Post-Thanksgiving Thoughts

Hope everyone had a good Thanksgiving. I haven't been posting here. I haven't posted my food pics on Instagram either. Some days I've eaten pretty well, some days I've veered way off course. I haven't weighed myself in weeks. My clothes don't seem to be getting any looser than they were, but they don't seem any tighter either, so I guess that's something. 

I haven't given up on the Paleo/Whole30 way of eating, it is something I intend to continue doing, I guess I'll just say I've been taking a bit of a break. For now, I'm going to keep eating according to Whole30 guidelines for my regular meals at home, but in social situations, I'm not going to worry too much. Fortunately for me, even during the holidays, my social life is not terribly active, but there will be a few things, and they may involve non-Paleo food, and that's okay. I am going to do another strict Whole30 after the holidays. I'm planning to start on January 2 (gotta have my black eyed peas for luck on the 1st, which would break the no legumes rule, so I'll start the next day), and hopefully I'll continue it for more than 30 days this time. 

I also think I preferred keeping a food log here, rather than on Instagram -- not that Instagram isn't great for looking at other people's foods and getting ideas, but I like being able to link to recipes or list things I forgot to take a picture of, which seems sort of limited on Instagram. Or maybe I just haven't figured out all the bells and whistles over there, I don't know.  Anyway, that means more food pictures here. Things that don't qualify as Whole30 or Paleo, I'll list in red, just to make it clear for myself or anyone else who may look at this later for food ideas during a Whole30. 

So without further ado, here's today's food:

Breakfast -- scrambled eggs with spinach and ground beef, roasted sweet potato with salt, pepper, garlic powder, and chili powder, homemade mayo.

Lunch -- (sorry for the really blurry pic, didn't realize it was that bad until I went to add it here) Applegate Farms organic beef hot dog, ground beef, spinach/kale mix, mushrooms, yellow cherry tomatoes, mustard, mayo. Not pictured -- packet of Artisana Cacao Bliss.

Supper -- two Applegate organic beef hot dogs, Bubbies sauerkraut, broccoli slaw, sweet potato baked fries, mustard, mayo, Strawberry Bliss kombucha.

Got a little off course, but back on track now, I hope

So much for updating this blog a few times a week, I sort of forgot about it, and didn't really have a lot to say anyway, but I thought I should maybe post an update, now that it's been almost a month since my Whole30. 

I haven't stuck to a Whole30 way of eating 100% over the last month. Some days I did, some days not so much. I didn't ever do all the really structured reintroductions of food that they recommend, but I have reintroduced a few things. Dairy was first on my list, and at first, it didn't seem to affect me at all. So I had it almost every day for a couple of weeks, and then realized I wasn't feeling so great anymore -- my joints were achy, I was having some digestive issues. I can't say for sure that it's the dairy, but I'm cutting it back out of my diet so I can see what happens.

Then, this past weekend, I reintroduced grains -- although I was also still having dairy, so it's not a clean reintroduction as recommended in the book. It was really more of a lack of planning, coupled with being tired and a little stressed, which all resulted in an I-don't-care sort of an attitude. So I had a breakfast burrito from Whataburger on Sunday morning when I overslept and needed to get to work. And a sandwich at lunch on Sunday. And some candy. And then on Monday, crepes for lunch (the smoked turkey ones from Cafe Brazil), and a loaded baked potato from Junior's Barbecue, with sour cream and butter and cheese and chopped beef. And a Blizzard (Oreo Cheesequake). 

What I noticed: The breakfast burrito wasn't very filling, but didn't seem to have any adverse effects. The sandwich, aside from not really tasting as good as it sounded, left me feeling sort of foggy, mentally. The crepes were totally worth it, absolutely delicious, although I really should've done more to add more veggies to the meal, it was definitely short on those. The baked potato was also yummy (how could it not be, considering all the stuff in it?) but it's definitely something I need to make sure I don't have often, and again, it was a meal that was really short on veggies. And the Blizzard was good. Really, really sweet, but good. (I was honestly hoping that I'd be one of those people who, after my Whole30 experience, would find sweets too sickeningly sweet to enjoy. It would make it a lot easier to avoid them. Alas, no such luck, my sweet tooth is still intact, but at least I'm not having major cravings, even after these two days of being so completely off track.)

Since yesterday, I've been back on track, no dairy, no grains, no added sweeteners, although I have had more fruit than the Whole30 template really calls for. I'll have to keep an eye on that and make sure I'm not having so much fruit I don't get my veggies in, but given that it's a vast improvement over the last couple of days, I'm not all that worried about it. I didn't take pictures of the stuff I ate over the weekend, or yesterday, but so far today this is what I've had:

Breakfast -- sweet potato, pear, and sausage hash topped with two eggs, coffee blended with coconut milk, coconut oil, and cacao nibs

Lunch -- a bunless hamburger on a lettuce/spinach mix (so, a hamburger salad, I guess?), with tomatoes, pickles, mustard, and guacamole and a side of baked sweet potato fries, and some kombucha.

I haven't had supper yet, I guess I should get on that soon, since it's 10 pm, but I wasn't hungry. It'll probably be leftover beef stew that I need to finish off soon.

Day 6

I was really tired again today, so I went back and looked at the Whole30 Timeline and it looks like I'm about on schedule. I was having trouble staying awake at work today, so it would be nice for this part to be over with, which according to their timeline should happen in the next day or two. 

Anyway, to the food:

Breakfast -- sweet potato and zucchini, three fried eggs, half an avocado.

Lunch -- big handful of salad greens, carrots, celery, zucchini, seasoned ground beef, half an avocado, a peach.

Supper -- Leftover salmon, raw carrots, celery and snow peas (I was feeling lazy and didn't want to cook any veggies) plus, not pictured, a peach and a handful of almonds.

Tomorrow's the end of week one. I knew the first week or so would be hard, because Medifast has a similar effect, when you give up sugar and bread and all of that. I did think maybe I'd get by without going through most of the hard part, since I came straight from Medifast to this plan without adding a bunch of stuff into my diet between them, but I guess that wasn't enough to avoid it completely.

The hardest part is definitely planning and cooking. Since I'm single and don't have to feed anyone but myself, I don't usually bother to pre plan, I just eat what I feel like, and before this, if I didn't feel like cooking, I could go out. Going out now seems like it would be very difficult, given the sheer number of things I'm supposed to avoid, and the number of things that contain sugar that you don't think would, and how soy seems to sneak into everything in some form or another, not to mention avoiding dairy and wheat products. Whatever I decide to do after the end of this 30 day period, whether it's basically just sticking to this same plan or trying to add in dairy or other foods, I can say I will be paying a lot more attention to labels -- and not just the calories and fat content, which is all I used to really look at, but the actual ingredients. I knew there were a lot of chemicals and salt and other unexpected stuff in some foods, but I guess I never realized exactly how widespread it was, and I think the sheer number of things that have added sugar explains a lot about the obesity rate in this country. Even people trying to cook at home, thinking that's healthier than having fast food, can be putting sugar into everything without realizing it if they're not paying attention. Case in point -- I would love to add bacon to my egg casserole thing for the week, not a lot of it, just enough to have that lovely salty bacon flavor, and it would be allowed within the whole30, if I could find it in a form that didn't have sugar. There are some out there at some grocery stores, I hear, and I could special order some online if I were really desperate, but I can't just walk into our local HEB and pick some up. I didn't even find any when i was at Whole Foods. I would've expected this if I were looking at, say, maple bacon, but really, does the just plain old regular bacon really need sugar? That's a little frustrating.

Day 4

So, I've been really tired all day, not sure if this is still the caffeine withdrawal or what. Also, I just feel sort of slow, mentally speaking, like in a fog or something. Fortunately, I got to work from home, so I actually ate supper at a reasonable time and can go to bed fairly early tonight, maybe that will help. I have noticed that over the last few days I haven't sat around watching tv as much -- mostly because I'm in the kitchen trying to cook all the time. I will say I'm eating better tasting food than I've had in a long time.

Anyway, the food:

Breakfast -- This one was sort of a fail. I ate it anyway, but those are supposed to be fried eggs there -- I forgot how fast eggs cook when you fry them, and they got a bit overcooked. So that's two overcooked fried eggs, with the last of my egg muffins I've been having all week, with a sweet potato (baking them overnight in the crockpot turned out perfect -- just wrap them in foil, throw them in the crock pot, put the lid on it, put it on low, and go to bed.) I added coconut oil to the potato, since I can't have butter because of the no dairy rule.

Lunch -- Big handful of salad greens, with part of the breakfast salad stuff I've been having every morning because it's starting to look kind of sad and I want to finish it before it gets too soggy, plus the last of the roast chicken, half an avocado, and a mix of olive oil, coconut milk and lime juice for dressing.

Supper -- leftover orange cinnamon beef stew (still one more serving of that left in the fridge, eventually you will see something new here), chopped zucchini, roasted cauliflower and carrots, and half an avocado.

I've got the remains of the roast chicken, some celery, carrots, onion, garlic, rosemary, and thyme all in the crockpot simmering to make chicken broth -- hope it turns out good, I've never made my own broth before. Tomorrow, I'm going to go to the farmer's market here in town -- in addition to the obvious veggies and fruit, there's supposed to be a spice company and someone selling grass-fed organic ground beef, so I'll have to check them out.

Whole30

I started this blog a while back, at my sister's suggestion, but then never actually told anyone about it, because I wasn't sure if I really wanted to blog regularly, and I didn't want to tell people and then stop posting. But then I posted anyway, which is kind of silly, I guess, since no one was reading it. Anyway, so now I decided to actually tell people about it. I even wrote a lovely intro post, it's here, but basically, after struggling with weight issues all of my life and then surviving cancer a few years ago, I'm finally trying to get healthy. Not that I haven't tried before. I've lost weight before, and then gained it back. This time, I want to lose weight, and then stay healthy. So I started on Medifast, and since June I've lost 35 lbs. Which is great. But Medifast is a bit restrictive, and I'm getting bored with it, so I've noticed I've started adding things to make their food taste better. I haven't added things that are totally off plan, but I'm definitely not following the plan to the letter either. 

I've known since I started MF that it was not a plan that I would be on forever -- it's not designed to be something you stick to your whole life, it is specifically a weight loss plan -- once you lose the weight, you transition back to eating real food. So I'd been reading up on options for post-MF, starting with looking into glycemic load/glycemic index, which is just a diet that takes into account how all of your food affects your blood sugar, the idea being to keep your blood sugar levels even throughout the day, without the ups and downs you get when you eat a lot of sugary/carb-laden stuff. That is something that really makes sense to me, as someone from a family with a history of type 2 diabetes. But I also kept hearing about this Paleo thing. It is not specifically focused on counting carbs -- in fact, it doesn't necessarily count anything. There are variations of it out there, people can't all seem to agree on what exactly it is, and some of the why it's good for you that focuses on eating like our Paleolithic ancestors is something I'm just not educated enough on the subject to judge, but I like the explanation from whole9, which they've summed up with their Whole9′s Nutrition in 60 Seconds:

We eat real food – meat, fish, eggs, vegetables, fruit, healthy oils, nuts and seeds. We choose foods that were raised, fed and grown naturally, and foods that are nutrient-dense, with lots of naturally occurring vitamins and minerals.This is not a “diet” – we eat as much as we need to maintain strength, energy, activity levels and a healthy body weight. We aim for well-balanced nutrition, so we eat animals and a significant amount of plants.Eating like this has helped us to look, feel, live and perform our best, and reduces our risk for a variety of lifestyle-related diseases and conditions.

(They stress that if you cannot find things like grass-fed beef, or you can't afford to buy all organic everything, that you can use conventionally grown options.) I'm sure I'll talk more about their way of doing things, as I'm about halfway through their book, It Starts With Food. Their way of eating, and their reasons for eating that way, really struck a chord with me. 

Whole9 has developed a 30-day plan, the Whole30.  Basically, for 30 days, you commit to cutting out grains, sugars and sweeteners (all of them, sugar, honey, stevia, splenda -- no sweeteners), dairy, legumes (beans and peanuts), potatoes, and alcohol (that one's so not a problem for me, I can't even remember the last time I had a drink). Also no MSGs, sulfites, or carrageenan, each of which can be in things like spice mixes and prepared sauces. The point is to cut out these things for 30 full days and see how you feel, because each of these things can cause problems in people's diets, and if you're used to eating them, you may not realize how much they're affecting you, because it may not be obvious. And they focus not just on physical effects of the food, but emotional -- so for instance, during the Whole30 they ask you not to try to Paleo-fy desserts using ingredients that are allowed. So even though you can have bananas and you can have 100% cocoa (like cocoa powder), they ask you not to make banana ice cream with frozen bananas and cocoa powder, not because there's anything inherently wrong with that, but because instead of learning that you can, in fact, live without ice cream for 30 days, you're just making an ice cream substitute. I'm guessing people who've never really had issues with food, who have never felt like a meal just isn't complete without a little dessert, won't get that, but when I read it, I understood it completely. They want you to learn to enjoy the taste of real food, not the sugary stuff we've come to expect in our modern diet.

Anyway, getting a little long-winded here, sorry. Basically, I'm going to do a Whole 30, starting tomorrow. I've been getting ready since yesterday, stocking up on veggies and fruit (yay! fruit! I haven't had that since June when I started Medifast), tossing out the cheese in the fridge (which seems so wasteful, but fortunately there wasn't a lot left in the package), I've made some egg muffins (mine are not exactly like that, I couldn't find sausage that met the requirements for the plan, so I used some prosciutto -- possibly not ideal, but with only pork and salt as ingredients it met the requirements, and hey, I'm giving up cheese here, give me a break! -- and I added some sauteed leeks, mushrooms and garlic). I've got a whole chicken roasting in the oven (that's almost certainly not going to happen every week, but I figured it would make a lot of meat with little effort, and I'm not sure how much time I'm going to have the rest of the week to cook, so I want to be prepared). Each meal, I'll eat lots of veggies (raw or cooked), some meat or eggs for protein, and possibly a little fruit and a bit of healthy fat, like part of an avocado or coconut or adding a little oil to my food or certain nuts/nut butters (but not peanuts). After months of Medifast meals, it actually sounds like an awful lot of food at each meal, but then they encourage you to only eat three meals a day and avoid snacking if possible. (The official meal template is here with an explanation of amounts/portion sizes.) 

I've resisted doing something like this for a while -- who wants to give up bread and cheese and butter and sugar for the rest of their life, after all? But on the other hand, who wants to be tired and fat and miserable the rest of their life? And really, it's 30 days, and if at the end of it I don't feel any better than I do right now, what have I lost? 30 days that I would've been eating something, and at least the stuff in this plan will taste good, which is a step up from a lot of the Medifast stuff I've been eating for the last few months. (Of course, the fact that it will taste good is one reason a part of me is still going, this can't possibly work. They say I can cook in oil -- that doesn't sound like a way to lose weight, not according to any diet I've ever heard of.)

So, I'll be starting tomorrow. One of their rules is not to step on the scale during the 30 days, the focus is not supposed to be on weight, but tomorrow morning I'll do one last weigh in before I start, and maybe take some measurements, so that at the end of 30 days, I can see if it's affected my weight at all. And during the 30 days, I'm going to try to post every day, probably toward the end of the day, about how everything went