Shenanigans

I weighed myself again before the “real” end of my Whole30 yesterday (on Day 49) and had lost another 3 pounds. (And no ill effects from butter.) So that was nice to see, but then Mik came home and we ended up eating restaurant food not once but twice yesterday. I’m not blaming him—I just truly wanted to do something “special” while we caught up, and then later we had my mom and stepdad over for Chinese takeout because I was frankly too lazy to whip up a healthy meal for five.

In one more week a bunch of family starts rolling into town, so truly this super-strict way of eating is canceled for about the next month, but M.H. and I both want to try to continue to eat as well as we can, and start up being strict again once the summer excitement is over. He is trying intermittent fasting as well and has been able to take his already tiny belt in not one but two notches, so as usual everything works like magic for him. I’m not jealous. :)

A reintroduction

Since I see the inevitable end coming for this Whole30, I went ahead and officially stopped it (after Day 46) to try at least one food reintroduction, the most important one: butter. So basically I’m going to eat the same way I have been today, except to cook some things in butter. Then I’ll go back to Whole30 eating for a few days. I guess if I suffer any ill effects from butter then I’ll have my bad news, but I’m really not expecting any.

It was a good day to add butter back in, because I got a bunch of adorable pullet eggs from a new “chicken lady” I met on Facebook ($4 a dozen delivered, with the pullet eggs thrown in as a bonus!). The only reasonable way to eat pullet eggs is fried, so you can enjoy all the little yolks whole. And the only reasonable way to fry eggs is in butter.

Contemplating the end

Day 45

I’ve now done a Whole30 and a half! I haven’t got tons to say about my progress or lack thereof, but I am looking forward to getting my lab test done and seeing if that is helpful in any way.

I noticed in the library a non-nutrition book by the Whole30 co-creator Melissa Urban. It is about boundary-setting and is SO GOOD. Then I found her Instagram feed and it is also SO GOOD. I highly recommend both.

Mik comes home on Saturday for a month, and I was saying to M.H. today that we might need to end our 45+ day streak of not eating in restaurants, only because it’s a good way to get our taciturn kid seated across from us to talk. I would like to go on eating this way, and I probably will resume it after Mik goes back to school, but honestly it’s more important to squeeze in some quality time, and if I have to fall on a burrito sword, so be it.

Medical intervention

Day 41

I found a naturopathic doctor who takes my insurance and is willing to be my primary care physician, and went to see her for the first time yesterday. The good news is that I really liked her generally, and that I seem to be in good health except for the obvious and having pretty freaking high blood pressure. The bad news is her first instinct was to approach my weight issue with a standard lecture about nutrition, which made me bristly.

I couldn’t seem to impress on her that nutrition is 99.9% NOT my problem. At the moment, my diet is impeccable—literally as good as I know how to make it for 41 days and counting. And even before the Whole30, my diet was honestly still fantastic, and it’s been like eight years since I’ve had added sugar. She said, “A cup of raw spinach has just 7 calories, and that’s as much as two M&M’s” and I was screaming inside, “THIS ISN’T FROM M&M’S!” I probably should have screamed it on the outside, I don’t know. I need to follow up by sending her an email about a couple of things, so maybe I will include a paragraph about my diet and my history and see if I can get her to really hear me on this.

When she saw my blood pressure, she said, “What do you want to do about this?” and I said, “Literally anything but go on blood pressure medication.” She recommended a couple of supplements to try but agrees with me that if I could lose weight it would go a long way toward resolving the problem.

ANYWAY. Next step is to have some labs done. I have some family stuff going on that is stressing me the hell out and want to wait until I have calmed down a little before going to the blood-suckers.

Play and work

Day 38

Work this summer has been QUIET, which is always slightly alarming but also gives me lots of time to play. I’ve been urban sketching, learning to crochet, reading a lot, swimming outside, doing yoga outside, doing jigsaw puzzles, and passively watching my tiny garden explode. (Plus tons of decluttering, which is not actually fun, but I am enjoying the results.) Let it not be said that I didn’t enjoy summer to the fullest! Honestly, anytime the windows are open, that’s a win in my book.

My Achilles tendons still hurt, which of course puts a damper on everything, but my foot and knees feel better today. I was noticing that my neck was hurting, too, and I couldn’t figure out why until I swam yesterday morning. It’s literally sore from turning my head side to side to breathe! So I’m back to square one in the pool, basically, but I’ll keep plugging away and eventually get a little better.

Actually, between yoga, swimming, and now lifting weights, I have added quite a bit of exercise to my life recently. Maybe I will see some benefit at some point…

Reality check

Day 36

I’m still feeling really good mentally, but physically…ugh. My Achilles really hurt, along with the arch of one foot and suddenly both knees. I don’t know if this is actually the case, but it FEELS like I just weigh so dang much that my supporting structures are wearing out. (I wish I had an anti-gravity treadmill. What could that cost, $20, $30?)

In an effort to report that my strength has improved in 24 days (at the end of two Whole30s), I found a weight-lifting program on YouTube that I like and have done it a couple of times. So I’m hoping I’m actually just a little tired from yesterday’s workout and not riding a downward spiral into owning a recliner with a lift feature.

On the plus side—because I really am doing quite well from the thighs up—I have made a ton of progress on decluttering and am still going strong there. I have been giving things to people from my Buy Nothing group, which takes a little longer than dumping it all at a thrift store but is much more satisfying and seems better for the world.

A watery day

Day 33

I swam again yesterday, 800 meters. This time my lanemate was a delight and I also had a great chat with Michael’s former swim coach. When I got out of the pool there was a text from my mom saying her basement was flooded, so I went home, grabbed a shower and breakfast, and then continued my “workout” by spending the next three hours helping to haul 3½ rooms of her stuff to higher ground. (The disaster was caused by a shockingly negligent contractor.)

I am hoping to establish a schedule of swimming on Mondays and Thursdays, and to do at least 1000 meters from now on. :)

A satisfying bit of decluttering and an urban sketch

Day 32*

I spent a good chunk of time yesterday purging and organizing my art supplies space—moving things around, giving things away, putting like with like, et cetera. And obviously this photo doesn’t show the half of it, but anyway here’s the After.

I probably could have purged more stuff—for example, a friend gave me some oil painting supplies that I don’t have a clue how to use—but I did keep a few just-in-case things like that and shoved them in a shoebox and pushed it to the back. Everything I do want to use should be readily accessible, and in fact my entire urban sketching kit is in a cute backpack, visible through the window, and ready to just grab and go.

Speaking of which, I’ve been hanging out with a local group of Urban Sketchers, and we met again today:

 

*As far as the Whole30 goes, I decided against adding back even butter to my diet. I just think it’s smarter to keep going, at least until I see the Day 60 results, if any.

Whole30 recap

Day 31

Here’s my Whole30 wishlist and an update on each of the issues:

1. Heal Achilles: At times in the past 30 days this has felt better, but at the moment it feels the same or even worse. This has been an issue for YEARS now, so I’m disappointed but not surprised that a miracle didn’t occur. (PSA: This injury is the worst, and if you ever feel a twinge of pain in your ankle/heel, I strongly encourage you to rest until it’s better, rather than playing through the pain until it becomes chronic, like a moron.)

2. Lose fat: I lost a grand total of 2 pounds, which is incredibly disappointing but does confirm my suspicion that all this recent weight gain doesn’t really have much to do with my diet. (But if I could lose 2 pounds every 30 days by eating this way, I would do it in a heartbeat.)

3. Lower blood pressure: I had the opportunity to take my blood pressure last night with my mom’s device and it’s still awful. Boo.

4. Improve circulation: Not sure but possibly this has helped. My legs were feeling super-heavy all the time, and now they feel better—but I have also been wearing a pair of compression socks I found at a garage sale, so it might just be that.

5. Improve motivation and focus: This is the #1 thing that changed for me. I feel smarter, more creative, and more motivated than I did 30 days ago BY FAR.

6. Get stronger: I don’t have any sense that this changed one way or another.

7. Improve endurance: It is really hard to say, because I still can’t walk any sort of distance because of my injury. I may possibly feel better walking up stairs…

8. Stop snoring: I do believe my snoring has lessened, although we started sleeping downstairs recently because it got hot out, and down there we somehow snore much more???

I’m feeling like, whether this helps a lot or a little, I still need to do it so my health doesn’t continue spiraling downhill. I think I’ll just keep going, do the other smart things I know I should do, and check in again on Day 60.

Whole30 Day 29 and 30

I’ve been mega-inspired to tackle the excess stuff these past few days—it might be the Tiger Blood talking or just that I’m fed up and recently read a book about decluttering. :)

I don’t really have strong feelings about the Whole30 coming to an end or how it went (but stay tuned for a recap tomorrow). I think I’ll go ahead and keep eating this way as long as possible, but following their food reintroduction protocol. For example, you have one food that was not allowed on the Whole30—I plan to start with butter—a couple of times in a day, and then go back to the Whole30 for a few days. The idea, of course, is to see if that food was negatively affecting you and how much. I do hope butter doesn’t do anything horrible to me; it would make my life a bit tastier if I could cook eggs in it, for example.

Whole30 Day 27

I think the main thing this Whole30 has done is remind me of how important it is to COOK. We had been getting kind of lazy, to the point where if we didn’t have anything in the fridge and didn’t really feel like making dinner we would just go out for burritos.

(I know that’s not a radically shocking confession, but it is a pretty big regression from the way I was eating 10 years ago.)

“If you want to eat, you have to cook” is what I keep telling myself, and it goes along nicely with my strong feelings about taking care of my own house/yard, even when hiring someone else to clean the bathrooms sometimes sounds like a really fine idea.

Also, I decided it would be dumb to stop the Whole30 one day early for the family party, so I will just have to be slightly annoying and either bring something or find out in advance if there will be something I can eat. I haven’t made any big announcements about doing a Whole30, but everyone is used to me eating weird.

Also, I must be (Tiger Blood!) motivated, because I read a book about decluttering, and now I have a New Life Plan to work on the house clutter for 30 minutes per day until I’ve done the whole thing. (It will probably take six months at that rate, but whatever.) The book says to start in the bathrooms, mostly because there’s very little difficult decision-making to be found in there. Great idea, and I think I decluttered most of my own drawers a few years ago, so it shouldn’t be too bad. Plus all the bathrooms need to be cleaned (speaking of which), so there you go.

Whole30 Day 28 but this is now a decluttering blog

I woke up ambitious and did a bunch of cleaning, as well as decluttered and organized my knitting/crocheting supplies. That was pretty easy, mostly because I did all the untangling and winding a few months ago, and all I had left to do was get rid of duplicates and my unwanted paper patterns. I now have yarncraft basically confined to one area of the house, which looks like this:

Those drawers are ALL full to the top with yarn, but overall, it’s not bad!

I have a lot of work to do on Other Art Supplies. Ideally I would have a whole room—studio!—for that stuff, but despite having a large house with no minor children in it, we don’t seem to have the space. Or at least I can’t bear to turn ALL our guest space into Julie-only space—for example, I would still like my kids to have a place to sleep when they visit.

I think the solution is to get rid of the excess and figure out how to make better use of the existing art-crap space, which currently looks like this:

It SEEMS like it should be enough room, but the art supplies are sharing quarters with first-aid stuff, sunscreen, water bottles, stationery, egg cartons that need to be donated to people with chickens, and other miscellaneous junk. I know I would use art supplies a lot more if I was able to get to them easily…

Whole30 Day 26

It’s getting toward the end of 30 days here! I think I’ve learned that I really do better eating this way, although the lack of progress on my Achilles tendons is a bit disappointing. And I have a family event on Day 29, so there’s a relatively decent chance I may be going off-plan, just to not be an annoying guest. (But I don’t even know what they’re serving, so maybe not!) 

I do feel like it’s OK now to start practicing my long-term plan, which is to eat this way at home 100% but be chill about it in social circumstances. I feel like that’s the same plan I had 10 years ago, but I guess I needed reminding…