Day 11

Tea while blogging at Sbux in the afternoon

I babysat until 10:30 last night.  To most of you, that's probably not really that late.  But I thought I was getting off around 8:30/9 and since I was so exhausted, I planned on going to bed immediately.  Well...immediately ended up being 11pm.  Up ay 6 again to spend some time with God.  Which was great.  Very tired though.

I've found myself drinking a lot of tea...I prefer Tazo Sweet Cinnamon Spice and Refresh.  Depends if I'm wanting sugar but not giving into the craving-that calls for cinnamon.  If I've eaten and know I'll want to keep eating or am worried about wanting to graze as I watch the girls have snack-that's when I pull out the mint.




Breakfast: I won't give into the sugar cravings in the afternoon but heck, I'll eat a bunch of it for breakfast!  Paleo pancakes leftover from the weekend, topped with fruit salad and toasted nut mixture.  A side of the frittata and a few pieces of bacon.  This was a great breakfast!

Workout: Today was "recovery" day on Insanity.  It's a 38(ish) minute video that is mostly stretching, with some deep muscle movement.  I've been looking forward to this video since I did it last Thursday. Well, today it didn't feel so easy.  My muscles are completely fatigued.  I really need to get some sleep tonight.

PWM: Not the best but it's what I had on hand as I rushed to get some stuff done.  A handful of nuts and a veggie pouch.  Carroty Chop this time...very good.  Sure, it says it's a veggie/fruit mix but my guess is it's 95% fruit.  I'll make sure to steer clear of these in the afternoon...I just don't seem to have such an issue with sugar in the morning.

Lunch:  I knew it would happen sooner or later...I completely spaced on taking pics of my lunch until I was mostly done with it.  I packed up a beautiful meal and headed down to Moody to plan a baby shower and as I was finishing up my mango salad (come on, I can't let all my fruit go bad just because I am giving up snacking) I realized I never snapped a photo.  Well, I had 3egg egg salad and a little salad I threw together-a handful and a half of spinach, some chopped tomatoes, baby cucumber, half an avocado, some onion and a good squeeze of lime juice.  I would have added cilantro but I was clean out!  So...here's a pic of the rest of the mango salad...and my dirty containers...

Dinner:
I made the girls sausages, mashed potatoes and peas.  I made myself the rest of the chicken sausages with pesto spaghetti squash topped with fresh tomatoes.  I added a side of sweet potato chips and some asparagus.  Which ended up much crispier than I intended...like hollow and burnt but I ate it anyway.  It was a huge meal but I didn't really eat much veggies the rest of the day so I made up for it.  Plus, no snacking so this has to get me all the way till breakfast...

Thoughts:

So, yesterday the not snacking thing went better than I thought.  Sure, I had the sugar-withdrawl headaches but I realized that after the initial "I'm starving, I need to eat right now!!" feeling, I ended up not actually being hungry at all.  So, turns out that all this time I've been eating a bunch of food every afternoon that I didn't actually need.  Guess that's really the point of the "No Snacking" rule for Whole30...break habits are aren't serving me well.

Beyond that, I was up a few times in the middle of the night and early hours of the morning with cramps in my right calf.  I blame this on W30 not letting me snack...I'd normally have a banana at some point for a snack-either on its own or in a green smoothie.  Clearly, W30 is trying to kill me with a potassium shortage causing me to cramp up.  Luckily, I go to the chiropractor on Thursday and she (along with everything else she does to put my body back where it belongs) worked on my calf a little.  Felt better instantly and didn't give me trouble at all during the workout or rest of the day.  Hopefully tonight is better-if not, I'll be up at 3am taking a picture of the banana I'm eating.

Ok, to be completely honest...I'm getting a little discouraged.  I know it's only a temporary mindset.  That it's just the initial excitement of trying something new that has worn off and I'm realizing that I'm really doing this.  But, dang it! why aren't my clothes falling off me yet?!  I know I'm begin ridiculous, and I know that eating better for 11 days doesn't undo the damage of years worth of unhealthy habits.  It took more than 11 days to put on the extra bits, it's going to take more than 11 to remove them.  I've even found myself daydreaming about food.  Today it was ice cream sandwiches vs. hot fudge sundaes.  I was making arguments for why one is better than the other--I was arguing both sides.  At one point I told myself to stop it, that I wasn't even craving either of those items and continuing to think about them was just going to make me want them.  I then pulled out Philippians 4:8. Continually giving it to God has really helped.  I mean, I have to give it to Him about a million times a day, but it sure does beat the heck out of trying to control things with my own strength.  Because, I am weak, people...really weak!  

Another thing I've really liked about W30 is that I know what I'm putting into my body is healthy.  Sure, maybe you can't really call bacon "healthy' but it's not sugar, it's not chemicals, it's not wheat or dairy...at most it's a little artery clogging cholesterol (which, btw, I have awesome cholesterol...when you're my age they test you for that kind of stuff) and I'm not gonna worry about a little of that.  I used to view food as time logged on the treadmill...or vice versa...I'd run 4 miles and think, ok, that makes up for the second (and third) bowl of cereal I ate today.  Or, ok, if I'm planning on going to dinner tonight with the girls, I better get in at least 45 minutes of hard cardio to balance it out.  Ugh!  How sick and gross is that?!?!  So glad that I know I'm doing good things for my body now and don't have to "punish" myself for the things I'm eating.  I know that the food going in is being used by my body and not stored as fat...because I did that for long enough and I'm not doing it anymore.  And the exercise I'm doing is because I want to honor God with the body he's given me, to make it healthy and strong so He can use it as He sees fit.  Sure, I wanna look good at the beach this summer but that'll be a side effect of everything else.  If I'm honoring God with my diet and exercise, then my body will look exactly as He built it to (well, minus the years of damage already done) and that'll be fine by me.

Ok, I'm praying about that last point.  I'm a perfectionist and I am praying about no longer striving for perfection but for embracing how God has made me and celebrating the work He has done, and is continuing to do in me.  

Day 12, bring it on...

And, btw...who else is super stoked that we have almost made it halfway?  I honestly wasn't sure I would...congrats to all of you who are sticking it out, we are doing this!!