Whole 30-ish, day 4.5

So on Christmas day, feeling nasty from eating too many cookies and other junk, I realized that I had a perfect time window in front of me to do a Whole30. I am not so busy with horses or gardening in January, and don't have any travel plans until the second week of February.

For those who aren't familiar, Whole30 is basically a strict paleo 30 day challenge, that you modify afterwards to see which foods you react to, or just keep on going with the Whole30 plan if you don't miss any of the foods that are cut out for the 30 days. It doesn't allow any grains, legumes, dairy, sugar, or alcohol, not even any paleo-fied treats like muffins made with almond flour.

So I did a "soft start" on December 26, and then started "for real" the next day. However, I am bending the rules a little bit. I had some heavy cream left over, so I decided I would use that up, which I did today; tomorrow will be day 1 of no dairy. Secondly, I decided that I could have a drink or two of either red wine or hard cider (nothing brewed from grains) on Saturday night. Lastly, I got the Twister jar for my Blendtec yesterday and was dying to try it out, so I broke the no paleo-fied treats and made some pumpkin fudge, but kept the sweeteners to a minimum. I also plan to include some white potato here and there because I think they qualify as paleo, and my husband hates sweet potatoes, so sometimes it just makes life easier.

So far, I am really liking the results; I've dropped about 3# of water weight as of this morning, and am not experiencing any carb cravings. In fact, I'm completely un-tempted by the beer or candy bars DH left in the fridge, and most of the food at the grocery store doesn't even register to me as food, much less anything I want to eat. When I get hungry, it's sort of background noise, rather than a feeling of needing to eat, right now. In fact, I've been eating at odd hours because I've gotten absorbed in other activities and can't be bothered to eat. On my energy level, I am hoping that it picks up. I don't feel "bad" in any way, shape or form, but just don't feel compelled to work out. Not sure if some carbs would help there. I may try eating a couple dates before I head to the gym tomorrow and see if I perk up. My energy is on just sort of a low, steady monotone right now, but that might partly be because I've finally got some time after work after a few stressful months of working on tight deadlines. It will be interesting to see how it goes at the gym tomorrow, and when I go back to work next week.

So that's it for now... the dairy goes for real tomorrow!