A Whole New Approach

Feeling Good Inside Out

I recently celebrated my 47^th birthday. And the day before it, one of my gym instructors introduced a nutrient-dense healthy eating plan that our family embarked on June1st.

To be clear, I think diets are a total waste of time.

They all seem to end the same. In defeat. Diets leave dieters hungry. Physically, emotionally and spiritually. Because it is never really about the why or a greater inner goal.

It always seems to be about what we need to lose. Not what we have to gain.

I am normally suspect of any ‘plan’ or ‘program’ because they all seem dangerously close to consumer manipulation. Even ones based on healthy lifestyles over weight.

But because of who introduced this to me, I remained open-minded.

Besides being in amazing shape (not skinny or over-muscular but wicked strong) and being incredibly even-tempered and encouraging (for over four years), my fitness instructor, Liz, radiates joy.

Not in that overhyped, steroidal happy way but true blue contentedness.

In addition to teaching several killer classes from weight training to kickboxing, she is always upbeat, professional and interested in each individual’s life fitness. Not just exercise but attitude, mindset, emotional resilience and a strong spirit.

She subscribes to a whole being approach.

Here’s an example. We do superman push-ups (where you go down to your belly and raise your feet and arms in air before getting up). She says, we do these because we train that when we fall all the way down, we get all the way back up. 

If we can do it with our bodies, we can do it with our lives. 

Normally I stretch after class and high tail it out of the gym because I am not terribly social, don’t love chitchat and need to get to work. However, this past week, our instructor, Liz, was sitting outside class and I went to say thank you for class.

Conversation ensued. She generously said she noticed the difference in my body having taken her class for a while and I jokingly asked if I continued taking it would she be able to make my wrinkles go away too.

She laughed. 

But then she began talking to me about inflammatory foods in the body and how women our age (which was really MY age since she is like 32) should have 40% fat (like in avocado), 35% carbs (not in grains) and 25% protein.

I didn’t understand much except my yes instincts sparked to life and I thought, wow, I avoid fat at all costs. And… I thought protein was god. And… how the heck do you get carbs without grains. Have I been living under a rock?

She could see my slightly overwhelmed look trying to digest her “how and why to eat healthy in a nutshell” explanation. She smiled and gave me the Whole 30 website to check out. http://whole30.com

I devoured it as soon as I got home. 

It turns out the deficit in my thinking about what constitutes or at least passes for a healthy lifestyle were, to put it mildly, wildly dated. And erroneous. This provided me enormous relief. I love to be wrong about things I am doing that aren’t working. And my plan wasn’t.

In a nutshell, the Whole 30 plan is simple.

It says yes to meat, poultry, seafood and all vegetables and fruits. No to alcohol, dairy, sugar and grains. Yes to as much as you want to eat. No to calorie-counting, scales and any food that encourages a “No brakes” mentality.

This includes all chips and fries made with veggies. And frozen treats or deserts, even ones made with compliant ingredients.

The point is to change habits. 

The book is hilariously written and encouraging. It allows for absolutely no cheats and lasts 30 days.

It offers tough love as in, This isn’t hard. Beating cancer is hard. Losing a loved one is hard. No milk in your coffee is not hard. But this is balanced out with compassionate recognition about the difficulty of giving up a reward system set up in childhood.

And there is guidance on the emotional and physical side effects of changing your food life day by day so when you want to kill everyone, you know its coming and when you think you may need a 24 hour nap, you know it is your body readjusting.

It offers wise advice: Fail to plan and you plan to fail.

This came in handy on Day 7 when Leo and Finn went to a Newspaper Club pool party and we pictured all the amazing array of sugary junk food that would be there and them saying no thanks and going for a slice of watermelon.

It worked! They have each been clean for 11 days. Aside from the program they are learning amazing life skills. Making positive healthy choices in the face of temptation and peer pressure.

Learning how to visual a challenge ahead of time and rehearse what they will do so they feel confident when the time comes. And the amazing options that can open up when you say no to what doesn’t serve you and yes to what does.

It has opened up a savory, delicious adventure in cooking and meal planning.

We are on Day 11. Joe’s chronic joint pain is gone. His chronic sleeping issues: way better. Significant weight: lost. Sustained energy: found. Feeling of peace: increased. All without being hungry.

In case all this good news seems too good to be true, it is. There have been downsides.

Joe wanted to kill everyone for the first few days. I have bouts of extreme crankiness. And the kids have had small breakdowns over the elimination of milk and goldfish.

Overall, for me, so far, it has been both exhilarating and emotional.

I start most endeavors with a fierce optimism and take on the world attitude. This was no different. I was so excited the kids became excited. We shopped together. Bought crazy new things like different kinds of beef and turkey and bison jerky.

Some were disgusting: some amazing.

Mostly we began treating the process as a giant experiment and adventure. New meals every night. New lunches everyday. I threw myself into the creativity of it and thinking about what they’d love that would keep them curious and happy.

And then, on Day 8 I hit a wall, hard.

My newfound energy and excitement fizzled out. I felt sad, defeated and like a failure. I wasn’t sure why.

For anyone who reads the Pilgrim regularly, I gave up all sugary treats, soda of any kind and all artificial sweeteners the Monday after Thanksgiving. This did not in any way include alcohol, dairy or grains of any kind.

So I was still able to power eat pretzels, corn chips and cheese platters when necessary. You know, to hide from unwanted anxiety, insecurity or disappointment.

And numb out overwhelming sadness.

The no sugar thing, for me, was a huge accomplishment. I had based my entire reward structure around food. But, mentally I simply replaced chocolate with salty processed snacks.

The Whole 30 put an end to that. And warned strongly about turning to salted nuts as anything more than a small accompaniment to meals. I haven’t quite mastered moderate nut-eating yet.

So, basically I was screwed.

But, in the first week of the Whole 30 the layer of thickness I could not lose while still eating grains and dairy came off. My body is at fit as it can be, for me. I looked at myself in the mirror after gym class yesterday and thought, this is it. This is what I have been working towards.

I felt like I had finally arrived at the top of the mountain but it was not at all what I thought it’d be. I don’t know what I’d expected.

Maybe a killer reception with champagne, celebrities, an elaborate award ceremony followed by an interview with Vanity Fair and an offer to host my own talk show?

Something. More than my reflection.

I lay face down on the matt pretending to stretch, tears free-falling. Why does any of this matter? What have I been training so hard for? What do I do know? Is there some new challenge to which I must rise? I don’t think I can. Seriously, what now?

What is the big thing toward which I’ve been training?

The feeling was terror. That soul-trembling discomfort that signals a personal earthquake is imminent. You can keep running, keep accomplishing, keep up high levels of productivity, keep reinventing goals… But, sometimes, exhaustion combined with an inner GPS says: no more.

There was a haunting familiarity to it. A kind of inner knowing my heart longed for but my overachieving mind had categorically rejected.

Still does.

So, what is the big thing toward which I’ve been training?

Life. Mundane, magnificent life. Extraordinary but not glamorous. Courageously humble. Quietly inspiring. The simply, beautiful, act of living with grace and love. I have been training to lessen my preoccupation with food, so I can focus more wholeheartedly on what feeds me most.

Being lovingly present. For all of it. Even the seriously uncomfortable parts.

Being fit, being healthy, being disciplined– completing this new Whole 30 goal, only matters if it feeds my heart, my spirit, my life and those of the people I love.