Adventures in Whole30 (and probably some other random thoughts too)
I didn’t feel any worse today, but I’m attributing my enhanced fartitude to the wheat. I also notice that it doesn’t have as much staying power as other foods. Going forward, I would probably be better off to keep the breads to a minimum.
Gluten-tag! Triscuits at lunch were a nice change. The dinner highlight actually wasn’t the gluten. We made avocado pesto and it was excellent! Grandma also made us a loaf of homemade bread and we ate the pesto with whole wheat pasta. The bread was fantastic. It was a wonderful feast, but my wife made an interesting observation. She noticed with this meal that it was possible to overeat before her head knew whe was full. That probably explains how I can eat so much pizza- there is room in my hollow leg and no stop signs in my head.
Svelte Wednesday offerings today were homemade breakfast burritos and a separate egg bake without cheese or sausage specially made for me. Thumbs up.
And the really exciting news of the day is that my Rasberry Pi arrived. Not the food and nothing to do with Pi Day. It is an inexpensive tiny computer. Hopefully I have time to play with it this weekend.
I don’t think dairy did anything too crazy to my system. Considering that I have a life and a job and a baby maybe I’m not quite as tuned in to my bodily systems as is required to get the Whole30 effect. But maybe that also means that I’m on a good track now and as long as I basically keep the diet headed in a healthy direction I can have a pretty wide range of flexibility. I would imagine the transition from simple sugar fuels to fat burning energy is probably the biggest takeaway from this time.
Dairy day is in the books. It was less triumphant than the past couple for some reason. Plain Greek yogurt is just not that delicious on its own. Cheese with dinner was lovely, but didn’t add significantly to the taste or quality of the meal for me. I enjoyed a tall glass of milk the most of all those things. Next stop: Glutenville on Thursday.
Happy Easter. Part of the timing we considered with starting this Whole30 shenanigans was to coincide with lent. However, other people are back to watching tv, or sugar, or alcohol… and we’re still working our way through reintroductions. Oh well, the point is lifelong, not temporary improvements. That should really go for any fasting for lent as well. If the only point is to be tough on yourself for a while, there is a large portion of the big picture that is getting missed.
Dinner was deconstructed shepherd’s pie, which means we made the meat and the mash parts, put them into our bowls and skipped the whole baking routine. Maybe a better description would be personal pan no-bake shepherd’s pie.
No significant effects from rice day.
Regarding Let’s All Gamble at Work Month, I don’t think I will ever understand basketball. Specifically, fouls make no sense to me. I can hardly see them in slow motion replay with someone explaining the situation to me, let alone in real time. Meh.
Good Friday, aka non-gluten grains day! I enjoyed a big bowl of oatmeal for breakfast with some raisins and salt. I probably ended up eating a bit later than I usually have egg cups. But I didn’t notice any energy deficit.
Then dinner was paella-ish rice with chicken, tomato, almonds, raisins, & cumin. Part of what I missed was just the texture of rice. Yum.
Another day, another egg cup.
Snow day! There were no noticeable effects from legume day, but it was also a weird day of being snowed in and heavy shoveling.
I tried the chicken cacciatore recipe for dinner. It was okay, but the chicken ended up fairly rubbery.
Let’s call it 12 pounds lost over the 30 days. I would love to lose more, but all things considered, that isn’t too bad. Especially when considering that I wasn’t aggressively running or training for anything. I did run, but nothing crazy for my standards. And besides limiting the foods I put in my mouth, I didn’t restrict quantities at all.
<rant>On a totally unrelated note- I used my snow day to update the OS on my Mac, which is an activity I truly despise. Settings and configurations change in unexpected ways. Some programs become obsolete. New apps get added. I HATE it. Apple likes to forget that it is my machine and I want access to all the files, including the raw photos. And since I don’t give a rip what Apple stock prices are don’t make it so hard for me to remove that stupid widget. I could go on, and on.</rant>
It doesn’t seem like it has already been 30 days. And it is a relief to be here, but at the same time doesn’t feel like a triumphal accomplishment. I’m definitely not one of those people who do this for 30 days and never want to go back because my life is so much better now than it was a month ago. I miss foods, and not just sugary stuff, simple things like rice.
Maybe that has something to do with the enthusiastic language of the authors of the program. Maybe that has to do with finishing on a travel day. Maybe that has to do with needing more than 30 days to get to where I want to be. Maybe that has to do with the fact that I know that finishing this well means at least another 10 days of gradually reintroducing foods.
Tomorrow we will do something with tofu and soy sauce for dinner. Hopefully we don’t turn instantly bloated and feminine from the phytoestrogens.
I have decided that travel days are much more challenging than actually being on vacation. Thankfully we got home in time to have a normal evening of cooking and getting ready for tomorrow, but that came at the end of a day of flying a baby home. We are all extremely tired.
Speaking of cooking. We made cauliflower mash tonight. It was excellent!