Completed 11/14

[Daryl Mitchell]

I completed my whole 30 yesterday. I am down 12lbs (192 to 180). It was quite a roller-coaster ride. I posted in a previous thread but 3 days into my Whole 30 and I had a knot in my stomach that my doctor said was a hernia and stepped away from Crossfit. A couple weeks later and the surgeon told me I had an excessive amount of scar tissue that from when my umbilical healed as a child and my new found ab muscles, via eating healthier and Crossfit were causing inflamation and irritation, basically grinding against the scar tissue. So, back to Crossfit to let my body work through this transition. I wonder if this had this not happened, I would have stayed around 190 and just leaned out more. .

Food Consumption

Breakfast - A lot of eggs, usually with asparagus, kale or spinach mixed in. Sometimes I added prosciutto. I also ate a lot of left-over hamburger patties, grilled chicken and some salmon.

Lunch - Usually a big salad with grilled chicken or steak, lots of mixed veggies and avocado. I have never liked salad dressing so this was not an issue. Otherwise it was left-overs from Dinner.

Dinner - I tried a great many things, but we did a few pots of paleo pumpkin chili and I rallied the kids around the dinner table to enjoy. We are always on the go and rarely use the dinner table. I tried to make this at least a twice a week event and still working on it. Other things was beef and bok-choy, prosciutto stuffed chicken and a lot of grilled food with either a side salad, veggies such as asparagus or broccoli or cauliflower rice. Most of the recipes I pulled from thefoodee.com.

So I did an official off-road this morning, as I like paleo cookies. My wife made them smaller so I could eat a couple to test myself to see if I would emotionally eat them, and so I could share them with my Crossfit box (Thanks Focus Family for supporting me!!). I ate two of them this morning (though still ate 3 eggs), but they didn't taste as good. It wasn't that they tasted different, but just didn't make me want to go back and eat 10 more like they used to. I am hoping that is a good sign, so I will be keeping an eye on the sugar dragon.

Where do I go from here? I plan to enjoy a couple drinks across the holidays and maybe a couple more paleo cookies from future batches, but that remains to be seen. I need to reduce my nut and nut butter consumption (macadamias are addictive) but overall I didn't eat near as many as I thought. I mixed up the fruit quite a bit and tried to keep it to 2 servings or less a day. That became 3 when I started back to Crossfit, but working in the sweet potatos to curve the fruit consumption. I hope to do another Whole 30 after the holidays (like starting December 26 or something).

A couple things that didn't go as I had thought. I started off sleeping very well, but found I became very sensitive to caffeine, even in tea. I have reduced the caffeine and sleeping better now but still not waking up without an alarm clock like I did towards the middle of my Whole 30. My acne didn't seem to go away either. I think this is stress related to work, and due to the whole hernia fiasco. One of my main goals was to step away from the alcohol, and have read that doing so can be a great stressor on the body as I go through the withdrawl symptoms (34 days since I have had a drink). I will be looking for these two things to resolve themselves over the next Whole 30 and I have faith that they will.

[Alana in Canada]

Congratulations on completeing your whole30! It's too bad you had to cope with health issues at the same time.

Why don't you follow the reintroduction plan as outlined in ISWF? That will help you know whatyou can tolrate and what you can't going forward into the holidays.

[melbournegirl]

Congratulations!!! FYI, my acne clears up when I eat clean AND I keep my heart rate aerobic rather than anaerobic ie under 150 for me. There is a big correlation between skin problems and the stress hormones produced during intense exercise as I understand it!

[CSB1960]

Congrats!