Whole30 – Day 10 – Lest ye mistake me for a paragon

Whole30, Day 10, Thursday 1/11/2017

This January I gave myself two related goals:

Goal 1: The Whole30, thirty days of clean eating with no alcohol, dairy, sugar, legumes, grains or baked goods. I wanted to find out if my regular diet was contributing to my body aches. If you haven’t read any of the other posts in this series, the quick answer is: Yes, and the answer came in lightening fast! I think it was on Day 2.

Goal 2: Post about it. Specifically, challenge myself to a month of posting daily, using the Whole30 as my theme.

How’s It Going?

Not well. The Whole30 is going well. The daily posting, not so much. Here I am doing a post on Day 10 when the last post was on Day 6. It turns out that posting daily is harder than I thought it would be. I can always come up with something I want to write about, but life happens. Kids and jobs and spouses and grocery shopping and, as Pema Chodron would say, "the whole catastrophe." By comparison, cutting sugar, dairy and grains out of my diet has been a piece of cake….well, not cake.

I have written all my life. I love to write. I’ve always wanted to do more of it. Along came Steemit. What an opportunity! Perfect, right? Yes, mostly, but I am still finding my way. Turns out my way does not include posting daily. My reason: when quantity is queen, quality suffers. I prefer quality. I want to produce the best posts I can, which means skipping it if the GottaDoos crowd out the WannaDoos for a day. I'm committed to my goals, but there is a place for letting it go occasionally and getting back on the horse for another ride tomorrow. Yesterday, I read a great post for beginning Steemians by @gmuxx. It really validated what I was thinking about the quantity vs. quality issue.

And the food? How’s the clean eating going?

Great actually, but even there I have slipped from grace occasionally. I wrote about one such lapse involving popcorn on Day 4. Other lapses have involved turning a blind eye or making a choice not to know. For example, I had been having ham occasionally without looking up whether it is on the nice list. Turns out it is on the naughty list. What do they cure ham with? You got it. Sugar! So ham is off my plate for the rest of the month, fine. But note, I had some to eat one or twice before I looked it up. I just didn't want to know.

Yesterday the slip was more of the turning a blind eye type. I work in an office building where breakfast and lunch meetings are often catered. We have a nice café in the building and people make use of it to bring in food for their meetings. When there is leftover food, it gets put on the counter in the coffee room for anyone to share. People also bring in cookies they made at home, the second half of a birthday cake, muffins, bagels, a giant Christmas Stolen last week, all kinds of treats. Even though I am normally the first mooch in line, while doing the Whole30, I have been very successful at saying no to all of that. I have been pretty good. But not yesterday.

The Walnuts (I love walnuts)

Yesterday, someone had a breakfast meeting to which the café brought a tray of mini quiches and a crockpot of oatmeal with all the fixings, brown sugar, raisins, cinnamon and walnuts, all in pretty little bowls with spoons for scooping. The leftovers were put in the coffee room at about 10am, just when people want a snack. The quiches went first, and even the last serving of oatmeal was snapped up by someone soon thereafter. At 11, after a full hour of concerted willpower wrestling, I found myself in the coffee room, quite unexpectedly. Happily all the off-limits foods had been snapped up. All that was left was something I could have! A half cup of walnuts. I scooped them into a cup and brought them back to my desk where I began nibbling them while I was working. It was pretty clear from the first bite that these walnuts had met--and probably dated briefly--sugar. They weren't sweet exactly, but they were sweeter than walnuts are supposed to be. It was as if the Sugar Plum Fairy had danced in on her toes and sneezed on them. There was just a hint of sweetness. I could taste it. And I kept on tasting it until all the walnuts were gone. The café in my building has some really excellent cooks. Someone probably sprinkled the nuts with the merest dusting of sugar when placing them in their pretty little bowl. Did I allow that to stop me in my pursuit of a free snack? No I did not.

I am doing really well at the Whole30 most of the time. I'd say 98% of the time I'm doing great. The other 2%, I am not adhering to the letter of the Whole30 law. Is that Ok? Well, no. Not according to the authors of the Whole30. They would tell you that you shouldn't even contemplate a slip. You need to figure out how to stay on track, come what may, through all stressors and all situations for 30 days in order to get the full benefit of the plan. I'm sure that is probably true, but I am comfortable with my 98%. So, I am not a paragon, in case you were wondering, and I am in no danger of being selected to be the spokes-steemian for the Whole30, not any time soon. But if the walnut council calls, be sure and let me know.

What I ate Wednesday 1/10/2017
Breakfast: Eggs, avocado, coffee
Lunch: Salad, chicken breast, almond milk
Dinner: Butternut squash soup, hot blueberries and banana
Snack: Almond milk and some wicked good walnuts

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