#tedeatsbetter

It’s been a long, interesting journey. I’ve broadened my horizons when it comes to food. I’ve undoubtedly lowered my cholesterol (no way of knowing since it’s not in the budget to go get it tested). I don’t feel the need to drink multiple, if any, sodas every day at work. I don’t really miss caffeine at all. I still wouldn’t mind some bread with certain meals.

I came home from work to have Sara tell me she’s lost 12.5 lbs. That’s EXTREMELY impressive, although she’s pissed at Anytime because according to their gym, it said she had only lost 2. Since we don’t have a reference point (and she wasn’t wearing sweaty workout gear) I’m sure their scale is a bit off from ours.

Based off of this information, I made a quick guess at what my results may be after I woke up. I was off a bit. I lost a hair under 12 pounds in 30 days. In my weird lizard brain 11.9 in 30 isn’t good enough (yes I know that 2-3 per week is ideal for long term health maintenance). I just expected to lose more than 3.7% of my weight.

Sara tried to cheer me up and tell me to look at all the positives. My clothes feel looser, my foot has hurt a bit less, we’ve eaten better, we hadn’t started working out yet, all these things. Finally she said something that I’ve been neglecting to admit.

I didn’t gain all this weight in 30 days, I can’t expect to lose all of it in 30 days either.

Things I can take from this. I’m 17.3% of the way towards my first major goal, being 250 lbs. That was my goal 3 years ago before I first went to Disney, I believe I was just shy of that goal, but I want to hit it. Sara suggest we have 30ish days of moderation and working out and then we come back to the Whole30 lifestyle. I think me working out more, training for the half, and eating better should have me (knock on wood) at my goal weight before my next runDisney race. I just can’t backslide.

We’ve made it! Day 30. The end of this interesting journey. I’m also on Day 4 of 6 at work. Sara had a rough night, spilling over half of our mega jug of coconut oil whilst making dinner to bring to me at work. I think she’s ready for the rigidity to end, or she’s just ready for a few days off from work.

My headaches have been popping up every little while, I’m hoping this isn’t a lingering side effect from my vertigo spell. I don’t want to be popping ibuprofen every 6-8 hours like candy.

Breakfast: Scrambled eggs, sweet potatoes, and sausage

Lunch: Roasted chicken (really good!), carrots and some leftover sweet potatoes

Dinner: 2 turkey burgers, the rest of the sweet potatoes, carrots, and mushrooms.

Sara’s chicken was a welcome change from the monotony of our food prep.I had been talking with a friend about how bored I am with turkey burgers and how I longed for something shitty like a hot pocket or a burger with cheese and buns. Clearly if I’m going to stay on the Whole 30 path afterward, I’m going to need to think of something to make for work that doesn’t leave me feeling blah. That, or I’ll have to stop working past 3 nights consecutively.

Day 29. Tomorrow should be the finish line, but as we all know, I am going 2 extra days just to make it easier with me working. My first day off will be the night of my first of 2 Flogging Molly concerts. It’ll be a lot of fun, but that’s not today.

I slept pretty decently, only I woke up around 2pm to use the restroom. Then I couldn’t stay asleep for any lengthy time frame. I woke up at 3 and 4ish, finally getting up because Sara was home from work. I’d really like to start getting 8 hours of sleep consistently, but I guess getting 7-7.5 will have to suffice.

I’m planning on going to the gym after work. Day 1 of the going back. 3 years ago I managed to drop 20 pounds in almost 2 months going to the gym, despite eating pretty crappily. I’m hoping that going back will result in me shedding some body fat %. I know our trainer is planning to come and “re-pitch his services” in June. I think I did the math and I need to lose like 7 pounds of fat mass to keep him off my back. The fact that the gym is so close to my house should keep me going. My current plan is on MWF going and doing 15-20 min of cardio, 30-45 min of weight training with a 10 min cooldown, T-Th going and doing 30+ min of cardio. The training for my Disney race starts in July and I’d like to get a month head start on it.

Breakfast: Fried eggs, sausage and sweet potato hash, blueberry kombucha

Lunch: 2 turkey burgers, leftover sweet potatoes, zucchini

Dinner: Spaghetti squash and meatballs

More of the same meals. Lunch kind of felt like “meh”. I am enjoying the meatballs of dinner. I should come up with something we can make for the next 2-3 nights so I don’t get super burnt out.

Wooooo 5k day!

I got up before the alarm and started heating up breakfast for us. Leftover sweet potatoes and some hard boiled eggs. Just something so we could have some energy for our “fun run”.

We left around 6:30ish so we could have time to get our bibs and I’m glad we did. The parking was a nightmare. They had 2 people working for all these cars getting in. It took us like 10 min just to park. Ridiculous. We ended up making 2 trips back to the car, 1 to drop off gear, the other to get Sara’s sunglasses, so that was like a warm up.

We met my coworker Adriana at the starting line and chatted for a while, finally getting to start around 8:25. Adriana was a sport and stayed with Sara and me through the first mile and a half before taking off. We would see her right before the finish line. I tried to get Sara to run/job part of the course. I had it in my head that 2 people who hadn’t trained in a long time would be able to pull off 15 min miles. We came up to the first “bubble bog”, this one dyed red, and walked through it. That dye was horrible. We all looked like horror movie members doused in fake blood. Don’t know if that was what I would call fun, but others seemed to enjoy it. I think I had a brain fart about the color dye part. Had we had extra clothes and not worn our nicer running stuff, it could have been more enjoyable.

Another unexpected outcome was Sara and I had jogged up to the bog and she inhaled a bit of the bubbles. There would be no more running for her. I jogged with Adriana a bit around the 1 mile mark, but I didn’t want to leave Sara behind so I stayed with her and we walked the rest of the way.

Green, blue, and yellow stations passed and I kept pushing Sara to want to run the last bit of the race. “Finish Strong”, I kept saying. Sara was having none of it. Her legs still ached from Thursday. I’ll admit, I got frustrated with her. Though I shouldn’t have as we had zero training and the last time she ran was our 10k in January. We ended up crossing the finish line at 1 hour even. Boom, first leg of the Mickey Virtual Running Series in the books. 

We get home, have some food, then it’s nap time for me as I work the night shift. I take 2 melatonin and maybe get 2 hours of sleep. This results with me having a large headache for the first 2 hours of work.

After tonight I have 4 more. I have GOT to stop working so many in a row.

Breakfast: Hard Boiled eggs, reheated sweet potatoes

Post race: Scrambled Eggs

Work Breakfast: fried eggs, sausage, sweet potatoes

Lunch: 2 turkey burgers, green beans and leftover sweet potatoes

Dinner: spaghetti squash and meatballs.

Friday. Today I’m a day shifter. I switched my shift for today so I could do a 5k tomorrow and still get some sleep. I’ll say this, being a day shift worker is weird, and not just because it’s too dang bright. I wanted to wear sunglasses all day. 

There wasn’t really any downtime at work, so that’s good. I trained one of our part time workers and it made me remember how much I enjoy training.

Day shift eats really well. They picked up a smorgasbord of food from HEB (I couldn’t eat any of it) and were raving about the ice cream. Kept telling me to have some. I told them I couldn’t and got to inform them about Whole 30. I got some props about my dedication.

Breakfast: Fried eggs, sausage, sweet potatoes

Lunch: turkey burgers, green beans, sweet potatoes

Dinner: oven baked salmon, green beans, and sweet potatoes.

Today’s the day. Time for Sara and I to see how bad of shape we are in and what we need to do to correct it. I didn’t really get to sleep in, there was a thunderstorm and Ein started being loud, even with all the stuff we’ve gotten for her. I set up the wooden baby gate at our door and let her out of the bathroom gate. That seemed to calm her down and let me get another hour, maybe, of sleep.

The trainer giving us our health assessment was very thorough about what we were looking for and asking us what our limitations were due to injuries or conditions. He even agreed to shield our weight from us, a BIG point for Sara, as apparently we aren’t supposed to be weigh in. He made sure to tell us to be honest with him during the assessment. If we felt like a 9 or 10, he wanted us to say that so we didn’t injure ourselves or throw up.

We used only one machine, the rest was just resistance exercises. 20-25 min in and I was pouring sweat. I know I was out of shape, but good lord. There was one part where he said he was going to “catch me up” to Sara exhaustion-wise and had me do two exercises back to back. I had been between a 6 and an 8 all during, but I felt I was bordering on 10. I just felt weak and couldn’t catch my breath. Luckily he let me get some extra time to breath before continuing. Afterwards, he weighed us and got our body fat % so he could break it down. Sara and I both saw our weights despite our best effort not to.

*side note* It’s really a bit deflating, almost devastating, to have given up almost everything I love eating and come this far to see so little result on that thing. I guess that’s why they say don’t weigh yourself. Later Sara told me I need to look at the “non scale victories”. She said my front looks smaller, my pants feel a bit looser, my cholesterol is clearer (dumb measuring stick), and I’ve been 27 days without a soda, 26 without McDonald’s. *back to the story*

He laid out how much of our body was fat and how much fat mass we needed to lose and how long it might take to get to our goal. On the plus side, he did point out that it could be possible to meet our goal in 41 weeks. Somehow I didn’t even think about this until he sprung it on us, but next came a sales pitch for his services. Even for a 30 min session 3 days a week, it’s 350 bucks a month. Yeah, no thanks. While I know we would benefit from it, I just don’t have that kind of money.

Breakfast: Eggs, Sausage, Sweet potatoes

Lunch: Eggs, Sausage

First of 2 days off! I actually came home and went to bed afterward. I slept until noon:30-ish, but then had to get up so I could take Ein to the pet store for a beauty appointment. Sara made us breakfast and we dropped Ein off. While she was at the groomer, Sara and I drove up to Austin so I could cancel my old gym membership. I went to where I had signed up, as my email said that’s where I needed to go, only to be informed that I had to go to a different gym to cancel. That seems really idiotic. I was not a happy camper. It’s all one company. Just cancel my membership! Luckily the employee called over to the Oak Hill gym and they were ready for me when I showed up. That was nice.

I guess it was some sort of divine intervention, as going there led me to going to the Goodwill next door and seeing that they had a concertina for auction. This renewed my interest to learn to play the “squeezebox”. I need to do more research to see what kind of investment I’d need to start.

We went to Costco to refill our food reserves (mainly sweet potatoes and eggs). On the way home, Sara and I decided we needed something new for tonight’s dinner. We decided to go to HEB later to get inspiration.

That inspiration came in the form of steak and shrimp. We spent around 28 bucks on dinner, still cheaper than the two of us eating out.

Brunch(?): Scrambled Eggs and pulled pork

Dinner: Shrimp, steak, steamed broccoli, and mashed red potatoes.

That meal really seemed to pull me out of my rut. It was nice to have something so different. As I think I said on the photo I posted, I wished we had opted for the non bagged broccoli, but it still was a great meal.

I am SO flipping bad at maintaining the blog this week. I don’t even have a good excuse. I just didn’t.

Second day back post ER visit. Feeling a lot better, but still not up to my regular self. I am, however, starting to feel weary slowly drudging towards Day 30+2 (more on this later). I just kind of feel bored with meals and I feel in a rut. I found a place to do my repeat cholesterol at, however to the tune of 40 bucks. I’ll have to weigh my options.

Breakfast: Eggs, sausage, sweet potato

Lunch: Turkey Burgers, zucchini

Dinner: Pulled pork, green beans and mushrooms