Is it Saturday already?

This week has flown by. It was a hectic and busy week at work and I received some bad news that brought me down for a few days, but I pushed through and told myself to just make it to the weekend and then I could take time to get my head together and regroup.Now the weekend is here so that's what I'm going to do. Its pouring rain right now and supposed to be a dull and gloomy weekend. I actually don't mind days like this now and again.

I have a whole bunch of stuff on my to-do list for this weekend:

• Job hunt
• Deep clean the apartment
• Sort clothes and get rid of what doesn't fit me/I don't like/never wear
• Somehow convince Liam to do the same for his clothes (wish me luck on that!)
• Run 2x (1x is my Running Clinic practice tomorrow morning)
• Prep meals for next week

Well now that I've written it out it doesn't seem as daunting as I first thought.

My 10K Running Clinic started on Thursday (August 9) but I wasn't able to make it to the first clinic. Tomorrow is the first practice run and I think most Sundays will be doable for me, thanks to another kind woman in the group (I've met so many nice people at the Running Room Clinic who have been kind and generous to me), and I have figured out to make Wednesdays and Thursdays work.

Despite the craziness of the week I stuck to my After Whole30 plan pretty closely. I am definitely going to start writing down what I eat again though. Although I didn't track calories during Whole30 I still wrote down what I ate. This past week I wanted to try NOT doing that and I found that some days I'd wake up starving or feeling the start of that bloating feeling again but couldn't remember exactly what I ate the day before so I wasn't able to know what changes to make the next day.

So I finally weighed myself yesterday. I started at 196.5 the day before I started Whole30 with a 37.5" waist. Yesterday, my waist was 36" and my weight was 191.2 so I lost 5.3 lbs. I know some people lose huge amounts of weight on Whole30, but I NEVER lose huge amounts of weight so this was not a surprise to me. Also, I wasn't eating a lot of sugar/grains/legumes/dairy before I started. The biggest change was adding more protein and more fat.  Also, I really think the first two weeks when my stomach was so upset, I wasn't getting any benefit from changing my diet at all.

I am glad that I seem to have finally broken through the 193-196 plateau I was stuck on for months. My body seems to do that every 10lbs or so, I get stuck for months at the same weight. I've been doing this a long time and the pattern is very clear, I sometimes wonder how much of it is psychological and how much of it is physical but if I try and analyze too much then I start to backslide because I start to feel defeated. I'm trying very hard these days to just accept that I control what  I put in my mouth and how often I move my body. I can't control how quickly my messed up body (lots of medical issues that I don't talk about here and don't intend to) will react to the changes.

Despite the small weight loss, my body composition did change, I can see that in these photos and also the way my clothes fit.  The other day a friend told me I didn't "look puffy anymore". My face tends to get really puffy when I'm not feeling well or tired, but it has not been puffy for over a month now. And I feel better, despite all the stress of the past few weeks, I am sleeping better and I am feeling stronger in spirit and confidence despite the last couple of days.

Doing Whole30 was definitely a positive experience for me and one that I would recommend to anyone.

I'd like to do another really strict Whole30 but I need to deal with some other stuff in my life. Right now it feels like my head is a filing cabinet with a bunch of open drawers and files spilling out - does that make sense? Once I can get some of the files closed and the drawers shut, I can focus on adding more files.