Whole 30 to heal my digestion

I have been waiting for a 30 day window to open up and for me to have the ability to focus on healing myself and my gut. I am embarking on the Whole 30 challenge. I eat pretty Paleo now, I follow an 85/15 rule. I guess rather than calling it Paleo I am more on what I like to call a Real Food diet where I eat real unprocessed foods most of the time while once a week I indulge on bread, pasta, candy, or alcohol. I have found that this is the best balance FOR ME and it's what works for my body. I have seen GREAT results just in the past 3 months alone from following this diet.

The problem is, I have IBS type symptoms that disrupt my daily life and most of them come from FODMAPS. Garlic and onion particularly. I also have a severe reaction to cauliflower but I don't really like it anyway so it's not a big deal to me. Garlic has been a recent irritant so I am going to do a Whole 30 which is something that I have wanted to do but do it Low FODMAP style and take out all the FODMAPS from my diet and see if I can finally find some relief.

My goals for this Whole 30 challenge to myself is to:

1. Complete 30 days NO CHEATS.
2. Feel better in my digestive function to be able to finally be free and begin to heal my leaky gut.
3. Relax and enjoy the ride and see it as a healing practice and not torture.

I got my cookbook, it should be in the mail today and I am really excited about reading it. In preparation for the challenge I have started eating three meals a day and sticking to it and trying to get over my garlic issues ha ha ha. I can have the powder just not the real thing which really sucks but I digress. 30 days of no alcohol, no cheats, and 100% paleo/real food.

I am pretty excited to say the least. I am not sure if I am going to take pictures of what I ate and all that but I will try to remember. I think that my biggest hurdle is going to be caffeine, I am not sure if I can have that but if I can't well doom will arrive on the first week LOL. If you want to follow me and see if I am posting about it next week than you can follow me on instagram @prettynena

I can't wait to share my results but most of all I am SO happy that I have found the time to put my health first without interruption! The next 90 days I would assume are going to be crazy and hard but i want to heal my gut once and for all :)

Mindsets and consistency

Weight loss is a tricky thing. It is probably one of the hardest things that I have ever done other than birth my children. The reason is because it is SO SLOW! We truly live in a society that wants everything right now and the patience that we have with life in general is pretty much non existent. 

In order to successfully lose weight you must change your mind. You have to go to a place where you have probably never been before. You are going to work harder than you have and you are going to be frustrated in a way that you may not have been because the work that you are putting in is not going to go with the results that your mind THINKS it should be seeing. Your body may allow you to lose a ton of weight when you start and then you will slow down to the pace of a turtle. 

Getting you mindset right BEFORE you attempt your weight loss is going to be instrumental in your success because knowing that this is going to be a process and one that is going to take longer than a week than you are setting your mind up for the expectation that it WILL be a journey. You won't be disappointed and you will be more patient with yourself and the whole process. 

Another part of weight loss success is getting comfortable with the thought of consistency. Consistency (of a person, behavior, or process) unchanging in achievement or effect over a period of time.

What that means is that you are going to have to eat healthy and workout every day with your rest day in there somewhere. When you plateau you still do it. when you are frustrated with your weight loss do it. When you don't feel like it DO IT. WHY because one day you are going to wake up and the results WILL BE THERE when you don't pay attention to what is going on I promise you, you are going to be so proud of yourself for sticking with something and getting the thing done after all was said and done that it's seriously is going to be like magic. 

I know that because I experience the same thing. For most of my life I did things that I didn't have the choice to do like school. I just got up and went because my parents told me to. I got in the Army and while I made the choice to get in when I changed my mind the day after I got there I was stuck and had to do the thing and it was one of the best experiences of my life. With weight loss it was something that I had tried on and off for 10 YEARS! 10 years of choosing to lose weight and saying ah forget it this is too hard. 

When I finally got my mindset right that this was going to be a long journey of AT LEAST 90 days for the initial weight loss and something I would have to do for the rest of my life that's when I succeeded and I am still able to maintain my weight. I know now that I have to eat healthy MORE than I have pizza and candy and I have to exercise to keep my body tight and muscular how I want it to be. This has become my lifestyle. 

Did I want to quit? Hell yes! Do I want to have days where I lay in bed and eat take out all day? YUP! I know though that I will feel like crap and probably put myself down if I do and I don't want negative emotions anymore. I am happy and I love living a life that has balance in most parts of it. 

Maybe it sound easier said than done so why not try to get yourself in the zone now :) 

Perfection......no such thing

I have been reading a ton of personal development and I opened up the book Gifts of Imperfection by Brene Brown. It is such a great read and something that I needed to read. There was a section in the book that spoke about perfectionsim and how it is a terrible reality to try to live especially when it comes to weight loss or succeeding in life.

It is really easy to go and look on Instagram and Facebook and see all these inspiring people who have lost a ton of weight and kept it off or are just plain fit. I know, I have been there too my favorite was YouTube. They post pictures of what they eat, what they do for a workout, and man their lives look so put together. I really fall for the pictures where people have this clutter free office or home, I envy that but who's to say that they don't stage that before they shoot? I know I would..........

It's a facade. I'm not saying that they are faking it or lying but people are not posting the truth about their lives 100% of the time. I don't either, I should now that I mention it (when it comes to food),  but I will admit that I do eat candy and it is something that I struggle with and I do eat the shit out of some pizza but I have balance in my life. I know that to maintain my weight I have to eat a certain way and give in 1 or 2 times a week. Meaning a meal, not day. It is not something that came easy to me and it was something that I had to tweak in order to make it work for MY body.

The point I am trying to make is that when you are looking at people for inspiration you are really only seeing their highlight reel. They put their best foot forward and wouldn't you? Healthy people are normal people and the ideas that we create in our minds about them is more than likely false. I know because I have been there.......HA I can't believe I admitted that but there are people that I have followed on social media or their blogs and I seriously thought that they ate the way they appeared to in my mind. When I first started my weight loss journey I saw a blog of what someone kept in their fridge and I stocked mine the same way and bloop I met this person and it was real but what I thought she was doing and what she really did were two different things. I thought she held this perfection of healthy eating in her mind when she too was human and ate a damn candy bar and drank some wine too.

You aren't always going to be perfect on your journey to health. When you begin your journey is probably when you are going to make more errors in judgement than later on in your journey but the thing for you is not to quit. The more consistently that you do things the better they are going to be. It's much like riding a bike. You start and you can't keep your balance you fall off but what do you do? You get back on that bike and keep riding it. It's the same concept with a healthy lifestyle, you are going to trip and you are going to fall off but you are creating change a little bit at a time to get better, and to make yourself a healthier version of you. Let go of the perfectionist mentality and set your mind to make better choices and give yourself a break when you indulge a little. If this is a lifestyle you are creating you should be creating a lifestyle that consists of balance.

Hot Yoga

I am a big believer in getting outside the box and trying new things. I am all for my Beachbody workouts but I am not going to say no to a new experience when it comes my way. I was invited to go to Bikram Yoga with a friend of mine from work. I thought why not? It's a rest day but why not challenge myself and stretch my body. I like the occasional yoga to stretch myself out and get at one with myself so I said sure.

I went on Pinterest to see more about this Bikram Hot Yoga thing and I shouldn't have even gone in there to try and research blogs on this issue. HA HA HA I FREAKED myself out. Seriously!

The first picture I see is a red picture and in scary movie writing how to survive hot Yoga. Here it was....

 

Source

So I don't know about you but that picture scared me a little bit. I sent a text to my friend telling her how scared I was and she told me that she was too even though she had already been several times so HOLY CRAP that doesn't help does it?

So we get to the Bikram place and I am all geared up. Water. change of clothes. renting a towel and mat there. Check check and check. The instructor was really nice and welcoming which put me at ease and she showed me some of the breathing exercises that we were going to do in class and told me that my main goal was to stay in the room the whole time. Ok I got it. Stay in the room. Honestly though I was like shit it MUST be hot in there! So I went in set up my mat and it wasn't so bad. We waited on another friend and we started just laying around there.

I really thought that all yoga was like I guess vinyasa style where you downward dog and all that but Bikram is 26 poses that you do twice totaling 90 minutes of breathing, stretching, poses, and corpse pose at the end. I was pretty happy that we didn't have to move all over the place. For a beginner like me to explain it to you the best way I can put it is that we got into a pose, stretched or compressed the body depending on the pose and then you repeat it again. It was REALLY challenging and fun to do I really liked it.

So you are probably wondering how hot it was in there! Um yeah it was pretty freaking hot at one point I had to take a break because I was getting lightheaded but I think that was because I have a sinus issue going on and it irritated it a little. There were 2 points in the session where I felt REALLY hot and wondered when it was over but when I felt like that I started spitting positive affirmations at myself and I forgot about the heat. I started to tell myself that I could do it, we were almost done, and that I was strong and doing a wonderful job. I paid attention to how beautiful I looked holding the poses and surprised myself at how much farther I was able to stretch.

After the class I was DRENCHED. There was a puddle on my towel which was gross but when you are in a room that is 105 degrees you are going to pour sweat. I didn't feel it until I got home but I totally felt cleaner and "detoxed" lighter feeling. I don't know if that really is a true thing but I felt lighter and not bloated even though my fingers swelled from being so hot. It is something that I would do again but I totally saw the value in my at home workouts. Overall it took three and a half hours to get ready, go to the yoga place, do the thing, and then get home. When I can just go downstairs do my thing and come back upstairs and shower and go on with my day.

I did like the instructor and the atmosphere and the people there were so nice and you could instantly tell that you were in a no judgement zone which was really cool. I was totally surprised that so many men went to the class and the ages and different types of people that were there too. It is something that I would do again and yoga is something that I don't consider to be a weight loss tool but a wellness tool but I could totally see myself doing some kind of challenge with it in the future if I was ever in a place where I would be able to be closer.

Here are a few tips that I found to be helpful for my next go round or that would help you to go.

 1.) Bring cold water! I had warmer water and it was OK but having that COLD water in the room would have been a morale booster when I was feeling down.

2.) Bring a mat and a towel. They do not have special mats (I thought they did) they carry the same ones you probably have at home.

3.) Don't worry about a change of clothes. You are going to be sweating through them anyway so just throw a dry towel on your car seats and you will be good.

4.) Go in there with a positive mindset. I went in there scared and I did panic a bit at the end but keeping it positive will help you to focus on what you are doing and you will forget the time.


Why not test yourself and try something new?