The Whole 30: The End

Well, today marks the end of our 30 days. It’s crazy knowing that I have stuck with this way of eating for a whole month. I haven’t stuck to anything healthy like this for years! I’m definitely feeling a lot better, and even when I don’t get enough sleep I have more energy than I did before, and I have lost 5.5 inches all together (the most in one area being 2-1/4 inches off my belly) and exactly 5 pounds in the last thirty days. Which, while not a huge or visible difference in weight, is still progress and progress is always good.

Highlights:

Having more energy
Losing a few pounds and inches all around
Feeling more confident overall
Having clearer skin (through my period, no less!)
Gaining the knowledge of what my body needs throughout the day
Less time spent hungry and searching for food that isn’t satisfying!
More confidence in whipping up a semi-quick dinner without a recipe
Being healthy
Cleaner teeth
Inspiring others to be healthier
Increased determination to reach my goal weight
Increased encouragement that I can reach my goals
Steadier moods throughout the day
Discovering foods we’d never tried before
Breaking free of guilt where food is concerned

Lowlights:
The husband lost about 7 pounds, which wasn’t what we’d hoped (he needs/wants to gain weight)
I really, really, really missed half-and-half.
Being unable to socialize normally in food-centric occasions
Not getting to go out for a fun date night at a new restaurant for a month
The constant barrage of “What do you eat?”  questions. Seriously, people.
His getting made fun of for “dieting” at work
My getting really tired of eggs and/or meat for breakfast all the time

While I’m not going to eat Whole 30-way all the time, I have learned that there are foods I really can live without and not even miss (grains, legumes), and that I do have it in me to be healthy. Living this way for thirty days is not a small feat. I didn’t necessarily have overpowering cravings or terrible withdrawal symptoms, but it was difficult some days to make myself cook dinner or think about what we were going to eat for lunch the next day. There were no fallback boxes of macaroni and cheese or Cup Noodles when I felt lazy. I had to cook, or we didn’t eat.

Going forward from this, we will definitely still be eating healthily, with our main sustenance being meat and veggies and our main snacks fruits and nuts. But if we want to go out to eat, we will. We won’t worry about what we’re eating if we’re invited to someone else’s house for dinner. And there might be some homemade bread in the house every once in a while. So long as it doesn’t affect either of us terribly.

Mostly, even though I don’t want to stray too far from the way we’re eating now, I just really want some half-and-half in my coffee tomorrow.

So now I’ll begin reintroducing foods into my diet, and evaluating how they make me feel, whether they affect my mood, my skin, my stomach, or my head (headaches, stuffiness, etc), and most of all… I’ll still try to be healthy as possible!

Overall, I would recommend doing the Whole 30. It is a great way to learn how to listen to what your body needs, to break bad habits with food, and to become a healthier person all over. As well, I found that I had  very few days of coming home and not knowing what to cook. There was always something to eat.

Please feel free to ask me any questions I haven’t answered!

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