The Whole30 After Action Report…

So the lovely people at Whole9 suggest we write up an After Action Report to evaluate the Whole30.  So, here’s mine:

What went well:

• I lost 7.2 pounds!
• My skin was definitely clearer
• I won my dietbet!
• I didn’t stress about having 348 recipes and each day planned out to the nines
• I didn’t stress about working out, and by the end actually felt like walking
• No more gurgling, gassy GI system!
• GERD basically gone – except when I eat too-spicy things.
• Having a buddy to vent to during the 30 days

What could have gone better:

• SO. EXHAUSTED.  Every day at 3 pm [I’m pretty sure this is directly linked to caffeine, as I’ve been off it for 4 days and feel much better already]
• Snacking.  Sunbutter, I cannot quit yooou. I did not make a diligent effort to eliminate snacking from my diet.  I think this was also tied to the 3 pm sleepies; I get tired and because I cannot nap, I get hungry.

What you’ll do the next time:

• Focus on the rest of the program:  3 meals a day, and make sure to have breakfast
• Stay decaffeinated during the W30; although most likely, I’ll be staying decaf from now on.
• Start in January, and plan a W45, and post in the Whole30 forums daily
• Make a list of my favorite recipes and post/link them here

Reintroduction updates:

• Non gluten grains don’t have a huge impact on me, but they are starting to make my GI system gurgly and odoriferous.  I’m going back to strict W30 until Tuesday, when I will reintroduce dairy (mmmm jeni’s ice cream….)
• The non-gluten grains are nice, but not really necessary.  I may have some quinoa pasta with my ground beef/veggie fry ups occasionally – maybe once a week, because the texture is nice, but it’s certainly not something I’d like inflict on my body every day.

Next 30 day challenge??

I’ve signed up for Leo Babuta’s Sea Change program, and decided I want to journal every day.  I’m using lift.do to track, which is pretty convenient.  I started on the 29th of September and have 6 days under my belt!

Whole60, Day 31

Day 31: Thursday, October 3rd

So, my ice cream date had to reschedule for Tuesday.  Boo.  This threw my introduction plan for a bit of a loop, as I as going to re-introduce dairy today through Saturday, then move on to gluten, then non gluten grains, and then legumes. Oh, and alcohol in there somewhere…  So, now I had to rearrange and move dairy somewhere around Tuesday.  At least I knew last night that things were going to change so I had a regular whole30 compliant breakfast whilst I figured out what I was going to do.

In the end, I decided I would introduce non-gluten grains first.  So, today through Saturday, I will try and have rice/corn/potatoes 3 times a day for 3 days and see how I feel.  You know what this means?

… that’s right… SUSHI!

I picked some up for lunch and it was glorious.  Even if it was just grocery store sushi, oh how I missed you…

I also picked up some polenta, gluten free cibatta bread, as well as quinoa pasta for other meals:

I’m looking forward to poached eggs on polenta tomorrow morning.

Sadly, I think the sushi gave me some heartburn, so I am going to have to take that into account.

Whole60, Day 30!

Day 30: Wednesday Oct 2nd

LAST. DAY. WAHOOOO!

It felt like I was counting the minutes. And then, of course, I read this thread, and I wanted to just keep going.  But I also want to be able to go out to a restaurant without it being difficult.  And I miss sushi, and ice cream.

My ice cream date with Julie is tomorrow, and so after my evening appointment, I swung by the grocery store and picked up a bunch of dairy for my re-introduction that starts tomorrow: cream for my coffee, fancy cheeses, and full-fat yogurt.  I didn’t pick up any ice cream, because my house and ice cream is a bad idea.  I really have no concept of serving sizes.

Here’s what I got:

The speculoos cookie bar is for when I introduce gluten. Couldn’t resist.

Other than that, I spent a lot of the day thinking about this webpost: Life is Freaking Brutiful.  It really, truly spoke to me. It is probably a subject for another post, but I try and hide the broken things.  I don’t want people to see that, because I am ashamed I’m broken.   It’s probably time to break out the Brené Brown books and start reading them.  I think the universe is pointing me in this way, and who am I to ignore that?

Whole60, Day 29

Day 29: Tuesday, Oct 1

I don’t know if it’s because today was the first day without caffeine, or if I really did get gluten-bombed yesterday, but I could barely keep my eyes open at 10 am, and I had gotten a good night’s sleep the night before.  It got to the point where I basically had to call off work for my early morning meetings, and went back to bed.   I tried coming back to work at 2, but that wasn’t working either.  I think between 11 am and 5:30 pm, I was asleep all but an hour of that.

Food was leftovers for lunch (the last of the sweet&sour chicken), and eggs with avocado for lunch, as I just didn’t feel like cooking and there weren’t any more leftovers to nosh on.

If I’m honest,  I am more than ready to end the Whole30, but if I am going to feel terrible because of the lack of caffeine, I’m not sure I can do a true test of how foods affect me when I’m feeling so poorly due to the caffeine adjustment.

Let’s just hope it was a one time feeling bad deal, and I’m on the mend tomorrow.

Whole60, Day 28

Day 28: Monday, Sept 30

So, I prepared the Saltwater Cleanse last night and took it first thing in the morning.  I had forgotten that, while it is effective, it also makes me nauseous.  I  bailed on my 7:30 am meeting and basically laid in bed until everything, erm, passed.  I’ll say that it does that job effectively.

I also made the  realization after reading this article: Caffeine Clean: Four months without coffee, that the one major difference between this Whole30 and the one I did earlier in May is that I didn’t drink coffee in May.  I just couldn’t stand the taste of coffee without sugar, so I did without.  By October, I was drinking coffee with coconut milk and no sugar, so I continued to have my cup in the mornings.

So, I’ve made the sad realization that I need to give up caffeine and see where that goes, and if that resets my early afternoon tireds.  I has all the sads about this, though.

I am still having issues around snacks and sunbutter.  I got the  cashews out of the house, but have not really broken the 3pm snack habit.  I don’t wonder that this is directly tied into being tired right about that time.

For dinner, it was restaurant night with Paul, and it was his turn to pick, and he picked Alhambra Palace Restaurant.   I got some Baba Ganoush to start (with veggies instead of pita) and Tandoori Chicken.  The latter, despite me saying “no grains no grains” was served on some big tortilla chip looking thing.  Sigh.  I picked it off onto another plate and ate the chicken, which was great, but …

… I’m afraid I got gluten-bombed by the sauce.  Ugh.

Whole60, Day 27

Day 27: Sunday, Sept 29

The day started out early, as Dorothy was coming over for brunch, and due to yesterday’s lazy day, the house was pretty much a disaster.  So I picked up and straightened, walked the dog, and then it was time for brunch.

We  went to Crosby’s Kitchen for brunch, which was tasty as usual.  I had a couple of poached eggs (made the real way, not  like me with my pan!), sausage, fruit and some ice tea.  I was even proud of myself for sitting facing away from the bears game and focusing on Dorothy.

It was probably a good thing that I didn’t, as while the Bears were in the lead when we left the restaurant, but they blew up later while i was watching it at home.  Crazy.

For dinner, I had myself a cherry fizz, and then some leftover tomato soup and sweet&sour chicken, as well as some broccoli.  Pretty tasty, although I admit I am counting the days to day 31.

Whole60, day 26

Day 26: Saturday, Sept 28:

I definitely didn’t want to get out of bed today.  My hip hurt, and I was exhausted, and generally lethargic.  I had a talking to with myself, and got up, showered and took some aleve, and felt good enough to go to my morning meeting. I’d also put in the Sweet & Sour Chicken based off of the recipe in Primal Cravings: Your favorite foods made Paleo.  It was pretty tasty, at least.

After my meeting and hanging out at Starbucks, where I bought myself an office chair online [for less than it would have been if I went and picked it up!], I decided that I’d had all I could handle for the day.

I cancelled the rest of my plans and laid on the couch and rested my hip. I was definitely a laze-a-bug, caught up on my TV and did get some roasted tomato soup together, which was delicious.

I also made plans with Julie to get dinner and ice cream on the 3rd, so I have definitely decided to end my Whole60 early – at 30 days.

I also found some interesting recipes for chia pudding (for when I’m trying dairy again).  I think the chocolate coffee chia might be on the agenda for breakfast tomorrow….

• How to make simple chia pudding | Simple Bites
• PaleOMG – Paleo Recipes – Overnight Chocolate Coffee Chia Breakfast Pudding.
• Healthy Chocolate Chia Pudding — Oh She Glows

Whole60, day 25

Note, this is not me…

Day 25: Friday Sept 27

Today is Kiwanis Peanut Day, so I took the day off, as I had to bail to head out to the suburbs about 2 pm in order to hit the streets at 3:30 pm.

I started the day off with my typical coffee w/coconut milk and poached eggs.  I’m finding that my usual 3 eggs is actually starting to be a little too much, so going forward, maybe I’ll just do two eggs.  It’s nice to actually be able to notice this stuff now!  I’ve also bought some gelatin, based on some reading on the Peat articles and swung by Caribou Coffee for a second cup of coffee that I could gelatin-up.  The gelatin isn’t really noticeable in the coffee, so I’ll probably continue with it, since there are a lot of health benefits to the stuff.

Peanut Day requires a little bit of planning: normally, I’ll snack on peanuts and we’ll go back to count money at someone’s house and order pizza. Yeah, that’s not going to work on the Whole30.   So, instead I packed up some guacamole and leftover mexican/collard greens dinner from the other night.

Turns out my hip was hurting enough that I just wanted to go home [I definitely made my step goal for the day!]. I also needed to get home to the dog as well, since he had pretty much refused to do his business before I left at 2 pm.  So, no way to heat up, or really eat, the leftovers.  I punted and swung by Jimmy John’s and picked up an unwich with extra meat and extra guac along with some mustard.  Good enough until I got home.

Then, I got it in my head, for whatever reason, to make coconut butter.   I’d bought a case of Let’s Do Organic unsweetened coconut flakes and hadn’t done anything with them, and my Blend-Tec was getting dusty.   So, I asked Chef Google how to make it, and found Nom Nom Paleo’s Homemade Coconut Butter recipe.

My first attempt was kind of a fail.  The Blend-Tec heated things up and I was getting a paste, not really a liquid.  I added another pouch of coconut flakes, and still – mostly pasty, not smooth and liquidy.   After doing a little research in the comments of the above post, as well as the comments at Mark’s Daily Apple, I realized I may need to add a bit more liquid to the recipe to get it to blend properly.  I added 2 more TBS coconut oil (melted) and whoomp, there it was!  In retrospect, this may have been a little too much, but the result tasted just fine.  I added a bit of cinnamon and it tastes a bit like rumchata butter! Yum.

Here’s what I used for my batch:

• 2 x 7 ounce package of Let’s Do Organic Unsweetened Coconut Flakes
• 3 tablespoons melted coconut oil
• Shake of cinnamon (maybe 1/2 tsp?)
• Pinch of Kosher salt

I tossed it all in my blend-tec, hit the “sauces/dips” button, and then blitzed it a second time at level 8 for 45 seconds, and then did that one more time:

Whole60, Day 24

Day 24: Thursday, Sept 26

Surprise, still exhausted around 3 pm.  I was so tired, I bailed on dinner with Paul, and also totally forgot about a 7:30 pm meeting I had. Whoops.  Instead, I made some ground beef mashup with collard greens, carrots, and sweet potato, some acorn squash candy, and washed Nashville and The Bridge.

I didn’t have time to do the salt cleanse, as I didn’t have a 2 hour window that I wouldn’t need to be near the restroom.  However, I did end up putting a bit too much MCT oil in my coffee, so I ended up with basically the same effect.  Yee haw.

In other W30 news, I don’t think I’ll ever get tired of poached eggs and coffee for breakfast:

Whole60, Day 23

Day 23: Wednesday Sept 25

This being tired, especially around 3 pm is really frustrating.  I’m not sure why this is happening on this Whole30 when it wasn’t present after the first week on the last one.  I’ve also felt like my brain is not functioning as well as it usually does: I’m losing my train of thought occasionally at work and am not as able to multitask.   I admit, I do take pride in my intelligence and speed on picking things up, so this is doubly frustrating.

I think there’s also the fact that I’m sad/anxious/internally whiny about the fact that it is September, and that Scooter’s Frozen Custard, and Black Dog Gelato will close soon and I will miss out on this taste of summer.   So, I will admit that this does factor into this, a bit.

But, the other thing on my mind is something I read about is Ray Peat and his ideas that dairy is actually good, and that sugar is not evil.  I’m having a hard time wrapping my head around that last one I’ll admit.  But, I mean, the man even recommends Ice Cream!

I mentioned the tiredness to Lori, and she mentioned that perhaps I am detoxing, which is why I’m so ridiculously tired all the time.  She suggested an enema, but that is not happening – but I may do a Salt Water Flush instead.  Maybe it’ll flush out my urge to eat cashews like candy – like I managed to do today, sigh.