Whole30

I've been working on my health and weight for a while now. Ok so for real, my whole life, but this time around I've really been focused on it the past year or two. I had started running and trying to eat better....I've even been tracking food and counting calories. It was working pretty well for me until I hurt my back and things sort of stalled. I managed to do ok with just watching my food intake, but at some point I hit a plateau that I could.not.get.past. Not too long ago I told Nick that I felt like I really needed to do something, anything!, so shake things up a bit and cause some real changes. Obviously what I had been doing had worked up to a certain point - but then I hit this wall, and it was not going to be easy to get past.

A couple of weeks ago a friend of mine mentioned that she was on day 16 of Whole30 and felt amazing. She had lost some weight and was loving these new changes in her life. It made me curious enough to start researching what Whole30 was and what it was not. I had this overwhelming sense that THIS is what I needed to do to really make a difference - really shake things up and get the ball rolling again. So I started talking to Nick about it and he decided to give it a shot with me.

So what's Whole30? In a nutshell:
No sugar.
No dairy,
No legumes (beans).
No soy.
No cheating.
For 30 days.

Pretty strict, huh? It's supposed to be. To sum up 7 chapters of science about the why behind it all, basically it's to reset your system, clean out all the junk, and get your body and gut working the way it was designed to work without the added stuff that we eat. Once you complete day 30, you may begin reintroducing foods to see how they affect you, assuming you still even want them.

It's not meant to be used as a diet or just for weight loss. It;s for overall health. Weight loss is often a happy side effect, if you will.

So we decided to go for it. I'm crazy enough to try it and Nick is stubborn enough to play along. Protein, vegetables, fruits, and healthy fats for 30 days.

I can't go cold turkey with something like that. I will fail if I make that attempt, so I decided to start contributing to the local farm share again and we have been getting and eating more vegetables lately. I've even been forcing myself to eat an apple here and there, and I can't stand apples. I haven't had bread in a while, and I've slowly been cutting back on the amount of sweet stuff I use. I've starting drinking water with my meals more often, though not all the time. Just in doing that, 6 pounds almost fell off of me right away. This got me over the hump I was stuck on and makes me really hopeful for the next month.

We are going on a weekend trip for our anniversary, so we decided to start our Whole30 the day after we return. I didn't want the weekend of having to eat out to cause us to fail, so we thought this would be best. It also gave me time to read It Starts With Food, which is one of the Whole30 books that helps with your journey.

March 15th. That is the big day. We will begin 30 days of clean eating and see what happens next. We will finish 8 days before our next cruise, and the day after my Whole30 ends I will be going on a weekend girls trip. Probably going to make things interesting but I will find a way to manage. I'm actually super excited about this and can't wait to see what it does and how it affects us! I will definitely be trying to document as much as I can as we go along.
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