Whole30

LIFE. It’s my One Little Word for 2011. And LIFE has been good. The boys are, well, vibrant. Little Miss is, well, I don’t even have the words to describe her. We have had months of productive lessons. Russ is back to work. Spring is here, and I’m positive glorious weather is on its way. I have interests and passions. I have an amazing family. My friends are awesome. Life is right on track. Except…

My eating habits are ATROCIOUS. I want to (and do) eat all. day. long. I’ve been hungry since the day I was born. The only time I’ve lost my appetite longer that the 48 hour flu has been during the first few months of pregnancy and the couple months I was at my worst battling anxiety/depression. My whole life I’ve craved food that I shouldn’t be eating. Lately that has escalated. Something must change. Telling myself to eat smaller portions doesn’t work. Convincing myself that veggies are tasty doesn’t work. And fighting the cravings is unbearable.

On top of the craving and eating, my energy is almost non-existent. I constantly feel like I’m coming down with a head cold. That stuffed-up, head-achy, foggy-brain sort of feeling. I don’t want to live LIFE like that.

I’m participating in the Whole30 to reset my system. Thirty days of no sugar, grains, soy, dairy, or legumes. It will be one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. (I don’t think I’ve gone that long without a Dr. Pepper in twenty years!) After thirty days, I’ll re-evaluate how I feel and decide where to go from there. I suspect I’ll need to be on some version of a Paleo diet to feel at my best, but we’ll see.

I chose to work in two-week increments. Last Saturday I stopped drinking Dr. Pepper and eating M&Ms while gradually reducing my carb intake. I’m spending another week working on my menu and grocery shopping lists. Friday the 29th is officially my day 1 of Whole30, at which time I will only be eating meats (including fish and eggs), fruits, vegetables, nuts (-peanuts) and healthy fats. Two weeks after starting Whole30, I plan on adding in some form of exercise.

I’ll be sharing menus and recipes here on my blog, but if anyone is interested in doing this challenge with me, I’ll share a few links to get you started:

The Whole30 2011:: Details on the Whole30 challenge.

Everyday Paleo:: Lots of great information and awesome recipes.

Paleo Diet Lifestyle:: More great recipes.

 

And some extra credit reading for you. {grin}

 Is Sugar Toxic? @ The New York Times (It’s a long article, but every word is worth it!)

If Lustig is right, then our excessive consumption of sugar is the primary reason that the numbers of obese and diabetic Americans have skyrocketed in the past 30 years. But his argument implies more than that. If Lustig is right, it would mean that sugar is also the likely dietary cause of several other chronic ailments widely considered to be diseases of Western lifestyles — heart disease, hypertension and many common cancers among them.

Speaking of diabetes, heart disease, and cancer…

The Fiscal Toll of Treating ‘Lifestyle Diseases’ @ The New York Times

For the first time in history, lifestyle diseases like diabetes, heart disease, some cancers and others kill more people than communicable ones. Treating these diseases — and futile attempts to “cure” them — costs a fortune, more than one-seventh of our GDP.

Let’s add epilepsy and kidney disease to the conversation, shall we?

Low-carb, high-fat diet could replace dialysis @ Health on MSNBC.com

A type of low-carb, high-fat diet that's typically used to manage seizures for children with epilepsy could reverse kidney disease in Type 1 and Type 2 diabetics, a new animal study suggests.

As long as we’re talking about health, how about a good night’s sleep?

How Little Sleep Can You Get Away With? @ The New York Times

Not surprisingly, those who had eight hours of sleep hardly had any attention lapses and no cognitive declines over the 14 days of the study. What was interesting was that those in the four- and six-hour groups had P.V.T. results that declined steadily with almost each passing day. Though the four-hour subjects performed far worse, the six-hour group also consistently fell off-task. By the sixth day, 25 percent of the six-hour group was falling asleep at the computer. And at the end of the study, they were lapsing fives times as much as they did the first day.

The six-hour subjects fared no better — steadily declining over the two weeks — on a test of working memory in which they had to remember numbers and symbols and substitute one for the other. The same was true for an addition-subtraction task that measures speed and accuracy. All told, by the end of two weeks, the six-hour sleepers were as impaired as those who, in another Dinges study, had been sleep-deprived for 24 hours straight — the cognitive equivalent of being legally drunk.

(Emphasis mine…Lola, did you hear that?)