1.) My fingernails grow faster and my hair feels thicker and shinier (no, I’m not pregnant, though I appreciate the fact that you think my womb is worthy of housing a miracle baby). I got a hair cut on February 10th and I feel like I need another one, just twelve days later. Unsure if this is from the food or from the weather. I’m going with food.

2.) My head feels smaller. I was washing my face yesterday and stopped short because I could feel my jaw bones. I felt dainty and breakable, like a ballerina or a kitten or something.

3.) Vegetables for breakfast are amazing. On Saturday and Sunday I added asparagus and spinach, respectively, and hot dang! The results were impressive. I felt like a chef.

4.) It is hard to find breakfast meat without added sugar. I’ve only found one kind of sausage without added sugar and it’s very fennel-y so it’s not my favorite. Also it’s chicken sausage so it barely qualifies as sausage.

5.) I can no longer wear my wedding rings because they are too big.

6.) I am still balking at exercise. I take walks with the dog and when we take the dog to the dog park we walk around the track there, but as far as intentional and self-centered exercise goes? I do not want to do it. Maybe I could start with pushups or something and work my way up to… something else. I don’t know. Pilates? Yoga? Blah. My friend Ashley has started taking exercise classes and I’m a little jealous of her because she sounuds all fancy when she says she’s going to spin class. And Amber with her crazy assed bikram yoga! You go, girl.

7.) My husband looks incredible and makes me regret not taking before and after pictures, though I’m sure I could conjur some up. Maybe I’ll do that.

I’ve gotten some questions about what I eat during the day, whether or not I feel hungry, and how often I eat. I love getting questions. It makes me feel legitimate.

So! Let’s just dive right in.

Breakfast, 7:15 a.m.: eggs in one form or another. I’m getting better at making them and eating them. Lately I’ve been eating two hard boiled eggs (one without a yolk, one with yolk intact) and half a ruby red grapefruit. Can I tell you how much I love ruby red grapefruit? Almost as much as Cheerios, which I still pine for on a semi-regular basis.

Snack, 10:15 a.m.: grapes and baby carrots. It took about two days to get used to eating carrots without hummus or ranch dressing. Now I love them.

Lunch, 1 p.m.: a salad. I eat half a bag of lettuce mix, a hard boiled egg white, cucumber or zucchini or slices of pepper or squash or whatever vegetable is in the fridge that morning, and some protein from the night before. Dressing is olive oil and pomegranate balsamic vinegar (no sugar!) with some salt and pepper.

Snack, 3 p.m.: Mixed nuts (peanut free).

Dinner, 7 p.m.: Dinner is where we flex our cooking muscles. The basic ingredients are the same (meat and vegetables) but the type and presentation varies from mood to mood. My favorite is a Mexican-type salad with spiced meat (my favorite is shrimp, but we’ve also used ground chicken) over a bed of crisp lettuce, topped with fresh guacamole. We’ve also had curry twice which is just as delicious and is a good way to use the last part of your veggies (half a zucchini, a lone crown of broccoli, a handful of carrots, half an onion, chicken breast pieces, and BOOM! Dinner).

I don’t typically feel hungry at all which really surprised me at first. I expected to feel famished by 9:30 and was pleased that the feeling never occurred. I eat every three hours and drink a lot of water. I’m so hydrated that it’s unreal. I can tell because I pee a lot and it’s always clear.

I don’t always eat organically. If we ate all organic, all the time we wouldn’t be able to pay our mortgage. The baby carrots I buy are organic, but I buy them because they’re on sale every week. The apples I bought were organic, too, for the same reason. But everything else isn’t usually organic, and that is okay with me.

The one concession I do make is organic, grass-finished beef. Cows are not made to digest corn, so when conventional farmers feed their cows form in an effort to fatten them up quickly, the farmers must also feed the cows antibiotics to prevent disease that stems from being fed a food that the cows cannot properly digest. I do not care that grass-finished beef is more expensive than conventional beef. It’s not necessary for my food to be cheap (you get what you pay for, after all. Sometimes you pay extra for what they DON’T put in there); it’s necessary for my food to not give me e.coli.

I find it more important to eat locally as plant food loses its nutritional value the longer it’s off the vine. The closer you can find it to your door, the better. Visit farmers’ markets or roadside stands, u-pick orchards or food coops to find local, fresh food. It’s an adjustment for sure, but one that I’m glad that I’m making.

This was not a true Whole30 by anyone’s definition. There was a solid week where I ate sugar, and while it’s not as much as I would have normally eaten, it’s still added sugar and added sugar is a no-go. Clearly I have a bit of a problem.

Mary commented about having difficulties with flour-based stuff (like crackers and bread) and said that she found it better to abstain, and I am going to do that from now until whenever I stop. I’ve realized I cannot eat just one piece of chocolate or Girl Scout cookie and no matter how desperately I tell myself that I will eat just one, I know that I will not. I lack whatever it is in people’s brain parts that allows them to control themselves around sugar. But I think I’ll follow Mary’s lead and cut out the added sugar.

I don’t know how abstaining will go over. Maybe it will go well in a month or two I can eat it again without consuming an entire tray of cupcakes. I’m afraid that it will backfire and I’ll start fixating on it to the point where I cannot think of anything else but sugar and I’ll overload and acquire diabetes in a matter of hours. Or (and this is much more likely) I need to be an adult and realize that sugar is bad and not eating it makes me feel better and quit with the stream-of-consciousness chatter about sugar for two freaking posts because DAMN, GINA YOU ARE WEARING YOURSELF OUT.

Happier news: twenty days without a cigarette. I would rather be a non-smoker with a weakness for red velvet cake than a rail-thin vegetable eater who smokes. I smell like Jergen’s lotion and Pantene shampoo. I can wear perfume and still smell it twelve hours later. My acne is clearing up. My heartburn is minimal. I have more time in my day than I would if I was standing outside puffing away. It’s a really good thing. This is the longest I’ve gone without smoking since I was seventeen years old. If it were possible to give myself a hug I would.

I deleted myfitnesspal account on Wednesday. It was an impulse decision that I do not regret.

I don’t have a need to count calories anymore. The Whole30 has made that obsolete. I would log my calories and be 150-200 calories under my goal, prompting the website to warn me of the dangers of undereating and letting me know I could be putting my body into starvation mode. I tend to think that’s bullshit. I’m eating a lot of vegetables and lean protein and fruit, and none of those things (except the meat, perhaps) have many calories. An entire bowl of spinach (about three cups) has roughly twenty calories in it, as well as iron, vitamin C, and more than a day’s worth of vitamin A. I’m not concerned about getting appropriate nutrition.

Despite my deleting my profile, I highly recommend the website. It helped me a LOT when I was first starting to lose weight, and calorie counting allowed me to lose a solid 20 pounds before starting the Whole30. I also enjoyed the community aspect. The group of women encouraged me a lot and I am really grateful for that.

Eating healthfully isn’t yet engrained in my head. I have slip ups and cheat days and blatant “I will eat what I want because I am a big girl” moments, which are always (every. single. time) followed with a feeling of dread, physical discomfort, and guilt. It continues to happen, though the instances are fewer and farther between since beginning the Whole30.

I do my best to set myself up for success.
There is precious little in the house that is bad for me. We have a gigantic thing of peanut butter which is easy to resist because it’s for the dog (we stuff his Kong with peanut butter and treats and freeze it, leaving it with him when we go). There are some cereals on the top shelf of the pantry which are probably expired by now. There are no sweets. My home is a safe, safe place full of things that are good for me and Whole30 approved.

Work is a really unsafe place.
With regards to food, that is. There is a constant stream of doughnuts, cookies, cake (it’s always someone’s birthday), lattes, and candy. It’s Girl Scout cookie season so there are stupid boxes of cookies everywhere, and I had some yesterday, right after I finished posting my “SUGAR IS POISON AND I WILL NOT EAT IT ANYMORE!” entry. Because I am a hypocrite of epic proportions. And Thin Mints are fucking delicious.

Willpower is a lot of stinking work.
Instead of being cool and calm and collected when faced with something I cannot eat, I instead go through a weird mental process that starts with “Self, do not eat that!” and finishes with me wiping crumbs off of my scrub top. My resolve went out the window on Day 8 and I don’t know how to get it back. Jillian Michaels said that willpower is like a muscle, and recently that muscle has not been worked out too terribly hard. Giving in to one temptation does not have to mean giving into every single one I encounter, especially when those things aren’t really temptations or I don’t necessarily want them.

This is not an all-or-nothing thing.
Maybe the Whole30 is, and if that’s true, then I have failed. But weight loss and overall health is NOT do-or-die. I must come to grips with the fact that sometimes I will not be on point; sometimes I will screw up royally but that doesn’t mean my entire day (or week) is shot. I am learning to eat more good than bad. It’s taking a lot longer than I thought it would and the struggle is purely mental. In one day I stopped smoking and eating terribly and at first it was okay. At first I was awesome. Now that the novelty has worn off it is not so fun and I do not always enjoy eating well all the time. I get cranky and start craving sugar when I want nicotine, so the two things might be related with regarding to the hormones that both of those activities release. It is kind of a battle, one that I do not want to fight or even really want to talk about because I feel a bit lame admitting that I cannot even lay off sugar for two solid weeks.

There is progress amidst the shit storm.
Every day for years I took at least 5 Tums a day. I could not travel without them because my heartburn was so awful. The little pocket in my purse was permanently the chalky, pastel color because I would need to throw a handful in there before going anywhere. I needed them after drinking alcohol, after eating anything with grains in it, after eating salad… basically after eating in general. Heartburn would wake me up in the middle of the night. It would start during sex. I had it constantly for at least five years. I’m surprised I still have an esophagus.

I can count on two fingers the number of times I’ve needed Tums in the past sixteen days: the time after I ate the doughnuts, and the time after I drank the wine. I can eat spicy curry and salad and vinegar without any symptoms at all.

My pants are too big. I’m so, so close to being able to fit into the next smallest jean size. I can fit into them but there’s a bit of a muffin top issue going on, but they BUTTON. And ZIP. Without me LAYING DOWN ON THE BED AND SUCKING IN AND CURSING A LOT.

I enjoy the taste of vegetables. Specifically carrots. Perhaps it was because my smoking dulled my tastebuds or I was on sugar overload, but vegetables never tasted really great to me. I ate them because they weren’t the worst things ever, but now I eat carrots for fun. It’s pretty great.

This is a life-long process.
I spent the last tenish years or so developing really poor eating habits, and this behavior will not change over the course of thirty days. Obviously. But little by little I can see measurable progress. I really need to stop focusing on the times I mess up and encourage myself by remembering the times I didn’t mess up, or the times I regained traction after I did eat poorly. I need to remember that I can do this and how good I feel when I have a great day of on-track eating.

I’ve let myself get lax with the “no sugar” part of the Whole30. As such, I have felt sluggish and cloudy headed and generally no good. Why do I keep gravitating towards the sugar? Why not cheat with grains or butter or cheese? I have no idea. Sugar is my food drug of choice and it’s been a real struggle to keep it gone. (Is it addictive? Articles from The Huffington Post, CNN and MSNBC suggest that sugar may be addictive and dangerous. Also it’s almost everything processed in some capacity, which is another reason to stay away from it.)

The next fifteen days will hopefully go much smoother than the first fifteen, sugar-wise. I only started having a hard time when I cheated. First it was chocolate, then a doughnut, then a cookie. A bite of sugar led to me craving more sugar to the point where I didn’t necessarily care that I was derailing my Whole30. I didn’t care that I might gain weight or that I would get fuzzy headed. I just wanted it inside of me. Clearly I have some issues with it and they might be deeper than just “stop eating it!”

The point is that I might have to take a break from sugar for a longish while. Even typing that made me kind of panicky, which I think it clear evidence that a break is needed for longer than 30 days.

I’ve been weighing myself because that’s the only way I know to measure progress. In the past fifteen days I’ve lost five pounds (hooray!) and that has been my motivating factor. I’m not supposed to be weighing myself for these thirty days but I’m a rule breaker (see also: doughnut and wine consumption) and also kind of nosey. I NEED TO KNOW THAT THIS IS WORKING. Although! So remember how Jason’s testosterone was all whacky because of the cancer and ball surgery? And he was supposed to be giving himself shots? Did I tell you that? Consider yourself informed. Well. He hasn’t given himself shots in a while because OUCH but he went to get his tri-monthly blood work done and guess the hell what? His testosterone is on the low side of normal. NORMAL. We will continue to eat this way until his next blood test in three months to see if it’s on the normal side of normal. Perhaps we’ve cured him.

Anyway! Back to the scale. I was weighing myself every day because I like seeing the number go down. It gave me a little thrill. I liked being able to have something to point to and say “This. This is what I did today.” My reliance on the scale to tell me what kind of mood to be in was great, and that was not good.

And so I bid adeiu to the scale. Dun-dun-DUN! (Imagine trumpet sounds there, not scary music sounds.) Goodbye, faithful scale. I will see you on Day 31, maybe. No longer will your numbers control my attitude; no more will your digital readout alter my feelings about myself. No longer will you little rubber pads collect dog hair and dust. Enjoy your spot on the top shelf. I will retreive you in about two weeks.

The Whole30 is rigid and inflexible.

I love it.

Left to my own devises I have very little self control. I mean, I have some. I lost twenty pounds via counting calories. That’s all about control. But I’m discovering more and more that I need clear-cut boundaries in order to succeed. I am very task-oriented and don’t do well with abstract concepts like “clean your room” or “eat healthy food.” I need straightforward instructions, such as “dust the dresser” and “don’t eat dairy.”

I am operating well within the confines of the Whole30 regiment, though there have been some slip ups with less than desirable bodily consequences (dairy: gas; donuts: heartburn; wine: no effect. Woohoo!). I gave into temptation and I’m glad for it; it turned off the little voice in my head that told me I would feel better if I ate it.

Better than what? First of all, I felt pretty great as I was. Second of all, I do not consider tooting for the duration of the day “better.” I do not consider heartburn “better.” Eating the processed food turned the voice off, but I felt worse, physically, than I had in a week. It wasn’t worth it but I learned from it. I’m kind of glad that I cheated, all things considered. It absolutely took away the temptation to do it again and it gave me a look at how far I’ve come in such a short amount of time.

I finally feel better. My sinuses aren’t clogged all to hell and I can sleep without coughing my lungs out. I’m not on eight hundred different medications so I can go through my day without seeing everyone’s heads floating 4 inches above their bodies. True story: I was driving to the store to pick up something one night and the yellow lines in the middle of the road were kind of veering off to one side, decidedly un-line like. Very scary. But! That time has passed now and I am no longer hallucinating. It’s downright blissful.

I feel like I’ve hit my stride when it comes to eating whole foods; it’s not a buzzkill anymore, nor do my sugar cravings have me wanting to lick old ice cream lids. Cooking without aid of processed ingredients takes a bit longer, and I appreciate my food a lot more than I would if I just snagged it at a drive through. I feel invested in my health when I cook, like I’m doing myself a delicious favor.

I’ve always liked to bake. What child doesn’t enjoy licking the spoon after chocolate chip cookie dough has been stirred, or dipping a finger in the nearly-empty brownie batter bowl? But it’s taken me up until now to enjoy cooking something that didn’t necessarily taste great raw. I’ve braised pork shoulder and baked tilapia, grilled chicken breasts and diced onions and peppers, halved brussels sprouts and riced caluflower. It’s enjoyable (though not always what I want to do after a long day) but the more often I do it, the more comfortable I become. On Monday I whipped up a curry out of just ingredients. It was weird and wonderful and I want to do it more often.

Yesterday, through a series of link-clinking, I found a blog called Radical Hateloss. I clicked around some more and found a post called “The Problem With Skinny & Fat.” I read the following exerpt and I felt something inside my chest click. Metaphorically. I understood.

The problem with skinny and fat is the belief that those bodies will either bring satisfaction or push it away. Your body isn’t what makes you sad, and a different body will never make you happy.

What makes me sad isn’t the fact that I think my stomach is too pudgy or my arms wobble; what makes me sad is the fact that I think that because my body does these things I am not worthy of love so I must change. It makes me sad that when I try to change those things I cannot, so I get more upset and start eating more. It’s a fairly fucked up cycle, and one that has repeated itself many, many times.

I want my body to be healthy. I know that I’m heading in the right direction because I can feel it. My clothes fit better; I’m more clear headed and alert; I sleep better; I don’t get so tired after taking the dog for a walk. My body is losing the weight it has carried around for years because of the crap that I’ve shoveled into it. It’s recovering from years of smoking, drinking, overeating, and eating shitty food. This recovery will not happen over night.

I want to push myself. I want to exercise because it is fun and good for me, not because it is some form of punishment. I will use what I have been given and not wish for something else. I will nourish myself with foods that haven’t been overly processed, though I will absolutely enjoy cheesecake when the occasion calls for it. I understand this more acutely than I ever have before. I have never been more aware of my body than I am right now. I know that it sounds like I have smoked a bunch of pot and stared at my naked self for four hours, but I think that everything I’ve read and experienced about exercise and eating well and the effects of bad food on the body have culiminated into this moment. I think my paradigm has shifted in such a way that I will not look at myself the same way again. That’s a good thing.