The Skeptic’s Whole30: Day 31

Wednesday, March 21, 2018

This post is part of a series. For the previous post, click here. For the whole series, click here.

EIGHT POUNDS.

That’s the verdict. I lost eight pounds.

So I guess that’s good! I mean…I guess. It’s kind of on the low end of normal, but then, it is a loss of two pounds a week, which is great.

So now I have to find some way to keep losing weight without being on this diet. Or at least not gaining it all back. I worked too hard to gain it back now.

We’re going to Cape Cod in about exactly 5 months. If I continued to lose at this rate, which seems impossible, I’ll have lost 40 more pounds by then, which would be amazing, but come on. If something as extreme as the Whole30 can’t give me more than 8 pounds a month, something less extreme is certainly not gonna. But maybe I could lose 20 pounds by the time we go to Cape Cod. That would be a huge improvement. I am thinking of a horrifying photo of myself standing in a tidepool last year, wearing a dress I thought looked good on me, looking elephantine. And this year we’re going to Wellfleet, which is more…glamorous?…than Eastham, where we stayed last year.

So it seems I’m framing all this in terms of weight loss. Well, how else can I frame it? I didn’t feel any different, in terms of energy. The Whole30 did not give me any of the incredible differences that other people claimed to experience. Well, who knows, maybe when I’m back on the carbs and dairy I’ll suddenly feel all sluggish and horrible, but we’ll see.

I do like eating wholesome, nourishing food, and hopefully I can continue doing that. It can only be easier, not harder, with carbs involved.

I started the day with my Old Breakfast, a whole-wheat English muffin, toasted, with peanut butter and jelly. You know how people say when they get together with a friend they haven’t seen in ages and have such a strong friendship that it’s “like picking up where they left off” and “as if no time had passed”? That’s how it was with me and my PB&J English Muffin.

Then we got empanadas from Juanita’s for lunch, at the kids’ request, but it made me feel vindicated. I had definitely craved those, specifically, during the Whole30. It is yet another snow day (seriously!) so both kids were home with me. And by mid-afternoon, it still had barely snowed at all. What a waste.

I was still hungry after eating two empanadas, so I heated up the last of the North African Chicken and had that as well. I wonder if I’m going to find carbs less filling than I did before. Is that a good or a bad thing? I guess it depends on what it leads me to do.

Dinner was ravioli. Cheese ravioli with red sauce. I enjoyed it, but felt like it was missing something. Something like…meat. It would have been better with a nice pork ragu instead of just a plain old tomato sauce. Were my tastes…changing?

Tomorrow: Looking ahead to a future where I pair Whole30-learned recipes with formerly forbidden foods for maximum deliciousness.