Not a Bad Tuesday: Whole30 W3D2

I couldn't be happier to report that the start of Week 3 on Whole30 is going better than the sum of week 2.  To be honest, yesterday I took the opportunity to really get some sleep which can only mean better things for mood, ability to think clearly, and to generally function like a normal person.  But here's my thoughts on why today feels so much better than the past 7 days have:

1. I ate more balanced foods yesterday including vegetables. 

This is huge and I've known it for a long time.  If you're anything like me, as soon as you've got some rules you have to follow you look for hacks and I definitely do.  Though I haven't been keeping a food journal, I know I've been trending toward 1) meat sticks 2) fruit and 3) RX Bars/convenience foods even though they're compliant.

This is no bueno.  You can't hack healthy eating and stringing together snacks is not the point.  And they tell you that.  And I didn't listen because "any port in a storm," you know.  But it's a fun moment when you realize you're causing the storm by hacking the system.  If I lean into it, i'm much better off.

2. I laid off the fat...a bit.

I learned this on Keto the very hard way: just because you're supposed to eat more fat does not mean it all the fat.  Now, that's what keto is and, to be honest, I followed those rules and felt like shit...because my body just doesn't love all the dietary fat.  It does love some though.  So, I prioritize.  Instead of eating (compliant) mayo and too much oil, I eat a "whole-er" version by eating an avocado which I seem to do better with.  If I'm eating 2 whole eggs, I don't need to heap on the saturated fat in addition to what's in the eggs.  You get the idea.  Be cool with fat.  But cool it with the fat.  Just enough, not too much.

3.  My nuts dragon needed to go back in its crate.

The nuts.  I need to avoid them totally.  I did have some walnuts yesterday instead of nut butter with an apple because I didn't want to get weird in eating an avocado or adding oil just bc I needed some dietary fat with my little apple slices.  But dang.  Nuts are like crack to me.  I need to put them down.

4. I drank an ocean of water.

This should probably be #1 and could be the answer to the whole post.  Sometimes in the chaos of all the compliance checking, I need to get out Occam's Razor and just go back to the basics: sleep, drink water, and drink some more water.  I'm not sure if it's the season, the fact that I OD'd on bacon/processed (but compliant) meats, working out...whatever.  But I was DRY.  Like the desert DRY.  So I about doubled my water consumption.  And life returned.  This is something I could learn from amoebas and yet I choose to get more complicated first.  Just. drink. the water.

5. I got creative.

Not with food.  I literally created something.  I've been exploring the idea that when I'm feeling really backed into a corner or restless that it might be because I've switched from a creative mindset to one too focused on consuming things.  Whole30 will do that do you...because I'm thinking about food even when I don't want to be.  So I dug in and put together this crazy IKEA kitchen island thing that's been sitting, boxed, in my kitchen for, like, 3 weeks.  It got me out of the mode of thinking about food, gave me the feeling of accomplishing something, and wiped me out.  I was ready for bed and slept like a log...that didn't have exactly enough of the pre-fabbed screws but made it work nonetheless.

I really do think, for me, the key to this thing is taking it day by day.  People get so consumed in the language and "jargon" and weird-ass community of Whole30.  I don't really need any of that.  Keep it simple.  Go back to the basics. And drink water.

Then drink some more water.