Suzy's 2nd Whole30, The Sequel, For Real This Time \o/, This Time It's Personal

[Suzy]

Thanks, Amy S!

Day Three

Woke up refreshed today. Not the refreshed I'll feel at week three, but a lot, lot better than I've been in a couple weeks. Yeehaw, relief! I stretched around in bed before I got up and noted some things. 1) I'm stiff all over, but a little better than I was. 2) My shoulder tendonitis is knocking at the door whereas it used to be in remission after my first W30. 3) My left hip and side are particularly stiff, probably due to mild scoliosis and working on my feet on concrete floors all day. 4) Mild plantar fasciitis on my right heel, due to having to limp after my plantar wart treatments I've been getting monthly. These are all affected by systemic inflammation, so I can't wait to see how they improve over the next couple of weeks. Also, planning on getting a massage soon during this four weeks. When is the best time of the month to do that? Should I do it when I'm the most inflamed or the least? When will reap the best benefits? Would be great if all of humanity could afford weekly massage.

My eating is GREAT. Totally back on track and back in black. Last night I made this favorite recipe of mine that is usually vegetarian, but I added two pounds of grass fed beef instead of the white Valencia rice. It was totally different, as you can imagine, but still comforting and lots of veg and omega-3 rich meat. Here's the original recipe. Obviously, don't make it with rice if you're on a Whole30! http://www.eatingwell.com/recipes/basque_vegetable_rice.html

My rough patches yesterday included only having bone broth for breakfast (not enough food!) and eating two Lara Bars when I got to work to quickly feed myself. It was a tough call and just one of those things, but I'll make sure to eat within an hour of rising next time. I had the healthy 8 and turkey with olive oil and lemon juice for lunch again, so that filled me up quite well the rest of the day. I'm pleased to report I didn't have gas from the raw cabbage and celery. My gut must have healed more since eating mostly paleo over the last several months. That's huge.

I'm feeling really good emotionally. I think my mood is already evening out a bit. I know I have a way to go, and those kill-all-the-things days are on their way, but it's nice to relax under the rules of W30. It really is a refuge. I'm teaching yoga tonight, and I'm definitely in the mood to do it and to be good for my students. My days off are Tuesdays and Sundays for the foreseeable future, so I'm really going to make sure I relax fully on those days and not stress myself. It will be an adjustment to work five days from four.

[Beets]

Hi. I read your post about your walk in the woods with your husband and wanted to respond but I was on my phone and felt like I couldn't do it justice. I could really relate. It made me cry because I could see myself 100% in that scenario.

Now I am on my computer but out of time and have to scarf down my lunch but I just wanted to say I feel you and I am glad to read you're feeling good about your food and this resonates with me one thousand-fold: "relax under the rules of the W30." Well said.

I'm on Day 29 and the threat of freedom is making me freak out and revert to the anxious ways I wanted to leave behind. I'm scrambling to figure out what to do next so I don't just fall back into my old ways.

[Beets]

One more thing: have you been on birth control before? I ask because I absolutely cannot tolerate them. They make me so depressed and crazy and I know a lot of women with mood issues who also cannot take any sort of oral BC. I took them in college w no issue, but I was also drinking a lot and dealing with my ED so who knows what was going on there. It was only in my late 20s when I went back on that I realized how awful they made me feel.

[Suzy]

^{Beets, thanks so much for your caring posts. Yeah, that walk in the woods was a terrible feeling. I just felt lost and . . . away from who I am and who I wanted to be. It was hard to communicate to my husband, who still doesn't fully understand, but says it's no big deal. He knows I have food/eating/anxiety/depression/possible fibromyalgia-or-something issues. At least he stands by whatever I decide is wrong with my body.}

^{I, like you, have been having an alarming acceleration in my anxiety symptoms of late. I first had a full on panic attack when I was 10, but haven't really had many since. It's horrible to think this, but sometimes I feel like I'm just in a constant state of low panic and having the need to calm down that I just don't get those intense bursts of panic attack as much . . . until recently. Which is why the W30 now.}

^{I think you're right about the birth control. I really don't want to take them, as they made me CRAZY, or uncomfortable at least, when I was on them before, too, in my late teens and early 20's. I know not all pills are alike, but I'm so aware of my body and sensitive, that taking any medication is going to be a pain in the ass because of the intense sensing of side effects. I'm getting my hormones tested next week and I'll find out what, if any, issue there is. It might be perimenopause (kinda doubt it), bad PMS, or my raging sugar problem. I want to rule out perimenopause first, and then try to deal with my sugar addiction to control PMS. My thing is, if diet and lifestyle are causing my symptoms, as I hope they are, I want diet and lifestyle change to fix them, not pharmaceuticals. I'm all for science, but I just don't need that kind of chemistry happening all up in my body.}

[baker-in-exile]

Suzy I just wanted to chime in on the pms issues because I have a long history of bad pms and have had some success dealing with it more recently. I think eliminating the sugar demon from my life is going to help too. Six days off and it's already helped balance my mood a bit.

Anyway. What i was going to say is that in addition to eating clean foods that won't screw with your brain chemistry you might look into a few supplements (if you haven't already). I've had great results with taking 1000-1500mg of evening primrose oil daily plus a good fish oil supplement (i use the women's krill oil from mercola, but the Norwegian Cod liver oil is good too), plus a good calcium magnesium supplement and vitamin D. I have to take them every day but when I am consistent, everyone in my family notices that I am less awful during the PMS time. It's still there, the snarling and snapping, but some much less, and fewer moments of dark thoughts and feeling hopeless, numb, despondent.

For awhile I was feeling so bad I was ready to go get one of those antidepressants you take just around the end of your cycle, but with healthier eating and good supplements, I feel like I am functional-to-thriving on most days. :-) which is a big improvement.

Good luck with your w30! We're only a few days apart. :-)

[Beets]

Ugh. I also have horrible PMS. When I'm eating SAD I have PMS for like two weeks--which is half my life! When I quit sugar and grains I was completely surprised by my period--which was amazing. But during the W30 it was pretty standard, though I'd just quit coffee and I was drinking a lot, so maybe there was that element.

Fish oil helps me but I think I never took enough.

[Suzy]

Day Four

Going strong and in a great mood. I feel my muscles and joints starting to move and break out of some inflammation already. Perhaps this is psychosomatic or it really is happening this quickly because I've had mostly a healthy lifestyle over the past 11 months. Speaking of that, the end of this Whole30 will mark the end of my first year on a paleo diet! It was only a year ago that I started reading Loren Cordain, Robb Wolf, and the Hartwigs. What a wild ride to health!

I took the dog on a nice walk first thing after rising and drinking a big glass of water, which is what I want to do from now on. I, like a lot of people, need to actually enjoy my physical activity for me to do it. This means lots of walks and stretching and not much else, which is fine with me. Maybe I'll throw a few calisthenics in there eventually, but I'm not in any rush. I just want to be consistent with my walking and stretching since I lift heavy things all day for a living at Trader Joe's. I'd love to do a team sport, but I doubt I could be consistent with it. Consistency is key. I'm also learning how to do magic and juggle.

I've been really good on my veggies, but I absolutely need to stop that damned dried fruit. I've never really looked my sugar dragon in the eyes before, and this is the one to do that for me. Every other facet of Whole30 I could practically do in my sleep, but that after dinner feeling of wanting a whole bag of dried mango is ridiculous. I'll try shoving in more veg, meat, fat, and starchy veg. Beets are my new favorite. Can't forget carrots, too. Very useful veg as you can eat it raw or cooked.

[Suzy]

Day Five

Is it normal to poop 5 times in 2 hours on day five?

[Suzy]

Day Six

Made it through my poop day. I'm thinking it was a lot of the onion I ate in something.

Still going strong. I have most of my meals planned out for the day. Very, very tired as I only slept a four and a half hours last night. Couldn't be helped. My heart was racing even after my Epsom salts bath! Whaddayagonnado?

[Suzy]

Day Seven

One week in! Woohoo! Made an executive decision to sneak a tiny bit of non-compliant stuff into my dinner last night. Not gonna confess what it was and not gonna start over. It's MY Whole30.

My mood is so much better, very even keel and bright. I can't wait to lose a bit more stubborn fat this summer, from mostly a hormonal perspective. I'm very concerned about maintaining great blood sugar and hormone levels at this stage in life. I just really need a lot of energy, like everyone, to accomplish what I want to do, not just what I need to do, in life. I'm no longer interested in maintaining the bare minimum by dragging my tired, hormone-wracked body to work. I want to live vibrantly and inspire others. Or there's no point in living, right? There's this girl at my job who is miserable day after day. She is one of the highest-paid people at Trader Joe's, works creatively in the art department, has great insurance and a free health club membership, and gets every single weekend off. Yet, she's tired, sad, and one of the most ungrateful people I've met in my life. She's not aware of it. I'm glad she's there as an example for me; I will be grateful for any pay that I get and any weekend days I can get off. My gratitude will make me a happier person than her, despite all of her wealth.

Of course I understand that depression is complicated. It's not just a matter of being grateful in your life, but eating good food, resting, and a host of other things. It's so important not to sink into your depression and dump it on people at work. When I'm sad again, I'll just try and be quiet about it and talk later with my therapist and friends and family.

[Suzy]

Days Eight and Nine

Eight was great! Really settled in to my W30. Had some turkey and broccoli for lunch yesterday and the meal felt like no big deal, exactly the feeling I was waiting for. When I'm eating less healthy foods outside the W30, I think about how much I can get away with. When I settle into the W30, I just eat a meal and get on with my life. I'm so glad my blood sugar is stable and I'm losing some inflammation.

Today I'm going to keep on in my positive vein. The one thing I'd like to change is how late I go to bed. I work until 11, and soon it will be midnight, so I don't go to sleep sometimes until 4am! Wowee. I'd like to bring that down to 1 or 2am at the latest, realistically. That would give me 8 or 9 hours if I woke up at 10am. I just don't want to sleep in to noon anymore; it's kind of eroding my plans for getting things done outside of work. Less TV at night, more sleeping.

I'm kind of stuck with the dried fruit again. Even though everything is technically compliant, I'm getting a lot of sugar from fruit and not eating enough starchy veg. I have the sweet potatoes; I need to make them.