Whole 30 Week 1 Recap — The Nourish RD

It has been 7 days and despite 3 hours of sleep last night, I’m feeling pretty great overall. I’ve had a few ups and downs, but nothing too uncomfortable. I also haven’t felt deprived or hungry. I actually feel more satisfied after eating even though I’m eating fewer calories overall. When your body is being fed with exactly what it needs, it stops “searching” for what’s missing, which helps with self-regulation in terms of portion control and satiety.

What I bring to work - Breakfast, lunch and snacks

As you can see above, what I eat during the day is quite pretty and there’s a lot of it. And this is just what I bring to work, it doesn’t include my morning smoothie, coffee, kombucha or dinner. I also keep a bag of nuts on hand for extreme hunger, but have only had to dip into that if I’m not heading home right after work.

My typical schedule is:

8:30 am - banana while I pump with coffee
9 am - 10 am - graze on blueberries
10 am - apple while pumping
12 pm - lunch
1:30 - 3 pm - graze on carrots and cherry tomatoes
3 pm - hard boiled egg
4:20 pm - Rx bar while I pump

So I’m basically eating all day long while also chugging water and sipping on black coffee and kombucha throughout the morning. You’ll notice there is a lot of fruit. I wouldn’t normally be eating this much fruit, but since I’m breastfeeding I find that I need some extra carbs and sugar to keep my supply up.

This is a perfect way of eating for me because I don’t really care what am eating as long as I can eat all the time. Ask my brother, I’ve been a food hoarder my whole life. See the previous post on what dinners looked like last week. I’ll try to do another round-up next week and post a few recipes. Now on to how I’ve been feeling….

Here’s a rundown of the good, the bad and the fluctuations:

Good:

Clear, calm glowing skin - the dryness and redness has gone away and the wrinkles that were popping up at an alarming rate have softened (whew).
Fewer cravings - I’m not going to say I don’t want sugar anymore, but I don’t NEED it like I did before. I’ve satisfied any cravings with dried fruit and nuts this week, but I’m going to do less of that each week to get as much benefit out of this as I can.
Allergy symptoms are gone. No itchy eyes, running nose, etc. Hooray!
Unexplained happiness. This is pretty self-explanatory, but the first few days as I stopped eating junk, I periodically had this happy, '“bubbly” feeling for no reason. Hoping for lots more of that soon!

Bad:

Digestive back-log and bloat. The first few days were fine - actually better than it had been - but then the weekend hit and all movement came to a halt. This is a normal side effect of cleansing, but it can be very uncomfortable. I’ll discuss why this happens shortly.
Irritability. I thought I was home free in this department until Saturday. Along with my digestive troubles came my emotional claws. EVERYTHING annoyed me for two whole days.
Fatigue. I am typically a very energetic person, but this weekend (specifically Sunday), I felt like I was wading through peanut butter. I woke up today feeling much better (despite no sleep) so things are looking up.
Brain fog. Along with fatigue, it felt like my brain was computing at about 40%. zzzzzz zzzz. Again, much better today.
Low grade headache. Nothing I couldn’t handle, but it just felt like a hangover without the fun :/

Fluctuations:

Emotions. As you read above, I experienced both unexplained happiness and irritability. Emotions are tied directly to your gut, so it’s normal to feel happy during times of proper digestion and crabby when things are backed up or when there are toxins floating around in your system that were previously neatly tucked away in your cells.. (I’ll talk a lot about this is future posts)
Energy. At the beginning of the week I had a lot of energy and it decreased over the weekend. This is also very much tied to digestion. If your body is working hard to clean out waste, there isn’t much fuel left over to make you feel energized.

As you read this list you’re probably thinking, that doesn’t sound fun at all, why would I put myself through that? Valid response. BUT, this is temporary. I think of it kind of like sore muscles after a workout. The sorer I am, the stronger I’m getting…or maybe the more more out of shape I am…whatever.

Same principle here though. If you’re feeling symptoms, it means your body is clearing out toxins that have been polluting your body. And if you continue feeding your body fresh, live enzymes (fruit and vegetables) and avoid foods that cause inflammation or add to the toxicity (grains/processed foods/sugar), your body is able to put more energy towards “cleaning house.”

I’ll be going into more detail on how this works in a future post.

Things I will be working on this week:

Listening to my hunger and satiety cues. Last week, I focused on eating the correct foods, but found myself mindlessly grazing, which led to some uncomfortable fullness. I’m going to slow down during meals and pause before reaching for snacks to assess whether I’m actually hungry.
Reducing “natural” sugar. While foods like dates, raisins and other dried fruits as well as fresh fruit are technically compliant, they still contain a lot of sugar. I’m going to do my best to stick to fresh fruit and cut down on the dried.
Increasing water intake. I already drink a lot of water (about 8 liters per day), but even so, when I’m breastfeeding I constantly feel dehydrated. To help move waste through and out of the body, hydration is key, so my goal is to increase to about 10-12 liters.

I’m hoping this will be the last week of negative symptoms and that I’ll start feeling/seeing real results this week. We’re going to have a lot going on after work, so my meal plan will have a few pre-made meals from Kitchfix and I’ll be explaining why their food is so amazing.

If you’re thinking of making some changes to improve your health and would like some guidance on how to get there, contact me here and I’ll talk you through my program.

Have a great week!