I Just Want To "Clean"

I think I need to rename my blog to "Whatever Miscellaneous Thing Danielle Feels Like Writing that Day" or "Jesus, Crossfit, and Disney - and everything in between". This isn't really the on topic blog I had intended... all about human dignity, women's rights (read my postings on abortion/contraception for more on that), and my journey of learning about NFP. As it turns out, my journey (I have been having a lot of these lately) towards exploring NFP while learning about the physical and emotional harms of contraception led me down another path... one towards actually and actively striving to take care of my body and health...which led to my discovery of Paleo and Crossfit.

It is no surprise that as a woman getting married in 2 months (*insert super excited smiley emojicon*!!) I have been looking for ways to drop a few extra pounds before the wedding. I tried counting calories with little success and was not eating a sustainable diet. I found out about "Paleo" from my doctor (purely for health reasons -- hormones and healthy gut  *blah blah blah blah blah*) and I poo-pooed it right away. Give up chocolate, sugar, and grains? Impossible. Inconceivable! Those are staples in my diet. I didn't want to do it at first, but I researched a little and found that it could have pretty good health benefits. I found a strict paleo 30 day diet... the "Whole30" and gave it an (honestly) half-hearted try. After it ended I dove into the nearest bowl of chocolate candy I could find because even though I knew I felt physically better, I didn't lose those 10-15 pounds I wanted in a month. Of course the logical answer to that was to find the closest unhealthy food I could. I was being very logical and completely unemotional in that moment...

That was over a month ago. 

Today, I am 4 days into my second Whole30 and going in with a brand new mentality -- an improved me, a healthy me, a fit me. 

I started Crossfit about a month ago, worked my way through Foundations, and I get to join actual classes on Monday (yay!). The biggest thing I noticed was that food and the types of foods I eat directly influence my athletic performance and my future recovery (duh!!!) I re-started Whole30, bought the book for the program ("It Starts With Food") and I have been learning how the food we put in our body influences our psychological response, hormonal balance, immune system, etc. It's kind of scary to think about how certain foods disrupt and "trick" our body's normal regulation system. The book talks about a "skinny-fat" where you look physically thin but your thyroid and hormones are out of whack. I read that and all I thought was "me. me. me." I've been going to the doctor because my hormones are out of whack (which I learned from NFP and charting, then blood tests..) and if the food I eat can either balance them or put them more out of whack maybe I need to be more conscientious about what I am eating.. "It Starts With Food" ... the journey is coming full circle.. See all my topics are inter-related to the original intent of "free, total, faithful, and fruitful love".. The idea of free, total, faithful, and fruitful love (which is what Christ's love is) led to discovering NFP which led to discovering Paleo which led to Crossfit while Disney just has to be interspersed for it to be complete. It comes full circle. So maybe I have really been on topic this whole time. Have you been paying attention? See what I've been doing there?

Anyway back to Crossfit! In one of my foundations classes I had to learn a Crossfit move called the "power clean". As someone who has almost never weight lifted in their life, I was struggling to get the proper form and I just could not get it. I couldn't process the part where I had to get it to my shoulders. I left the box frustrated that day because obviously I should have been able to do that. Frustrated. Was this just something I physically wouldn't be able to do? The next foundations class I learned the power snatch and I rocked. We tried cleans again, and voila the miracle of all miracles happened... I could do it (did I eat better that day??). Every class since I have had to clean the bar up whether it was to do another Crossfit move or just to do more power cleans (or squat cleans!) and after my last foundations class all I wanted to do was more power cleans.

At my last foundations class we reviewed many of the previous technical moves I had learned and we did my final foundations workout... "Fight Gone Bad" It is a 15 minute workout. You do 1 minute of wall balls, 1 minute SDHP ( I forgot what this stands for), 1 minute of box jumps, 1 minute of STOH,  1 minute of rowing for calories, 1 minute of rest and repeat for a total of three rounds. The goal is to get as many reps as you can and all your reps get added up to make up your final score. It was awful. At one point I felt like I couldn't lift the bar over me head anymore, but as soon as I left box and caught my breath all I wanted to do was try it again and get a better score next time. That (below) is how I looked after my "Fight Gone Bad" and my score is the large number in red at the bottom.

That's the strange thing about Crossfit is it gives you something to strive for physically... stronger, fitter, healthier. So it has been a journey and it will continue to be. I have always wanted to be thin, thin, thin but all I want now is to be fit. I want to be able to do an unassisted pull-up, or 10, or 20. I want to be able to do as many overhead squats (my nemesis!) as possible. I want to strive for what my body can do and how I can push it to get there. For the first time I feel like it is actually possible. I am sore and I don't think there has been a part of my body that hasn't been sore since I started Crossfit. It brings me back to my soccer days where I pushed myself and I strove to better myself and my performance. I am doing that again. I will be faster, stronger, and fitter. I will be healthier and every small accomplishment (broccoli rather than chocolate or "one more push up") is going to bring me closer to that goal. So whether it is learning NFP and striving to love like Christ, eating Paleo (sometimes succeeding and sometimes failing), or getting stronger as I push myself to the limits, it is all part of my journey of self-improvement and it is all intertwined. 

Now I know you have been waiting for the Disney reference/relation so I will say that since I can't choose just one song to describe how I feel or what I want to write about, I will provide you with a medley. Life is a medley and how boring would it be if I stayed on topic? 

Round 2

It is a very sad realization when you start eating clean for 30 days (e.g. the whole30/paleo/primal) and then when you start eating processed foods again (specifically grains and sugars), your body revolts. It seems almost tragic knowing that even though your brain still thinks your favorite "food group" is a delectable piece of smooth, creamy milk chocolate perfected by a sugar-type peanut butter filling your body knows that is no longer the case. Stomach aches. Poor(er).. ["worse" would be the grammatically correct way to say this] athletic performance. Anxiety. Acne. Poor sleep. Less energy. Etc. It amazes me how the food choices we make dramatically effect so many different areas of our well-being and health... both physical and mental!

As I sit here and mourn over a imminent loss of grains and sugar in my life (due to a [stupid?/crazy?/difficult?/inconvenient!] decision to start up round 2 of Whole30 the best I can do to overcome the "loss" is to reflect on all the positive changes that were occurring during Whole30 round 1.

I should start by saying that I started and quit and started Whole30 3 times before I got through my whole 30 days. To say that I wasn't 100% committed on the third attempt would be an understatement. After about 3 days in, I started the countdown to when I would get to eat that delicious vice of mine (that smooth, creamy peanut butter filled chocolate I referred to above...) and by doing so I potentially missed even greater changes that could have occurred.

The biggest change I didn't see was my relationship with food. I am a stress eater. If I'm sad. I eat (chocolate). If I'm stressed. I eat (chocolate). If I'm mad. I eat (chocolate). If I'm happy. I eat (chocolate). If I just feel like eating. I eat (chocolate). It is a bad relationship and that's all I was waiting to go back to. Little did I know that as my body was cleaning out all the junky, processed foods of the last 23 years, there was no way it would be able to handle the sugar addiction the way it had prior to my clean eating endeavor.

Even though I didn't gain that new relationship with food (the healthy one) during round 1, I did gain a lot. I had increased amounts of energy and I had given up coffee... something that I depended on to sustain me through a work day since I began my adult career last August. Energy without caffeine. Truly amazing. I had better athletic performance. After my marathon in January, I have been super lax on working out/exercising and I could go out and run 3 or 4 miles and feel great. In all honestly, clean eating made my work-outs feel good. My body was sustained by the nutrients it needed and my body worked so much more effectively and efficiently. My skin had started to clear up. My stomach had started to shrink. I NEVER got a stomach ache or felt sick after eating during the whole30. My digestion was starting to work properly. My whole body was changing. My mood was changing. I was changing, and all I could focus on was the piece of chocolate I was going to get to eat in 28 days... 27 days... 26 days... and so on.

So now it is time for round 2. Three weeks post Whole30 and eating clean half the time while defaulting back to the known world of grains and sugars the other half, my body has had enough. The only way I am going to be healthy physically and mentally is if I give my body what it needs to function and to thrive. So I will say good-bye to sugar and grains as I make my way into my new clean eating, crazy, unconventional "meat (protein), veggies, nuts and seeds, fruit, and healthy fats 'diet'". I will strive to be strong and healthy rather than weak and malnourished. I will work to change my relationship with food as something to sustain me rather than as a crutch in a stressful, happy, sad, "feelings" situation. I will eat what sustains me and find better outlets for my "feelings" situations.

I started Crossfit three weeks ago and it is tough. I'm using muscles I have never or rarely used before. I'm lifting weights over my head, doing what seems like endless burpees, squats, and wall-balls, and slowly getting stronger. I have a long way to go before I am physically as strong as I would like to be and I need to fuel my body correctly in order to get there. My goal is to be strong, fit, and healthy. My goal doesn't need to be attached to a number on the scale or the number of kcals on a food label. My health is and needs to be measured by how I feel. The best I have ever felt strictly in regards to health and nutrition is when I eat clean. So good-bye bagels and pizza and Reese's peanut butter cups because my body is not a fan. My brain may be, but that will change (not overnight but overtime) just like my body will slowly get stronger every time I do another push-up. When I started Crossfit three weeks ago, I was doing ring rows. Now I can do banded pull-ups. My first wall balls felt like I was being slammed by a brick wall. The first 10 wall balls I did today felt almost flawless. It's slow progress but slow progress is greater than no progress.

Anything worth doing is going to take time and effort and commitment (I had a discussion with my very intelligent fiance who reminded me of this fact). Do I want to feel good all the time? Do I want to be healthy and strong? Or do I want to countdown until I can eat that piece of chocolate?

If processed foods versus real foods make such a huge impact then the choice is simple. I know there is science out there to support it and I know I don't know it all, but I do know how I feel. I have a career as a mechanical engineer and as an engineer I have to experiment and consider real life applications. I can't depend on the numbers or the theories 100% because real life applications always have a way of throwing a curveball. If I consider my first Whole30 an experiment then I have real life proof of how food effects my health. I have the evidence, the data, and "numbers" as a support. Theories are important, but applied experimentation with data is a much stronger basis. At work, I can say that a component will pass vibration testing because it is designed to do so, but it doesn't account for all the applications of that component in the design. The only way I can guarantee 100% that it will work in its designed application is if it undergoes vibration testing. I can say that Whole30 and Paleo are a great diet because of scientific evidence, but I won't say that. I will say that Paleo/clean eating/Whole30 is great for me because I have proof.

Find what works for you. Find what fuels you. Find what makes you happy, healthy, and strong.
I'm committing to another 30 days of clean, Whole30 eating because like and unlike the little engine that could I not only "think I can", I know I can and that I will be changed for the better because of it.

Day 4. Fighting off the "Sugar Dragon"

I made it through my 4th day of Whole30. The daily e-mail today spoke about self-control over cravings and fighting off your "Sugar Dragon." My Sugar Dragon was well and alive today and roaring at me for sugar, for sweets, for chocolate. I did my best to tame it though. It probably didn't help my cravings with a stressful yet interesting start to the morning. I had to get blood drawn in order to help with the diagnosis of whatever is going on with my cycle. Needless to say, needles are not my friend. I told the nurse drawing my blood that I was going to close my eyes while she took my blood (yes I am a baby). So she starts prepping my arm and talking to me and I feel the needle go in. My eyes are still closed but I start feeling just a little dizzy. The next thing I know I hear the nurse yell "I need help in here." I jerk up and ask"oh, did I fall asleep?" (oops). It didn't occur to me until later that I had actually passed out. Probably the nausea and dizziness I felt after should have clued me in. I also asked her if she had finished taking my blood. Apparently she had just started so after I started feeling better I got wheeled to a bed where I could lay down as they finished the procedure. I was only 30 minutes later to work than normal though which was really nice. 

After the blood work my day got better, and after work I came home to my brand new book. Theology of the Body by Pope John Paul II. It wasn't written as a book  but was actually a series of encyclical letters he delivered. Saying I am excited is an understatement! Everything I have read about the Catholic Church's teachings on the dignity of human life and the human body have been more profound than almost anything I have read especially in regards to love, marriage, and even celibacy. I'll most likely start this up as soon as I finish this post.

So I'm going to make an awkward transition back into Whole30 (Paleo). I had prepared my Whole30 breakfast and lunch the night before for work. I won't tell you about everything I ate during the day, but the dinner I prepared? Delicious! I am very pleased with how it turned out. I made zucchini "pasta" (thanks to my new julienne peeler) with chicken, mushrooms, olive oil and various spices. I also cut up some Roma Tomatoes. YUM. 

 I love baking now and finding new recipes and foods. It makes me happy and if I'm cooking healthy food, it's keeping me away from those foods that unleash the "Sugar Dragon". I hope that goes away soon because I've been thinking/dreaming about chocolate, peanut butter, peanut butter m&ms, and sweet coffee for the last hour. Day 4. Only 26 to go and I'm excited for all the physical and mental changes ahead.