BIRBS ARE HERE

They are here! A little rumpled, hungry, and thirsty, but here. After some food, water, screaming the song of their people, and some tentative cage exploration, they are settled and it's now night night time.

Phew, what a journey! I will bomb this blog with adorable photos starting tomorrow.

Three more days! Three more days! Three more days!

I haven't had much to post onto my BIRD blog because I don't currently have BIRDS.

That will all change in three days!

My feather-kids are scheduled to arrive in San Diego at 6:30 p.m. on Saturday. Holy hell, that snuck up on me.

D is already making a plan to keep me as calm as possible Saturday morning, with promises of things like "gardening," "yoga and meditation," and "frozen yogurt." I still think I'm going to require a heavy sedative to not be an Anxious Annie McNervouspants. Everything has to go smoothly in Maryland, and I can control exactly none of it from California. Mom is nervous about getting them into their crates. The crates need to be approved by the airlines. Mom has to fill out all kinds of paperwork. They have to be put on the correct flight. They have a layover where someone else needs to put them on their next correct flight. They need to be calm because stress can kill birds pretty easily and these guys have like zero life experiences outside of their current room. Also can you tell that I'm a control freak and 100% of my anxiety stems from having to rely on people? I bet you can't. (I bet you can).

The Final Week (plus two days) of Whole30 Insanity

Day 22 (5/5/14): Today was such a blur. Nest survey early in the morning, back to office for a couple hours, then head home to move more stuff. All I really recall eating is some carrot sticks, a weaksauce salad, and plantains, chicken, and green beans for dinner. Sounds about right.

Day 23 (5/6/14): MOVING DAY! I'm moving today. Am I moving today, you ask? Why yes! I am! All my things are going from THIS house to THAT OTHER house! Stomach not feeling well today due to Rx change, so I just pick at things. Bad eating the last couple of days is making me grumpy, tired, etc. Will go to grocery store tomorrow for all the veggies, but for now... I sleep.

Day 24 (5/7/14): Remember that time I moved and said that I was tired and needed to sleep? Yeah, me too. Sleep didn't happen. The cats YOWLED ALL NIGHT LONG. Not even a 5 minute break. Couldn't make breakfast when I got up at 4:30 am, had to do Starbucks for breakfast. Needless to say, they do not offer paleo breakfasts, so I cheated. Egg white, spinach, feta (cringe), all on a wrap (doh!). Briefly thought about just picking the egg off, and then ate the entire thing in a fit of rage. Staying at a friend's house tonight.

Day 25 (5/8/14): Stomach still not ok. Hungry, but just thinking about eating making me feel nauseated.

Day 26 (5/9/14): Repeat of Day 25. Grocery shopping today was grueling. Ended up buying applesauce, zucchini, and kiwis. Wtf? I can't make dinner with that, dumb brain. Cheat again for dinner - paleo pancakes. All ingredients are Whole30 approved, but it's technically a "sweet" food. Fuck it. They're delicious and actually kinda calm my stomach (for about 10 minutes). Only 3 ingredients: banana, egg, and almond flour. Nom.

Day 27 (5/10/14): Wake up feeling like it's gonna be a repeat of the last several days. Eggs for breakfast sit in my stomach like a rock. I'm starving and feeling weak by 10 am. Still can't really eat anything. Roommate offers me half her shrimp/veggie/rice burrito for lunch. It actually sounds good, so I eat some of it. If my options are eat Whole30 foods and feel horrible, or eat a shrimp burrito and feel great, guess which one I'm going to pick? You bet your butt I shoved that burrito right into my mouth hole. Even though I've had several serious lapses in the Whole30 program, I'm still trying my best to stick to it most of the time (as opposed to how I normally face challenges, which is, once I fail, I keep failing so hard over and over again because who cares? I failed.). I only have three more days, and I can definitely make them count.

Day 28 (5/11/14):Stuck with it today. Salad from Subway because I was running tons of errands. Very meh, but did the trick. I'm ready for this challenge to be over, honestly. Even though, yes, there is a wonderful variety of vegetables and meats available to eat, I'm not feeling fulfilled or satisfied by what I'm eating. Eating that shrimp burrito the other day, which had rice in it, was the most satisfied I've felt in the entire 30 days. Stomach still not 100% ok, but doing much better than a couple days ago.

Day 29 (5/12/14): Feeling so much better today. Eggs and bacon don't make my stomach buck.Salad, asparagus, lamb (OMG YUM), and curried sweet potato chips. Yup. All that happened.

Day 30 (5/13/14): My last day. I didn't make anything extraordinary, too tired from work. It was literally 100 degrees today, and a huge fire broke out in San Diego. No homes or lives lost (yet, fingers crossed it stays that way), but over 1500 acres of pristine coastal sage scrub gone. Just totally burned to a crisp. Screw droughts.

Summary: Doing this challenge with a move and Rx change right smack in the third/fourth week was a terrible idea. Combination of stress, feeling awful, and 90+ degree temperatures made the last week really miserable. I'm glad that I had some kind of guiding rule/light-force to keep me away from chocolate during this stressful, hormonal time, but I could have really used some toast to calm my stomach.


All in all, I'm really REALLY glad I tried this challenge. I didn't totally meet the standards of Whole30, but I got SUPER close and I'm proud of myself for that. I still crave sweet things and salty junk-food snacks from time to time, but my brain no longer goes crazy when I walk past the candy at the grocery check-out. I even watched an Almond Joy commercial yesterday and didn't cry (jk, I've never cried over candy). I'm going to allow myself one piece of chocolate on day 31, and then try out another 30 days of no processed sugar. I'll start to work pseudo-grains and regular grains back into my diet, natural sweeteners like honey and maple syrup (in tiny amounts), and a little bit of dairy (hard cheeses and small amounts of yogurt). 

The Third Week of Whole30 Cray-Ballness

Day 15 (4/28/14): I'm HALFWAY THERE! Also, just kidding about the lost weight thing. I think the shorts just stretched out. (An aside: my body is pretty much incapable of losing weight. Only with a combination of extreme exercise and pretty serious calorie restriction do I EVER lose weight. I trained for a half marathon for like 4 months on 1400 calories a day and lost three pounds. THREE. POUNDS. And everything still jiggled and my clothes fit me, so don't give me that "you were building muscle" crap. My genetics want me to be shaped like a Teletubby forever. Ok. Rant over.) So today was leftover Bora Bora Fireballs, carrot sticks, eggs, brussels sprouts, and a gargantuan salad with shredded salmon and beets on top for dinner. Omg. Yum.

Day 16 (4/29/14): Two eggs and two strips of bacon for brekkie (been hanging out with my roommate too long). Looonnnng drive up into the mountains for field work today. 10 oz chia drink and a handful of carrot sticks snack attack keeps hunger at bay until... wait for it..... 5:00 p.m. Now don't get me wrong, I could have eaten during that time. I could have probably eaten an entire cow. But I didn't get that crazed I HAVE TO EAT RIGHT NOW feeling until I got home from work. And then salami and pineapple and brussels sprouts (not all at the same time) went into my mouth hole. (An aside: hooray for finally being too busy at work to stop and eat. For real. I've been waiting for this since last fall. Busy Mandy is happy Mandy.)

Day 17 (4/30/14): I thought I'd be getting sick of eggs by now, but I'm really not. Before I decided to do this challenge, I ate Kashi cereal for breakfast. Same cereal. Same flax milk. Every. Single. Day. But if I ate eggs two days in a row, I'd be sick of them. I'm not sick of eggs now! Finding something frustrating: I began to follow several "paleo" blogs on Instagram, Tumblr, Blogger, etc. to find some daily inspiration for recipes. I'd venture to guess that about 80% of recipes these people post are Paleo-fied desserts. People. This completely misses the point of the paleo lifestyle. -_- Bucket of salmon-beet-salad for lunch at work. The beets turned EVERYTHING bright pink. Funnest lunch ever! Sweet potato fries, steak, and huge salad for dinner.

Day 18 (5/1/14): Field day! Snacks include carrot sticks and almond butter, salami, and various other goodies. Spent much of the day talking about how wonderful coconut is in everything and how nut butters (excluding peanut butter) rule supreme. Made the best tostones I've ever made in my entire life for dinner with chicken cooked in green chile salsa and green beans. I can't even.

Day 19 (5/2/14): Still chugging along. Moving stress is becoming REAL right now. The house is getting emptier and emptier. D takes me out to dinner at a new place called True Foods Kitchen. I'm not going to lie to you all. I cheated. I got a chopped chicken salad that was DELICIOUS, but it had a dressing with some non-approved ingredients and some kind of unidentifiable pseudo-grain. Do I feel guilty about eating a delicious salad made with organic, locally grown, seasonal ingredients? Not even a little bit.

Day 20 (5/3/14): So much moving. How do we have so much stuff? I cheat again at lunch when we go to Outback Steakhouse. Small steak, coconut shrimp, and vegetables that I'm pretty sure were cooked in butter. Again. I'm not stressing. Bora Bora Fireballs for dinner tonight and for snacking tomorrow. So tired. Much sore. Many moving. Very furniture. Wow!

Day 21 (5/4/14): Champagne brunch at the old house. I resisted bagels, cream cheese, champagne, and muffins. Eggs, bacon, and fruit please! Very busy doing moving stuff today, not a lot of time to really sit down and eat. Leftover Bora Bora Fireballs for lunch, random snacking on veggies and fireballs throughout the day. Today's the last day I get to watch D jump into the pool. He's going back on the island early tomorrow morning. I am le sad :(

Summary: I am totally getting the hang of this. Hunger is way more under control. I still crave sweet things and bread every once in a while, but not every 5 minutes. My biggest disappointment is reading all these other blogs of people who lost all this weight during their Whole30 challenge, and I haven't lost a pound. I've maintained. Which, don't get me wrong, is WAY better than gaining when I'm supposed to be losing... but still. Once the move is complete I'll be ramping up the workouts like whoa (we're getting a new elliptical too! Weee!!), so that should help. And I've decided that I'm going to stick with Paleo diet/lifestyle, with the addition of some pseudo-grains and the subtraction of many much meats (nod to Liz). Not all meats. Just cutting back on red meat and salami. Cause I looooove salami and Ive been eating too much of it.

Lack of Feathery Posts

I don't have much bird-related content because my birds live 3,000 miles away at the moment.

BUT ONLY FOR 30 MORE DAYS!!!! Squeeeee!