Whole30: day six

First of all, I have to confess to a "cheat"... You're not supposed to weigh yourself except day 1 and day 30, but this morning, I stepped on the scale. Over the last five days, I've felt light-headed every time that I stand up and then yesterday, I had a simply awful run. I felt weak from the first step. Rich wondered if I was eating enough...? I feel that I've been eating lots of food and not going hungry, fueling workouts, hydrating and paying attention to recovery. On day 1, the scale read 132.5lbs. This morning it was 127.5lbs.

Five pounds in six days is a lot so it has me worried. I've cooked a lot over the last five days and eaten huge platefuls of food at all meals. I've also eaten lots of snacks: mostly fresh fruit and nuts. Here's a selection of foods we've eaten in the last few days...

Coconut chicken & cauliflower curry with salad of bitter herbs

Scrambled eggs with smoked salmon and sliced brown tomatoes

Buffalo and sweet potato lettuce cups (adapted from Feed Zone)

Scrambled eggs with spinach and chicken apple sausage with fruit salad

 

Poached eggs with smoked salmon and fruit salad

 

Turkey lettuce cups (adapted from Feed Zone)

This week, I'm going to focus on increasing the quantity of food and watch my energy levels to see how I handle my training schedule on Whole30...  though I think I got off to a bad start by failing to plan/time lunch well today... thankfully I had some roasted vegetables and boiled eggs on hand, so that's what I had. A weird combination in my book, but I'm starting to get used to *weird combinations* so perhaps I'll be more open about food pairing too post Whole30!

 

Roasted turnips, parsnips, carrots, sweet potatoes and boiled eggs!

There are been some positive things I've noticed so far since eating Whole30:

 

1. Enhanced sensitivity to sweetness - a few times in the last few days I've commented on how sweet things are, e.g. blueberries, cherry tomatoes

 

2. My hair seems shinier

 

3. Very settled stomach

 

4. Blanco is completely on board with it. To be honest, I thought he'd support me for a few days and then say the rules were too complicated to get his appropriate fill of food when bread, rice and pasta are off-limits.

 

However, there are things that I am really missing, especially in the context of the busy endurance training lifestyle:

 

1. Chocolate milk after a hard workout - this always felt like a treat so I missed having choc milk after Saturday's 6hr ride

 

2. Greek yoghurt for breakfast or as a snack - this is my grab and go breakfast so it's a lot more challenging to be up and out the door quickly with a little food in my belly if I can't just grab something to go. The quickest (tastiest) thing I've come up with so far is a banana with a little cashew or almond butter.

 

3. Social eating and drinking - we've only eaten out once (ahi tuna burger at Umami)... whereas we might have eaten out 2-3x in six days. We have quite a few more social engagements coming up this month that we'll need to work our way around. To figure out if a restaurant choice is Whole30 compliant takes 4-5 questions, and the server doesn't always know so it can include some back and forth conversation with the kitchen too!

Tonight's dinner will be "Cauliflower fried rice"... (http://www.familyfreshmeals.com/2013/03/cauliflower-fried-rice.html) which will be a good test of how Blanco will get through the next 24 days without real rice!