Exactly one month ago, I started on my Whole30 journey. The beginning of this year was pretty rough for my family and myself. In the span of a week, I lost my mother, my uncle, and we moved into our new house. It was devastating and stressful to say the least. The lack of routine, emotional eating, and a broken refrigerator when we moved in accounted for some very poor health choices.
I had heard about this program called Whole30 from a few different people. One of the program’s tag lines is “losing a parent is hard, having a baby is hard, drinking your coffee black is not hard.” Well, I had dealt with the first two things in the last 6 months so I figured this can’t possibly be as hard as that was. So I bought the Whole 30 book, read through it and liked what I saw.
I planned to start on February 18th, the same day my husband and I got baptized at our church and exactly one month since I lost my mom. I did some serious grocery shopping after we received our new refrigerator (that kind of worked out!) and I was ready!
The name of the game with Whole30 is all about preparation. Knowing what you’re going to have for each meal, including snacks, helped immensely. Even outside of the book, there are so many resources! Pinterest, Instagram, and searching #whole30 are filled with tons of recipes, grocery store hacks, and motivating stories.
There were a couple of challenging moments during the 30 days, but I just kept telling myself that I was stronger than whatever that situation or craving was. By the end of it, I could not only see a difference but felt it. My CrossFit workouts weren’t as exhausting and most of all, I developed a better relationship with food. I also have been able to figure out which foods that I eliminated during Whole30 are triggers for bloating, gerd, or stomachaches. I plan to continue to do some version of Whole30 from now on.
There a very few things we can control in life and that’s a hard lesson I’ve had to learn recently. But I can control what and how I eat.
