One of the bloggers I follow did the Whole 30 challenge in the month of January. Check out her reflection blog here. After reading this blog post, I was inspired to do the same and see what kind of results I got!
The idea of this challenge comes from the website Whole9. The idea is that you go 30 days with no sugar, grains, dairy, legumes, or any artificial ingredients. The 30 days is supposed to cleanse your body and allow you to determine which foods are causing harm to your body. The people who came up with this challenge also wrote a book explaining in more detail how certain foods can negatively effect the way your body functions. It also goes into more details about what your can/can't eat in those 30 days. Basically meat, veggies, and fruit are what you can eat.
After reading the blogger's blog on her results and several other blogs about peoples' great results from the program, I was excited to give it a try. Yesterday was my last day of it, so now I can give my feedback on how it went! Here are my before and after shots!
My positive thoughts on the challenge: I did lose 7 lbs in the last month, which I think you can see in the photos. I feel much more toned. I have gained a lot of muscle since I started crossfit 7 months ago, so I think that's starting to show more.
My negative/apathetic thoughts on the challenge: The first week of the challenge was awful. My body was transitioning from burning sugars/carbs to burning fat, so for a while it was really confused and burning nothing which meant no energy for me! I went from being able to run 10+ miles easily to barely being able to run a mile. It was embarrassing. Luckily that didn't last too long. Slowly my energy started coming back. What I am slightly disappointed about is that I have not experienced all the amazingly positive results that so many other people seemed to have! I do not have super hero energy as a result of this. In fact, I'd say I'm still trying to get back to the amount of energy I had before starting this thing. I do not have magically clear skin; I notice no difference. I do not sleep like a baby. I still have to take my sleeping pills every night and still wake up throughout the night (mostly due to dogs moving around and making noise). I don't think I have better moods, in fact I often feel more stressed out trying to figure out what I can/can't be eating.
So I guess my conclusion is that this challenge made my body a more efficient fat burner and as a result, I lost 7lbs of fat. So where I go from here...2 weeks after I started my Whole30 challenge, our crossfit gym started a 'Whole Life' Challenge. The nutrition rules for it is similar to what I've been following with the Whole30, but it also includes things like exercising and stretching everyday and drinking half your body weight in water every day. So Ryan and I both joined up with that challenge as well. So as I finish my 30 days of the Whole30, I still have 37 days left of the other challenge. One difference in the 'Whole Life' Challenge is that it's based on a point system where you lose points if you eat things outside of the rules, but you can make up those points in other ways. So it give you a little more flexibility to not be so rigid with your food. As a result, I fully intend to make a few rule breaks now that I'm done with my strict 30 days! I'll have to report back on how the rest of that challenge goes!
1 comment:
Good job sticking to it! You look great! Daniel and I did something similar last year to see if we had any food allergies and I agree that mostly I felt tired and cranky the whole time. I think if you went from eating super processed foods to clean eating you'd see more of a change but we don't really eat that badly.
Post a Comment