Day 7 of Whole 30

It has officially been one week since Kaci and I started this little adventure. This morning we did a long run and my legs felt great afterwards. My pre-run meal included one scrambled egg, 1/4 sweet potato, and about 5 baby carrots. My energy was good throughout the run and I was able to play soccer later in the day.

So far, I am still not having any "strong cravings", although something about hot summer nights makes me want ice cream, but I'll go for a handful of cherries that I picked from our cherry tree this weekend instead.

Controlling insulin response, inflammation, and acidifying effects are the main reason the Whole 30 program is so strict. Many foods can have negative effects without us really realizing it. Before doing this program, I often enjoyed eating oatmeal, brown rice, bread, string cheese, and plain greek yogurt. So, the idea of giving up dairy and grains for this was not appealing to me and hard for me to understand, since I felt like what I was eating was healthy. Since on the program, I have noticed improvement in recovery time, mental concentration, and no pain in my knees in the mornings, which I was really suffering from before. I am not entirely sure why the improvement and whether it has anything to do with removing dairy and/or grains from my diet, but once I start to reintroduce those back into my diet after the 30 day program, I may have a better idea. The links below are Dallas and Melissa's grain and dairy manifestos which explain their reasoning for taking these out of the diet.

Grain Manifesto

Dairy Manifesto

Day 4 of Whole 30

Today is day 4 on the Whole 30 plan and still going strong. Was pretty tired throughout the morning, but also didn't exercise until 4 pm, so I was a bit off schedule. I usually do my workout in the morning and that wakes me up, so that may have been why I was tired today until late morning. For breakfast, I had a lettuce wrapped burger (left overs from dinner), walnuts/raisin mix, and some grapes. Lunch was a chicken salad salad from the cafe down the street from my work - love that salad, but I skipped on the bread that comes with it. Instead, I had brought a cooked yam with me to work and had that as a complex carb with my salad. Snacks included strawberries, blackberries, cherries and celery with sunbutter, baby carrots, sliced yellow squash, sliced green bell pepper, and a couple spoonfuls of coconut butter. Dinner was a chicken breast with salad and oil/vinegar for dressing. I've been using oil/vinegar for salad dressing because most other dressings have either sugar or xantham gum in them, which is a corn product (i.e. another form of sugar). For exercise today, I did a bootcamp workout with folks from my work for about 40 minutes and then ran 4 miles. The run was hard because it was around 5 pm during the hot part of the day, but I had no pain in my shins or calves, which was great. I am definitely noticing an improvement in my inflammation problems after running and in the morning with the clean eating. I weighed myself this evening and am down almost 5 pounds already!

Day 3 of Whole 30

Today is day 3 of the Whole 30 program for Kaci and me. Not sure how Kaci is doing today, but I have to say that other than some energy drain/tiredness in the late afternoon, I'm feeling pretty good. The program is designed to control spike in blood sugar and insulin response and also inflammation. So far, I've noticed the following: Better mental concentration/productivity at work, no joint pain in my knees in the morning as I had been having, no pain after running (i.e. shin splints and calf cramps), and good level of energy throughout the day except for late afternoons, which generally improves upon eating. So far, no cravings for sugar, grains, or processed foods like I thought I would have.

Who's up for a challenge?

I mentioned in my previous post that I attended a nutrition seminar last week. It was put on by Melissa Urban and Dallas Hartwig of Whole9 who provide individual coaching on nutrition as well as travel all over conducting nutrition workshops. Their main philosophy is that whatever we put in our mouth will either help us be more healthy or will cause us to be less healthy.

They have designed a program called Whole 30, which basically works like an elimination diet where you take all the "garbage foods" and "other foods" that may be causing you to feel like garbage out of your diet for 30 days.......No Cheating Allowed!!!! At the end of the 30 days, you can begin to add some of the foods back in slowly (i.e. dairy, grains, legumes, etc.) and see how these foods affect you. Read the details and explanation of their program at Whole30.

Kaci Caldwell and I are going to be starting this on Monday, so that we have some personal support through the process. If anyone else may be interested in starting this, please let me know so we can all support each other during the process.......it won't be easy!

FYI - I do have some information they provided at the seminar such as shopping lists, websites, and recipes that I can share.

Getting Started

Hi Everyone,

In case you are wondering who is writing this blog....it is me....Patti, but hopefully I will be able to get others to contribute as it progresses. I decided to start this blog because at Challenge Fitness we get asked a lot of questions about nutrition.

At the beginning of 2010, I made a resolution that this would be the year that I would learn about nutrition, not for the sake of losing weight, but because I want to be healthy. Some of you know that I used to do figure competitions and the diet that I used in order to get lean enough to go on stage consisted of six meals a day of boiled chicken, broccoli, and sweet potatoes, two protein shakes, 1-2 gallons of water, and a dose of some kind of fat burner (you name it, I probably tried it) for three months straight, plus doing daily doubles of 45 minutes of cardio 5 days a week. While I was able to get a nice lean physique with this extreme regimen for the 5 competitions I did, I never felt healthy, I was irritable, had terrible headaches all the time, couldn't concentrate on anything for more than 5 minutes, and turned into a total ditz (yes, more than I am now). Then, show day would come and go and boom, I was up ten pounds and an additional 5% bodyfat in a month. So, I know that if I need to lean out and drop 20 pounds, that 3 months of the above described hell will do it, but although I might look "good" for a short period of time, the truth is that I won't be healthy. So, my goal this year was to learn about how to eat for "health".

I started by watching the movie, Food, Inc., which convinced me immediately to start buying organic everything and to begin scaling back on all processed foods. From there, I have started to do other research including reading books, internet research, talking to people, etc. I try to read books by different authors in order to get different perspectives, understanding that some authors are more "credentialed" that others, while others may just have more "personal experience and experimentation". As humans, we all have to eat to survive, so it makes no difference to me if a person is a certified nutritionist, medical doctor, or gym junkie who has messed with different regimens, we each have our own experience with food. I like to read it all. So far, the books I've read this year are: "Eating Well for Optimum Nutrition" by Andrew Weil, "Master Your Metabolism" by Jillian Michaels, and "The Eat Clean Diet" by Tosca Reno, and am currently reading "The Omnivore's Dillema" by Michael Pollan. I've also watched the movie Food Matters, went to my naturopath and had a food allergy test, followed various blogs, planted a garden in my yard, and just this week attended a seminar put on by Whole9. What I have found is that the information available on nutrition is endless and it can be quite confusing at times because opinions differ based on different research and experiences. So, my intent with this blog is to share things that I have found interesting, true for me personally, have experimented with, etc. as a way to pass on my research and learning. I do not hold out any particular "diet", "program", "eating lifestyle", whatever you want to call it, as the one and only. Food interacts with our body at the cellular level and because of that, each person will have their own reaction to food, therefore, what works for some people may or may not work for others. There are, however, a few basic principles, that I believe apply to all people when it comes to eating for health. These are:

1. Avoid all processed sugar and artificial sweeteners - these are basically like putting poison in your body.

2. Drink plenty of water throughout the day (i.e. 90 to 120 ounces)

3. Eat more vegetables and more varieties

4. Make meals that are comprised of lean protein, lots of vegetables, and some healthy fat.

5. Buy mostly organic foods

6. Do not eat meat that comes from feed lots of fish from farms - free range chickens, beef, pork, etc. and wild caught fish is much healthier.

7. Avoid processed foods all together. Anything from a box, can, bottle, etc. should be limited or preferably eliminated.

I'm sure there are more, but this is what I've got for now.