Intrepid's W30 -- The Sequel

[Intrepid4]

Day Minus One

 

My first (and only successful) W30 was -- oh, gosh -- two years ago? Time flies when you're eating fries! It was extremely helpful, but alas, I strayed from the path of whole and healthy, and into the depths of sugar addict hell.

 

So here I am again. Bloated, overweight, tired all the time, waking up with headaches, lethargic, craving sugar constantly, mood swings, memory issues... yeah, that about covers it.

 

My goals this time around:

1.) Fix all that stuff I just listed above.

2.) Prove to myself that I can actually practice self-control.

 

My immediate plan:

I've been reading the W30 book, so will continue to do that.

Today -- plan my meals for the few 4 to 7 days.

Tomorrow -- mega grocery shopping trip. I think the only "real" food I have in the house right now are two apples.

Sunday, January 17th -- Begin the Beguine (or something like that).

 

Okie doke! Enough said for now. Recipe reading time!

 

 

 

[ketmie]

Looks exciting!  I hope you are able to stick with it this time.

 

I'm really interested in what motivates people to go through all this more than once!  I'm really, really hoping I can just do it once, learn what's healthy, and use that knowledge to course correct in the future.  I'm only on day 1, and I can't even imagine doing this more than once.  The cheese.  The pasta.  The Taco Bell.  So much sacrifice.

[Intrepid4]

Looks exciting!  I hope you are able to stick with it this time.

 

I'm really interested in what motivates people to go through all this more than once!  I'm really, really hoping I can just do it once, learn what's healthy, and use that knowledge to course correct in the future.  I'm only on day 1, and I can't even imagine doing this more than once.  The cheese.  The pasta.  The Taco Bell.  So much sacrifice.

 

What brought me back were the results! That list of items that I want to "fix" corresponds exactly with the benefits I gained from doing it the first time. It is challenging, but well worth it. I lost some weight, not a lot. But my waist shrank substantially.

 

I think it helps to just go at it with blind faith. In the first week, I thought I must be coming down with the flu, and thought I should stop until I got over it.. But in reality I was just detoxing from all the garbage that I had been calling food. And when the 30 days were up, I actually went on eating exactly the same way for another week or so, not as an extension of the W30, but just because I didn't really crave any of the "off limits" food.

 

Stick with it, and I think you will be pleasantly surprised!

[Intrepid4]

Day Zero

 

So I actually followed through yesterday and charted the first few days' menus for my W30. It wasn't that hard, really. Since most recipes make around four servings, I can cook once and have meals for the next three days. Fortunately I don't mind eating the same thing day after day. After day...

 

I went grocery shopping today as planned, steering toward the organic sections. After recovering from the shock of the final total for my food, I may have to rethink the whole organic thing. We'll see. Perhaps the discontinuance of daily lattes and last-minute frozen meal purchases at the local mini-mart (with their 200% mark ups), I may find my food budget breaking even. That would be nice.

 

Today I'll make a meatloaf in prep for tomorrow, and I bought some chicken thighs to cook tomorrow. Omelet in the a.m. to start me off. Easy peasy, right???

 

Don't answer that. I don't want anyone bursting my bubble.

[Intrepid4]

Day One

 

Yes, I actually started my W30. And I cooked. Real food. And now my kitchen is a disaster area. But I have real food cooked. Made a wonderful omelet this morning, using my cast iron skillet for the first time. It worked great, which is a good thing, since I have another $90 worth of cast iron cookware ordered.

 

I really really wish I had a dishwasher. This might be the most difficult part: keeping my kitchen functional. It's small to begin with, and once you fill every inch of counter space with cooking stuff, you kind of have to just start building towers until you can get around to washing dishes. Maybe I'll get better at not using every single piece of cookware I own to make one meal.

 

Lessons learned today: 1.) It might help to track the timing of my meals. I got kind of dizzy this afternoon; don't think I ate enough for lunch. But it seemed too early for dinner. I ended up having a (compliant) snack so I could hold off on dinner. I think tracking will help me determine whether or not I "should" be hungry.

 

2.) I need to eat adequate amounts each meal. I remember thinking that my lunch didn't seem very big, but I was not particularly hungry at the moment. Until my body learns to accurately read its own level of hunger, I need to be diligent about serving sizes.

 

AM - omelet with spinach, mushrooms, onions, bacon. Coffee.

Lunch - chicken thigh with cauliflower/onions. Half an avocado.

Snack - banana w/almond butter.

Dinner - meatloaf, Brussels sprouts, half a sweet potato with coconut butter.

[Intrepid4]

Day Two

 

So my daughter texts me first thing this morning, inviting me out to coffee. But of course "coffee" means lattes and scones. I told her I was W30ing and suggested we walk our dogs instead. (Note the blinding gleam of my halo.) We had a good walk. She's done W30 before, and in fact was the one who introduced me to it, so there wasn't anything uncomfortable about it. She has seen me try and fail, though, too. So she kind of takes my declarations of beginning a W30 with a grain of salt. Can't say I blame her.

 

Kind of swung the pendulum the opposite of what I did yesterday. Instead of eating too little for lunch, I guess I ate too much. I was totally not hungry for dinner, but I made myself eat something. Don't want to tank my metabolism. Eventually everything will sync together. I hope.

 

Breakfast: chicken thigh w/cauliflower and onion; 1/2 avocado; coffee.

Lunch: meatloaf w/Brussels sprouts; 1/2 sweet spud w/coconut butter.

Dinner: 2 boiled eggs, baby carrots, apple slices w/almond butter.

 

Trying to drink more water, too, but then I have to pee all the time. Not really an issue until I get to the point in my bathroom remodel where I have to move the toilet to lay the new floor tiles. Yes, that's something I tend to dwell upon. Better than obsessing about food, though. Or is it?

[Intrepid4]

Day Three

 

I think I posted somewhere that I didn't mind eating the same thing over and over. Well... I lied. It's just such a pain for me to cook (not a pain, really; I just don't enjoy cooking), that I'd much prefer to make multiple servings of something and then reheat it for however many meals it lasts. I will cook a couple of new things tomorrow (after a shopping trip), and then eat them ad nauseum. Thinking of a beef stew, and maybe some pulled pork or something. Definitely NOT chicken thighs or meatloaf.

 

Headache today, probably from sugar withdrawal. I'm noticing that I don't seem to have much sense of smell or taste. Don't know if it's just an aging thing, or if I should be concerned. Maybe that's in part why I ate so much sugar: at least I could kind of taste it.

 

Anyway, made it through yet another day.

[Intrepid4]

Day Four

 

You know that whole "fail to plan / plan to fail" thing? Well, I planned, but I should have made a Plan B. Today was supposed to be my grocery shopping/cooking/food prep day, but I got pulled into something else and didn't have time to do any of that. So I found myself belatedly at the store, hungry, tired, in a bad mood, in a hurry... well into the throes of "carb flu."

 

I was soooooo tempted to give in and give up. I came home and ate the very last of the leftovers for my second meal of the day, and I'll manage to pull something together for dinner. Today wasn't pretty, but I think I'll make it through.

 

Tomorrow I'll do the shopping/prep/cooking, and I'll try to stock up on something SUPER easy to make for days like this. Don't know what that will be yet. I'll do some research tonight. If I can stay awake.

[J9er]

Tomorrow I'll do the shopping/prep/cooking, and I'll try to stock up on something SUPER easy to make for days like this. Don't know what that will be yet. I'll do some research tonight. If I can stay awake.

You're doing great! It'll get easier as you said.

Do you like seafood? I copied a recipe another member posted for salmon cakes. Just a can of salmon, a couple eggs, couple tbsp coconut flour and some seasonings, mix all together and make patties. fry them up and there's dinner or breakfast or whatever. I've started grabbing a can of salmon every time I shop for just in case! I also keep a thawed pack of ground beef in the fridge each week. I'll make a plain hamburger patty if I'm In a pinch and have that with broccoli or green beens (I buy precut and bagged from Costco or wegmans).

[Intrepid4]

Great ideas! Thank you. I will add those to my next shopping list. Thanks for your support!

[Intrepid4]

Day Five -- Thursday

 

I did my mega shopping trip, and came away with a mega dent in my checking account. But a lot of it went for pantry staples that I will use throughout the next month. Got some of the cooking done that I intended, then my energy hit a wall. So I'll do the rest tomorrow. If I didn't already have a completed W30 under my belt, I would be very disappointed in my lack of energy right now. But from experience, I know that it gets worse before it gets better. It does get better, though! It takes patience and perseverance, neither of which I possess in great abundance.

 

Only five days in, and I already find myself checking the mirror and the fit of my clothing to see if I can detect even an inkling of change for the better. And the answer is no, I can't. But a lot can happen in 30 days. It remains to be seen how this W30 will affect me.

 

breakfast - 2 egg omelet with spinach, mushrooms, onions, and fresh tarragon. Coffee

lunch - pork tenderloin on a bed of fresh baby spinach, onion, Tessemae dressing and 1/2 avocado. 

dinner - tuna salad with baby spinach, onion, Tessemae dressing and 1/2 avocado.

 

A lot of repetition, but I can change things up once I get my act together a bit better. Maybe using both the dressing and the avocado is too much fat. But I didn't think I was getting enough fat the past couple of days, and thought that might have something to do with the energy thing. I'll pay better attention at balancing it all out.

 

 

 

[Intrepid4]

What Should Have Been Day Seven

 

Alcoholism, Sugar and Cravings...

 

Major stumbling block here. Without going into the science-y stuff, there's a strong link between quitting alcohol (abuse) and craving sugar. Some of it is physical, and even if/when that part of the equation smoothes out, the psychological link can linger on like a bad date. So... being the alcoholic that I am, although I abstain from alcohol, I still crave sugar as a means of "balancing" my system in the way it was forced to do when I was drinking.

 

The solution, of course, is to abstain from sugar altogether and slay that dastardly sugar dragon once and for all and let my system get back into proper sync. After the withdrawal period, my body thanks me profusely, but my brain is saying, "Nuh uh! I ain't doing this prohibition-inhibition-deprivation thing! Either give me sugar, or... Ooor... give me booze!" And the addict part of my brain says, "Great idea! Lead the way!"

 

So the catch here is that even if I stay compliant to Whole30 long enough to lose the physical "need" for sugar, the psychological craving makes for a very steep slippery slope to relapse into drinking. And the question comes: are the potential gains from the Whole30 reset worth the potential risk of relapse?

 

My response was, "yeah, maybe... let's try it and see."  My alcohol counselor's response was, "No." And since it was her question to begin with and she has all the initials after her name, her answer kind of trumps mine. But we did negotiate down to a compromise of, "Not now." So maybe when I have a couple of years of sobriety under my belt (however stretched it may be). That's the current thinking as to how long it takes the brain to rewire and repair itself from most of the damage alcohol wreaked upon its tiny little synapses.

 

Long story short: I'm going to hold off for a while on completing a W30. Not because I pretend to understand any of this mumbo jumbo that I probably completely misstated. Simply because I have been craving alcohol. And I don't want to relapse.

 

So why this long manifesto? Because I searched the forums for the term "alcoholism" and drew a blank. Then I searched for "alcoholic" and drew up a slew of comments that made scarily non-insightful comparisons between alcoholics and... well, you can search for yourself.

 

If anyone else comes across this while searching for information on how the Whole30 impacts alcoholism, don't believe a word I've written. But please do some further searching to find your own answers and make sure your answer to the "is it worth the risk" question is right for you.

 

See you in a year or so.