I'm Gonna Eat Better!

In 2013 I turned the way I run and the way I eat upside down. I started heart rate training and I cleaned up the way I eat….big time. People in my gym were all atwitter about this thing called the Whole 30. I heard them talk about how exciting it was so I looked into it. I looked into it and immediately decided that it was stupid, restrictive, and impossible. And then a month or two later as is often the case with stubborn, overreacting, alarmist people like myself, I calmed the heck down and decided to give it a shot (you know, once I pretended that it was all my idea, of course). I learned a lot from it and once I got over the initial feeling awful part a felt great!

So, what is it? Well for30 days you cut out dairy, grains, legumes, and sugar (and sugar substitutes). Oh my lord, what’s left? Well, tons of veggies, protein, fruit, and nuts! FYI, peanuts are a legume, not a nut. This was a fact that resulted in a few false starts for my husband’s first Whole 30. Here’s the website for more detailed information:

http://whole30.com/whole30-program-rules/

Anywhoo…. As 2013 turned into 2014 my “eat right 90% of the time with a treat occasionally” way of eating slowly turned into “eat right 20% of the time, not awful 40%, and total crap %40 but still pretend you’re doing well”. Why was I gaining weight, achy, not recovering as well, etc? Well, around the time that I admitted I was burnt out on training, I had to admit that my diet had turned to not good. Time to clean it all up!

And what a great time to start,  January 1^st! I’m not a typical new year’s resolution gal, but my gym and a few of my closest friends were all doing a Whole 30 starting on January 1^st. So, I reckon that’s as good a time as any right? Weeelllllll, kind of right. I might have eaten my body weight in sugar in the month of December in preparation. Oh, and I might have had a sugar binge to end all sugar binges on December 31^st, but hey, I never said I was smart.

Now I have a plan to blog my way through a Whole 30. Ok, I plan to do at least a couple posts on it.

I’m seven days in now and here’s a few excerpts from some ongoing exchanges I’m having with friends as we stumble through another Whole 30 together.

- (Day 2) Talk about New Year’s Eve binge. I definitely had more fruit than I should have yesterday to avoid diabetic shock. I was wolfing down baby food on the way to my run to avoid the sugar shakes.

- (Day 3) Oh good, I think my sugar withdrawal headache just arrived, I was afraid I would miss it. The good thing is that they seem to come in nausea inducing waves. At least they aren’t constant.

- (Day 4) Today’s run was brought to you by… Oh my god my body hates me and doesn’t know how to use energy.

-(Day 6) – I seem to be entering the I hate everything phase of this Whole 30. I got violently angry at my husband yesterday because he was cutting up cauliflower the wrong way. You know, totally normal to freak out about that, right?

Things I learned today;

1)      Maybe I AM a bit moody and should keep to myself

2)      Don’t try to explain to anyone how I’m eating because they will be hateful and unsupportive and I will want to drop kick them. (absolutely not overreacting, right?)

- (Day 7) - I went running, at a low heart rate yesterday and IT FELT LIKE AWFUL!!! I don't even know if I was too hungry or what but I felt like I was dying.

Sure this sounds awful, and right now it is, I'm not going to lie. But I have to think that part of the reason it seems so awful is because my body has become so used to eating garbage that it's taking it a minute or two to figure out how to fuel itself on

ACTUAL NUTRITIOUS FOOD.

Will it get better? Oh my good night I hope so. But in the mean time, if you see me looking like a hot mess and then I snap your head off for no apparent reason, please forgive me.

Onward!