Whole 30 Confessions

Hello friends!

After Thursday's post revealing that I am doing the Whole 30 challenge, I had no idea so many of you had done it, are doing it, or want to hear all about it. I can tell y'all are going to be what keeps me going because Chris and his Cokes and cookies are not helping the cause.

If you have been around here for awhile, you know that I keep things pretty honest and I'm not good at the whole "of course eating celery instead of cookies is great" thing.

So, let me be honest, last week sucked. I was hungry, grumpy, in a brain fog, and all around pretty much wanting to gorge on pizza and ice cream. I was irritated at having to cook so much, only to wind up with a meal that wasn't even 1/100 as good at the Little Caesar's pizza Chris was eating. It was not good.

After some requests, each week I will try to let you know my grocery list and the meals I plan on eating. I think this will help me stay organized and it will help you decide if this is for you or not!

I have found the hardest thing is snacks. When I get home for school, I want a snack. It used to be a bag of chips or bowl of ice cream. Last week it was an apple, banana, orange, or a bag of carrots. Noting equivalent to ice cream, or chips.

Before I started this, I thought my eating habits were pretty good. I felt like my protein shake with fruit and Greek yogurt was a good start to my day. The Belvida breakfast biscuits I had for snack were delicious and a better choice than other snacks I could have opted for. For lunch I usually had left overs from the night before, and my dinners were normally a meat and some veggies, or spaghetti and some veggies. On the weekends Chris and I would normally go out to eat, but then again, nothing I ate I ever felt was terrible or loaded with carbs and sugar. Oh how wrong I was.

During the Whole 30 challenge you can consume absolutely no sugar, added or natural (fruits don't count). None. That eliminates basically everything. Almond milk, yogurt, bread, spaghetti sauce, noodles, grains, cereal, granola, Belvidas, and pretty much everything else I was eating. Of course my beloved Cokes, pizza, and ice cream are out the door, which has not been easy.

Last week I could tell that my brain was lost. I made so many dumb mistakes that even I was dumbfounded as to how much my brain relies on sugar to get through  my day. I am usually pretty with it and I wouldn't be one to consider myself to have a lot of "blonde moments." By Wednesday I had: put face wash on my loofah, opened the deodorant and just stared at it not knowing what to do next, put leftovers in their containers and went to the trash to throw them away, got out an apple to cut, but stood there for two minutes thinking about what I needed to do with this apple, left the bathroom door at school unlocked and someone walked in, called my classroom phone looking for a parent, walked around looking for my keys and they were in my hand, walked around looking for my phone and it was also in my hand, and this is just to name a few.

Y'all, that is bad.

I went to bed before 8:30pm every night last week. As in I was dead asleep by 8:30pm. I also noticed that I did not toss and turn as much as I used to and never once did I feel sick from my acid reflux, something that is a huge blessing.

I am typing all of this out to say that here I sit on a gorgeous Sunday afternoon feeling really good. Do I want sweets, yes, 100%. Do I crave them? Yes, 100%. But, I feel better. My brain is functioning better, I feel more alert and less like I am about to pass out at any moment. I feel skinnier and less blah. I feel healthy.

Tomorrow I will be back with some recipes I made this weekend, the hits and the misses! I won't lie to ya...if I say is is bad, it is probably pretty nasty! I was a cooking fool this weekend and I feel much more prepared going into my second week of the challenge.

Happy Monday!

Linking up with Leann and Kimberlee!