In the Middle

[mandrake]

I finished my Whole Lent on Sunday. The scale reports I have lost some weight and that is nice, but the best part is that I feel so much better than I used to. I no longer walk down steps like a granny (no offense to the fit grannies out there!) and I have more energy to do more things I like to do.

This was my third W30 and I didn't do reintro fully the first two times. I don't have a serious enough reaction to anything to keep me from including it occasionally. Rather, I find myself sliding back into the morass of unhealthy habits around food. For this reason, I am taking reintro super slow - I am in a good rhythm with cooking, eating, and choosing appropriate foods. I'm not feeling deprived. So I'm going to hang out here in the middle for a while.

I have pretty much vanquished the sugar dragon. I haven't had dried fruit more than once in the last month, and nuts are a non-exciting occasional thing that I save for times when better fats are inconvenient or unavailable. I do fruit once a day with dinner, if that.

I am bored with potatoes, but they are cheap and my body does well with them so I usually have a serving for breakfast. Eggs every day forever and ever amen. Roasted broccoli with lemon and castelvetrano olives are on heavy rotation.

This weekend I have a "girls weekend" at the beach and will be enjoying a glass or two of wine. Will have olives, dried coconut, maybe some smoked salmon with that.

The big exciting new food item: raw cacao nibs. Bitter and crunchy and deep dark flavorful. Because I had rectal surgery two years ago, I have to be careful how I eat anything sharp and stabby - chew thoroughly, and consume with a collection of other foods - so I am not worried about these becoming FWB. But the nibs are new food that has none of the bad stuff I'm avoiding, so I'm excited about them.

I realized I hate logging food. It's just so tedious. I am planning to pay close attention during reintro of different foods as they come up and will log what happens. But I can't bring myself to log food when it's just the same template items I know I'm fine with.

The other game changer is natural calm magnesium. I have been taking that for a couple of weeks and holy crap, sleep is amazing.

And acupuncture. I'm still doing that a couple times a week. Just started going to the chiropractor.

Basically I am putting a lot of time, effort, and energy into healing this body after decades of misuse and poor self-care. Whole 30 is a huge piece of that process, and I'm grateful for it.