Starting over: New Day 1 will be September 21st

[kew]

For my second Whole30, I need to focus on some things that I did not handle so well in my first.

1. Snacking between meals.

There are two issues here. One is emotional eating (usually from stress/anxiety, sometimes from boredom, sometimes as a reward for a hard day). Even if the snacks are Whole30 approved foods, they still come from a junky place in my mind/behavior.

The second is planning: I am so busy that I have not been good about planning an adequate lunch, nor taking an adequate lunchtime. So, I don't sit down and feel 'present' at lunch, which leads me to bolt my food, which may make me overeat, either in the moment or later. I also don't have the conversation with myself that says, "this is a carefully planned and satisfying lunch. It is sufficient because I planned it that way."

2. Exercise.

This I started to fix towards the end of my first attempt at a Whole30, and I need to stick with it: running 3x/week, and Crossfit 1-2x/week. (I'm giving myself the option to scale back on CF in part because of injury risk, and in part because of scheduling. I need to do the running, though, if I am to stay on track with the half-marathon training.)

3. Evening ritual.

Decaf or herbal tea. Not fruit, with or without coconut milk, or pumpkin seeds with coconut flakes, etc. SWYPO. Also unplug (I was pretty good about that last month.)

4. Breakfast?

I know Whole30 says to eat breakfast, but I have two issues with that. If I force myself to eat when I don't feel hungry, then I typically do feel hungry again later and eat a second breakfast. I have spent enough time lurking at Mark's Daily Apple to feel that intermittent fasting may have a place in my life. Generally, I think that stretching the intervals between meals is a good way to remind this graze-a-holic about the difference between impulse and hunger.

So, I am going to spend the first 2 weeks practicing not eating _until I am hungry_ in the mornings, whether that time is 10:00 or lunchtime, and see how that works. Then, for the second fortnight, I will try making myself eat in the morning and not impulse-eating a second time before lunch.

5. Scale

In keeping with the experiment in #4, I will weigh myself tomorrow (Day 1), Day 16, and Day 31, and not otherwise.

6. Emotional health

a) As often as I can manage, I will practice gratitude, mostly by writing down a list of things big and small I feel grateful for -- this is not a "should" list, but a getting-in-touch-with-feelings practice.

Continue the practice I began in my first attempt at a Whole30 of building body acceptance, my own and others'. "All bodies, all sizes; all human, all striving."

[Tom Denham]

Great goals, some good thoughts, but if you decide to do intermittent fasting and weigh yourself midway through your 30 days, you are following your own program and not following the Whole30 program. You may achieve solid progress, but during a Whole30 you are asked to eat breakfast within about an hour of waking in the morning and to not weigh yourself for the entire 30 days.

[kew]

Fair enough! Although as a morning exerciser, I believe I get a pass on the breakfast-within-one-hour-of-rising rule, IIRC. And from what I have read, I don't think most folks here would consider getting on the scale a reason to reset their Whole30. But I do take the point and I will abandon the scale for the whole 30 days. The bit about IF is a stage in my anti-snacking campaign, btw, not a goal in itself.

Given my reaction to Tom's supportive and sensible post (which was to write and then edit -- twice in 5 minutes! -- a response/justification), what I think I need to work on most is the need for external affirmation.... I have to be happy to pat my own head!

[Tom Denham]

I like external affirmation and I really appreciate you reconsidering some elements of your plan. The Whole30 is not a good time to experiment with things that can mess with your hormones, sleep, or head.

It's ironic, that I have been eating my first meal at about 1 PM, often 7 hours after getting up, for much of the past week [i'm not doing a Whole30 currently!] Fasting all morning gives me more time to do other things and allows me to exercise fasted mid-day, which is something I have been wanting to try with my current training approach. So far, my sleep is good and I have not been waking up hungry in the middle of the night, so my hormones seem to be working in a decent balance. However, I've only been doing this for a week. It's probably too early to decide whether this works for me or not. And maybe more importantly, I've been eating the Whole30 way for more than 2 years. As yoga has begun to teach me, some things take time to develop. Some change is quick and dramatic, and some is a long process.

[Guest]

I'm starting tomorrow !! I've been lurking here for awhile, and I know one of my challenges will be to stay on the Whole30 program as written, and not try to tweak it into something different. Just go with the process, as written ... I'll be checking in here a lot for reminders and motivation !

[Renee Lee]

Kew, I loved your post in response to bodygeek's post and I wanted to pop in over here and add some thoughts about breakfast:

Yes, you mostly get a pass on the within one-hour of waking because of being a morning-exerciser (we'd still like to see the small pre-workout meal if your stomach can handle it), BUT...

Do you think that your current breakfast habits set you up for a day of grazing, or just not being satisfied in general? I know that for me, eating right when I get up just sets me up for success hormonally for the rest of the day, particularly the evening. I'm a huge grazer myself, and I've noticed that if I do breakfast "on time" and eat 3 meals during the day, I am 100% content to stop eating when I get home at 6ish. I don't graze, because I'm full and satisfied. This sets me up to be hungry when I wake up in the morning. In contrast, if eat breakfast late, it messes with my whole schedule and I wind up in this miserable cycle of poor meal timing. (this actually happened this week, I need to correct it asap)

Anyway, what time is your last meal generally?

[kew]

My concern is that I think I graze less when I don't eat breakfast than when I do. But I think that being much more intentional about not snacking AND demanding that I eat breakfast early or within a short window after exercise is a worthy experiment. Maybe it just will take longer than I would like to reset that food clock.

As for dinner, we usually eat around 6:30, and I usually have something like a piece of fruit around 8. (To sleep around 9:30, up at 5, usually). Another change I want to make, though, is to have a cup of tea as my evening thing, and not food.

[kew]

I guess it's day 7 now. Snacking is still an issue for me, but I'm hoping the invisalign that I'm getting later today will help truncate that! My mom said it was such a pain to take the thing out, brush your teeth, etc, that she pretty much stopped snacking. Fingers crossed!

I find that in this 2nd whole 30, the cookies on my kitchen counter are much harder to resist. It's not that I have fallen off the wagon; it's just that the temptation is real every time I see them. (Why are they on my kitchen counter? Good question. They are in the house because of the rest of the family, but I could get them off the stupid counter!

[kew]

Having these invisalign trays in my mouth is really making me aware of how much I would mindlessly snack during work. I mean, I knew I did it -- a lot -- but having this physical barrier is such a shock to the system, or rather the habits. No coffee or tea, no beef jerky, no nothing between meals except water. Mind you, it's day 1, and I wouldn't put it past myself to decide that I could stand to brush my teeth five times a day.....But for now, I'm sticking to the "it's just not worth it" theory.

[kew]

Still not worth it, four days in. Good.