The Whole30, day 31

So it’s January 31. The first day of the rest of my life after the Whole30.

It’s hard to know where to begin, so I’ll begin with the scale. I lost 10.5 pounds.

Now, weight is only one small measure of overall health, and there the story is of course a lot more complex. But it’s a measure. It’s quantifiable. It’s clear. And for me, this is a good steady, safe pace of weight loss. It’s just a start, of course, but it’s a solid start.

The most important thing to know about this is that, after the initial couple weeks of brain fog, tiredness, crabbiness, confusion about what to eat, etc., this did get easy. I am never hungry nor unhappy about food. Indeed, I’m happy! I’m eating a lot of great food! The sheer volume of food coming into the house and being consumed by all is amazing to me.  The boys are chowing too. (I can’t keep apples and carrots in stock!)

The usual horrors of dieting (measuring and weighing things, walking away from the table hungry and depressed, feeling deprived and half starved) are just not at all in evidence here. There can also be a punishing, self-loathing quality to diets (“I’m fat so I have to suffer through this.”) It’s not like that at all. It’s abundant and delicious and pleasant. This is more “I love to be nourished with food that feels great” and “I can have all I want.”

I think this psychology is part of why they (the Whole30 mavins) forbid you to weigh yourself during the 30 days. You will lose weight, but that is not the only point. Healing your body after years of mistreatment, reducing inflammation, gathering more and more energy, ferreting out andy food sensitivities you may have, and overcoming a dependency on food for emotional support, are all really the main points. Weight loss flows from those.

So, how am I feeling?

Frankly, not as awesome as I hoped. Yet. Yet!! I started in a very deep hole, dealing with health issues that are very complex and daunting. A miracle would have been nice, of course. But a good beginning is okay too. I heard from a friend of a friend online who said that she was recovering from migraines, and it took her three full months (during which she lost 30 pounds, as a minor detail!) for her to really feel beyond incredible. The Whole30 people themselves suggest that if you have medical issues, you should keep going for longer.

One set back I had is that last week I had a bad stomach flu. It was brief, and horrible, as they so often are. But being me, it’s taken much longer than a normal person to recover. I still am feeling sort of weak and semi-ill after that. I do not feel strong, not as strong as I would like. I’m still struggling to get through the day without needing to rest. My head is congested, too, and my stomach still feels kind of tender. Elias has been semi-sick also all week, variously having a sore throat, and sick tummy, etc., although he’s been going to school normally. I think he and I have the same thing, sort of a nagging little virus that’s taking it all down a peg. I even have low-grade fever and chills nibbling at me around the edges. So… that’s casting a little shadow over what should be a moment of true glory.

No worries. That too shall pass.

My plan at the moment is to change nothing, add nothing, alter nothing, for at least another ten days so that Isaac and I will finish together. After that, I’m honestly thinking of still staying the course until mid-March. We’re going to London at the end of March, and I’d like to take a couple weeks to experiment with reintroduction before we go (e.g., is dairy or gluten a problem? Are both fine? etc.) so that in London I can have high tea and fish and chips and so on with a clear sense of what that all means in terms of how I will feel afterwards.  And armed with that knowledge, enjoy the vacation to the fullest!

By then, too, maybe the tiger blood will really be coursing through my veins. (Isaac is doing great by the way. It’s his day 20. Yesterday he came home from school and announced: “The tiger blood kicked in right in the middle of dodge ball!”)

My “learnings” from this Whole30, if you’re thinking about doing it too. My advice:

1. Before you start, a couple months before would be ideal, get yourself this cookbook called “Well-Fed: Paleo Recipes for People Who Love to Eat” by Melissa Joulwan. Of all the resources I used during this experience, that was the most useful. Cook things out of it. Practice the “weekly cook up” a couple times, get a sense of what it all will entail. Then when you really begin, those first weeks will be less bewildering.
2. Get used to cooking extra of everything all the time. Food shopping and prep is your biggest challenge. I’ve finally gotten a handle on this. Don’t freeze everything raw the minute you take it out of the grocery bag. Cook it! Chop it! Last night I was making meatballs with red sauce, and while I was standing at the stove I browned a pound of extra ground beef with onions. No reason. Just because. Now it’s there and when I show up at the fridge  starving I will be able to just grab it. Similarly, when I’m chopping sweet peppers or onions, or whatever, I chop a couple more than I need. Who cares? you’ve got your knife in hand. Now, next time you need something, it’s ready to grab.
3. On a related note, invest in a lot of wonderful glass pyrex containers with plastic lids. You will need a million containers. Get nice ones. Target is your friend. They are not expensive and last forever.
4. Most of the time… this is a shocker… I don’t really care what I eat. this is the normal, workaday eating. Need food. Now. In my gullet. When I’m hungry, I will eat whatever’s handy. The key to the Whole30 is to make the right things handy. This morning I dropped the kids off at school and came home, hungry. I had no idea what I was going to eat. I opened the fridge and there were chicken nuggets (fools gold) I made a couple nights ago, and broccolini. Breakfast in three minutes. I didn’t plan it, but I was prepared. If you can see what I mean.
5. You will have food dreams. I had three. One involved a cousin’s wedding, where I showed up in towel! Yes, pretty mortifying, standing in all those wedding pictures in my towel! There was a tray of cupcakes and I was trying to get one, but the frosting (which I wanted most), kept falling off. Then someone showed up with a tray of raw suet and told me I should eat that! The second two were both about eating something (one was a cupcake, the other a chocolate thing with toffee inside) off the plan, and that I would have to reset to the beginning and how horrible that was! Both times I woke up upset, and only gradually realized that I hadn’t eaten anything.
6. The only way to kill the sugar dragon is to starve it. These cravings do go away. And the strangest part is that other things start tasting really sweet! Like sweet potatoes and berries. They just are amazingly sweet. I was eating a pear the other day that I found actually oppressively sweet and could not finish it. You can change your tastes! It’s so incredible, but it’s true. I actually don’t want a cupcake anymore.
7. That’s how they get you on track. You commit for thirty days. You figure: “I can do anything for thirty days.” You do it. And then when it ends, you’re different. You don’t want to fall face first into a box of donuts anymore. It’s… just… over.
8. The Whole30 is incredibly strict. That’s the whole point. You do it or you don’t do it. There’s no middle ground. Ben keeps telling me, “I’m pretty much doing your diet.” He’s great. He’s been so remarkably patient and kind through all this. He’s been incredibly supportive. But he’s not doing the Whole30. He drinks beer and wine every night. He has cut down on grains a lot, was never huge on dairy or sweets, never cared about legumes at all, he’s getting pretty paleo. But he might have a roll when he’s out for lunch. He’s not checking for carrageenan, nitrates, or MSG in anything I’m positive. And yet he’s awesome! He’s been doing push-ups– with a small child on his back– and has the body of a 25 year old. But he’s not doing the Whole30. You see my point? It’s a thing. With rules. They are hard-asses about it for a lot of solid reasons. Either drink the unsweetened herbal tea (I say this instead of “drink the kool-aid,” for obvious reasons) or don’t.
9. But that being said, DO. Do do it. It’s a great, great thing.

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