It has been, in my humble opinion, an unusually difficult year. Things have not been going well for me, overall, and so I took some time off for quiet reflection; I’ve seen all the motivational quotes: “be the change you want to see in the world,” et cetera, but the one that really got to me was one that I found randomly on Tumblr. It simply said, “Don’t make change too complicated. Just begin.” I’d been thinking on that for a while and coming to terms with the whole vicious cycle of “I know none of the things I’m unhappy about are going to change unless I change them” tempered by struggling with major depressive disorder and a lifestyle full of stressors over which I have zero control when my oldest sister first talked to me about joining the rest of my family on a thirty day diet plan. I’ll be honest, I rolled my eyes a little. Especially when she told me what the diet entailed, which was esentially no sugar, grains, dairy, legumes, or alcohol. I couldn’t help laughing at that point. I was a depressed wreck of a human being who could barely even muster the energy to pack a PB&J for work, so how on earth did my sister think I was going to be able to actually meal prep for an elimination diet this strict? But the third or fourth time we talked about it, she told me she had sent me an email that I should check out and, when I opened the email, I found something that proved beyond a shadow of a doubt how well my sister knows me as well as how much she loves me. It was a four-week Whole 30 meal plan with weekly menus and grocery shopping lists. She had anticipated all of the possible reasons I could flake out and subverted me already! So, I sent her a Marco Polo thanking her and telling her that, while I couldn’t start on that day (Monday the 14th) because I didn’t have the groceries and also I’d definitely already eaten Chik-fil-a, I would be starting the very next day. I told her that I wasn’t going to use it being Tuesday or the middle of the month as an excuse not to start something new like I usually did, and – surprising no one more than myself – I stuck to it.
So on the morning of Tuesday the 15th of October, instead of stopping by Dunkin Donuts for a wake-up wrap and a medium iced coffee with caramel and almond milk (my go-to “I’m running late but I still need to eat breakfast”), I ate Whole 30 food that I had prepped over the weekend: a pumpkin custard, hard boiled eggs, and some bacon. And weirdly, it was delicious. Normally, you kind of expect diet food to be less than pleasant – bland, aggressively full of leafy greens, bitter, really just a whole mess of flavors and textures that are not particularly agreeable to the palate of the average American. Not so with Whole 30. Everything I’ve prepped and eaten so far, now exactly one week into it, has been delicious.
The real problem lies with something that I should have but did not anticipate: the keto flu, detoxing, whatever you call it, when you start a new diet and suddenly you’re only eating things that are actually good for you, your body is going to have some opinions on the matter and not all of them are going to be agreeable. So far I’ve learned to pack more food for work, because otherwise I wind up light-headed and dizzy halfway through the morning (which is obviously less than ideal), and that feeling like absolute trash for the first week or two (or three) is totally normal, although that might be bunk. I’m just taking my sister’s word for that one. That being said, I have started to notice some interesting side effects, like a better overall mood, higher energy level, clearer skin, and less irritable temper. Plus other health benefits I am simply too ladylike to put down in writing. So I guess what I’m saying is I’m going to try to stick with it and we’ll see how it goes?
This coming weekend, as I’m meal prepping, I’ll take some pics and upload them, as well as pictures of the finished dish. And I promise I won’t write a twelve paragraph story before you get to the recipe.
Blue Side Doc 