I'm on Day 30! And I feel great!

[runningmad]

And I've never felt more at peace with food. I know that my clothes feel better, and I have way more energy, and the energy I have is very even over the course of the day. Here were my goals and fears starting the program:

 

What makes me scared or seems hard?

• That this is just a fad: This is NOT just a fad. I feel good, I love eating real food. My DH is completely on board as well. He doesn't eat W30, but he eats the same dinners I do.
• That I won't be able to complete 30 days: Assuming I finish today (And I will!), this one is completely unfounded. In fact I'm thinking that I will go forward with this longer. I might do another 30, but taking Thanksgiving off. Another 30 would take me through December 12th.
• That I will not lose weight, even though I know that shouldn't be the most important thing: I'm looking forward to weighing and measuring myself, but this is less important to me, because I just FEEL better. I can tell that my body composition is better.
• That I'll be hungry all the time: This was absolutely debunked. I think the main reason is even though I'm eating smaller dinners, I added breakfast to my habits. I used to drink a sugary coffee for my breakfast, and I see now how much that was killing me. Which leads me to...
• That is won't actually help me develop a good understanding of how food affects me: I am still worried about sustaining the habit, but I see now that I really do understand how much the -kind- of food affects me.

What am I trying to achieve?

• I'm trying to break my compulsions about food, and approach fueling my body more healthily: I am working on my mental behaviors. I want to replace the "I can't eat this, it's not on plan" that I say in my head to "I don't eat this, it doesn't fit with how I live" or "I don't eat this, it doesn't make me feel good, like real food does.". I started doing this about halfway through the program, and it really is starting to help me feel more like I make the decisions, the decisions don't make me.
• I'm trying to break my sugar habit: Yep. I gotta be careful, things like Kombucha and apples still make me feel the Sugar Dragon a bit. It's so much better now that I'm concentrating on what my brain is saying when I eat them.
• I'm trying to isolate what foods make me feel bad: I feel this is still up in the air until I do some reintroductions. But I plan to do reintros in a very controlled, slow way.
• I'm trying to break my addiction to restaurants, and stop being lazy about food: This falls into line simply because it sucks so much to go to restaurants when on plan. I'm going to need to be careful not to slide into this again when really start riding my own bike.
• I want my clicking joints to improve: Maybe they have a bit? I know losing more weight will help with this, too.
• I want to improve my energy levels (This one is so important!): This went amazingly! I'm so excited by how I feel. I'm amazed at how different I feel than I did when I was calorie counting. I'm not a super energetic person, even now, but I just feel GOOD.
• I want to maintain a healthy weight without having to impose artificial restrictions on my life: I think this is totally doable for me on a Whole30 type maintenance diet going forward. I'm very confident.

I have an additional goal now. I got blood tests done two weeks into the program, and my lipid tests weren't good. I have an appointment with my doctor in a couple of weeks, and I'm going to ask to do the blood test again, and see if they have improved because of whole30. My goal is to stay off medications for my cholesterol. I want to be able to fix this with a healthy diet and exercise.

[runningmad]

I weighed myself today, and 9.5 pounds down! I'm stoked considering I didn't starve myself. That's just about 2 pounds a week, so I feel that is exceptionally healthy weight loss.

 

Also, I know measurements are more important in some ways I lost:

Hips 1 inch lost
Waist 1 1/2 inch lost
Bust 2 inches lost (although I can't remember if I was wearing a bra the first measurement, so who knows. But I'm sure I lost something)
R thigh 1 1/2 inches

 

I'm so excited for those results. My before and after pics do show change, and I'm betting another couple of months and I will be much closer health goals. I know that weight loss isn't the end all, and that my post yesterday was about the things that REALLY matter, but these numbers do help me understand that this is a great way for me to live. In fact, I'm ready to put the scale away for another month. Next 30 days, here I come!