*Takes deep breath* Okay, this blog post has been a long time coming. Where to even begin with my weightloss story.
I'll start at the beginning, when it all went down. It was November 2013. My ex-wife Kathy was at a work conference in California. Our mutual friend, Ashley Reeves, had recently finished this program called 'Whole 30' and posted her before and after pictures on instagram:
Meet Ashley:
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| This is the picture that started it all for me. |
"When I get home, we are doing a whole 30!"
I was game, if I could see results like that in 30 days, I was willing to try anything.
In a nutshell, Whole 30 means you eat only the following for 30 days:
- Proteins (preferably lean, organic if you can)
- Vegetables
- Fruits
- Nuts
- Healthy Fats/Oils (coconut oil, olive oil, avacados, coconut milk, nuts)
And you must avoid having any of the following for 30 days:
- Sugar, and any products with added sugar
- Products with MSG or sulfates.
- Grains
- Dairy
- Legumes (beans, peas, peanuts)
- Alcohol
- Soda
- All of the items that you avoid for 30 days can cause a wide range of health problems, including bloating, irritable bowels, mood swings, migraines etc. So by cutting them out for 30 days you basically reset your bodies system.
- At the end of 30 days you have essentially rewired your brain to think about food differently. Many people report no longer craving sugary, or their daily diet coke.
- All those health problems I mentioned earlier, begin showing signs of easing up or disappearing completley.
- At the end of 30 days you can slowly reintroduce those foods into your diet, to monitor if any of those foods make you ill. I found that when I reintroduced breads, they tend to make me feel really sick. A friend of mine reintroduced beans and felt very ill. It gives you a thermometer to measure how your body reacts to certain foods.
I'll talk about everything it did for me in a little bit.
So with all this information we decided to go for it! 30 days of clean eating wouldn't be so hard, right. We can do anything for 30 days. So when Kathy got home from her business trip, we cleared out our house of all things that would be tempting to us during the next month, And oh boy did we get rid of a lot of food. My little sister was thrilled when we showed up at her house with bags and bags of free groceries.
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| Our Cupboards after the great purge |
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| Our Fridge fared the same fate. |
Once the house was cleared out, we headed to Costco & Whole Foods (a place we knew very little about). A few hours later and a few $$ hundred later our fridge now looked like this:
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| Holy Cow, Real Food! *Almond Breeze is not Whole 30 approved, upon closer examination of the ingredients it contains carageean* |
The amount of groceries that we were bringing home each trip was astounding.
There was definitely a learning curve to all this healthy eating business. So much of a learning curve that I have dedicated an entire page to all the food education that I have amassed since I started this whole thing. Many of our evenings were spent researching ingredients and recipes and scouring the Whole 30 forums online for answers to our questions. Check out my 'Eat Real Food' tab for more on this.
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| One Weeks Worth of Groceries.....No Joke! |
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| One Weeks Worth of Groceries! |
Each week I create a menu, for the next 7 days. I usually plan one breakfast item and eat the same breakfast for the entire week. This makes mornings much faster! Then when I plan dinners, I make sure to plan enough dinner so that lunch the next day is just leftovers. Easy!
My first week of Whole 30, we tried to be fancy and plan a different breakfast, lunch and dinner for each day. This ended up costing more money and more time in the kitchen. So once I wised up, here is what a typical menu looks like now.
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| This weeks Menu |
I typically try to shop on a Friday, and have prep-day Saturday or Sunday. This makes the work week much more bearable. I was notorious for being the person that was so hungry by 5 o'clock that a quick trip to the drive through on my way home was often in order. Prep-day means that mymeals are ready to go in 5-10 minutes.
Another part of Whole 30 is taking 'before' and 'after' pictures, weighing yourself once at the beginning, and once at the end. You are not supposed to weigh at all during the 30 days. I also decided to take before and after measurements of my arms, bust, waist, hips and thighs. Here are our Before and After pictures, in just 30 days (with no exercise):
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| Day 1- Day 30 |
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| Day 1- Day 30 |
Beginning Weight: 233.8 lbs. Ending Weight: 213.8 lbs.
Beginning Arms: 13.75 In. Ending Arms: 13.75 In.
Beginning Bust: 48.5 In. Ending Bust: 42.25 In.
Beginning Waist: 46.5 In. Ending Waist: 40 In.
Beginning Hips: 52 In. Ending Hips: 48 In.
So with that determination, I set out to complete a whole 100, with absolutely zero cheats, slips or excuses.
Q: What's a Whole 100?
A: A Whole 100 is sticking to the programs guidelines for longer than 30 days, in this case 100 days.
Now, something you should know, this wasn't all just butterflies and rainbows, the first 2 weeks of this was really, incredibly hard.
I went from eating fast food around 2X a day and consuming large quantities of caffeine and diet coke, to quitting-cold turkey. I was now eating vegetables instead of french fries and drinking water instead of Coke. Let me tell you my friends, that is a shock to the system. Whole 30 warns about these feelings in their hilariously written Whole 30 Timeline. Where they call days 4-5 "Kill all the Things"- a phase I hit on day 2.
I wanted to crawl into bed and sleep for the next 30 days. Not to mention I started my first Whole 30 on November 23rd-2 days before Thanksgiving. Let me just tell you, I was in "Kill all the Things" on Thanksgiving and I probably would have killed for a piece of pie and ice cream. It was hard, I was grumpy, pissed off and if I had to look at one more vegetable I was going to die.
At Thanksgiving, a family member said to me,
"This is great and all, that you're eating healthy, but a year from now you're just going to be back to eating what you usually do and not caring."
Well, that was it! That was just the fire that I needed lit under my butt to give me the will power and drive to prove them wrong. It turns out, I might be a little competitive, and come hell or high water I was going to show them, and the rest of the world that I could do this/ CAN do this, and by Thanksgiving 2014 I'll be a whole new person. I can compete against myself to become a healthier me.
Christmas season rolled around and I began to feel different, my headaches went away. I had been a long time victim of migraines and I would get a really bad one 3 or so times a week. I also started to feel all this energy out of nowhere. I was liking this. My food dreams started to get out of control though.
My most vivid dream was that I was being chased by zombies (thank you Walking Dead). And out of the sky bags of BBQ and Sour Cream and Onion chips start falling to the ground all around us. Despite the zombies being on our tail, I stopped and ripped open a bag of BBQ chips and start shoveling them into my mouth by the handful, yelling "Wait! There's Chips!" Only to come to the sinking realization moments later that I'm on Whole 30 and I'll have to start all over again. Welcome to day 11-15. For me, those days were the most psychological. My brain was yearning for the old comfort foods I used to feed it, and so my dreams were filled with sweet & salty treats.
My food never looked so pretty, my body never felt so good. I had been suffering for about a year with really irritable bowels (TMI?) After every meal I would usually need to run to the bathroom, sometimes for 20-30 minutes at a time. Which, as you can imagine, really puts a damper on going to dinner and a movie, or having dinner with friends. Almost immediately, 2 or 3 days into Whole 30, this stopped. Altogether a problem that had been ailing me for so long was gone. The world that this new found freedom opened up to me was unfathomable. No longer did I need to worry about what I ate right before a flight, or wonder if I was going to miss half the movie after dinner. Toilet freedom was mine!
Migraines were gone, irritable bowels were gone, holy crap my skin was clearer than it had ever been before. I was spending time in the kitchen cooking, and liking it! Me, the girl who could only make Macaroni and Cheese, was now creating meals from scratch and enjoying it! I started to feel all this energy, I was happier and I found that I finally was starting to have control over what I ate. It was easy to pass up sweets from my students and co workers, blaming being on whole 30 for my lack of indulgence was nice. As my garbage can at work started bulging with the thrown away treats I was shocked at the sight. To think that all that packaged, sugar and butter could have been sitting in my stomach. The thought made me ill.
So, what exactly was I eating? I'll show you some pictures of the beautiful food!
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| Grass fed beef burgers with sour kraut and roasted sweet potato fries. |
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| Pan seared salmon with avocado cilantro guacamole over asparagus. |
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| Crock pot cashew chicken, broccoli and a fried egg. |
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| Cod Tacos with cilantro lime dressing and green beans. |
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| Orange Chicken over cabbage and cauliflower rice. |
Delicious! Right!
I wasn't sure I recognized this new Becca that was unfolding, but I was excited to get to know her.
There were some unexpected results of doing a whole 30 (Whole 100). My brain psychology really did change drastically. I have become a different person. I am fundamentally different. I value exercise and eating clean above most other things, I have the energy of about 20 puppies, I spend my free time training for triathlons, Crossfit, or hiking the mountains around our house. My body looks different, and when I look in the mirror a new version of me is looking back. This is WONDERFUL and I don't regret it for a second, but it has been WEIRD. I would be lying if I didn't tell you that getting to know yourself all over again after 25 years is an odd feeling.
My hormones went completely out of whack as they began to sort themselves out and equalize. And in the spirit of being completely honest with you in this blog, I had my period for about 30 days strait. (Around day 45-75). The doctor said this was because women hold estrogen in their fat stores. When they loose fat quickly, their body is overrun with estrogen-thus the month long period. (Now THAT'S something they didn't tell me was going to happen, hopefully now if it happens to you, you can be prepared).
Day 60 rolled around, 2 months of clean eating and I was still seeing results!
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| Day 30- Day 60 |
By this time I was skiing every weekend and doing yoga at home. People didn't recognize me, I didn't recognize myself and I was loving it.
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| This was the day I tried on my old "Fat Pants" and realized I could fit in one leg of them! A true non scale victory! None of my clothes fit anymore. I decided that a great non scale victory would be to donate all my clothes that were too big. It was therapeutic to go through my closet and get rid of everything that no longer fit. It was also very symbolic to get rid of clothes that held specific, unhappy memories. Going through my closet was like going through a graveyard of unhappy, unhealthy memories.   |
Days turned into weeks, weeks turned into months and I was approaching Day 90. My co-workers had gotten used to my healthy lunches, and they began asking me about Whole 30. My friends and family started asking me about it, and how they could get started. This was really starting to have a ripple effect that I couldn't have imagined. All of a sudden people I knew were starting their own Whole 30 journeys, and they were inspiring their own families and friends. Wow!
March 2nd 2014 finally rolled around, DAY 100. I couldn't think of any better way to celebrate than to go skiing, a sport which I came to love while on my Whole 100. (More on that in my fitness page). Old Becca used to celebrate with food and drink, but this new Becca wanted to celebrate by being outdoors and exercising.
March 2nd 2014 finally rolled around, DAY 100. I couldn't think of any better way to celebrate than to go skiing, a sport which I came to love while on my Whole 100. (More on that in my fitness page). Old Becca used to celebrate with food and drink, but this new Becca wanted to celebrate by being outdoors and exercising.
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| Skiing at Park City Mountain Resort, Day 100. |
And here are my day 100 pictures, sometimes I still can't believe it!
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| Day 1- Day 100 |
ONE DER LAND! WEIGHT: 188.6 lbs
Arms: 12 inches
Bust: 40.5 Inches
Waist 36.76 Inches
Hips: 42.75 Inches
By this point, Whole 30 had picked up momentum across the country and it was and is becoming more and more popular as people see other regular people making huge changes to their lives. The local news stations got word of my progress, as well as my friend Ashley's progress. Soon we were seeing our pictures on the nightly news-it was pretty awesome!
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| ABC 4 News |
As I write this, I've done 10 whole 30's in my lifetime and live a pretty consistent daily diet of 80 % Paleo, 20% whatever the hell I want. I've been doing this for 9 months, on and off. This is a lifestyle now.
My lifestyle.
My lifestyle.
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Weight: 177
Arms: 12 inches
Bust: 39 Inches
Waist: 36.5 Inches
Hips: 42.25 Inches
Thigh: 25 Inches
The Whole 30 program worked for me for a couple of reasons.
- You aren't allowed any cheats. None. So many other programs let you have certain treats but you have to track their calories, or points. Sugar is like crack cocaine to me, if I even have one bite-it is near impossible for me to stop. So by having a very strict no sugar policy for 30 days helped me to rid my body of those sugar cravings.
- You don't have to track what you eat, how many calories something is and you don't have to measure your food. I'm busy enough without having to remember what I ate at each meal and take time to enter it into the computer or my phone. All you have to do is eat real, good, whole foods.
- I learned so much during the first 30 days about how and why my body had been addicted to sugar, fat and salt for so many years. I actually became educated on the psychology behind my decisions and this helped me to get better at making more informed decisions about how, why and what I eat.
- Whole 30 encourages you to slow down when you eat, and eat without distractions. By eating at my dinner table, instead of in front of the T.V, I was actually able to savor my food, and take my time eating. I am aware of what I'm eating and how much. Without the distractions of T.V or my phone I can listen better to my body when it is signaling to me that I'm full.
I should note that I am in no way affiliated with Whole 30 or Whole 9, and I have no monetary interest or gain by promoting their program. It just works, so I want to share it with everyone!
So what is Whole 30, and where can I get more information about it? First, go to their website-it's easy to navigate and it has all the info you need.
Next, buy a copy of their book, "It starts with food." You won't regret reading this.
Still need more?
These links were very helpful during my first Whole 30, they were kind of like my religion those first few weeks.
Then, finally, these are a few blogs where I have gotten many of my favorite recipes, I would be lost without them:
Nom Nom Paleo
and my friend Jessicas personal blog, documenting her Whole 30 as well :
http://whole30sistersthings.tumblr.com/
and my friend Jessicas personal blog, documenting her Whole 30 as well :
http://whole30sistersthings.tumblr.com/
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