Whole30 ~ Day One

I am over-weight.  I am 5'7" and 170 pounds.  This is the heaviest I have ever been without a bun in the oven.  I have reached this point because I have horrible eating habits.  I was blessed as a child and young-adult to have a very high metabolism, so I was one of those people that could eat whatever I wanted and still weight 125 pounds.

I will clarify that I did play lots of sports in high school and college, and I religiously went to the gym five to six times a week before I had children - so it's not like I just sat on my couch eating pasta and cake never gaining a pound.

My mom used to say, "Wait until you hit 30, it will be harder when you are 30...and then every ten years after that it is like your metabolism slowly goes into retirement."

I scoffed at this notion.  I was in great shape.  I was never going to be over-weight.  That was crazy.

Then I turned 30.  And I gained ten pounds in six weeks.  Ever since I have been on a small roller coaster of gaining twenty pounds and then losing twenty pounds.  This did not happen because my mom was right.  Your metabolism does not just magically start to shut down as you get older.  An adult that becomes less active does lose muscle and gain fat, and that is why metabolism slows down.  So my weight gain happens because I have horrible, horrible eating habits.  I am a snacker.  I am a stress eater.  I love sugar.  I really love unhealthy coffee creamer.

I am also a teacher, which is great!  I work nine months a year, and I get ten weeks off ever summer.  I get two weeks at Christmas, one week in March, and various three-day weekends.  I get to see the light-bulbs turn on in middle-school math, and I get to bring down the hammer when someone throws an eraser cap across the room.  But as much as I love teaching, it is very stressful at times.  Stress = lack of sleep = lots of snacking.

Enter Whole30.  I have heard a lot about paleo meal plans, but have never tried one.  Yesterday was my first day, and it was great.  I got to cook my scrambled eggs with (clarified) butter!  I got to eat (organic chicken) sausage for lunch, with half a plate of roasted sweet potatoes.  I had a plate of salsa verde chicken with riced cauliflower that was such a big serving my husband said, "How are you going to eat all of that?"

Two things I discovered:
1.  My brain has been programmed to tell me I want a snack even when I am not hungry.  There were many times during the late morning and the entire afternoon where I thought I really needed a snack...but I wasn't hungry.  And since I am pretty good at sticking to a plan (because I have a faint, OCD tendency to follow all rules to the smallest detail...unless I have been drinking...) I told myself, "Too bad, you're not getting a snack!"  And then I realized I wasn't even hungry.

2.  A food processor does not work well if there is no blade.  Whole30 actually made me dig my grandma's Cuisinart out of storage and I realized that I have lost all the blades that go with that thing.  Thank goodness for Amazon Prime!  I will only be without Tzatsiki Sauce until Wednesday evening.

I am anxiously awaiting the arrival of my Sugar Dragon.  He is supposed to be here around the third day, so that should be awesome!  But so far, so good.

Day One Done!

On Being Middle-Aged

I am middle-aged.  Or at least I think I am middle-aged.  If I die at age sixty, I am past middle-aged and more like three-quarter-aged.  But I'm hoping for kicking around here until at least eighty-five, so I will just go with middle-aged.

How did that happen?

The best sign that you are middle-aged, other than your actual age, is when you start to realize your doctors are the same age or younger than you.  When you look at one of your doctors and think, "Please tell me you are Doogie Howser because you look like you are sixteen..."your middle-ageness hits you in the face.

If you don't know the Doogie reference you can rejoice because you probably aren't middle-aged yet.
Overall, I really like being middle-aged.  It is much better than I imagined it would be when I was twelve and thought my parents were ANCIENT because they were forty.  And yes, my twelve-year-old self did use all caps when I thought that in my head.  I clearly remember that they were some of the oldest people in the world.

Interesting fact:  I never gave it a second thought that my grandparents were old.  Maybe grandparents are just supposed to be old so you don't think about that.  They are wrinkly from your first memory of them...so perhaps that is why I thought they were just born that age.  The reasoning of a young mind is interesting for sure.

But here I am, not quite feeling old, but definitely not feeling young anymore.  I think middle-age is a good time for self-reflection.  It is kind of like a Tolkien book.  This is where I have been, this is where I am now, this is where I would like to go.  I guess I would say I would like to lose thirty pounds on my journey to throw my ring of evil, unorganized habits that leave my house cluttered in the fiery lava of Mt. Doom.

So it is with much excitement in the Hobbiton that I embark on this journey because I think that is what middle-aged years should be all about: making your life what you want it to be now that you have had time to sift out the stuff that just doesn't work.