For literally... 3 weeks... I’ve been trying to draft an update, since I haven’t been doing my daily logs. This is the end product of that piecemeal process.
I came very close to postponing the start of this round until sometime later in the month - after a day in the city with my mom & sister, after my cousin’s baby shower, etc. But then there’d just be another excuse to wait. So I decided to suck it up and start on January 2nd to get it going as quickly as possible.
Unfortunately, overnight between Days 1 and 2 my husband’s grandfather passed away, which meant (just like last year) I was once again be staring down a week of shiva meals and desserts while on Whole30. The thought of postponing it again crept in, but I knew that the right thing to do was proceed and just deal with it accordingly. This meant toting my own food around - an added stress in addition to packing the kids up for the back-&-forth to their great-grandparents’ house - and eating it while others had bagels and cream cheese for lunch or catered trays of lasagna for dinner, to say nothing of the platters of cookies and humongous cakes.
Once again, I’m very proud of resisting temptation with minimal anguish. More importantly, I’m quite grateful that I started Whole30 because if I hadn’t, Lord knows how many cookies I’d have eaten. A family-friend once said “a week of shiva is good for 5 lbs., easy!” and he’s absolutely right. (Of course, my husband ate basically half of a giant babka the other night and probably won’t gain an ounce, but fuck him.) I definitely drank more coffee, though, because Hubs’s grandma always seems to have a pot brewing and if I wasn’t eating all the good snacks I was more liberal with the caffeine indulgence.
Looking back on it, I’m struck by the realization of how pervasive this reflexive mindless eating can be. We took our kids to Disney on Ice that next weekend and they’ve been indoctrinated by the societal impulse to snack while watching something, so the 4yo got a hot dog at 10:45 AM and the 6yo required popcorn. Later they negotiated cotton candy.
The weekend after that, we had a family baby shower. In discussing it beforehand, the hosts assured me that the catered lunch - Greek food - would offer me plenty of compliant options. I felt bad making a special point of mentioning my diet, especially considering the mom-to-be is a diabetic vegetarian, but they were very reassuring that there would be food for everyone’s various needs. And they were right! I ate grilled chicken kebab, lamb gyro, roasted lemon potatoes, and salad (the feta was in discrete chunks I could easily avoid). I skipped the pita bread & hummus but partook in a babaghanoush that may well have had honey in it because it tasted vaguely sweet. Whoops. It was a little hard that day, ignoring the brownies and ice cream for dessert, but I was able to have fruit as well as some nuts I’d brought along. I also had some flavored seltzer and partook heartily in the crudite platter prior to the meal being served.
The following day, we went to visit some family-friends who unilaterally decided to order pizza before we arrived. Their forethought was entirely appropriate given that it was a bit of a long drive and the kids were eager to eat as soon as we got there. And, as usual, I’d brought an emergency meal for myself, which I ate while hoping not to draw too much attention to myself. (My mother also brought her own food, due to her own unique dietary restrictions, and surprisingly managed to do the same.) We wound up staying there through dinnertime, and ordering from a local kosher deli. As it turns out, this was a fantastic turn of events because I got a cobb salad that I knew wouldn’t contain dairy or sugar-laden bacon bits.
Otherwise, things rolled right along. I did my best to keep up with the semi-daily cycle of shopping for veggies and meats, then grilling and eating them. In reality that’s what I’ve ~always done, but there’s more pressure on Whole30 because I wind up toting my own food around for certain meals instead of making the best of whatever options are available at parties or elsewhere in the wild.
One particular challenge I’ve experienced involves on-the-go compliant carbs. By the strictest of interpretation of Whole30, potato chips and french fries are strictly verbotten because they violate the spirit of the regimen. However, I’ve incorporated them where necessary because there is nothing grosser than a cold sweet potato. This past week I roasted some beets, which are an acceptable form of cold or room-temperature compliant carb.
Speaking of bending the rules, another thought that crossed my mind prior to starting this round was to modify the plan to eliminate the ban on legumes. This prohibition is difficult for me only because without plant-based sources of protein I find I eat too much meat and too many eggs, which I can’t imagine is good for my lipids. Still, I avoided them until last week, when I made some three-bean and veggie chili, which I incorporated every other day so as to mitigate the over-meating issue. Initially, I was wary about reintroducing peanut butter, which I have a tendency to eat directly out of the jar as a snack, but thankfully that’s been kept to a minimum.
I know I’m not quite done, yet, but I posted the other day that my blood results on Day 22 were much better than I’d expected them to be. The one downside is that my cholesterol is “backwards” - my HDLs are low and my LDLs high. My weight is also up a few pounds from where I’d been previously. Last April, after my first Whole30, I was 5 lbs. less, representing the least I’d weighed since I was 18. For perspective, a few years prior to that, I weighed about 20 lbs. more. Part of this whole process for me has been trying to figure out how to sustain weight loss and then maintain it, i.e. why is it that I can Be Good for so long and then let things creep back to where they were before.
To be clear, I fully understand that the scale isn’t the whole story, and wouldn’t be so concerned about it if health professionals weren’t telling me I needed to be. At my appointment the other day, my endocrinological NP mentioned (for the second or third time now) the option of certain drugs that act as a metabolic reset and promote weight loss. I haven’t liked that idea because I’m already taking the maximum allowable daily dose of metformin (which I’ve now been on for almost 20 years) and am hoping to decrease that at some point. She stressed, though, that she’d only try me on one of the weight-loss meds for around three months, to see what effect it might have. Moreover, she said that I’ve been doing so much hard work but I just seem stuck, and one of these drugs would help me get over the hump. I’m still not sold, but it’s been on my mind as a logical next step.
Given all of this, I think a goal I’d like to set for myself is to continue to follow Whole30 as closely as possible for another month, to see where that gets me. I feel like I’ve come a long way in resisting temptations, and I’m up for the challenge of continuing to eat my grilled veggies and meats and compliant carbs. We’ll be on a short family vacation for four days in mid-February, and I’m sure there will be other challenges, as is always the case.
Historically, it’s been easy for my brain to switch into the mindset of “well I’m eating so well day-to-day, I can indulge on a special occasion”. Then, gradually, the “special occasions” magically become more numerous (read: I’m interpreting any little thing as a special occasion so as to afford opportunities for noncompliant eating), Then, that mentality bleeds into the day-to-day, when we’re so busy and my kids are stressing me out to the point where a spoonful of peanut butter from the jar or a handful of their Goldfish seems like a perfectly reasonable course of action. Food Freedom Forever acknowledges the ebbs and flows of healthy eating and provides some tips on how to stay close to the Whole30 path without living in a self-imposed food prison. Maybe I need to re-read that for inspiration.
If anyone has any tips/helpful strategies, I’d love to hear them! If you’re reading this, thanks also for sticking with me through this ridiculously long recap post (...which I didn’t proofread, sorry). Cheers.
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