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benji's fall whole30


Benjamin Shine

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Starting my fall whole30 here -- I started September 27, so today is Day 2.

Breakfast:

4 pastured eggs fried in bacon fat

bulletproof coffee made with 2T ghee bulletproofexec.com/bulletproof-coffee-recipe/

hungry and a bit sad mid-morning, but I made it through to lunchtime by talking to a friend and getting involved in work

lunch at work with a fellow whole30'er:

small bowl of pho with no noodles & raw grass-fed beef (less than a palm-sized portion)

seared wild-caught salmon (a little less than palm-sized portion)

flank steak salad (altogether probably up to 2 palm sized portions at this point)

1 cup snow peas

half a cup of mixed radicchio & endive

palm-sized portion of sweet potato - oh my god it was good

plus there was a teaspoon or so of a sweet sauce drizzled on top; my whole30-buddy assured me that it's probably not enough to matter. If we were in a restaurant and I could have asked for the salmon without the sauce, I would have, but in this environment it's grab-and-go until things slow down long after lunch starts.

got tired immediately after lunch -- brain fog tired.

tried to fix it with coffee with mimic creme. (almonds, cashews, water... and they just changed their formula; the current formula now has rice starch. damn! but I just bought six jars without noticing the new formula.)

I managed to do some good work and called it a day around 3. got home and slept from 4-6:30. I blame the sweet potato; that seemed too good to be true.

snacked on 4 raw macadamia nuts while I worked on dinner

dinner: 2 cups or so of broccoli with 1T coconut oil and 1t macadamia nut oil, smoked sea salt

about to eat hickory-smoked beef ribs from us wellness meats: http://www.grasslandbeef.com/Detail.bok?no=832

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The last couple of days have been pretty easy... but I've also strayed a bit into gray areas. Yesterday I had a chicken kabob from a street vendor, and I didn't ask about what the chicken was marinated in; it probably had some soy or sugar, or both. Also yesterday I had a salmon "hash" with beets and tomatoes instead of potatoes, and two eggs... but after I ate it, I saw there was a bit of dairy stuff, like a light yogurt, under the eggs.

This whole weekend I've been working on having good food options around during the week. In the morning I made some chicken + onion hash that I'm saving for breakfast, and now I'm baking some toasted cumin + cilantro chicken thighs. (I buy them marinated & vacuum-sealed from my amazing local grocery, Bi-Rite Market.) I stocked up on raw macadamia nuts and frozen broccoli & spinach, plus fresh "baby" carrots. (Not really baby carrots, but so convenient, I'm okay with the misdirection.)

I got my copy of It Starts With Food back from the friend I had lent it to, and I'm reading it again. I have some questions, so I guess I'll post them to the appropriate forum.

Good food choices, here I go.

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I woke up energized this morning -- really unusual. Usually I need to drink coffee before I can even think about breakfast, but today I woke up hungry. I *wanted* to eat breakfast before coffee. And then I only had half a cup of coffee left (I drink cold brew), but I still feel ready to face the world.

This is after a pretty intense workout yesterday -- my new gym just started offering olympic weightlifting classes, which I LOVE. So I got to do maybe 15 or 20 sets of two snatches at around 95 lbs. Also, Johnny M was there! Totally cool.

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Day 7, here, and I feel great. Another morning where I wake up hungry and energized. My challenge for now seems to be post-workout food. I had some raw-dehydrated nuts & vegetable crackers in my bag, and that was all I had for an hour after finishing my workout. It takes me an hour to get home after the gym, so my choices are either to stop somewhere for food on the way home (expensive) or to figure it out in the morning on my way to work.

Today I'm carrying some spanish chorizo with me to eat right after.

The pizza crackers are seriously yummy - they taste like pepperoni pizza even to people who eat gluten & dairy! But they're not pretending to be pizza; the same herbs in a different context.

http://store.livinspoonful.com/pizza-crackers/

Today at work I'm going to try coconut milk in coffee, if I have a second cup, instead of the cashew-almond mimic creme I usually use.

I'm totally in ketosis, by the way. I recognize ketosis from the ultra-weird dreams and the weird smell in my pee. The difference between this and my last ketogenic diet is that I'm eating plenty of vegetables and a bit of fruit, even some starchy vegetables at lunch.

-benji

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More tired this morning... three days of intense crossfit in a row. At the moment I don't even want to train today, but I also do want to train today.... but I know I'm training Friday and Saturday, so...

More importantly: I had some butternut squash cooked with "brown butter" yesterday. I'm not resetting, though. It *looked* like ghee in the pan, and my reading says that brown butter is ghee with the toasted milk solids still in it. Mostly I'm not resetting because I don't want to. Which is interesting, because the whole point of this whole 30 was to go 30 days without dairy. But it's *almost* ghee... I don't know. I don't want to reset my date. That's probably why I'm posting this here and not in another forum where people might see it.

That experience makes me want to make butternut squash with ghee, vadouvan, and thai basil at home. Wow.

Today is "grind night" at work -- the last night of hackweek -- and it's all pizza for dinner, instead of our usual in-house meals that can be tweaked to be whole30-compatible. I'm going to tuck away extra from lunch to eat at dinner. The centerpiece of lunch today is

pan poached wild wing salmon menu-item-type-blue.png

huckleberry & red wine ver jus, jonathan apple & jicama & carrot slaw

plus

marinated & grilled grass fed beef tri tip menu-item-type-light-green.png

scratch onion rings, warm ancho pepper vinaigrette

which I can probably get without the onion ring topping

and

sugar snap peas, roasted parsnips, grimway carrots menu-item-type-green.png

Also we're having a guest chef, @grilledcheezguy, come in and make special grilled cheeses; I will not be partaking. I already know that that much cheese and bread at lunch time would send me to bed for a 3 hour nap. I'd rather stay awake and hack!

Want to see the menu? Careful; it will make you want to come work at Twitter.

http://www.cafebonappetit.com/menu/your-cafe/twitter/cafes/details/403/twitter

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I just got my adrenal stress index back and found out that my adrenals are "deteriorated." They are right at the bottom of the reference range, except for one point (out of 4) where they're below the reference range. Total cortisol load is 22, where the ref range is 23-42 nM. 13/4/3/2 at morning, noon, afternoon, evening.

I don't understand the rest of these values, but in case somebody else does:

DHEA 5 ng/ml

Insulin fasting < 3 uIU/mL (reference range 3-10)

Insulin non-fasting <3 uIU/mL (optimal 5-20)

Could low insulin levels be *because* I've been eating paleo? I mean, most of the work I've been doing dietarily for the last two years has been trying to keep insulin levels low.

Progesterone 15 pg/ml depressed reference is 22-100 pg/ml

Salivary SIgA 10 mg/dl depressed reference is 25-60 mg/dl

Gliadin Ab, SIgA 22 U/ml positive (0 is normal, positive is >15)

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I made two conscious errors yesterday: chicken with barbecue sauce at the Castro County Fair, and then some barbecue sauce on my buffalo burger at home. I could have asked for the chicken not coated in bbq sauce, but I didn't.

Interesting; last weekend I made a similar error with teriyaki chicken at a street fair -- that time it was the Polk Street Jazz Festival. I keep *thinking* there are going to be food trucks there, and then it ends up being only bbq, funnel cakes, and deep-fried artichokes.

I'm not restarting my Whole 30 -- I'm 12 days in -- but I'm marking this down as good information: bbq booths at fairs probably aren't going to have something good for me to eat. I should either plan to eat at a nearby restaurant, or bring my own food.

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The last couple of days have been legit clean Whole30 days. I've mostly been eating at work or at home; no restaurants to confuse me. I had some amazing grass-fed beef short ribs at work yesterday. Oh crap, I just remembered they were sitting in a pile of horseradish mashed potatoes that probably also had some butter, and I ate a little bit of the mashed potatoes.

This is fascinating -- I seem to be okay with small slips involving dairy. Which is crazy, because avoiding dairy for 30 days was the biggest motivator for this Whole30. But at this point I'm 14 days in and I don't want to reset... which maybe means that I'm not all that committed to 30 days without dairy, after all.

What I haven't done is stock my fridge with dairy or deliberately eat a piece of cheese or add cream to my coffee or eat a meal that has cheese as a main component. That's a big change for me, but it's not *strictly* a whole 30.

I *have* been holding firm to no grains, legumes, alcohol, no added sugar or sweeteners, hardly any dried fruit, and the meal-planning guides. All of that together at once is a pretty big change for me too.

Hmm.

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Wow, tonight got rough. No gym after work -- scheduled rest day -- so I skipped my usual 4pm protein + fat pre-workout snack. Plus lunch was small. Then I like fell into a bad spot. I really wanted chocolate. I had 3 strawberries. Still *wanting*. So I took a nap at work, then went home to a meeting. I left the meeting after halfway (I *never* do this), went home & cooked dinner:

one small jar sweet potato baby food

onion sauteed in coconut oil with a little bit of dried apples

half-pound of chicken apple sausage (local stuff, unsweetened)

... and that was *starting* to help...

so then I made a big bowl of toasted coconut with a bit of coconut oil, sea salt, and cinnamon... this was as close to a binge as I've come on the whole30. But damn, I feel better.

Conclusion: not enough food, and it seems like I need my daily pre-workout snack and a big lunch.

...but damn, that was *rough*.

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What I really want out of the Whole 30 is... 30 days of challenging myself to change, especially around sugar and dairy. I want to cook some more foods, and dial in my pre- and post-workout meals without shakes and bars. I'm doing my Whole 30 at the same time as my friends' new gym opening, though, and it's *more* important to me to train with them for these first 30 days than to be perfect at my Whole 30. The relationship between the two is that the new gym is an extra 45 minutes away from my house than my normal gym, so it's a lot more time on the bus each day. These first 30 days with them is almost over, and I won't be able to afford that gym for months again afterwards. I hadn't realized how the gym relates to my Whole 30 before, but now it's clear: I care more about my olympic weightlifting & crossfit training right now than I do about the Whole 30.

The other thing going on here is that I'm getting ready to organize a January Whole 30 at work, when it's traditional for people to be reeling from the holiday season. So I'm looking forward to being part of a team effort to do a strict Whole 30.

I almost think that means I should stop trying now and just wait till January... but that doesn't seem right. I'm going to keep working at this for another 15 days, at least.

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What I really want out of the Whole 30 is... 30 days of challenging myself to change, especially around sugar and dairy. I want to cook some more foods, and dial in my pre- and post-workout meals without shakes and bars. I'm doing my Whole 30 at the same time as my friends' new gym opening, though, and it's *more* important to me to train with them for these first 30 days than to be perfect at my Whole 30. The relationship between the two is that the new gym is an extra 45 minutes away from my house than my normal gym, so it's a lot more time on the bus each day. These first 30 days with them is almost over, and I won't be able to afford that gym for months again afterwards. I hadn't realized how the gym relates to my Whole 30 before, but now it's clear: I care more about my olympic weightlifting & crossfit training right now than I do about the Whole 30.

The other thing going on here is that I'm getting ready to organize a January Whole 30 at work, when it's traditional for people to be reeling from the holiday season. So I'm looking forward to being part of a team effort to do a strict Whole 30.

I almost think that means I should stop trying now and just wait till January... but that doesn't seem right. I'm going to keep working at this for another 15 days, at least.

You are complicated. How about just focusing on on you for now? If you want to do a strict whole 30 then do it.

Edit to Add: When you first posted on this site, I thought you were close to what we all work for. I'm shocked at your posts and hope you can get it together if you choose to. Just know we're all here to support you.

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You are complicated. How about just focusing on on you for now? If you want to do a strict whole 30 then do it.

Edit to Add: You are a mess. When you first posted on this site, I thought you were close to what we all work for. I'm shocked at you posts and hope you can get it together.

Wow. I don't want to do a strict whole 30. I want to do exactly what I'm doing. I do have it together; it's just not the together that you seem to think I should have.

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Hi- I came here from your other post.

I remember you working on a Whole30 before and really learning about reading labels, hidden ingredients, all of that. If not eating dairy right now is what you need to work on, good for you for knowing that.

I guess what I want to say is that you may not be doing a Whole30, but it is clear that you are still progressing in your habits and thinking about food and that is admirable. Keep on.

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Yesterday was an interesting day, because I had to re-evaluate my eating choices in light of "I'm off-roading, not doing a Whole30." So I guess it was like Day 31, but without all the planning that I had on days 25-30 when I did a real W30. I decided that my biggest commitment was to do 30 days without dairy, so I'm going back to the day when I had dairy in the butternut squash and starting counting from there.

I didn't have any grains, beans, dairy, or added sugar. I'm deep in ketosis and I want to stay there. The one thing I did that I wouldn't have permitted on a W30 was a Jocalat bar: unsweetened cocoa, dates, almonds. Not super delicious, it turns out.

I think my biggest priority needs to be healing my cortisol issues and fixing my sleep.

I know I've slain the sugar demon -- that's what it means to me to be in ketosis -- and I'm fat-adapted. I'm not metabolically deranged anymore. There's still a challenge for me about not turning to foods as comfort... but really, right now fixing the cortisol/stress issues are more important to me than working on that... especially when I can be comforted by paleo foods.

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