Whole30 Week 1: I Survived

So I’ve just completed my first week of my #Whole30 challenge, and I’m not gonna lie, it was a hell of a lot easier than I expected. I truly believe that the advance prep work helped me through it.

A few observations:

1. I was worried I’d be hungry all the time, but I’m not. I’m sort of re-learning how my body does respond to its own signals, and now I’m eating when I start to feel growly, instead of when I’m bored.

2. I’m eating good stuff. Lots of chicken and fish, a ton of fruits and veggies, and of course, eggs. It’s never boring, because I have a metric fuckton of herbs and spices in my pantry – last night I made Indian curried chicken, sauteed in ghee and dumped over a plate of garlic roasted cauliflower. The other day, for breakfast, I had a spinach and turkey fritatta. I am eating well.

3. I miss bacon – believe it or not, nearly all commercial brands of bacon include some sort of sugar or sugar byproduct. There is a Whole30-approved bacon, but it’s incredibly expensive and I’ll be damned if I’m going to pay out the wazoo for a pound of bacon. That said, I’ve asked the nice lady at the Meijer butcher counter to order me a few pounds of pork belly, and I’m going to drag out the smoker and try making my own bacon. More on this later.

4. I’m seeing non-scale victories already. One of the things that Whole30 emphasizes is that you DO NOT step on the scale while you’re doing it. So I haven’t. And yet, I’m noticing a couple of things just one week in. My jeans are fitting better. And today, for the first time in I don’t know how many years, I needed to use the second row of hooks on my bra strap rather than the first one. Also, I’m sleeping better – that change happened within the first two days.

5. I have more willpower than I thought I would. My kid had a bag of candy hearts on the table the other day. It would have been SO easy to cheat, and just take one or two. But I didn’t. And once I didn’t, I felt really fucking GOOD about the fact that I didn’t, which made it even easier to pass them by the next time.

Week 2 looms on the horizon, and I’m already planning and prepping. This coming week is a bit crazy, so it’s probably going to be crockpot meals, but I’m okay with that. After just seven days, I’m feeling a lot better than I was in January, and it’s entirely possible I might be able to do this all the way to the end.