First though, it was a roller coaster last week and this is just some of what I felt and found:
Cravings. The first couple of days, if you caught me at the right time, I might have actually killed someone for Starburst jelly beans! I was hungry all day every day for the first few days. I had some rough cravings and my schedule being all messed up did not help that out. I turned to dried fruit to help with the cravings, but I don't know that I would do that again. See my "aha" moments below for why not!
Lack of appetite. After the cravings subsided, nothing sounded appetizing. I usually love hard boiled eggs and almost all fruit and I just didn't want anything. I would prepare food and push it around on my plate because it didn't sound good and it didn't taste good. This lasted another 2-3 days and it was so frustrating because my body was telling me that I was starving, but anything I tried to eat immediately lost its appeal. Again, my appetite has bounced back in week two and I pretty much eat every 2 hours, like a hamster.
Thirst. Throughout most of the first week, I was soooo thirsty. All. The. Time. I would wake up and chug water. I would grab a snack and chug my water. I would chug water just to chug water. It's not as intense in week two so far, but I have also focused on drinking more water throughout the day and not just when I feel like I'm dying of thirst.
Sleep. I slept pretty poorly the entire first week, too, but again, this could be due to my overnight shift throwing the rest of my week out of whack. I think there were other factors contributing too, but for the whole week, it seemed like all I did when I wasn't at work is nap and then I would sleep for 10-12 restless hours at night, too. Not a good situation. But like I said, I think there were other factors at play here, that I am working on addressing now. Who knows, you might hear about them in a later post!
Coffee. Toward the end of week one, I found that I didn't drink all of my coffee in the morning and I wasn't dying for more midday. This is a completely new experience for me because I love coffee (the actual taste). More to come after week two....?
Cheats. My cheating incident was a glass of semi-dry red wine with dinner with my best friend on Sunday. I'm going with the claim that the antioxidants outweigh the negative effects of sugar. Yes. Anyway, I wish that wouldn't have fallen within the challenge period because I wanted to make it a full 30 days, but I definitely don't regret it. It was a well-used cheat.
Also, behold the best snack out there if you need a little crunch in your life:
Aha's:
1. A pancake is still a pancake, even if it's a "healthy" pancake. Before the challenge started, I read through the Whole30 page since it is related to the No Added Sugar Challenge. One of the most interesting pieces that I found is that they talk about our psychological relationship to food and how even if you make a pancake with a banana and an egg, you are still eating a pancake. That was so interesting to me and I've taken it with me as I go on this challenge. I'm trying not to make "healthy" versions of sugary foods and just focus on eating whole foods...which has proven difficult as PMS hits this week....boo. Pancakes sound amaze-balls right now....
2. Would you ever eat 180 grapes? This is related to the cravings bit from above. As I noshed away at my dried banana chips and dried apple slices, I got to thinking: how much fiber is still present in this and is it even helpful? How similar would this be to drinking a glass of fruit juice? First, you should know that at some point in college, I decided that fruit juice is nonsense because it is basically sugar juice, and I stopped drinking it. Well I did a little research on dried fruit and found a website called PaleoLeap. Now, bear in mind that this is not cited as scientific evidence, but rather food for thought. They title an article "Dried Fruit and Sugar: Would You Eat 180 Grapes?" Would you? Because that is how many grapes you would consume in a regular sized box of raisins. It makes you think, doesn't it? I'm not going to steal all of their thunder and tell you everything from the article, but click the link to check it out.....it's some good info.
3. Bioavailability. This is in a similar vein as the grapes, but I think this is the beauty of biology. You will often see supermarket claims that processed foods are high in a certain vitamin or mineral that is a) not normally be in that food, b) not normally in that food at that level, or c) was removed when the food was processed and added back in afterwards. THIS IS NOT NATURE. I understand from a scientific perspective the need to isolate specific nutrients and to try to add single nutrients into foods, but that is not how nature intended us to eat! Those foods are not real foods! The beauty of biology and nutrition is that the nutrients that our bodies need are absorbed more easily when they are in whole foods. There is something special about the relationship of specific nutrients in a specific food item and eating processed crap, whether a single nutrient is added back in or not is simply not the same as getting the same nutrient from a whole food item. I'm sure you have heard that multivitamin tablets are nonsense because we don't absorb many of the nutrients. This is a factor in why that happens. Now, I am not saying to quit your multivitamin, but think about it. Wouldn't you rather eat your nutrients from nature than out of a lab? Anyway, the point is that nutrients in whole foods have a high bioavailability. All this means is that our bodies like nutrients in whole foods and absorb them more easily than the ones added to processed crap. So simple, even a caveman could do it, right? ;]
This got a little long, but I hope you enjoyed! I will be back after week two for an update, but I will leave you with this to ponder:
stay fit!
xoxo
anne
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