.   Sometimes, that might come with a lifestyle overhaul.   Laughter and cleansing joy helps the medicine go down.  

 

Stress, hormones, boredom and depression can leave you completely marshed.  Asking for help is always a good thing to aid management and recovery in situations that cannot be fixed with laughter and joy. There are factors that makes it nearly impossible to feel the faintest bit happy.  Help is good.  

 

Sustained happiness.  Eating yourself whole is the first part of the journey.  When I'm feeling dreary I'm going to keep calling upon my jocular friends.  Laugher is contagious and it helps pull me out of a funk.  

 

I think cake wrecks are hysterically funny.  Fondant looks like a rubber tablecloth no matter how you slice it.   Watching the layers slide off the table is the true icing on the cake for me.  A joyful heart is good medicine, along with whole foods.  It sustains me.

[MeadowLily]

I never meant to cause you any sorrow

I never meant to cause you any pain

I only wanted one time to see you laughing

I only wanted to see you

Laughing in the purple rain

 

I only wanted to be some kind of friend

If you know what I'm singing about up here

C'mon, raise your hand

I only want to see you

In the purple rain

 

[MeadowLily]

[Real Food Y'all]

 

I never meant to cause you any sorrow

I never meant to cause you any pain

I only wanted one time to see you laughing

I only wanted to see you

Laughing in the purple rain

 

I only wanted to be some kind of friend

If you know what I'm singing about up here

C'mon, raise your hand

I only want to see you

In the purple rain

 

 

 

Such a sad day.

"Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today to get through this thing called life."

[MeadowLily]

Music is what feelings sound like.

 

Music is medicine.  When you want to stuff feelings down with food, sing and dance as you tool along with the Whole 30.  There are accounts all through history how music has been used to soothe the soul and win nations.  It's being used to assist in the healing of several medical conditions.  

 

 

[MeadowLily]

I wanted to visit with you about how easy it is to forget our mantra or forms of self-encouragement.

 

When we wing it and fly by the seat of our pants,  that mantra may be constantly changing.  Minute by minute and day by day.  It's alright.  It's good to refocus and resubmit. 

 

I know some disciplined folks that like things in order and are very good at compartmentalizing everything.  We all need each other.  There's a reason no two set of fingerprints are the same.  We'd be dropping like flies from the boredom.  I need the disciplined around me.  They motivate me and I am amazed at them.  

 

 

We can't change a single person in our family.  Stubborn as mules and won't budge an inch. 

 

I was listening to the account of a man who stuffed his feelings and emotions down with food and was up over 500 pounds.  He released more than 1/2 of that on his own and had to have skin surgery. They asked him how that happened. Very easily, he said.

 

Life happened.   After he started eating more, there was more metabolism derangement.  It just snowballed on him.  There really wasn't an end in sight but he could no longer stand on his feet. Depression and medical conditions started piling up.

 

The first part of the journey begins with one single step.   Two years ago,  I felt like that man.  

 

PQK, I wrote my mantras, phrases, quotes down as I started.  I still have them.  I filled up two large journals with feelings and emotions.  There were days that being here and writing in my journal, playing songs, singing and dancing were the only things that got me through the inevitable rough patches.

 

The closer we get to the Finish Line that is not really there the easier it is to forget what brought us here in the first place.  Oooooo,  it can all come undone in less than 1/2 the time it takes to make it.

 

Those old neural pathways and deep grooves in the brain.  They don't give up that easily. There's always a faint whisper of the sneaky snake.  I'll get you back...just start back in where you left off. It can be a real fight.  Your back is up against the ropes...rope-a-dope.  Sneaky snake is back in the ring and he doesn't fight fair and square.  He'll sneak up on you while you're sleeping.  Get-up and go ahead, you can eat all of the things.  But it's a lie.

 

Once you've had the big release the body has all kinds of chemical reactions/alternative fat metabolism pathways to see to it that you don't put it in a starvation mode.  Fat wants you back.  It may be released but it's hanging around out there somewhere in the ethers even after all of the solar flaring is done.  That's for another day.

 

We have to fight for ourselves.  Don't let your mantras and forms of self-encouragement go. They may not have been there in the first place and now that we've found them....don't ever let them go.

 

Those positive words we speak over ourselves may be the only thing holding us together. The rivets on the plane are ready to pop loose but we use our creativity and bring that plane out of a tailspin.

 

We level out and hang onto our life preservers for another day.

 

 

 

 

 

[Hutlifr]

On the first part of the journey,  I was looking at all of life and the scenery around me.  

 

Finding exercise that you actually enjoy is very important.  If it's a have to rather than a want to..you are more likely to quit somewhere along the line.

 

I know in this day of extreme sports where people leap from helicopters onto snowboards and carve their way down Mount Everest, those who are embarking on a new routine we enjoy, we feel the need to put the word  "just" in front of our accomplishment.   I just walked down the road for an hour and I wasn't even walking fast.  

 

But let me tell you,  when you get dressed and walk or hike at some speed above completely still that's an accomplishment.  When you start where I started...there's really nothing easy about that on your feet or joints.  If I had been carrying a backpack with that amount....it was not a walk in the park. 

 

Give yourself a pat on the back.  You don't have to say "just".  

 

In the beginning,  I was lifting weight.  Later on, you can add free weights or find a gym you like for lifting more things.  You'll get a euphoria bump when all of the enjoyable exercise is done. We deserve it.  You may like manmakers and burpees.  Good job going.  

I am still "just" walking my dog, and hiking around Heidiland... No weights yet... I know myself, if I do anything that is fake, I can't stick with it for long...

[Hutlifr]

 I wish I had a way to get back to this kind of laughter... We used to have so many belly laughs my man and I....

[MeadowLily]

When we stop using play foods for emotional healing we begin to peel all of the layers back.  It's important to deal with losses and may need to reach out for the help of a grief counselor. 

 

I remember having to wait it out minute by minute for emotional play foods- trickery triggery to pass. They are the strongest in nature.  There is no amount of trigger foods that will fix it.  You can try to shove everything back down with food but those feelings are going to reverb back on you the very next day. 

 

 

Shoved feelings and emotions are the true acid reflux.   The faster the food goes down, greater the quantity of reverb you will feel.  It's those kinds of feelings that will result in pain.  Your body and mind is in chaos.  Acid Reflux Reverb = shoving emotions and feelings down with food.

 

You may even cry while you're in the process of doing this but it doesn't help.  This bandaid panacea process is a cover-up artist.   You have to learn how to decode your hunger.

 

Head/heart hunger sends your body mixed signals.  It results in eating to numb yourself out.  It's automatic pilot.  That pilot light can stay lit for years or decades before you choose to finally let the thing burn itself out.

 

Social Servings = gathering with friends and family for celebrations.  Using the Social for extra Servings of play foods and trickery triggers to connect with more emotional eating.  Not done in the privacy of your home or car but in a socially acceptable setting. 

 

Let's Do Lunch =  Social Servings and Sharing.  Can result in more catching up with others and shoving more play foods down or sharing desserts and hitting the more serious trickery triggery buttons while you're driving back from the Social Servings.

 

Social Servings can lead to Private Eye  Servings.   Secret Eating.   

 

Eating in secret = shoving more feelings and emotions down.  Crying in the Rain and the Car.  

 

Eating out of the state of emotions is strictly a temporary escape to avoid feelings.  Emotions can be a slow burning fire, crowning only in the tops of the trees or a raging forest fire that takes everything out.

 

To keep our emotions alive,  we have to fuel them.  Fueling and tooling along with play foods can keep this fire going for years and years.  Call the firefighters and step away from the scene of the fire.  When you've used foods for happy endorphins,  you have to find a replacement.

 

Face the sneaky truth.   Sneaking foods with Sneaky Snake in the presence of others or all by yourself is shoving your feelings and emotions down,  down, down.  They're still there and they need a release.  It's a caldera  under all of that trickery triggery. 

 

The first step to putting the fire out is to get certains words and phrases out of your head.  

 

Cheating.   Cheat Meals.  Budgeting for Cheat Meals.   Bad Girl.  Good Girl Eating. Dirty eating.  I was naughty today.  Assigning childish terms to shoving your emotions and feelings down with food.

 

Everytime you go on a thrill eating bender,  your heart is trying to tell you something and get your attention.  It has something very important to say to you.  You smothered it with food.  The heart will try and tell you again tomorrow.    

 

The first part of the journey starts with decoding your hunger.  Honor true hunger with whole foods. Then start with one thing that you like about yourself.   No more rejection of self.

 

Your fingerprints are unique from anyone.  Your toes are strong and your feet are a true gift.  You have family and friends that truly care about you.   It will take longer than 30 days to step away from that Sneaky Snake.  He keeps trying to distract you from your authentic self.

 

You're going to have to wait him out.  It might take an hour but 5 - 15 minutes usually works. 

[MeadowLily]