Skip to main content

Whole 30 - COMPLETE!

Me, at another finish line
(the 2010 Warrior Dash Ohio)
It's over.  Well, in 3 hours, it'll be over.  It's 9:05 PM on Day 30 of my Whole30 challenge, and I did it.

What did I accomplish?  Well, nothing particularly new since I went through this in 2008 with my first Primal Blueprint challenge, with one exception:

  1. I have solidified myself a lot - lots of body fat gone and replaced with lean muscle - again.
  2. I've improved my immune response - even when everyone else in the house got sick for a couple days with colds, etc., I had a slight case of the sniffles at worst.
  3. Stress levels have gone down a lot.
  4. I've created some great habits in cooking and, most important, preparation for cooking.
  5. I went dairy free for 30 days for the first time in my life.  
The last one is the most interesting to me, honestly.  I'm interested to see what happens when I introduce dairy back into the swing of things.  I recall Amy Kubal talking about how it affected her on the Health and Comedy show podcast a while back - she'd never given it up either, then did an on-ramp program.  When she introduced it back in, it did not agree with her to say the least.  So I'm going to be hesitantly getting back into that one.  

I'm pleased with the whole thing.  I enjoyed preparing food that was Whole30 friendly.  I am proud of myself for not lapsing once during the whole experience.  I am a person who has trouble following through with things for myself a lot (perhaps some self-esteem issues) and so this is particularly important to me.  

So what's next?  Well, slowly re-introducing some stuff.  Dairy will be first, for sure - just to see what happens.  I'm thinking that putting heavy whipping cream in my coffee will be best for tomorrow morning as that's something I always felt I handled well before (follow my Google+ stream or Facebook page for the results on that!)  

Keeping the progress going is also going to be big - focusing more on the movement and fitness aspects for a while.  I'm getting really interested in some of the stuff that's been making the podcast rounds lately - Dr. Kelly Starett was positively dynamic on the Fat Burning Man show recently, as was Darryl Edwards on the same show.  And of course, my interest in MovNat goes right along with that.  I've got some races coming up (the Savage Race in June and Mud Ninja in July, both as fund raisers for Train 4 Autism) so fitness and getting into top shape is of prime concern.

The other thing I really want to do is go back through Mark Sisson's The Primal Connection and start really paying attention to my lifestyle factors.  There's so much to pay attention to out of that book, and so much of it also goes along with what I've been learning from success mentors of mine like J.B. Glossinger and MorningCoach.com.  

So I'll be busy.  And I'll keep you posted on what's going on.  Because as much as this is about me, it's also about sharing with you and getting your feedback on all of this.  It's important to me that I give something back to this community because it's done so much for me!    
Labels:

Comments

  1. VirginieJanuary 25, 2014 at 11:37 AM

    What did you feel after reintroducing dairy ? I am still confused on wether or not it is good for us.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. JamieJanuary 25, 2014 at 3:02 PM

      I had no issues with reintroducing dairy. But that's not the case for everyone. I treat it as an "if it's there, don't sweat it" situation and try to make it as healthy as possible when I do have it.

      Delete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Caffeine and Cortisol - a 30-Day Experiment

No Caffeine for Me! Today, I began upon a 30-day experiment to reduce my cortisol levels by removing coffee from my diet. The goal is to see how it might be affecting my cognitive function and my belly fat. Cortisol is a hormone that is related to stress .  At a very basic level, cortisol is created as a response to stressors in our environment.  Back when we were still chucking spears at deer and chasing down antelope, cortisol was helping to preserve our lives by giving us quick energy by signalling to our livers that it was time to engage in a process known as gluconeogenesis. This process is basically the breakdown of amino acids, the building blocks of protein, into glucose - one of the two monosaccharides (the healthy one) that our bodies use for fuel. Picture this - you're walking across the street, enjoying the day, when suddenly some inattentive driver tries to turn and doesn't see you.  Your heart rate speeds up, and you get a little burst of speed to quickly sprint o
18 comments
Read more

More on Journaling: So many tools...

Journaling was long a habit that I wanted to pick up but just never did.  And it was never because I didn't believe in its worth, it was that I just never built the habit or found the proper method that worked best for me.  I'd start it for a while, be enthusiastic about it, and then lose the habit when something else came up and interrupted me.   That's all changed for me now, as I look forward each morning and night to journaling in my newest tool I've found.  But that search has clued me in to a ton of great journaling tools that might help you as you're looking for that great push to get you into the journaling habit!   The Five-Minute-Journal:    This is obviously   the one I've adopted .  It's simple, it's quick, and it does the trick.  I won't expand into stuff I've already talked about with this in the two posts I've done on this fantastic tool.  But let's talk about some of the other aspects of the Five-Minute Journal.
4 comments
Read more

Low-carb/Gluten-free helps with ADHD in study

The ADHD Research Centre in Eindhoven, the Netherlands has some interesting things to say about the treatment of children with ADHD: Diet can do it. Medscape, a website affiliated with WebMD , reports on a study by the Centre where groups of children with ADHD symptoms and behaviors were tested on their reaction to an elimination diet. The study included 100 children with ADHD, all of whom were checked for allergic reactions to foods before the study began.  Half were placed into a control group, half into a test group where their diet was limited to "mainly rice, meat vegetables, pears, and water, complemented with potatoes, fruits, and wheat."  And all the children were monitored by their parents for behavior changes. Now here's the interesting part:  after 2 weeks, 41 of the children in the test group were showing no changes, so the diet was limited even more to rice, meat, vegetables, pears, and water.  Notice what was left out:  gluten and fructose via the wheat and
5 comments
Read more