The First Week of Whole30 Weirdness

As promised, here's my daily log of feels during the Whole30 Challenge. It's been a crazy ride.

Day 1 (4/14/14): Yeah, I can do this! So many vegetables I can eat! So many meats to eat! Down with sugar! I'ma eat me a pork chop for dinner. With cauliflower. Hell yeah.

Day 2 (4/15/14): Breakfast: hard-boiled eggs and turkey bacon! YUM!! Oh crap. Turkey bacon has sugar in it. WHAT. Oh well, I'm not wasting it. I'll buy non-sugary bacon tomorrow.  Crazy hike today! Super steep downhill, bouldery, cactusy hike. Two hard-boiled eggs and turkey bacon for breakfast wore off around 9 am. Better ramp up the breakfast. Leftover pork chops wore off about an hour after eating. I'M SO HUNGRY. Long drive home. Now I'm hangry. I should shop at Sprout's to pick up some more paleo things I can't find at the regular grocery store. Crap, shopping hungry is stupid. $65 later...

Day 3 (4/16/14): More hard-boiled eggs and the last of the turkey bacon for breakfast. Banana chia pudding helps take the edge off. Even though it's technically "cheating" (it's a fake dessert food), it's still healthy and keeps me full for a long time. More crazy steep hiking. Tuna with paleo-mayo, tomatoes, and cucumber for lunch is actually sticking with me, this is great! Crap. Mom sent me a box full of Easter candy. The moment I had to hide the box under a stack of other boxes happened when my hands starting shaking and I started thinking crazy thoughts like, "I wonder if I can eat all this chocolate in one sitting? I bet I can. I TOTALLY CAN. I CAN DO A CHOCOLATE CHALLENGE INSTEAD OF WHOLE30 CHALLENGE." More grocery shopping because I'm tearing through vegetables faster than I can buy them and I needed a distraction from the candy box.

Day 4 (4/17/14): Eggs, mushrooms, spinach omelet for breakfast. Delish.  Driving around from site to site today, so lots of snacking on salami, carrot sticks, grape tomatoes, and coconut chia drink. Got chased out of a site by a crowbar-wielding tweaker who was yelling, "I FOUND A CROWBAR! I FOUND A CROWBAR!" Feel oddly energetic (unrelated to the tweaker incident... probably). Co-worker eating chocolate Easter candy in front of to "make me stronger." Nice try, pal. D comes back into town tonight. He's into The Challenge as long as I keep feeding him shrimp stir fry.

Day 5 (4/18/14): MOAR EGGS. This time they're from a co-worker who owns chickens, so they're super fresh with neon orange yolks. NOMZ. Partial office day. 12:30 rolls around and I head home. The entire car ride home I think about In-n-Out Burger and how much I want to put at least 3 burgers into my face. Leftover shrimp, green beans, beets, sweet potato, and mushrooms for lunch instead. Grocery store shopping. Again. This time it sucked. The smell of bread made my mouth water. Non-sugary bacon doesn't exist in stores, apparently. Bought steak and what seemed like 20 pounds of vegetables instead. Maybe it'll last me three days.

Day 6 (4/19/14): Wish I was joking when I say that I dreamed about eating chocolate last night. Felt guilty upon waking, only to remember that I hadn't actually eaten any chocolate. Reminded myself that this is the reason why I'm doing this: I'm addicted to sugar. Egg, bacon, broccoli scramble and banana chia pudding for breakfast. BLT salad for lunch. Freaking delicious. Still feel oddly energetic, but also hungry ALL THE TIME. Hoping incessant hunger will go away when my body realizes that throwing a tantrum will get it neither bread nor Almond Joy. Also hoping I don't accidentally put bread or Almond Joy into my mouth. Chicken cooked in salsa, spicy kale chips, and sweet potato hash for dinner. No chocolate accidents.

Day 7 (4/20/14): HOPPY EASTER! Energy levels feeling less odd, but remain high. No dreams about candy last night (phew). Still have an underlying feeling of constant hunger, but not as intense as previous days. This is a good sign. Tri-tip roast with carrots, leeks, sweet potato, and mushrooms for late Easter lunch. Pineapple for dessert. So California. Much paleo. Very health. Wow!

Summary: The first week was hard... challenging (Whole30 has very specific rules about using the word "hard" to describe their program, as in, DON'T). I learned a lot about myself. I am way more addicted to sugary things than I thought I was. I also feel like a total badass when I walk out of the grocery store with nothing but healthy "approved" things to eat (and my soul dies a little every time I walk out without an Almond Joy). Also, bacon has sugar in it.

I will admit, I'm "cheating" here and there; the way that I justify it is that small cheats are ok as long as they're consistent with my main goal of kicking my sugar and grains habit. A small amount of carrageenan in my coconut milk is not something I'm going to stress over. If the only bacon I can find has a small amount of sugar in it, I'm not going to skip buying it. I'm not buying the bacon to gratify my body's Gollum-like sugar-hoarding desires, so it's consistent with my goals. I'm not eating banana chia pudding because I want dessert, I'm eating it because it's the only thing I've found so far that keeps me full for more than two hours.

Also, I need to plan better and not spend $1 billion on groceries every week. 

This will take some tweaking over the weeks, but as long as I stick my goals, I'm happy. Mostly happy. And a little hangry.