I'm baaaack!

[Nicole]

Good morning lovely supportive people! Today is the first day of my second Whole30!

My husband and I did it together in January, and then after the reintroduction we kind of "fell off the wagon" (but not too hard), and started to feel super stink. I timed this Whole30 to correspond with the end of a road trip around New Zealand (Where I live) because I feel less tempted that way.

My first Whole30 also corresponded with me quitting birth control, so my body was already kind of a mess. Because birth control strips you of minerals and such I included supplements in my Whole30, but will not be doing that this time around since my body has now had several months to get over the hormone imbalance.

My first Whole 30 I got these hives everywhere... Which I couldn't say for sure was the dietary changes since I am pretty strict paleo and have been for years. It could have been from quitting birth control or it could have really just been the small dietary changes I had made on the Whole30. I'm really hoping that doesn't happen again because that was pretty bad.

I also started getting a lot of coldsores during my first Whole30 (especially in the beginning), so I will take my cold sore pills and use my herbal lysine cream, and take a lysine supplement if that happens again. I've already researched the products and the Whole30 rules about this, so I know I'm good to go.

One of the most valuable parts of the Whole30 for me is the "no alcohol" thing. I realized that when I drink say: after work... I'm already tired... Probably stressed... I have a glass of wine and then suddenly I'm too tired to do much else besides make dinner and watch a movie... I'm a movie nerd and I do love good wine- but I realized that sometimes I would be inspired to write music (I'm also a musician), or to write a story (I'm a writer), and my brain would just be like "Nope! We are sleepy now. No more working. Have another glass." So, as time goes on I never write that story and I never play music in the evening... And I work during the day, so it's not happening during the day either... It's not happening at all and I'm starting to feel hollow for not following my dreams... So I learned that that if I drink less (or not at all) then I am more inspired to follow my dreams. So far I'm only really good at this while on the Whole30, so one of my goals is to figure out how to keep up the good habit after this Whole30 ends... I guess that's always the goal.

Post Whole30 the first time around I had a pretty big reaction to reintroducing dairy... So after this Whole30 I'm doing now, I will make the dairy reintroduction the star. Give it special treatment and see if it happens again.

My goals for this Whole30 are to get to bed early and to work on my creativity passions once a day. Whether that be writing, reading about it, or playing music. It's just about making this more important than these other things that seem more important, but are not.