Oh, oops, I can eat pumpkin, I think. Wait, that’s not it…

I’ve completed my first week on the Whole30 eating plan. We have enjoyed such delicious home cooked meals as turkey lettuce wraps, cajun shrimp salad, thai halibut curry and on the menu for this weekend is cottage pie with cauliflower mash topping, plantain tostadas with cilantro lime chicken and guacamole, chicken piccata with zucchini noodles, and chicken salad with apples & grapes. I find that in order not to get bored with salad after salad, I need to find, prep and prepare delicious and varied recipes all week, sometimes due to schedules I need to do it all in advance, but as long as I am prepared, this has not been so bad.

I have had the occasional pasta, bread and chocolate cake craving, but determination won out.

There are a lot of rules on the Whole30 and it has been quite eye opening not to be able to just grab a box of organic chicken stock off the shelf without finding there is added sugar! Who knew? I am now very careful to check labels and to reference the Whole30 website often. I am quite attached to my Whole30 Pinterest board and have been frantically searching and pinning recipes. Some of the rules do annoy me, like don’t try to make something that looks like something you used to love, because that might make you crave what you used to love? Like some people seem to think that if you make anything in the shape of a pancake, it will make you crave pancakes? Well, I am not a big lover of pancakes, so no worries. I guess we all just need to be accountable to ourselves and stay off ridiculous comment threads on random websites and blogs. Or maybe that is just me.

All week my numbers have been really good. My blood pressure was borderline low, so I reduced another medication. My blood sugars were going really well, so I cut back on my Metformin, and then this morning I had a random high fasting blood glucose reading of 158. Whoa. I freaked out! I have not had a reading that high for quite some time. I know I need to get in more exercise, but I have been so tired this week. I decided to take the exercise a little easy in order to give my body a chance to adjust to the new diet (she says lazily). I know it is time to stop giving myself a pass on the exercise, but still, things had been going so well. So instead of taking it in stride and going about the day as usual, and exercising!!! I questioned the whole darn thing. Is this eating plan really working for me? It is so difficult to cut out so many of the things I love… not just eat in moderation, but cut them out completely. I thought, to heck with this, if this is not achieving my goals, why am I punishing myself? Well, all of this was just overreacting, of course, but when your messed up body feels carb deprived, it will force you to make all kinds of stupid decisions, like… getting on the scale! Ouch, there it is. You are NOT allowed to get on the scale during the Whole30. Let me repeat, you are not allowed to weigh yourself during the first 30 days. I don’t even like weighing myself. But throughout my entire life, weighing myself has been an indicator of whether I am doing something right, or doing something wrong. I have been weighing myself since I was 14 years old. There are a bunch of reasons why they don’t want you to weigh yourself on the Whole30. I threw them all out the window and got on that scale and I looked down and saw that I had lost 5 pounds. Remember how I had faithfully followed my other eating guidelines for myself and struggled to lose 4 pounds in a month’s time? Well, I guess the Whole30 is working if losing pounds is a goal, and it is, but regulating those blood sugars is my main goal, and I think exercise is key. I felt bad about breaking a rule, but I felt good about the fact that I had a concrete way to establish that what I am doing is working.

So, here’s the numbers:

Average blood pressure for the week: 115/74, 55 (resting heart rate)

Weight: 186 (loss of 5 pounds, 9 pounds total since Feb. 14, 2015)

Fasting Blood glucose readings for the week (doc wants it under 130, normal is below 100): 103, 114, 105, 132 (cut one medication in half), 123, 133, 91, 158

Bring on the exercise. 😦

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Oh, and post script… this is a text communication between me and Blue Eyes this morning:

Me: Good morning! I cheated, and I’m going to blog about it (shocked face emoji)

BE: What did you do?

Me: Oh, speaking of cheating, I forgot to tell you that they referenced Ashley Madison on a Criminal Minds episode I was watching… weird, huh? I need to eat, I am SO hungry.

BE: Go eat naughty girl!!!

Me: I’m a cheater (devil face emoji). So glad to get that off my chest. A weight has been lifted, ha. I guess you’ll have to read about it on my blog.

That text was followed by a phone call from Blue Eyes. He asked me what I was talking about. I told him I had weighed myself, which he knows is against the rules as we both promised not to weigh for the entire 30 days. He let out a huge sigh. I asked him what he thought I was talking about. He said he thought I hooked up with someone. Seriously? It is like he doesn’t know me at all. Geez. I told him if I had had sex with someone outside our marriage, I certainly wouldn’t be joking about it. He said he knew, but that he cannot control his fear response. Well, I cannot control my sarcasm either, so I guess we’re even???!!!???