Whole30 - Hung Jury

Well, I made it.  Shockingly enough.  For 30 days, I ate no grains, dairy, alcohol, soy, corn, potatoes, preservatives/additives, gluten, sugar, or God knows what else.  I have cooked and cleaned more in that 30 days than ever before as well.  My absolute biggest complaint has become the damn tupperware.  Being a good green little girl (and how sure how else I would do it….), I’ve cooked and packed all my meals/leftovers/portions in tupperware for storage in the fridge or freezer and for transport to work.  Due to the higher amount of fat in the food, said tupperware cannot simply be handwashed and left to dry – it all has to go into the dishwasher.  However, my dishwasher sucks for 2 reasons.  First, it does a crappy job of washing, so I have to clean every dish that goes in completely before putting it in (but the steam/heat of the dishwasher is the only thing that fully removes the grease).  Second, it is kamikaze like and sends every piece of tupperware flying throughout.  Therefore, when I open my seemingly clean dishwasher, I have to then again turn over and dump out water from each one, subsequently rinse out each in the sink, and return to the dishwasher to air dry with the door open and racks out. Awesome.  Over and over again.  Multiple containers per day.  I also learned on a trip to Alpharetta, GA, that these containers like to shatter when carried as airline cargo.  Yes, I’m that person.  I cooked my meals for the full week on Saturday, froze them Saturday night, and put them in a cooler to fly on Sunday night to my business trip.   Half of them shattered.  Very odd – I’m not sure if it is from the freezing/changing pressure, etc, or if they took a jackhammer to my bag.  I used a large soft-sided cooler in an even larger suitcase to carry everything.

I ended up with bronchitis a week after my surgery so that was one more hit to the body.  I was hoping the down time from lots of working out would maybe help my body adjust to the diet and that I’d be able to finally run without dying sooner than later.  Not so much.  I mustered out one 6 mile run and one 7 mile run during the second half of the Whole30, but both weren’t too pretty.  I supposed they were a slight improvement over the first half, but still nothing I’d consider remotely okay.  I ran last Thursday, Day 31, and ended up having to walk over half of the whopping three miles.  Not cool.

So I’m sure you are all wondering the final verdict.  Well, I think we have a hung jury.  I lost 8 lbs in the 30 days.  Normally, you/I’d say “that’s awesome!”  But, considering 5.2 lbs of that was muscle, it isn’t so cool.  30 days of eating cleaner than ever and I lost a whopping 2.8 lbs of fat on a diet that is supposed to make my body a fat burning machine.  Hmmmm… There is a possibility I may have been one of the people who would have benefitted from a Whole45 or Whole60 to really give my body the time to “get a hang of it,” but I was not willing to sacrifice any more muscle/fitness to find out.  I have a marathon to run in January and am already way behind schedule because of this.

One caveat though is that in the past I have never followed fat/muscle composition while losing weight.  Funny enough it seems I always had DEXA done at my heaviest and never re-did it at my lighter weights.  So I guess I will say it is possible this isn’t the first time I’ve dropped muscle like this.  I am getting DEXA done this Thursday – I preferred to have it last week before I added anything back, but there were no open appointments.  The scale I have now (Tanita BC1000) is by far the most accurate-seeming scale I’ve had for body composition (ie the only one I’ve even bothered paying attention to) – it is definitely the most in line with prior DEXA numbers.  Even if I didn’t lose lbs in those exact proportions, I still think the trend downwards in muscle mass per that scale is quite alarming.  So I’m interested to hear what insight the UT people may have when I go for DEXA Thursday morning.  I’m also interested in figuring out the best way for mybody to lose fat while maintaining or even building muscle.  My POTS may be playing a significant, yet unidentified, role in all of this is well, but that’s the frustrating thing with POTS – hard to ever really know for sure.  I do know I’m rarely in the lower HR “aerobic, fat-burning zone” while running due to my HR being so high.  Granted though, theoretically, I’m burning more calories in that higher zone so I should still be burning sufficient fat…but it doesn’t seem to be happening that way in reality.

I began my reintroduction Thursday with dairy.  I had cheese in the morning, ice cream after lunch, and cheese on my burger (no bun) at dinner.  The cheese was great.  The ice cream left me feeling how I’d expect to feel and how I usually feel after ice cream (I was allergic to milk when I was little and never drink straight out milk now and rarely have a big bowl of ice cream because it upsets my stomach).  So I think the cheese had little to no affect, which is pretty much what I expected, and I was reminded again that I don’t need to have big bowls of ice cream unless I’m prepared to suffer a bit after.  However, that suffering wasn’t any worse this time than before all of this – was maybe uncomfortable for a few hours, but nothing worse.  Friday for breakfast and lunch I ate clean again and at dinner decided it was time for grains.  Perhaps a little earlier than the plan suggests, but I figured I had a pretty good idea about the dairy so was ready to move on.  I had tortilla chips and fajitas with beef, onions, guacamole, and flour tortillas.  I also had a glorious strawberry margarita.  Of course that lead to snacking once I got home too – note one bad choice can lead to multiples…no shocker there.  I went to bed with quite the stomach ache, but I think it was more related to the volume of food than anything else as I felt okay in the morning.  My biggest surprise of all of this came Saturday morning too – I had my best run in over a month.  7 miles at a good pace where I didn’t once think I was going to die or that my body was choosing muscle for fuel.

Saturday I ate a wheat croissant and cake at a shower and then indulged in a wonderful burger and fries at Hut’s Hamburgers for dinner.  Again I had a stomachache when I got home, but again I’m not the least bit surprise due to the volume/quality of the food vs what I had been eating.  To make sure Saturday’s run wasn’t a fluke, I got up and did it again Sunday.  I ran 6 at a faster pace than I have in a few months.  I will be completely honest though and say that from Thursday AM to Sunday AM the scale went up almost FIVE lbs!!  Crazy.  Thankfully I don’t truly believe I ate myself 5 lbs fatter, but do acknowledge that food definitely sits a bit heavier on me than the other did. 

I’m planning to eat mostly Whole30 compliant again this week and see if that weight drops back down or what.  It is almost becoming a fun little science experiment.  I historically weigh more after weekends – due in part to longer training sessions and more glycogen hanging out.  This weekend safe to say a good bit of the gain was most likely food/food choices as well, but that is why I’m interested in seeing what happens over the week.  I’m also a bit torn though because I want to eat clean and want that 5 lbs to leave again, but also want to be able to properly fuel my runs.  I plan to add in rice and oatmeal on Thursday or Friday to see if the gluten-free grains have any effect on water/retention, etc, and also if they still give me the seemingly-needed boost I got from the grains/carbs last weekend.

I think the overall lesson learned for me here is that moderation is key, but also learned I think that will be a constant struggle.  Many say they don’t even want this or that after doing the Whole30.  Not me.  I also don’t think doing a Whole60 or 90 or whatever would change that forever.  I walk a narrow path when it comes to eliminating things from my diet – creates almost an unrealistic perspective on it and can cause crazy binging at some point, whether considered “allowed” or not.  I’d be happy to use a Whole7 or Whole14 again down the line whenever I feel like I’m getting a bit too out of hand, but at the same time I’m hesitant because I don’t want to be in a muscle-loss place again.  So I guess I certainly don’t have it all figured out and Whole30 definitely did not provide any magical answer or new perspectives on food for me.  Perhaps some subtle ones will stick with me – such as making slightly better food choices here and there, and being more aware of ingredients in food, but I’ve definitely not sworn off any food group, whether for the better or worse.

Some interesting #s...pretty obvious in each when I started/finished Whole30.