Lucky 13

The potatoes are looking pretty good - though the lower leaves are turning yellow which could mean a nitrogen deficiency. I fed them coffee grounds today - hopefully this will perk them up.

I fed myself a cup of coffee today too - and it perked me up tremendously.

So - here's the scoop: The Whole 30 failed me. It became a Whole 12 and then it stopped.

After spending the last 12 days feeling anywhere from just sub-par to really crappy, I decided it was time to change the rules again. The constant headache is just NOT acceptable anymore. After getting really sick with reflux last night during dinner, I decided that while eating healthy is a great idea, I'm just cutting too much out of my diet to really be comfortable. Battling hunger all day, especially when I had finally gotten that under control without the Whole 30 just wasn't making sense anymore. Popping Advil every other day when I had rarely had headaches in a long time, just wasn't making sense anymore. Lying awake half the night because my stomach was bothering me when it hadn't been for a long time, wasn't making sense anymore. It was time to call it and say Whole 30 was a bust for me.

I get that I still may be experiencing sugar withdrawal, but to be honest, I learned a long time ago that life is too short to be miserable if you don't have to be. Thirty days isn't a long time, but I asked myself what was the point of spending even a few precious hours of those 30 days feeling rotten? Who am I helping? Not me.

I lost 5 pounds in 12 days. Which just about beats the 6 in 6 months on keto.

Then again, I lost 6 pounds in 2 days when I had the stomach flu, so it's not really a good indicator.

Here's what I learned:

* I can live without chocolate.
* I can live without a decadent dessert every night.
* I can live without bread.
* I can enjoy a piece of fruit as much as I can enjoy a cookie.
* I can't really enjoy my work day without a good cup of coffee.
* Being hungry is not healthy.
* Having a headache all the time is not healthy.
* Feeling well is more important than looking good.

I'm not switching from Whole 30 to Whole Hog though. I had a protein shake this morning [soy and sugar] but I'm keeping off of almond milk for now and using water instead. It tasted fine- and thus I'm still avoiding the carrageenan.

I had coffee - one cup by itself, no snack to go with it. And I had about half the sweetener I usually use. Did I want a rich, sweet, decadent cappuccino? Yes. But I'm holding off.

I had my leftover dinner from last night for lunch. And with dinner I indulged in a couple of onion rings and then I had a mini-ice cream cone. So what?

I didn't need between meal snacks today. I don't have a gnawing pain in my stomach or a nagging headache. I plan to stick to as many whole30 compliant foods as I can without using the words 'I can't have...' anymore, but that wasn't doing me a damn bit of good.

Besides, I have more important things to do now that I have found my next project... at a garage sale for $18.00....

This Old House!

I'm so psyched to work on it! My next post will be about my new miniature project and the conversion of this old raggedy dollhouse into my Beach Cottage. I can't wait to get started.

10 down, 20 to go

 

New room box - partially finished. This is going to be a tropical vacation bedroom patterned after something I found on Pinterest.

 

It's probably a third of the way done - and I'm a third of the way through Whole 30 and still wondering what all the hype is about.

 

Today I had cheese.

 

And I'm not sorry. I didn't plan to 'cheat' - but my daughter bought me a salad from Panera. Pecan Apple Chicken Salad, which I love. Which I also forgot contains small crumbles of bleu cheese. [Remember my dream? I guess it was prophetic - but in the dream I felt bad about having eaten the cheese, and in real life I don't]. I was starving, and I wasn't about to throw the salad away or stuff it back in the fridge and hope someone else would eat it before it went bad, and I wasn't about to try to remove tiny little bleu cheese crumbles. So I scarfed it down like I'd been stuck on a desert island for a month. It was heaven.

 

The rest of the afternoon I spent craving bacon, so I made bacon and eggs for dinner. It was great.

 

So far, I really miss coffee. I don't think I'm getting enough protein [choked down a hard boiled egg with breakfast. It was awful. I can't eat eggs for breakfast.] I don't think I'm getting enough fat. [Hence the bacon.] I'm tired of having headaches. I didn't used to get frequent headaches before this. According to my research days 10 and 11 are the hardest. So if I can make it to day 12 I'm doing well. Hopefully by then I'll be feeling more like I'm detoxing rather than just arbitrarily depriving myself of food that I like that actually gives the me energy to get through the day.

 

Do I want to quit? God, yes.

 

Am I going to? No. Not yet. I really want to be able to see how I feel on Day 30 and if I don't feel utterly refreshed and fantastic by then I'll be able to truthfully say that I've tried everything and I've earned the right to eat whatever I want whenever I want. That's sort of what I'm in it for now - for how good it's going to feel to be done with it.



6 of 30

It's always when I'm in a hurry that Blogger acts up... I'm rushing off to sit down and watch a movie after being on my feet all day - and of course nothing I do in Blogger works right tonight.  Ugh.

 

Anyway - I'm not planning on updating every 3 days, but since I made it to the weekend on Whole 30, I want to crow about it. I got this far! I'm pretty amazed that I've been able to say no to chocolate all week. It has NOT been easy.

 

The week started off rough - I was cranky, tired and hungry. Today I am FINALLY less tired. In fact I got a surge of energy this afternoon that I'm still riding on. I hope that means all this good food is finally kicking in. My mood is decidedly better and I had the willpower to walk away from mini-donuts at the flea market even though I was hungry. I've eating good food all week and I found I've really enjoyed my food. Fruit has never tasted better and I appreciate every bite of everything else - probably because I'm so hungry.

 

Tomorrow I'm breaking a cardinal rule of Whole 30 and I'm making paleo pancakes for breakfast.

 

Why?

 

Simple. Whole 30 doesn't tell me what to do. And some stupid rules are made to be broken. I get why the authors of the book FORBID pancakes of any kind. 1) They're pandering to people who enjoy that feeling of having to 'be good' in order to prove themselves worthy. I got nothin' to prove. 2) They want you to get used to not having some of the trigger foods that can lead you down the garden path to bad eating. I get that. A paleo pancake is perfectly fine - but if you get used to eating pancakes every day, what happens when paleo pancakes aren't available? You'll just have regular pancakes and that's a different animal altogether. I get it. That's why I'm allowed to break the rule. It's like in writing. Know what the rules are and break them only for a good reason. My good reason is this: Eating right is NOT about never having something you like or about having the will power not to make something decadent out of good ingredients. LIVING WELL is about LIVING - not about sticking to arbitrary rules.

 

So, I'm having paleo pancakes because I can eat an egg and I can eat a banana and that's fine - there's NO REASON I can't mix them together and cook them and eat the result if that will make me happy, fuller, well fed and give me some variety. Arbitrary rules are stupid.

 

That being said, I am having the food dreams that so many people report having. In my dreams I've eaten corn, walnut chicken with soy sauce and bleu cheese - and I felt bad about it each time. But I did it anyway.

 

On that note, here's a before and after photo of one of my terrariums. Interesting to see the difference a year has made.

Then

 

 

 

Now

  



 

3 of 30

I had forgotten that I posted about the Whole 30 experiment already. I'm glad I did. It saves me time today.

I stuck to my plan and I began the Whole 30 June 1st. It seems silly to be writing an update at Day 3, but hey, I made it this far...with no sugar or chocolate or coffee. So that's an accomplishment in itself.

[BTW, that's a baby lemon tree in an awesome planter I found this weekend at a garage sale]

PROS: So far? No real pros. I'm still on board with the program and eager to see if it lives up to the hype. My goal is to achieve that 'I've never felt better in my life' feeling that so many people who have written about their Whole 30 results report. One pro is I don't have a really hard time eating food that's simple and good for me. I had a baked chicken cutlet, a baked sweet potato and a salad for dinner and I thought it was excellent. I don't need lasagna to feel like I 'ate' - but I think I do need cheese to be happy.

CONS: It's only day 3. It's going to be a LONG month. I did tell my co-workers about the plan and of course my family and I put it on Facebook. Of course on Facebook I got crickets - which is how most of my post are received. If they're received at all. I don't really know. Facebook generally sucks.
The problem with telling too many people is that of course the inevitable has happened already. "How are you doing on your diet?" [Ugh - really? I've been on it 72 hours, and you asked me at 24 hours and at 48 hours. Can we NOT do this every damn day?] I get that maybe people are interested and are hoping I will stumble across the Holy Grail of Weight Loss [for which I am not looking], but really? It's like telling people you submitted a novel to a publisher and they ask every day thereafter, "Have you heard from the publisher?" [If I had, don't you think that would be the first thing I'd mention?]

I've also gotten "Is that on your diet?" Which is the SINGULAR most inane question that I absolutely hate to hear from anyone. Because 1) If I'm eating it, it's ON MY DIET. 2) You are not the diet police. 3) I know what's ON MY DIET better than you do. I know the people who ask it actually do mean well - but enough already.

So if I do fall off the program, I imagine it will be from the stress of having to answer these inane questions and not from lack of food.

The final con is that I have been hungry the last three days. I don't like that. It took me YEARS to adjust my 'diet' to a point where I wasn't suffering blood sugar spikes and valleys that made me feel ravenous all day long and now they're back. One of my cardinal rules of diet is feeling hungry all the time and having to ignore it in order to stay on the diet is NOT ACCEPTABLE. I'm hoping it's a residual blood sugar drop from actual lack of sugar - and not true hunger. To combat it, I added a little more food to my breakfast and I'm now back to having an afternoon snack, which I didn't need on my regular eating plan. With Whole 30 you are technically not supposed to snack or need snacks, but hell, if I'm hungry then the plan isn't doing what it's supposed to be doing.

I made a small before chart to plot how things change over the 30 days - I'm assessing back pain, mood, sleep quality, GI health, skin and joint health. I also took a before weight and will weigh myself on July 1, but I took no measurements. This isn't about size, it's about how I feel.

I suppose the crankiness I'm experiencing is part of it - I recall on keto having an elevated mood and right now I'm a little short-fused. I think because on keto I was not hungry and on this I am. We'll see how that shapes up over the next four weeks.

Onward!

Whole 30 and the new grand experiment

So as we have established, keto was a bit of a bust. I did learn that bread/wheat/gluten might be a problem for me. The real problem is I don't know if I can cut it out of my diet completely.

The other day at BJs I ran across The Whole 30 - which is less of a 'diet' than it is an experiment with food and learning what causes you not to feel well. I was skeptical but I read the book and the things I like about it are these:

* Weight loss is not hyped - the book discourages before and after weighing and stepping on the scale at all

* It varies from keto in that the goal is to add foods back in after 30 days and see how they affect you.

* It is only for 30 days, and it's discouraged to make this a 365-eating plan

* There are no Whole30 prepackaged meals or bars that you 'should' buy. They're not selling chemicals packed as healthy foods like Atkins or Weight Watchers

* You're not encouraged to make cheater foods like faux brownies or eggless muffins, etc. The idea is not to 'trick' yourself into thinking you're eating something 'bad' when you're not

* Recipes and ingredients are simple

So I've decided to dedicate the 30 days of June 2015 to this new 'grand experiment' and see what happens. We're going down the shore in August, so by then I will have been able to add foods back in and see what that does for me.

The downsides: No chocolate.

This could be a deal breaker - but I'm willing to try it for 30 days. Chocolate will be the FIRST thing I add back in.

The rules are simple and yet impossibly difficult.

*No alcohol. [A cinch for someone who doesn't drink.]
*No dairy. [keto at least allowed cheese and heavy cream, but not Whole30]
*No sugar. [Yeah. Here's the kicker. If I can go no sugar I can pretty much fly.]
*No grains. [the bread thing]
*No soy, or legumes. [difficult but not impossible]

You can eat green beans and sugar snap peas though. Nuts and seeds are fine, but no almond milk that contains carrageenan which basically means no almond milk. No artificial sweeteners, but caffeine is ok. This means no coffee - another tough one for someone who went 46 years without coffee and now can't go for a weekend without it.

We'll see how it goes. I'm going to jump into it whole hog because for those few weeks on keto I actually felt great, and I'd like to feel great again. I'm also considering actually telling people about it. I know - I don't like involving other people in my dietary endeavors because A) it's none of their business, B) I'm not a walking advertisement for someone's diet plan C) I don't want to be accountable to anyone else for what I do or what I eat, but I think the key to this success will be not keeping it a secret. It won't be easy to eat like this, so I'm going to need help.

Wish me luck.

A shot of my jungle terrarium. 

Only if it's purple...

As promised, the desk accessories:

 

The washi tape accent really makes it.

 

 

I also redid some of my gardens:

 

Here are two red maple saplings I rescued from the front yard. I'm hoping to turn them into bonsai - my new obsession. The sweet little pot is from today's garage sale excursion.

I bought a sedum mat at Lowe's today and used pieces of it everywhere. A nice sized piece of it makes a fantastic ready made fairy garden in a glass ivy bowl.

The ivy terrarium was doing really well on my desk, but I just wasn't happy with it, so I replanted the ivy into an open jar and turned it into a proper fairy garden using some pink fencing I found at an estate sale and that cute little terra cotta pitcher I've had floating around in my junk box for years.

 

AND...

 

I've also discovered the Japanese art of Suiseki - or the contemplation of rocks. Of course real suiseki is one amazing rock, usually that looks like a landscape set in a custom made wooden tray. This is a set of rocks in a heart shaped wooden bowl, but you get the idea. I plan to contemplate them.

 

Over dinner we did a lot of talking about a major paint job for the basement...so it looks like in the next couple of weeks I'll be working on the faux rock wall along the basement steps.

 

I have to say that my guilty confession is I have let go of writing. I do still have to complete a novella, but I'm in no hurry. For the first time in about 10 years, I don't feel the need to write, or the guilt of not writing. I'm just living my life - and as much as writing has been who am for the last 38 years, I feel a tremendous sense of freedom in NOT having to do it. I'm sure I will go back to it. There are still things I want to write, but for now, I feel incredibly liberated and I'm enjoying so many more things now that I don't feel like every moment not spent writing is a moment wasted. Is that wrong?



Project salad

A little bit of everything...

My organization obsession is still in full swing.

 

 The Filofax and planner have their own drawer along with a cute little pouch to hold supplies.

 The garden is going along. Potatoes are taking over their pot, and the salad bowl garden is doing great. The cool weather has been nice for the lettuce and spinach. Carrots, radishes, beans, cucumbers and peppers are holding their own. Hopefully warmer weather will speed up the growth process because a lot of the plants seem like their in stasis, just waiting for more sunlight to kick start them.

Lastly, I've planted another DIY bonsai...

 

A little maple I found growing near the deck and some fern that was clinging to the barren eastern side of the house along with a lone moss patch. I'm still scouting for more bonsai pots - that's my garage sale mission for the summer.

 

Yesterday's project involved working on redoing my desk accessories. Pictures to come of the repurposed pen holder and the footstool shelf.