Wavering

It’s Day Two of the Whole 30. I hate every living minute of it.

I have never, ever, in my whole life wanted to quit something so quickly.

I hate it. Yes, the food is tasty. Whatever. It’s not satisfying at all. At. All.

My reasons for doing this were varied:

• Of course weight loss is always a little bit nice. I haven’t been able to break 135lbs, but I also haven’t been trying.
• I like the paleo food lifestyle. We can’t eat gluten-y grains, and we avoid most dairy anyway. This provided some structure, which was much-needed and much-wanted.
• I love doing stupid challenges, like my sugar fast. I wanted to see if I could do it.
• I wanted to feel better.

But guess what? The Whole 30 is a HUGE, SUDDEN CHANGE, even for someone who eats 90% gluten/dairy-free already. The physical act of cooking and eating the super-strict Whole 30 food isn’t what’s hard. It’s the mental commitment to it.

You see, I’m already pushing my brain beyond it’s happy place with my marathon training. I have to run 18 miles this Sunday, and I have some serious mental energy that needs to unblock before then. This year’s training is taking more mental commitment than anything I’ve ever done.

I also have a husband who has been gone since Saturday, and now won’t be home until August 2nd. He was supposed to be home today. Surprise!!

There’s also the timing on top of the mental stress. I am going away for the August long weekend with two celiac kids. I already need to plan for their food, and I don’t know if I want the added stress of bringing my own food too. Plus, it’s kind of imposing and rude to my hostess (even though she’s a beautiful, accommodating soul). The morning after we get back, I leave for 5 days in Las Vegas. I’ll be dancing from 9-5 every day, plus three training runs. I’ll have a tight schedule around meal times, and I’ll be at a hotel the whole time. The hotel is at the edge of town – no time for grocery store trips or anything like that.

That, my friends, is 8 solid days of food stress. On top of travel stress, on top of training stress.

I honestly don’t think I can do this right now. I actually feel anxious about eating. THAT is not healthy. I actually want to CRY. It’s pathetic. I don’t want to run out and get a Blizzard and a bottle of wine. I just don’t want to feel trapped and anxious!

I’m a healthy person! I’m not overweight, and I’m very active. I have no discernible health concerns. This isn’t a do-or-die nutrition situation. But I have to stop and wonder: am I having trouble because of all the other stress it’s causing, or because I really need to do this for my body. Is this just withdrawal/cleanse, and I need to push through it? Or is it just BS and I need to take the warning signs and walk away, try again later?

And it’s not like I’ve been starving. I’ve eaten LOTS – at least 2000kcal each day for the past two days. But I’m forcing it in, and I’m still not getting nearly enough carbohydrates to support my training.

Ugh.

I don’t like quitting, and I quit too often. But it’s not worth the struggle right now. Even if I woke up tomorrow and it was an easy day, it’s not worth it right now.

I can go gluten-free and dairy-free. I can’t do this Whole 30 right now. So while the title of this post is “Wavering“, what it really means is “Quitting“.

I need some breathing room right now. I can’t do food guilt. I need to just eat and train and dance and run that marathon in October!

So, Whole 30? I quit.

Whole 30 – Week One

My meal plans are set out for the next seven days! Today and tomorrow are my farewell-to-grain days, as I am preparing for the Moose is Loose half marathon in the morning. Monday morning is the start of my Whole 30 Challenge!!

Breakfasts:

• Egg muffins with spinach, sausage, onion, and pepper
• Ground turkey with onion, kale, and apples
• Shredded chicken with yam/carrot/onion hash
• Sausages with sweet potato hash brown cakes
• Omelette with spinach, onion, peppers
• Apples with almond butter, hard boiled eggs, left-over asparagus
• Shredded chicken with apples, onions and carrots

Lunches:

• Spinach salad with tuna, avocado, peppers, and cucumber
• Spinach salad with salmon, red onion, capers, and olives
• Peppers stuffed with tuna, carrots, peppers, avocado, mayonaise
• Shredded chicken, sweet potatoes, fruit
• Omelette with sausage, kale, and asparagus
• Left-over beef roast with kale, onion, green beans and sweet potato
• Left-over beef stew with apples, carrots, sweet potatoes, and onion

Dinners:

• Spaghetti squash with ground beef, diced tomatoes, spinach, onions, and peppers
• Beef roast with kale, onion, carrots, sweet potatoes, and green beans
• Beef stew with apples, carrots, sweet potatoes and onion
• Turkey chili with tomatoes, onions, and kale
• Cauliflower pizza dough with sausage, onion, tomatoes, and peppers
• Sausages with onions, apples, kale, and cucumber salad
• Crustless spinach quiche

I’ll be honest: looking at my meal plan, the estimated cost of groceries for this week terrified me! Nothing but fresh produce and meat! And this is my first week of living on cash only! What if it was more than the $200 I allotted us??

I had a handful of the ingredients already (5 peppers, green beans, cucumbers, riced cauliflower, diced tomatoes, almond butter, and capers) but I needed to buy everything else. When the cashier at Superstore finished ringing up my items, I was shocked!

Shocked!!!

Now, I still need 2 rotisserie chickens (those are my lazy-protien days ;)) and a spaghetti squash, so my final total will be closer to $150. I’m sure I could do a little better on the produce if I went to H&W Produce, but I didn’t want to make 2 trips into the city today.

Not bad, hey? And this is for ALL FOUR of us!

Switching to gluten-free grain flours and products bumped my monthly food bill from $600/month to $850. It kills me to spend $4-8 on a loaf of bread. This will take a huge chunk off that total, AND it will also keep Leith from buying lunch every day. $8-10 a day, 5 days a week?? That’s another $200 a month saved right there!

I am so excited, and my mouth is watering just looking at the menu. I can’t wait to start…48 hours to go!

The No’s: any grains/rice/quinoa, seeds (including peas and corn), soy, dairy, legumes, sugar, caffeine (other than tea), and alcohol

I can’t wait to share the results with you 🙂

The Whole 30 Plunge

I’m a little bit excited, a whole lot nervous, and very indecisive about when to start…

I read a great book this past week, in keeping with two other foodie books I read this past year. The first was Wheat Belly. This was my insight into the problems caused by eating grain. I needed to understand more about celiac and gluten, and this was a great resource.

From there, I moved onto Robb Wolf’s paleo bible, The Paleo Solution. It was another interesting read, but quite frankly, I didn’t like his tone. It was too casual and condescending for me. I know too many of “those types” from my fitness background. But I liked the material and the theories. Between that and Wheat Belly, it all made sense.

But of course, I like dairy and I love wine.

Unfortunately, 6 weeks into my naturopathic journey, I still feel blah despite strengthening my adrenal system and trying to improve my quality of sleep. I’ve thought about doing another sugar fast, and other than two oversights, I have been gluten free for all of July.

That’s when Laurie pointed me in the direction of It Starts With Food. It’s another paleo-style book, but I found a greater connection to the why: why I shouldn’t be eating dairy, or legumes, or grains. It also lays out a great 30-day purge, if you will, to challenge you to eat within Paleolithic nutritional guidelines and what to expect.

More importantly? It didn’t end with 30 days of meal plans. I hate meal plans. I won’t follow them, and I know that my family won’t follow them. I’ve tried to get eggs into my kids at breakfast. Not. Happening.

But guidelines? Perfect! Help me implement a lifestyle, instead of follow a chart! That I can do. I need that kind of flexibility.

I already know that nutritionally, I have something funky going on. My celiac test came back negative, but I feel better when I follow my girls’ celiac diet. One of the next steps my naturopath wants to take is eliminating dairy. Between those two, I’m halfway there already, so why not take the full Whole 30 plunge?

I just can’t narrow down the when. You see, there’s nothing stopping me from starting tomorrow. The problem lies in my Vegas trip in just under 3 weeks. I know that it will be a hard thing to follow while staying in a hotel, revolving around a conference schedule. I don’t know how easy it will be (time- or convenience-wise), and I don’t want to set myself up for failure.

What would you do? Would you commit to the full 30 days, and hope for the best for 5 days in Vegas? Or would you wait until you got back and just make small changes in the meantime?

I really want to try this. I want to buckle my diet down to good food that my body was designed to digest. I am SO sick of feeling sick and tired and unwell. I’m tired of feeling achy, dehydrated, sore, swollen, and inflamed with no discernible cause.

I’m giving myself until Monday to (decide to) start. My next half marathon is this Sunday, and I don’t want to change anything right before a race. But in the meantime, I’d love some feedback. And, if you’d like to join me, I’d love to have a team to survive with 😉

A farewell to wheat

The time has come for our goodbye to a troublesome family member. That innocuous, smiling cousin who causes too much drama, but hides behind sugar-coated smiles. Who makes us sick to our stomachs, but that we invite back time and time again.

Oh, wheat. You’re such a jerk.

Today marks 2 weeks since the bugz have been off wheat. The improvement has been remarkable for such a short period of time! The only complaints of tummy aches have been the attention-grabbing kind – the kind reserved for picky eaters who don’t want to try new foods 😉 Surprisingly, those tummy aches go away when the other choice is bedtime…!

Leith and I have been more moderate in our change over. There were a few bagels left over in the fridge, and I accidentally bought regular banana bread at the store. I thought it was gluten-free (because it was in the freezer…by other gluten-free things…), but fortunately, I read the label at home and discovered my error before the girls had any. I’ve also had the odd treat scarfed down when their backs were turned, and Leith has bought his lunch when he’s at work.

But today? Today is the end of wheat for me. Our house is officially emptied of wheat, and there is no turning back. I’ve already noticed a response in my own body when I have occasionally had wheat in the last week: quickly feeling groggy, bloated, and a little bit sick. While my own celiac tests were negative, it goes to show that there is something up about how the body tolerates this little grain.

When the bugz tested positive for celiac, we decided that our house would be wheat-free rather than trying to keep food separate and constantly explain why Mommy and Daddy could eat something, but the girls could not. I knew that there was a health shift towards removing wheat in people with no diagnosed wheat sensitivities, and I had no problem with being “forced” to eat healthier.

Wheat and sugar have been my downfall for as long as I can remember. I tried to cut added sugar out of my diet last spring, and with it came a lot of wheat. It was ridiculously hard, but I spent a greater percentage of my calories on whole fruits and vegetables, meats, cheeses, and very little baked or processed foods. I dropped weight like crazy, but it was the withdrawal that hurt me! It was all-consuming. I lost sleep, I was irritable, I was tired. My lifestyle was also too hectic for such an abrupt change; I’d failed to look at the necessary planning required to be successful.

Fast-forward a year, and I am ready. I am in a place where we have to make a change, or my kids will suffer innumerable health consequences. Celiac is not something that you can be cavalier about; it’s not like there’s a epi-pen they can carry in their back pockets in case of exposure. It’s a long, painful, drawn-out process of their digestive system failing – and not from a piece of bread. It’s from crumbs, and surprising wheat-filled additives in otherwise innocent foods.

I’m also in a place of knowledge this time, and knowledge is power. Having read and researched the implications of wheat in the diet for the past 3 months, I feel confident in my decision to remove it, as well as how to remove it and what to replace it with. Yes, there are a lot of gluten-free cereals, breads, treats and other conveniences available now. However, as our bodies are only really designed to eat seeds (grains) in limited quantities, it doesn’t make sense to replace one grain with another. Instead, we’re moving towards a more Paleo-inspired diet, rather than a modern, engineered diet.

Paleo? Despite the hype, it’s quite simple: meats, vegetables, fruits. Limited grain, seeds and legumes. Some dairy, but limited again. Basically, just enough dairy and grain to make life convenient, rather that having it dominate our fridge. Oh, and no junk: no additives, added sugar, flavours, etc. Just real food. The ultimate in clean eating.

Don’t get me wrong: this is a HUGE shift in our lifestyle. Wheat dominates almost every aspect of our grocery shopping, baking, and cooking, so this is ridiculously far-reaching. I’ve had to strip down everything I am used to doing in my kitchen and cross-check, rethink, look up, and relearn. It’s exhausting, but worth it. Once I’m past the mental drain of so much new, it will be life as usual.

In the meantime, I’ve started another blog to chronicle the journey. You can follow along at MagzD Gluten-Free. It’s a place to try out recipes, report on their successes and failures, and to provide support and resources. It’s my gluten-free, wheat-free journal.

In the meantime, here are some great resources that have made this transition easier for us:

• Wheat Belly, both the book and the blog
• Canadian Celiac Association
• Celiac.com

Calling it

Technically, I have 3 days left in my sugar-fast but I’m calling it a loss today instead of sticking it out until the end. _uacct = “UA-4888259-1”;urchinTracker();

Why?  Why, when I’m so close to crossing this challenge off my list of 101 in 1001, would I forfeit??

The answer is quite simple: it didn’t work.

Well, it worked in the sense that I removed all refined sugar and added sweeteners from my foods for 27 days.  What it didn’t do is clean up my diet and kill my sweet tooth.  In fact, it left me hungrier (even when I was eating plenty) and unsatisfied right up to the bitter end.

Don’t get me wrong: I didn’t removed all sugar from my diet.  I ate plenty of fruit, milk and whole grains.  This was not an Atkins’ experiment in any way.  And truthfully, I did like some of the alternatives I found to my normal sugar-binges, like carob powder mixed into my ricotta cheese and more fresh strawberries than I thought I could ever eat.

Unfortunately, I think that I need to put a lot more time and planning into this challenge before I try it again.  I was super-strict but it lacked execution…which led to a very unbalanced diet in April.

And to be quite frank, the stress of the past few weeks coupled with the cold I am battled made this whole challenge a pain in the azz.  While it stopped me from bingeing my stresses away, it would have been nice to have a little bit of comfort food.  Sugar does create a chemical response in the brain, and that serotonin spike would have been nice a few times here and there…

I gave in two nights ago and started taking raw honey for my cough.  I decided it fell into a grey area: it was pure, natural and unrefined (thank you in-laws!) and I wasn’t adding it to anything.  I expected the straight shot of sweetness would shock my system.  Instead?  Nothing.  It tasted like honey, and that was it.  None of the headache, upset stomach or other symptoms of a sugar-free diet I’d heard of.  Nothing.

Thus, I am calling it quits.  I’d rather redo the whole challenge and get the results I’m looking for that falsely finish it for the sake of crossing it off my list.  Rotten integrity…

Short n sweet

My bugz are sleeping in their own beds tonight – hooray! _uacct = “UA-4888259-1”;urchinTracker();

I am very sick, so this is a good thing.  I am also very lonely; thus, this is a bad thing 😦

I have 5 days left of “sugar-fasting” and it still sucks.  Granted, I am much more aware of my diet, but whoever said that nothing tastes as good as skinny feels?  Ya…um, they must not like chocolate.

The bugz’ attitude has levelled out a little bit in Leith’s absence.  I’m hoping the trend of (relatively) good behaviour lasts a bit longer!

We will be getting a new addition to our family next weekend.  Her name is Bailey:

I am so very excited to bring her into our home and hearts 🙂

And that is all for tonight!  Good night.

Gratitudes

• good choices
• fresh, homemade ricotta cheese
• sunshine in the springtime
• a body that survived a bunch of extra classes with very little soreness or pain – yay!
• snuggly kisses
• Mad Men 🙂
• Vampire Diaries dates with Sherrie
• seeing him smile while he tinkers with his new “toy” – a dirt bike…sigh…
• all the new twins in our spring session, and getting to hold and carry a baby in class again
• rest, in small snippets
• listening to them play, with boundless imagination!
• fresh food and 2 weeks sugar-free
• best friends
• fuzzy-footed pyjamas
• 4-wheel drive in our spring snowstorms
• my really, really, really high fat good Alfredo sauce
• time to read before bed

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So…tired…

So I challenged myself yesterday: I did 4 one-hour cardio dance classes.  3 of them were back-to-back.  HAWT Salsa Mama in the afternoon, then Balletone, Salsa Burn and Fit Hop one after the other.  We’re looking at 4 solid hours of sweating yesterday._uacct = “UA-4888259-1”;urchinTracker();

I felt like a million bucks!  Nothing hurt; things were getting a little tired by the end, but no sharp or aching pain.  

At 9pm, I poured myself into my heated car seat and drove home semi-conscious, showered with as little effort as possible and folded myself into bed expecting to wake up in a sobbing heap of pain.  Surprisingly, I was only a little stiff this morning.

But I am tired.

Exhausted.

Beaten down, barely conscious.

The only reason I am blogging is to help me maintain consciousness for the next 45 minutes until my class starts.  I have to stay awake for 2 classes: one postnatal dance and one postnatal strength.  I am dreading the effort of lifting my arms, not because they’re sore but because of the sheer amount of energy it will take.

I want sleep. 

Don’t get me wrong: I slept like a rock last night.  A solid seven-and-a-half hour sleep with no kicking, squirming munchkins in my bed.  But I want more!

Oh, and carbs.  I want to drown myself in fettuccine Alfredo right now.  I was too tired to even think about eating last night.  I had two pieces of toast with almond butter, a banana and a cheese string.  Lunch won’t be until 2pm for me today.  It’s taking every ounce of self-control to keep from strolling over to Sunterra and scarfing down a cheddar cheese scone or three right now.

Sleep and carbs.  Sleep and carbs. 

My mouth is watering at the thought of the lasagna I am having for dinner tonight.

Ohhhhh I am so sleeeeeeeeepy….so hungry…so zzzzzzzz……

Sugar-free me!

Thus begins Week 2 of no sugar.

Sigh…

No, wait!!  I’ve lost 5 lbs since I kicked my sweet tooth to the curb last week!!  FIVE POUNDS!!  Apparently, my addiction is what was killing my diet during these months of teaching 15+ classes a week.  Hmmmm…

Seriously: I am down to 140lbs for the first time in a year.  A year.

Now, I don’t care about weight loss from an aesthetic standpoint.  I love my body and all that it represents.  From a health view, however, I have not enjoyed these extra 15-20lbs on my frame.  I know that they are the result of some kind of imbalance in my activity to food ratio and that irritates me.  Last February (2010), I got back down to 135lbs for the first time since I was pregnant.  I was meticulous about what went in my body.  I was restrictive in a caloric sense; I was focused on the quality and wholesomeness of the foods I chose.  I was the cleanest of clean eaters.

Somewhere around April 2010, that started to slide.  By September, I was at about 150lbs.  Yuck.  Like I said: love my body in all it’s sizes and shapes, but do not like to see myself when I am unhealthy.

Extra sugar, you are the culprit!  You and your refined friend, white flour, have made my body an unhappy, unhealthy place.  You and your Sunterra scones and chocolate obsessions have made me an unhappy soul.  The extra water, the extra weight, the extra space.  I am officially breaking up with you.

Someone asked me where I am drawing the line, as the main “bad guys” I speak of are white sugar and white flour.  For me, it’s not the type of sweetener so much as the added sweetness period.  My insatiable sweet tooth is my downfall.  I can cut out added sugar, but I also need to cut out the full spectrum of sweeteners.  Thus, anything that does not naturally occur (e.g. fruits, milk) is off limits.  This includes honey and agave, and also aspartame and Splenda.  It’s the craving for sugar that I’m trying to kill!

White flour is off limits simply because I like and appreciate the quality of whole grain flours that actually do something for my health, rather than just filling me up with an unsatisfying insulin spike 😉  Whole grain flour is completely acceptable, and it allows me to have bread and pasta.  Dancer Meaghan needs her carbs!!

Sugar is necessary in some proportion as well, so I’ve capped my allowable sugar-added-per-serving at 3 grams.  If I don’t allow any sugar, I’m basically hooped.  There are very few complex, whole-grain foods that don’t have sugar added in some way.

Overall, I’m feeling good.  I feel perky and energetic.  I am enjoying a vast quantity of fruits and vegetables, and I have started to enjoy flavoured loose teas as well.  I am trying to find things that are naturally sweet to replace my need for excessively sweet.

It’s a long road, but it seems to be worth it 🙂

An empty weekend

It will be so much more exciting that just “empty”: we will be child-free from 4 o’clock this afternoon until late Sunday afternoon!  I am a little excited about the prospect of a whole weekend of adult conversation and sleeping in 🙂  My dance classes don’t start until next Saturday either, so I have the entire weekend off.  It will be nice; I am subbing an extra 6 classes next week, so the rest will come in handy. _uacct = “UA-4888259-1”;urchinTracker();

Some plans for this adult-only weekend?

• Dinner and a movie with my husband tonight, although it will probably be dinner and a Blockbuster rental, since there is nothing co-appealing in the theatres right now.  I’m going to have to keep that Cineplex gift card for the rest of my life.
• A trip to the Apple store to exchange a couple of wrong cords for an Apple TV.  Netflix is driving me nuts; I’m an iTunes girl through and through 😉
• Looking at, and hopefully purchasing a dirt bike for Leith.  We decided to go the bike route instead of a new quad…as long as he promises to stay out of the ER…
• Representing JDance at the Urban Infant launch party
• Taking Leith to MEC to get him some new clothes, and to find new jeans for him somewhere
• Convincing Leith to make me a champagne brunch for breakfast tomorrow?  I have a taste for good champagne after my Veuve Clicquot in Vegas 😉
• Spring cleaning the house out…or at least giving the house the weekly scrub-down.  I wonder if I could convince Sherrie’s mom to clean my house too??  LOL!
• A trip to our lawyer’s office to transfer the property title of our acreage so that it belongs to just Leith and me!  
• Working on my latest project: formatting my first 3 years of blog posts into 3 self-published books via BookSmart.  Even though the program imports all the posts and photographs, I still need to go through every page and check the formatting.  It’s a labour of love, but it will mean so much to have this journal in hard copy!
• Planning and grocery shopping for lunches next week, so that I can keep up my sugar-free/white flour-free challenge
• Bidding adieu to my crackPhone for the weekend: yes, that’s right.  I will be turning my cell phone off at 5pm tonight, until bedtime on Sunday night (I need the alarm clock…).  No sugar and no iPhone!  Ahhhh!

Sounds good to me!