On August 20th, I started a 30-day challenge with my partner. For those of you that are unfamiliar with this kind of diet/lifestyle, here are the basics: You can only eat foods that our cavemen ancestors would have consumed during the Paleolithic era. This means no beans, legumes, processed foods, foods with added sugar, corn, dairy, caffeine, grains, etc. It's basically the Whole30, just with less of a strict hold on sugars like honey, and you can eat dark chocolate over 70% and can drink red wine.
I was able to complete the Whole30 at one point, and figured that this would just be another reset of the same kind. Also, I figured that doing this with my partner would mean that he'd have more support and would be able to complete it if I was doing it with him. The thing about these kind of health challenges and resets are that you have to be prepared for them. Go in with the facts, have a game plan, and have someone or something that will keep you accountable. That being said, I've been in this health and fitness game for a little over a solid year now. While that's not much time in the grand scheme of things, I've been able to do my research and experiment a lot with what works and what doesn't for me. So, I figured that since I already ate pretty much 85% paleo already, it shouldn't be too hard to do this challenge. We went full steam ahead after having a much-anticipated gnocchi date the day before, and started off relatively strong. Sure, we missed certain foods, but we were eating paleo and weren't starving. On August 31st, I went on a retreat with a group to San Diego, CA. I wasn't able to be fully in control of the foods I was consuming, but stuck to the nuts and Rx Bars in my backpack for breakfast along with a piece of fruit, and even asked for a salad because I wasn't able to eat the pizza. I should also mention at this moment that I'm lactose intolerant anyway and eat greasy foods so rarely that my body immediately goes, "WHAT IN THE HELL DID YOU JUST PUT INTO ME" whenever I eat pizza. That being said, my biggest cheats were spoonfuls of peanut butter, cheese and deli turkey for "sandwiches", and coffee over the course of the weekend. Back home, my partner had a really rough weekend food-wise that I won't get into, but let's just say that he ended up starting the challenge over. This was definitely a challenge to say the least. Despite already having a healthy diet before taking this on, I found I wasn't ever satisfied with the meals I was eating, and was actually eating worse on this than during my normal routine. I was going to In-N-Out 4x as much as usual because it's something that I could eat, was having a lot of potatoes, and drinking more wine and eating more dark chocolate. I wasn't happy with the food I was consuming, and so I leaned towards the less healthy options in order to diminish the craving for satisfaction. I 100% "failed" this 30 day paleo challenge, and my partner did too. On Friday, we recognized that we were miserable and linked our attitude to the fact that we weren't nourishing our bodies the way they needed to be in order to sustain our rigorous academic and gym-based lifestyle. I hadn't gone to the gym all week because I was so low-energy, was constantly irritable and depressed, and although I was full, felt malnourished despite having eaten primarily protein, fruit, and veggies. After talking about what we thought was best, we stopped the challenge, went to get some well-made fresh pizza from a little market (mine had prosciutto, figs, and arugula on it), and shared a brownie. Needless to say we felt fantastic after, and I finally felt satisfied with the meal I had. That night, we indulged and got a couple of drinks after seeing a play, and agreed that we would develop a new sustainable routine that fits closely to what we needed. This upcoming week, I'm excited to get back to my everyday routine and continue tracking macros rather than keeping to such a strict diet. I will eat a solid breakfast in the morning, a sandwich at lunch, fruit and veggies for snacks, and make dinners that I'm excited about rather than just randomly throwing together (I'm also going to try Blue Apron for the first time this week to see if I like it, and will most likely be posting about that experience next week). What I've learned from this experience is: 1) The food you eat should be used to fuel your day and sustain your lifestyle. 2) I need to work mostly at moderating the quantity of what I eat rather than focusing on eating healthy (which I'm already doing). 3) Food-based challenges shouldn't be something that you pick up and drop, you should want to learn something from it and sustain what you learned well past the conclusion of the challenge. 4) It's ok to backtrack and to "fail" at something if you recognize it truly isn't working for you. 5) Food should be a joy, not a punishment.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorElena B. Archives
June 2020
Categories
All
|