Arriving at Day 30

[quiltbabe]

So here I am - on Day 30 of my first Whole30. The sole goal I set was to lower my average blood glucose level (type II diabetic here). That goal has not only been met, but so much more has happened!

What worked:

- Blood glucose average dropped about 30 points. Still not quite where I'd like it, but an incredible improvement.

- 500% increase in energy, from the start of the second week on.

- Skin glowing, hair and nail growing like weeds (downside: paying for haircuts more often, lol).

- More restful, restorative sleep.

- Increased ability to focus at work, particularly through what used to be the "afternoon slump".

- Between meal hunger disappeared.

- Ankles no longer swell.

- Clothes fit much better - in some cases, they no longer fit at all!

- Significant weight loss - without really trying, without being hungry all the time, without feeling "deprived". I've not been on the scale :), but I'm guessing about 15 - 20 pounds.

Only a couple of downsides:

- As a single, I've rarely cooked all three meals a day for more than a couple of days in a row. It's been much too easy to run through a drive through to pick up breakfast or dinner. I'm a good cook, just lazy, lol. Preparing three meals a day for thirty days - yikes, the time it took, especially in the first two weeks as I worked on changing those habits. 

- Dishpan hands. Seriously. I do have a dishwasher, but don't put the pots and pans and cooking implements in it. Since I generally needed those things again very quickly, a portion of all prep time was immediately washing things so they were ready for the next set of cooking.

What I'd do differently:

I decided on a Friday to start on Monday, which didn't give a lot of time to prepare. Next time (and I plan to start again the first week of January), I'll be sure to do much more advance cooking and freezing. Compliant soups and burgers, cooked and diced chicken to put on salads, perfect sausage cooked and packaged for breakfast hash. Not to mention hard boiling at least a couple of dozen eggs (thank heaven for InstantPot!).

While I'd put the non-compliant pantry food in a box in the back of the pantry, I'd not gone through the spice cupboard to take a look at the ingredients on the blends (ended up mixing my own poultry seasoning at the last minute because my jar had sugar as an ingredient). Time to go through and at least clearly mark which ones are compliant, which are not, and decide whether or not to keep the noncompliant around.

So overall...

Other than the work involved in planning (and dicing, and cooking, and cleaning...), at which I became more efficient as the days went by, I found the program surprisingly easy. Beginner's luck? The results were certainly worth the work involved. More than that, I think the way I view food, along with my eating habits, have undergone a permanent shift. 

Here's to healthy eating!