Our Whole Thirty: Wrap-Up and Assessment

     Over thirty days have passed, and I'm happy to say that we not only survived but thrived. Ray has been taking less insulin, I've had learned a few things, Lydia has had more energy, Alex healed a canker sore in a day, and we think we've figured out why Victor breaks out on his arms and back sometimes.

     Ray is now taking almost half of the insulin that he was taking. He also learned that most of what he thought was hunger throughout the day was actually cravings for carb-y things. This makes sense when you learn about how hormones play such a huge role in our hunger signals. I like to think of the brain as being like my dad, and I'll explain: one day, I had to take a reading comprehension and speed test (which is a pretty harsh thing to do to someone with dyslexia). This particular article was about the health benefits of tomatoes and the discovery of lycopene. I went home and told my parents about what I'd learned, and my dad would not believe it. He said that while tomatoes were tasty, they couldn't be good for you because they were too acidic. It wasn't until he read this information himself that he decided this was a huge discovery and had to tell me all about it. Our brains are just like that. We can look in the mirror and at the scale and see ourselves getting fat, but until the brain gets this information from leptin (which it cannot do if the brain is swimming in too much sugar and cortisol), the brain will ignore what it sees in the mirror and on the scare and insist that we're too thin. These signals from the brain are so much stronger than our willpower that it takes restricting carbs from sugars and sweeteners and only getting carbs from our fruits and veggies to get these hormones back into balance. If you want to learn more about this, I highly suggest you read Melissa ad Dallas Hartwig's It Starts with Food.

     I've learned that my stomach and head do not handle chocolate well, be in in the form of cacao in my chili or 75% dark chocolate yumminess. I've learned lots of new information from my new books. And I've learned that even though I'm fat, I'm in better shape than some of my smaller co-workers. After the tornado, we worked really hard to get our store up and running a week later. We were in the heat and moving heavy stuff, and I was barely breaking a sweat. I kept hearing various people say that it was man's work, or we needed men over to help us, or other misogynistic things, and I'd just pick it up and move it. I was throwing around 35 and 40 pounds of sugar and dog food, and after getting back into the pharmacy over a week later, I was asked how my back felt after all that, and I said, "Fine." The only ill effects of working that hard for that long was that I was exhausted at the end of every day.

     Lydia says that she thinks the Whole 30 was worth it because of Ray, but that she didn't notice a difference. I say that I noticed a difference. She was waking up earlier and with ease, and she had more energy throughout the day.

     The boys would go to the grandparents' house to have some cheese sticks and the occasional piece of chocolate, but they did pretty good. We were even able to identify what was making Victor break out on his arms and back pretty easily because it was only happening after he ate the cheese sticks, and Alex was able to heal a pretty bad canker sore that appeared on his gum within a day after taking and with one dose of L-Lysine. They say that felt pretty good, but that they feel so good most of the time that it was hard to tell. They did crave a lot and constantly asked what day we were on.

     So my examination of the rest of Melisa Joulwan's "30 Reasons to Whole30" in her Well Fed 2.

• "You'll learn about yourself." I definitely learned about my appetite triggers and even more about what I can and cannot tolerate.
• "You'll slay the sugar demon." I'm the girl who ate dessert with her meal, and felt I had to have something sweet at every meal, so if I can get over my sugar cravings, anyone can.
• "You'll make new friends." I've definitely gotten more follows on Instagram, but I wouldn't say I made new friends. I would say that the friend I did this with became a better friend, and that's better to me than a new friend.
• "You'll positively influence others." I don't know if this is true. I definitely don't feel like I've influenced anyone, but I did sell a friend on my new dressing recipe which should appear on my other blog: A Geek Girl's Guide to Love, Life, and Happiness pretty soon.
• "You'll learn more about how your body works." I feel I explained this adequately earlier.
• "Your skin will be brighter." I don't know if this is true, but I do feel like my skin was a little better during the Whole 30.
• "Your hair will be shinier." I've gotten so many compliments on my hair lately, and I'm not sure if it's the Whole 30, my new shampoo, or a combination of the two.
• "Your tummy will be flatter." That will be revealed in just a minute. Be patient. Stay with me.
• Your workouts will feel invigorating." I didn't get a lot of workouts in, unless you count what I did at work, and I do, so I'd have to say that this is true. Cleaning up after a mild disaster is pretty invigorating.
• You might get a pr." I guess my personal record for this Whole 30 is being able to sling around up to 40 pounds of product for hours, even at the end of a really long day.
• "You'll feel accomplished (or maybe even smug)." I do feel very accomplished. I did something that scared me to death. I went 30 days without eating a bunch of sugar.
• "You might lose weight, or gain muscle, or both." Again, I'll reveal that in a minute.
• "Your body image will improve." I don't, at this moment, really feel any better about how I look than I did when I started. I know I look better than I did 5 years ago, and that makes me happy, but I'm still far from where I want to be.
• "Food will become both more important and less important." It is more important to me that I get tasty, nutritious food, and less important that I fulfill every craving that crosses my mind.
• "You'll stop dieting and just eat." I don't count calories, and I haven't since I started eating Paleo. I just eat real food, and I know if I've done pretty good or pretty bad by the way that I feel.

      Now for the reveal:



Debra:
Weight before and after:
173.1 - 169.8 Loss of 3.3 pounds
Waist before and after:
43" - 42" Loss of 1 inch
Chest before and after:
44.5" - 42.5" Loss of 2 inches
BMI before and after:
30.66 - 30.08 Loss of 0.58 points




Ray:
Weight before and after:
264.3 - 251.8 Loss of 12.5 pounds
Waist before and after:
49.5" - 48.75" Loss of 0.75 inches
Chest before and after:
49" - 46" Loss of 3 inches
BMI before and after:
37.01 - 35.25 Loss of 1.76 points