My first Whole30 is complete.
Whole 30 Preamble
I have been on the fence about Whole30 for about a year and half now. I started following the Whole9 blog in the summer of 2010, when I first heard about “paleo”. This was around the time that I bought Mark Sisson’s book and gave paleo eating a half-assed whirl. My half assery – my lunches, for example, were salt and sugar laden deli meats with some fruit and vegetables – did grant me some benefits and I felt the best that I had in a long time. That summer I surprised myself and completed Murph (the Crossfit WOD – 1 mile run, 100 pull ups, 200 push ups, 300 squats, 1 mile run) as prescribed, minus the vest. I was pretty shocked by that, given that I’m not exactly known for my amazing pull ups, but the performance benefits weren’t enough to keep me from falling back into problematic eating patterns.
Fast forward to November 2010, where I partially tear my quad and tear my meniscus in my left knee playing indoor soccer. I sat out of hockey for three weeks before cautiously returning for our last few games before the holiday break. I was out of CrossFit until February 2011. Shockingly, decreasing my working out and increasing my eating out resulted in some pretty solid weight gain. In March, I tried on my motorcycle pants (for some reason, I use them as a weight gauge...I think it has to do with being made of that heavy ass fabric that doesn’t seem particularly pliable) and was a bit horrified when my legs sausaged against the fabric and I couldn’t get the zipper up. A trip to the scale and a few tears confirmed what the pants had already told me – I was way up in weight.
Motivated to lose the weight, I returned back to the paleo idea. I had kept a ton of paleo blogs on my rss feed while I was eating a decidedly non-paleo diet and returned to reading those with fervor. I spoke to some others at my gym and got serious about eating paleo. For about three months I was super diligent with my eating and I was super proud of myself that I brought my lunch to work for three months straight. Prior to this I probably would have set a record at three days straight, so it was a pretty big deal. I rediscovered my love for cooking and really enjoyed looking for recipes. The weight came off. After three months, I was down 20 pounds.
Then, I stalled. I was still eating paleo, but the scale wouldn’t move. Here I was, working out regularly, eating this food that was supposed to help me accomplish my goals, and nothing. I got frustrated. Feeling as though I was depriving myself of foods I like and foods my friends were eating was one thing, but doing it with “no benefits” was another. I started to rationalize my poor choices “well, I’m not losing any weight anyways, so I might as well eat this ice cream cone. It’s not like I’m gaining either. Maybe I just need a break”.
Ah yes, the break. That worked out well. The ice cream cone turned into popcorn, which turned into diet coke (a habit I had already suffered through breaking once) which turned into beers with friends. I had the month of July off work with the best intentions to keep working out and start lifting at a weightlifting gym in addition to playing ball hockey. That got derailed when I tweaked my quad again, leaving me unable to lift or play ball hockey. I was still at the gym, modifying most workouts (I did a lot of rowing for about three weeks). I fell into self pity at not being able to follow through with my plans and was shaking my fist at the scale which still refused to budge.
August came and I went back to work. I think I started off ok; I was bringing my lunches at the beginning. I gave up diet coke, again. This time it stuck (I haven’t had any since then). I’m not sure when or why the wheels really came off, but man did they ever. The funniest wheel that came off was actually the diet-coke-substitution-wheel. It started with iced tea, and in my head, as a punishment. “If you’re going to be dumb enough to go out to eat, then it’s your fault that you’re sucking back these extra calories in an iced tea!” And suck them back I did. By November, iced tea had turned into any of the soda options at the fountain that aren’t diet coke (or coke). Funny how these things happen. By November, I was also back to being a takeout queen. My office is situated in walking distance of a Subway, an Indian restaurant with a lunch buffet, and a Tim Hortons. Once a week was the Indian buffet (because that one gave me some stomach pains before working out after work), maybe once a week at the Tims, and three at the Subway. I’m not going to lie and say my eating habits were awesome, or not nearly as terrible as they were – they were BAD. In addition to these lunches, I would fail to eat breakfast at home at least a couple times a week. No worries though, Tim Hortons also sells breakfast sandwiches and wraps. By the time I got home, I was tired, uninspired and not motivated to cook. So we’d go out for dinner a couple times a week as well.
Stop me if you’ve heard this one before, but by December I started to wonder if maybe all this shitty food might be affecting my weight. The one good, consistent habit that I had managed to cultivate in 2011 was consistent gym-going. Monday to Friday, I am there. Rain or shine, I don’t miss a workout. I had been rationalizing the food on this fascinating assumption that an hour of solid work per day would totally work off all that food...which I might as well be eating since the scale hates me and won’t let me drop weight even when I’m eating well anyways. Up on the scale I went. Shocker, I was up. Just about 15 pounds to be exact. Awesome. All that hard work was mostly gone.
The first thought that went through my head was Whole 30. Honestly, my thought process at that point was to get back to paleo and Whole30 was the most paleo paleo that I could think of. I also felt that it was the ultimate way to “punish” myself – to put myself on a program that absolutely forbade all the foods that I loved. That would learn me. I spent one day thinking about it and dove in the next day.
My Whole 30
To be honest, sticking to the Whole30 has been fairly easy. Being incredibly irritated with myself has proven time and again to be a very effective way to ensure my naturally stubborn demeanor doesn’t have me swaying from the plan. And plans are comfortable. Safe. Especially something like Whole30 – the program is pretty specific about what you can and cannot have. To me, it felt like those decisions were taken out of my hands; that I had given over my food choices to Whole30. There wasn’t an option other than following the plan.
There were a few situations that were the hardest to navigate: post-hockey beers at Boston Pizza (where everyone also traditionally orders food. Nachos, bandera bread, pizza...); my hockey team’s Christmas party (complete with pizza); watching hockey games at Rexall Place (where I typically dine on popcorn, nachos and soda); and going to the movies (POPCORN!). Actually the final one would be watching my partner eat everything I can’t have – cookies, chocolate, cheese, chocolate milk, hot dogs, chips and salsa...(there’s more, but those were the ones that I really wanted). These represented a pretty great learning experience. I brought my own dinner to the Christmas party (no one cared). I brought nuts to the first hockey game and movie we went to and then discovered that I could attend both those things without needing anything to snack on. I brought a Lara bar and a Primal Pac to the fourth hockey game we attended (this week) mainly because I had come straight from the gym and needed something to sub in for dinner. The “change your relationship with food” part of the Whole30 really hit home here.
It was a big success getting back to bringing my breakfast and lunch to work. I made a frittata to last the week one week and then the other two weeks I had the chicken apple hash in the Whole30 Success Guide. I would have tried other recipes, but that one was so tasty that I got stuck on it. I’m one of those people that likes to eat something continuously for a long time until I get sick of it and then repeat the process with something else, so this isn’t really outside of the norm for me. Lunches were a mish mash of different things, often leftovers from dinner. I made Farmer’s Pie (from Paleo Comfort Foods) twice during my Whole30, same goes for the Garlic and Beef slow cooker stew (from Everyday Paleo) and the curry recipe from the Success Guide. The tuna salad recipe in the Success Guide came out at least three times (it’s quick AND tasty!). Those recipes probably got me through at least half my Whole30.
I think I can count on one hand the number of times we went out to eat during my Whole30 (dinner on New Year’s Eve, dinner on New Year’s Day, breakfast last week-end, dinner last night), which is quite the accomplishment compared to how many times we typically go out in a “normal” month. Even factoring in the added cost of purchasing more meat, etc., I undoubtedly saved money on my Whole30. I would have saved even more if one of the dogs hadn’t stolen the coconut oil and ripped the container to shreds, but hey.
The Numbers
Getting down to what I’m sure a lot of people want to know – what did I lose on my Whole30?
15 pounds. So in 30 days, I lost all the weight that I had gained back in between my last foray into paleo eating and the start of my Whole30.
I didn’t take measurements before starting my Whole30, but I did have measurements from when I got frustrated and stopped eating paleo. They were from when I was approximately the same weight (2 pounds heavier) in May, but were still different: waist is down 1.5”, hips are down 1.5”, thighs down 1”, calf and bicep down 0.5” each.
What Else Did I Gain?A better awareness of what I eat, when I eat it and why I eat it. I started my Whole30 to try and lose the weight I'd gained - that's the truth and I'm not going to pretend that I'm something I'm not. I treated the concept of Whole30 "changing my life" as some kind of hokey catch phrase. Two days post-Whole30 is not enough to predict the future, but I certainly feel that this has changed my relationship with food. I honestly thought that Day 31 was going to be the day I ate some nachos or bread or other grainy deliciousness. And I guess I did - I ate two nacho chips after hockey last night. I ate the first one and my response was pretty much "meh". I ate the second one and made the decision that I didn't really want any more - they weren't especially tasty, so why was I eating them? I had a penny candy on the way home and the sugary taste pretty much blew me away. I had no desire for another. Those two occurrences right there were enough to blow me away.
Where Do I Go From Here?
I realize that Whole30 is meant to be a lifestyle change and not a "diet". But the fact does remain that I have about 20 more pounds that I would like to lose and think that I realistically need to lose to get myself to healthy weight. Eating paleo has been one of the few ways that I've been able to lose weight and simultaneously feel good/better than before, so this is something that I would like to continue.
This is where I get the lump in my throat, because my faith in myself wanes. There’s the “woo, I lost 15.4 pounds IN A MONTH!” celebration factor, and then there’s the little voice that follows which says “...and now you’re going to be stuck at this weight no matter what you do!” Based on my last little paleo foray, I feel snake bitten here. It’s probably not the best plan to set myself up for failure before I even start (I think that’s something of a self fulfilling prophecy) but I can’t deny that the feeling is there.
I was chatting with my partner about this last night. What she suggested and I think I’m going to do is take off the training wheels for a month and attempt to apply the principles that in theory I have learned over the course of my Whole30 and try that out. I don’t want to go back to crappy eating, but I’m not going to lie – I would really love a piece of chocolate or some cheese something fierce. So, I’m going to see what happens over the next 30 days...my LiveMyLife30. I will try to start applying paleo principles to my long term eating and lifestyle outside of my safe and secure Whole30 bubble. I for sure want to keep bringing both my breakfast and lunch to work – particularly the breakfast now that I’ve discovered just how easy it is to make a huge batch of something and take it to work all week. Lunch should be similarly easy to keep going on – it just means I need to maintain some accountability cooking dinner. And the number one thing I don’t want to lose is slipping back into soda and crappy drinks – I’ve been drinking boatloads of cold water and tea at work and I don’t feel deprived at all. I drink club soda and lime juice when I’m out at restaurants. I’ve broken my cravings for soda and I really don’t want them back.
So, here we go. LiveMyLife30. Let the adventure begin.
