Whole 30 in 2020

Welp, it's only been 4 years.  I have been all over the map with my nutrition and fitness, stress levels, and goals.  A little synopsis to catch you up: We bought a house in Wyoming, PA that we gutted and remodeled for 6 months.

During that process, we gained back most of the weight we'd lost in 2016.  I was substitute teaching in Dallas, PA, commuting 45 mins to work, 30 mins to Wyoming for renovations every day after work, and then driving 40ish minutes back to Factoryville - sometimes not getting home  until 11:30 or 12.  We never really had time to prepare meals and ended up eating out a LOT.  It took a big toll on me to not be home and adjust to such a strenuous environment, which didn't help the cravings.  We got our act together after we moved in in July 2017 and got back on paleo.  We may have lost a little bit here and there but the scale never quite moved back to what it had been during our first paleo run.  I was hired at Dallas for two "part-time" positions in 2018.  It was really more like two full-time positions - hence the air quotes.  The stress was pretty overwhelming but I stuck it out until I was offered a full-time position teaching art at the elementary school in 2019.

In the meantime, we'd bought another fixer upper in Wapwallopen - our Blue Ridge house.  We worked on that throughout 2019 and moved in in December that year.  Neither Wyoming nor Blue Ridge are finished quite yet but we're hoping to sell Wyoming this summer.

Currently, the coronavirus has pretty much shut the world down.  Starting Monday, school is closed for 2 weeks after PA was issued a state of emergency.  Toilet paper is basically a black market item atm.

Rewind to 2/21/20, I decided to start Whole 30, a new elimination diet, to reset my system after a Christmas/New Years sugar binge.  I'd like to chronicle my experience, even though it's a bit late at this point - Day 22!!! I'll post meals and my notes next!

Well here we are about 4 ½ months since my last post.  Normally I would have bad news about having fallen off the paleo train and this post would’ve been pep talking myself into getting healthy.  But here’s the shocker – I ain’t fallen off no paleo train.  I been all up on dat bandwagon dis whole time.  So I’m pretty darn proud of myself.  While I haven’t slacked off on my eating guidelines, I’ve definitely been a slacker about posting.  Commitment issues.  So here are some pictures of a few things I’ve eaten since March. 

While eating right has certainly made us healthier – it’s also made us skinnier! Finally!  I still have a long way to go till I reach my goal weight but it’s exciting and so encouraging to see the pounds fall off.  I started at 194.8 on 3/27/16 and am currently at 168.6 today on 8/12/16.  That’s 26.2 lbs, folks!  Mikey has lost an unbelievable 55 lbs, starting out in February at 249lbs and is down to 196! 

He’s been so consistent with going to the gym and his body has changed so dramatically.  He sexy.

My ultimate weight goal is 135, but I’ll be stoked when I get to 150.  So my short term goal is another 18 lbs. from today and my long term goal is 33 lbs from today.  That means that when I reach my long term goal, I’ll have lost almost 60 lbs.

In the past month or so, Mikey and I have had a few cheats here and there.  Ice cream is our biggest weakness lol.  So when my parents were in town, we hit up the ice cream place twice in 4 days lol. 

Other than that, we snack on 85% dark chocolate (70% for Mikey, since he needs chocolate sweet like him), cashews, almonds, peaches, kielbasa, cheese, and miniature cucumbers. 

I started plateauing a little bit recently, which could be due to our occasional splurges or due to walking less frequently.  Life has been a little crazy so maybe we can get back to routine in the coming weeks. 

We’re on our way to Canada for a belated anniversary trip J It’s a town called Carleton Place in Ontario and we’re staying for 3 nights so hopefully our stay there will be much more relaxing than the drive up – Mikey literally just said “I can’t stand when someone cuts over in front of me – I just want to shoot them and kill them…”

Lawd help me. 

 

Well last night was ok.  Typical Monday.  We were sort of worn out.  Although somehow I managed to cook a few things lol.


I got home and made some roasted green beans and roasted carrots, but we only had 1 very small piece of ham each so we ate the rest of the Taco Bake I did last week.  It was probably too many calories for one meal, but I guess we were just thinking about meat/protein.  Plus, now I can wash my dish yay.


After dinner, I whipped up some Morning Glory Muffins, which required a quick walk to Ray's for some carrots.  The wind was so ridiculous that instead of making it into a 2 mile walk like usual, I think it amounted to a 7 min grocery run.  It was so horribly cold and blustery. 


When we got back, I finished the muffins and started on the Blueberry Breakfast Cookies, which is actually a pretty quick recipe.  Mikey looked like this.