Yesterday marked the end of an experiment for our family. Well.... more specifically my husband and I... Shortly after we were married my husband expressed a desire to try out this thing called Whole 30. Now if you are a woman you can probably totally relate to my initial reaction...
"Another diet? I've tried diet after diet and they just don't work for me. Not only that we haven't been married long enough for you to see me without sugar... That's worse than me without make-up!"
So we shelved that idea... For about 5 years to be exact... Enter an author I very much enjoy, Jen Hatmaker. Randomly across my Facebook feed comes a post about her experience on Whole 30. As I watched her pictures of amazing food find their way across my social media over the course of the next 30 days, I found myself thinking, "Maybe, just maybe I can do this."
Jump to a few months following her experiment with this life change and I found myself listening to her interview with one of the creators of this system. The thing that caught my attention in this particular interview was the idea that the purpose of the 30 days was to deal with our addictions to food. That hit home for me.
What I know to be true about myself is that when I'm happy, sad, depressed or anxious food is how I celebrate, cope or hide from the pain. If I needed any reminder of that it had come the year before when I heard the thing no one wants to hear at a doctor's appointment... I had gained rather than lost weight after the birth of my second daughter.
In the months following this realization about Whole 30 my husband and I decided that we would definitely do this. Finally, the day came when I finished the bag of Oreos and realized I just felt yuck. The food hadn't filled the void that it usually filled. Shortly after that I did what any rational person would do.... I bought a half gallon of unsweetened almond milk and determined our start date from that singular plastic bottle and it's expiration date.
That was about 40 days ago...
When my husband came home five years ago and told me that he wanted to try this thing called Whole 30 I never would have expected to learn about myself from what I thought of as a diet. What I've learned from our Whole 30 experiment is how I can abuse food. Crazy thought, right? I mean we need food to live, don't we?
What I realized as we progressed through the Whole 30 is that I really don't need all of the food I typically manage to consume in a day, week or month. The Whole 30 helped me realize to recognize when I was genuinely hungry and when I wanted to eat because I was bored The Whole 30 by taking away my sugar and processed foods made me think about what "treats" really hold value for me. One of the things I spent the last week doing is anticipating my first Starbucks visit after our 30 days was over. Prior to Whole 30 I made excuses to go big on my Starbucks visits, guzzling a venti latte or mocha in short order. This time I found myself like a kid in a candy store with enough to only get one piece of candy.... What was the exact thing I wanted to savor.... What was the smallest size that would give me the greatest enjoyment?
The Whole 30 made me realize that I had stopped enjoying the things that should have been special. I was using them to mask or medicate a feeling that I didn't want to experience. Our experiment with Whole 30 has made me realize that one of the dangers in the addictions that we allow ourselves to have in areas we deem socially acceptable is the way they dull our senses. We no longer allow ourselves to anticipate the simple things. They become commonplace.
When I had to spend 30 days finding some way other than snacking to fight boredom I found time to invest in things that had been on my to-do list, but just never managed to trump sitting on the couch snacking and watching a movie. I decluttered our bathroom closet, pantry, bookshelves and half our basement. I found more time to read and visit the library. I found time to spend special days with my daughters. I don't think I've ever tried a "diet" that made me do the soul-searching that Whole 30 did.
The Whole 30 brought me face to face with my socially acceptable addictions in the form of food and in some respects my laziness. There were days where the urge to go get McDonalds for the convenience it afforded was so strong, I had to make a decision to make to not make the fast food run. I discovered there is a part of me that wants to make things easy for myself. I in no way believe that my struggle with food is over.... I'm human. I think that this will be an issue I need to continually be aware of, but before Whole 30 I did not see food addictions in quite the same way I do post-Whole 30. Will I live the remainder of my life sugarless? No, but I believe that I will choose more wisely how I spend my newly developed sugar allowance.
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