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Amy's Whole 30 Log Starting July 15, 2019


Amy_Michigan

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Starting today/tomorrow.  Picking up groceries on way home from work.   Will update my log tomorrow for Day 1.  I am starting today as Day 0 (a prep/practice day).  I have no idea how much I weigh because when I tried to weigh myself recently, the batteries had died in my scale so I put it away.  Probably in the 220-230lb range.  So this is purely going to be for NSV since I don't really know for sure!   My skin on my face has been horrible ever since October of last year after I put some tea tree oil on some acne.  I have never been able to correct my skin chemistry and I probably made it worse trying, and now I have red flareups on both sides of my nose that have both acne and dry skin issues.  I'm 32, and have had good skin until last October :( .  I have not been able to motivate myself to eat healthy for at least a year.  Maybe eating healthy will finally clear up my skin.

Any healthy eating is going to be a major improvement for me.  I am a fast food junkie/addict (mostly donut shop and starbucks).  I work full time and I'm always rushing in the morning, so I stop on my way to work to get breakfast.  Then I need a break from work so I leave to go get fast food.  I am hoping to eat at work during my whole 30 & take walks for work breaks.

I am very sensitive to online moderators opinions, so please be easy on me!  I am experienced and I know what is and isn't compliant.  It is going to appear like I am a beginner because of being too lazy for food prep, but I have completed a successful Whole30 before.  Based on those healthy habits I learned from that Whole30,  I continued to eat healthy and exercise to get down to a healthy lifestyle and body 4 years ago.  Since that time I have had a baby and I let stress and laziness (and fatigue caused by Lupus) get in the way of getting back to a healthy lifestyle. 

GOALS:

1.  Reduce redness on my face from whatever is causing it (acne/eczema)

2.  Reduce bloat and fit into my clothes (stop buying new, larger clothes for $$$)

3.  Increase energy/productivity

4.  Start walking/exercising

 

 

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Day 0- Practice Day

It is almost 2 AM and I can’t sleep.  I went to bed at 10:30 and woke up at 11:30 to pee then woke up at 12:30 after having a very vivid nightmare.  Now every time I start falling asleep my body wakes itself up like I’m in high school math or something.  

Other symptoms:  After dinner I got some nausea and the second start of a bad headache so I took Tylenol right away.  Nausea is gone now that I have fallen asleep twice in 1 hour increments.  Just really really tired now. 

Today wasn’t even what I would call day 1 yet.  I was doing a practice day before starting tomorrow because I had already had already broken rules at breakfast with a Kind Bar.  

Today I ate (after breakfast):  Potato hash browns, butternut squash soup, a tuna patty with almond flour and lots of fat, frozen blueberries and strawberries.   I will make sure I eat more tomorrow and eat full meals.

 

 

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Day 1

After getting almost NO SLEEP last night, and wanting to call in sick today from my Whole30 practice-run of DOOM, I motivated myself to get up and go to work.  My grocery plan last night fell through last night, so I'm going tonight.

Food to eat today:  Frozen Potato Hash Browns (whole 30 compliant), Apple, Salad with romaine lettuce, cucumbers, tomatoes, sliced almonds, olive oil & balsamic vinegar (compliant), hard boiled eggs... haven't figured out dinner yet.   Getting groceries and will probably make some ground beef and eat with zucchini noodles and no-sugar pasta sauce (compliant).  Will also pick up carrots, broccoli, and other fruit and vegetables to snack on.

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Day 2

UGH, I can feel my body detoxing from my constant stream of sugar and gluten and it is not fun.  However, after my headache went away last night, my chamomile tea kicked in and helped me to sleep the whole night without waking up and I didn't have any crazy vivid dreams.  I think I am going to keep drinking that cup of tea before bed.  I need all the help I can get during this Whole30.

I am going on a work lunch today.  Going to try to order a compliant salad and bring my own dressing.  Hope it works out!

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Day 2 food consumed:  compliant potato hash browns, bone broth, pear, large salad with eggs and chicken, balsamic vinegar/evoo, apple...A whole box of zucchini spirals cooked in no-sugar pasta sauce and piled with fresh cooked ground beef.  A cup of almond milk.  Need to check if it’s compliant.  Doesn’t have carrageenan or sugar but could have something else bad :(  Will check tomorrow.

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Day 3

Good morning!  I had a good night.  Slept well, and feel good this morning.  I wonder if chamomile tea is okay for every night? Getting ready for work and noticed I still have a belly that pops out of my shirts at the bottom...I'm guessing that is going to stick around for at least 1 or 2 full rounds of Whole30 (unless I go out and buy all new clothes) which is fine.  It's fat, not bloat, that came from a year of donuts & starbucks drinks.  It was fun while it lasted but there was no stopping my weight...it just kept going up up up.  And I kept feeling worse and getting weird skin & health issues.  I hope I can keep this up for at least the 30 days!  I'm ready for a lifestyle change.

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Day 3 continued

Had a pretty similar day (food wise) as yesterday.  

Day 3 food consumed:  compliant potato hash browns, large salad with chicken, balsamic vinegar/evoo, apple...A whole box of zucchini spirals cooked in no-sugar pasta sauce and piled with fresh cooked ground beef.  A cup of almond milk.  And I picked up some sparkling water from the health food store called Spindrift.  That was pretty yummy.  I got grapefruit flavor and it is compliant.

I am probably also going to eat a spoonful of unsweetened sunflower seed butter tonight because I am hungry and I honestly can’t think of any other snacks.  I purposefully didn’t buy any compliant bars from the health food store for two reasons: 1) The only kind I probably like are chocolate or chocolate chip types and those will have added sugar, and 2) because I know if I got a box, I would eat them all in one night if they tasted good.  Okay...To be totally honest I had a brownie Larabar in my cart at checkout and I put it back at the last second when I saw sugar in the ingredients list (under the broken down chocolate chip ingredients).  Craving=0, Amy=1. Success!

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Day 4

I was too tired last night to eat any snacks, even though I was a tiny bit hungry.  So I woke up very hungry and my usual breakfast has not sufficed to settling the hunger pangs.  I am going to snack on some fruit (apple or banana) to get me through to lunch.  In a previous Whole30 I was a breakfast queen, making exactly the kind of breakfast that Whole30 guides recommend.  However, it is going to take me a bit to work up to that.  I didn't have any time to make eggs this morning, and I do not like hardboiled eggs, quiches, egg salad or any other eggy type of food for breakfast.  Maybe someday that will sound good, but for now, it's either potatoes & fat, or eggs & potatoes & fat for breakfast.  I like my eggs fried, hot & the yolk medium to hard.  That is the only way.  I eat plenty of protein with lunch and dinners.  If I need it I will add some sunflower seed butter to my apple slices in the morning.

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I have decided to do a video log at the end of each week of my Whole30, showing my progress.  If I end up posting it somewhere I will share :)  I think this will hold me accountable and show my progress so I can look back and see what the Whole30 did for me later on.

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  • Whole30 Certified Coach

Hi Amy! 

 

Keep up the great work. I loved reading through your entries on your Whole30 journey thus far. I think keeping a journal of some sort, whether it's here, or a video journal or actually writing things down will be really helpful. It will also be fun to look back on your journey once you complete your Whole30 to see just how far you've come. Please let me know if there's anything  I can do to support you!

 

Best of luck! You got this!

Ashley

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Day 4 Continued

It's 2pm and I am WAY hungrier today than prior days.  Having a salad for lunch with a huge amount of chicken and extra virgin olive oil and veggies did not keep me full for very long at all!  I think my body is starting to put up a fight and ask for more donuts please, instead of all the good stuff, because it was getting SO MANY more calories than I am probably eating now.  I bet I ate more than 3,000 calories per day before (with stops at Tim Hortons for donuts, and Starbucks runs for drinks and bakery items all the time).  So I guess my body is probably adjusting to (if I had to guess) 1,500-1,800 calories.  I'm not tracking, but olive oil, nuts, and meat can only add so many, and veggies and fruit are like nothing calorie-wise.  SO, to deal with my hunger, I made a run to the health food store again.  I got some Applegate deli meat (Smoked Turkey Breast) to snack on, as well as some Rx bars.  I already chowed some it down and I'm waiting patiently for the hunger pangs to go away.  Guess I will go grab some water while I am waiting!  I would do some green tea, but it is like 95 degrees out!

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When you make a salad, try adding some kind of root vegetables to it -- leftover roasted sweet potatoes or beets, or pickled beets if you like them, or carrots either raw or cooked. Or add some homemade plantain chips. The starchier vegetables seem to have more staying power, at least to me, so adding some of them to my salads seems to keep me full longer.

You might also try including solid fats in your salad -- avocado or olives or occasionally nuts or seeds. It can be in addition to your dressing. They might help you feel more satisfied. 

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Day 5 

Power outage.  Well, I got out of cooking last night and today.  We have no electricity and I also can't open our fridge.  My husband picked up some essentials for our cooler and bought ice...  

Breakfast was an apple and sunflower seed butter.  I took the kids to an indoor playscape place and packed an Rx bar, a pear, and salad that is pretty basic (lettuce, tomatoes, almond slices, extra virgin olive oil and balsamic vinegar).  I wanted to stop at a health food store to get a cooked chicken breast they sell in their prepared food area... but went right to the playscape place first so I might have to stop there with the kids afterwards to get my protein.  

I am going to brainstorm dinner options in case we don't get our power back by tonight.

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Day 6

I survived the 28-hour power outage.  Took the kids to my mom’s yesterday.  She made me some ground beef for a salad I had for dinner last night.  I chowed down the other half of it for lunch today.  I made eggs for breakfast and had an Rx bar.  Ate 2 fruit and veggie baby food pouches and a bag of almonds...I made it work.  Tonight I made tuna patties.  I feel pretty satisfied/full.

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Forgot to add that this morning after waking up at my mom’s house, I was making my kids some toast and I started getting another piece out of the bread bag for me and my family saved me by reminding me of my Whole30.  Almost totally forgot!  

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Day 7.  I made to to day 7!!  The rest should be easy, right?   Just kidding!  I know from experience that's not true.

Last night I had some ankle pain and I woke up this morning with both ankle pain and wrist pain.  So, not cool, but I'm still on my medication, so hopefully that will go away soon.  I think I mentioned this in one of my posts- I have Lupus.  So whenever I have any joint pains going on, I'm like hey- is that Lupus or something else?   I have never had any serious debilitating issues.  Just random aches and pains (and a rash before I started my medication).   Usually when I get joint pains, I blame it on poor diet, too many inflammatory foods, sugar, etc.  This time I'm not really sure what to blame it on.  Maybe too much sun exposure since UV rays are a no-no and I'm supposed to cover up or wear high SPF sunscreen at all times.  Kind of hard to prepare like that with 2 small kids running around, but I'll try harder to take precautions.

 

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Something I struggle with after Whole30s is reverting back to my old lifestyle.  I know I don't have to go there until reintroduction, but if I don't start planning now, am I going to have a successful reintroduction period?  I don't know how it's possible if I don't plan ahead.  I always skipped reading that part of the "It Starts With Food" book, I think.  Because of course my thinking was "I'm not to that part yet - I'm not interested".  I think I'm going to find a kindle version of that book and read it again.

Of course my hope is that I can maintain a lifestyle of minimal sugar and processed food after the Whole30.  And no dairy, because I'm 95% sure that was my food sensitivity I discovered on my first Whole30 that caused me horrible stomach pains during reintroduction that basically prevented me from living my life for a day.  Cheese is everywhere though.  I went to WholeFoods today and every single prepared salad had cheese on it, not individually packaged.  So I had to make my own from the fresh food take-out area of WholeFoods and I accidently wound up spending $12 on my lunch.  And two hours later I am hungry AGAIN.  It was an awesome salad- Hardboiled egg crumbles, chicken, spring mix, extra other lettuce, extra kale, cucumbers, cherry tomatoes, red cabbage, shredded carrots, and evoo/vinegar.  It was better than any salad I've made at home so far and much faster to put together obviously.

All of those articles about overweight people regaining all of their lost weight due to not being able to maintain a low calorie lifestyle has me SCARED.  For me, 1200-1500 is VERY low calorie, even though I know it is normal for average women.  I wonder if my body will ever not feel hunger pains when I eat that amount of calories?  Probably not.  I need more hobbies to distract myself.  If I rest and start feeling how empty my stomach is between meals, I'm just going to allow those hunger pains to sneak out into awareness.  A lot of people that have paleo lifestyles after Whole30s can eat all of the calories they want, basically, and don't seem to gain weight.  But that could be due to the amount of exercise/calories they are burning.  Cross fitters = goals.  But just finishing a whole30 is daunting right now.  One step at a time.  

Another food besides dairy I want to continue excluding after my whole30 is gluten.  The lupus foundation doesn't say gluten is bad for autoimmune diseases, but I feel like I should play it safe just in case.  It's hard to know whether paleo spokespeople talking about leaky gut syndrome and evil gluten is real.  If it is real, or if it had any reputable research supporting it, why is my go-to autoimmune disease resource saying to eat whole grains? 

From https://www.lupus.org/resources/diet-and-nutrition-with-lupus :  "If you also have celiac disease, a gluten-free diet is critical.  Otherwise, there is no evidence that gluten worsens or improves inflammation in any other autoimmune disease such as lupus.  If you haven't been tested for celiac disease, there is a blood test that can be done to detect it."

This is so ridiculously annoying.  Is this just out of date information?  The date says 2013 at the bottom so it is likely it is out of date.  This website is supposed to be my lifeline for support and advice - to answer all of my questions about my disease.  If they are giving me out of date information I will be so MAD.  I wish I could have trust in these organizations.  At this point I don't, though.  It's my body, and I have to think about myself. 

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Regarding the website information -- remember that just because they say there's no evidence that gluten worsens or improves inflammation in a general sense DOES NOT MEAN that your specific body has a reaction to it, even if you don't have celiac. Keep in mind, also, that there are a lot of non-gluten grains out there, some of which might be an option for you. As to whether the information is out of date, I wouldn't know, sorry.

In my own reintroduction experience, I planned it out while leaving flexibility for recovery time, if needed. It was a slow reintroduction, but I had the opportunity to reintroduce specific items rather than sticking to whole food groups (like doing rice one day, then compliant W30 for 2 days, then oats as my next test). This might be something you'd want to consider in order to help you find things that will really work for you.

Regarding caloric intake, I honestly haven't counted my calories in over a year. I guarantee you I was eating far fewer calories when I was strictly Whole30 than prior to starting it (or in the time since, if I'm honest)... but I never bothered to sit down and see what it looked like. I believe it's far more important for us to feel healthy and not feel or be starving than it is to limit our calories, and that's part of what I appreciated about W30's approach to it all. Some days my portions were quite large, some days they were quite small, and my homemade salads were huge (I got into a habit of using an entire head of Romaine as the base of my salad and building up from there!).

Regarding hunger -- following the template, you really and truly shouldn't have to feel hungry. It might take some tweaking to find your "perfect" balance, but it should be possible for you to not feel like you're suffering between meals. If you want to share what you've been eating (and the basic amounts of things, even guestimates), I'd be happy to give any feedback that seems relevant (and I'm sure others will also, if they read it).

Regarding cheese -- I hear you, I truly do. I'm allergic to dairy myself, so I totally understand how difficult it can be to avoid if it's not homemade!

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On re-reading, I realize I meant that generalized statements don't mean your specific body doesn't react (I wrote it backwards)... but I gather you got the gist. :D I'm a big believer in there being no one-diet-fits-all because each body is unique, with a unique set of factors in play, so it's up to each of us to find what works for us. We can take information like what's on the website into consideration, but ultimately our experience with a food (or food group) will weigh most heavily when we decide what should and shouldn't be included in our continuing diet. Good luck! :) 

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Day 7 continued

Today I had my Dr. Praegers hash browns (3 hashbrown patties are one serving so I just stick with that) and an Rx bar for breakfast.  At work I had an apple and a pear.

For lunch I had a large salad that I made at WholeFoods.  It had about 2-3 cups of lettuce (including kale, spinach, and spring mix), About 1/4-1/2 cup of hardboiled egg crumbles, 1/2 cup of chopped chicken breast, a few slices of cucumber, a sprinkle of shredded carrots, 5 large cherry tomatoes, a sprinkle of red cabbage, 1-2 Tbsp extra virgin olive oil, 1-2 tsp red wine vinegar, and a sprinkle of raw sunflower seeds.

Some black coffee with my lunch.

I was really hungry after thay but I was working and didn't have any food left.  Eventually I wasn't hungry anymore.

On way way home from work I stopped and bought some Honest unsweetened green tea (checked ingredients first) and an 8-pack of La Croix sparkling water.  I had 1 of those sparkling waters when I got home.

I also had lots of water today but didnt track it.

For dinner I ate a large banana.  I wasn't hungry after that, so I skipped dinner which is the first time I've done thar in forever and believe me I'm not going to make that a habit.  It was just kind of a stressful day.  I think I'm going to start seeing a therapist for the first time in my life to help me deal with some anxiety I feel at work.  I don't know, maybe it will help with other things too, like people relationships and my relationship with food ...not exactly sure at this point.  Probably won't be about food since most likely going to just talk about anxiety.  But I guess it could be related, who knows?  :)



 

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