2nd Day 2: Oops, I am doing it again!

I took a 4 day break from the Whole30 when I hit day 30 on my first round.  I indulged in what I wanted to eat and thought I had been missing...cheese fries, pasta salad, doughnuts, cream in my coffee, it is all such a blur I don't even remember what else...there may have been some peanut butter sandwich crackers in there too...it is all a little hazy.  I was even going to have a cupcake.  But you know what?  I was SICK for 4 days.  My heartburn returned with a vengeance.  I was nauseous the entire time...and even threw up...twice.  Now I know why they recommend a 10 day reintroduction plan in the book It Starts With Food.  It is really important not to skip that step.  Learn from my mistake.  That doughnut I dreamed about was NOT worth it.  It only made me sick.  It just put me into sugar shock.

This break from the Whole30 Part 1 coincided with my daughter's tube/adenoid surgery.  You know, the times in the past where I would have eaten away my stress and felt that I was completely justified.  But instead I just felt like I was cheating or something.  I felt like it was wrong to eat those foods.  Knowing what I know about what carbohydrate, sugar laden, chemically rich foods does to my body after cleansing it for 30 days helped me to realize something...and it is something BIG.

My body is made to be fed by real food.  Real meat, real vegetables, and real fruit.  I can not live on sugar and processed foods.  They may taste good in the moment, but the "reward" that I used to get from them wasn't at all the same after getting rid of them for so long.  I didn't feel good, satisfied, or fulfilled.  I felt sick.

I think the biggest thing that I learned from the Whole30 was that I had a very unhealthy relationship with food--it didn't take the Whole30 for me to know that, but it did take the Whole30 to give me to courage to break-up with those abusive foods.  But when I took out that unhealthy food that I ran to in order to feed my emotions, it helped me to see the unhealthy cycle my life had been in for so long.  Have a bad day, eat a brownie fudge sundae.  Feeling emotional, those chips and queso will make it all better.  Had a hard time getting the kids down to sleep, sure honey, run to the gas station and buy me a pint of ice cream to eat in one sitting.  Wouldn't the world look very different if everyone who had a bad day ran to their fridge and pulled out a giant bowl of roasted broccoli to ease their pain and heartache.  When those crutches were gone, I turned to something else.  I started reading my Bible plans again.  I started spending more time praying...and I am perfectly comfortable admitting that some of my prayers were, "Dear God, don't let me eat that cupcake or those tasty looking Cheese Its."  This helped me run to God instead of running to food.  Now, don't get me wrong, I am not saying that I didn't think about those things first at times, but I realized that food wasn't going to fill that emotional or spiritual void that I had been trying to fill.

The better my diet improved, the better my body felt.  I started working out again...been doing the 30 day Shred as I mentioned before, and I was able to get up in the morning and work out--and if I mentioned it before it is worth mentioning again.  That is an absolutely shocking thing if you really know me.  The only time I would be up at 6 am is if the smoke alarm was going off in the house...not because I felt the sudden urge to get up and sweat and breathe hard and burn calories.

Another reason why this plan really worked for me is because I like to cook.  Now don't get me wrong, I am no Gordon Ramsey...although he and I do share some serious personality traits.   But I like to make new recipes that I have never tried before.  I like trying new foods.  And I like sharing them with my family...even if they take one bite and spit it out.  Which happened tonight when K. ate a roasted brussels sprout.  She spit it out and said "that not taste good."  

So naturally after my 4 day food binder, I went right back to what I know works, and what I know makes me feel good.  So I am going for another 30 days--and my little sister is too. And guess what?  We have spread the Whole30 love.  Since we have talked about it so much, and told everyone we know about the benefits, we have enlisted others to ride this crazy train with us.  I know that they are going to see the benefits and they are going to be just as successful as we have been.

Oh, and I lost back some of the weight I had regained and I am down 13 lbs in 36 days.  I am glad I didn't gain from my cheating, which I totally expected.  This is a good feeling.  Knowing that I am finally making some progress in getting my life back on track is helping me mentally and physically.  It has been a good thing.