Whole30 - Week 1: My Thoughts

Just some quick notes on how the week went and some other random information... I wanted to make notes for myself for if we do this again later, so I can see how things compare a second time around. :)

How I felt during the week:

• Most of this week I was pretty tired, kind of sleepy, day 6 and 7 were the worst.. part of that was probably because I wasn't drinking as much coffee in the morning and afternoon without the creamer and I wasn't getting those random sugar highs from snack and processed foods I was grabbing here and there. Also, I have been up a lot with my littlest man at night (yay for babies sensitive to being over tired and teething! eek!) so that could have been part of it too.
• I've had congestion since Christmas and it literally cleared up within just a day or two of eating this way.
• Even though I have been tired, I don't feel run down and sluggish. Already I just feel better, not bloated and yucky, no stomach issues this week. :)
• I was a little cranky at the end of the week, but that's because my oldest little man decided to head bonk me in the face while we were "snuggling" on the couch watching morning cartoons... so yeah, that put a damper on my disposition a little bit because my face is hurting haha! Thanks son! Hazards of being a boy mom I tell you!

This is the closest selfie I've ever taken in my life. You're welcome.

Thoughts on Food:

• I have really enjoyed the simplicity of the meals... fewer ingredients and really I didn't notice a huge shift in time in the kitchen because I was already cooking for lunch and dinner on a normal basis, maybe just not as often. I was doing more dishes though, just because I was eating all of my meals at home!
• I loved not eating out. It was nice to not spend money in this area, and I didn't have to deal with the huge carb highs afterwards and feeling bleh. :)
• I realized how much I just "grab" things during the day. I was mentally having to stop myself from just snagging a goldfish from my son's snacks or a piece of chocolate during nap time. I feel like this week has been a lot of just stopping and thinking before I eat, which is a good thing!
• I still miss my creamer and muffins. I'm so in love with muffins, it is definitely a problem. But I've been proud of my self control this week. I feel like with each passing day I can do this and make good changes, so hopefully the cravings will get under control. The average craving lasts 3-5 minutes, so if I want a muffin, I just get myself distracted for a few minutes and then I don't want one anymore! Hopefully I can keep the momentum going!

Might have felt like this at one point this week though haha...

Random Facts I learned: (Disclaimer: I'm kind of obsessed with information haha... I love to read and learn things!! Keeps that brain working!! It's probably obvious then why I loved teaching science because it's all about learning facts and applying them!! My mother-in-law says I read too much haha and in some cases that's true and you have to just stop because it makes you paranoid!! In this case though, the more I know, the more motivated I am to make good food choices, so I'm hoping that encourages you as well. Just thought I would share some of the things I picked up from the Whole30 sites and books.)

• So much of our immunity is in our gut. Our intestines are the front lines for filtering through the good and bad for our body. They are permeable, which is how nutrients are absorbed from our gut into our blood stream for our body to use. So by eating too much/more processed unnatural foods, more of the bad gets into your body because our immune system physically cannot keep up. This is when your body starts going into overdrive, attacking itself, and developing auto-immune diseases such as fibromyalgia. One thing I realized was that by cleaning up my diet, I was helping my body out because my immune system didn't have as much junk to try and process through so it could focus on working in my body the way it was designed to. When we eat better foods, we're helping our gut heal so that less from the outside of our body gets inside of our body.
• It is really important to consume quality oils like olive oil and coconut oil. As I am still reading "It Starts With Food" (and rather slowly I might add haha), I got to the chapter about oils and how much of the American diet consists of different seed oils  (10%!!) and other oils that degrade quickly. Some become rancid before we even consume them just from reacting with the light in the grocery store! What?! Much of the issues we have regarding cancers, high blood pressure ect. comes from the inflammation caused our body from these oils. Listed below are the oils they said to avoid...

• I've been very surprised at what some of the marketing captions on food really stand for... It can be very misleading because "whole wheat" doesn't mean whole wheat, but that a certain portion of the bread is whole wheat. Also read a lot about how different food companies pay for certain kinds of testing just so they can prove that their product "is or possibly is" healthy. Yeah, probably will make you paranoid wondering, but point being... less ingredients in your food is best, and being able to pronounce the ingredients (as in you know what it is and it's not some mumbo jumbo scientific word) is really important.

So those were the highlights from the week. Good luck to you if you are trying this out too!

I could actually say that I haven't felt like this yet!