I wish I had something amazing to follow up that dream blog but I don’t. I woke up this morning pretty easy. I don’t have an amazing amount of energy like some people write about having. I’m wondering if maybe my morning energy levels were never that bad anyway. I always thought they were because I would wake up just not feeling 100%. But not feeling 100% and energy levels can be two different and non-correlated things. At least with certain people, me in particular.
Looking back, I’ve always been a morning person. As a kid and even a teenager, my mom never had trouble with waking me up for school. I never used to even set an alarm. In college, I was the same way. I would always sign up for super early classes because I knew I could get there. I loved being done with the day by 1 or 2 in the afternoon. There has always been a sense of accomplishment linked to waking up early for me and I think that’s why, even when I’m sick or tired, that I still manage to get up and get my day going.
The not feeling 100% thing started happening around the time I turned 30. A lot of things happened around that time actually:
My Skin
My skin went from being super oily to dry. I was not used to this and all the products I had been using up to this point started to turn on me. I had to, painfully, go through a period of testing other products. This meant I went through terrible breakouts and just a period of bad looking skin. This oddly was the time I started to date my, now, husband. Bless that man.
My Metabolism
This went to hell. All the things I loved to over indulge were joining forces and conspiring against me. I worked at the bar, during this time, and I would be drinking, eating pizza or wings or god knows what else. In the past, it never affected me negatively. 15 pounds later, I started to realize that maybe I can’t be putting all this stuff in my body every single day. I would work out all the time and saw nothing. It was frustrating to me because I didn’t want to admit to myself that some of my food choices were just bad. Skipping meals seemed to be the answer. But it wasn’t and only made me more miserable when I realized that didn’t help either. I needed to educate myself and acknowledge my own habits. I needed to eat healthier. Don’t get me wrong, I still indulge on my favorite things but I do it in moderation. You shouldn’t live your life telling yourself no all the time. =)
My New Allergies
Oh hey, I’m lactose intolerant. Yes, this is a fact. It’s also a fact that I didn’t learn of this until this last October. Looking back, I’ve been lactose intolerant for years, probably since Middle School. Yet, I ignored all the signs and never once considered “oh hey, maybe my skin looks so bad and I’m bloated ALL THE TIME because I’m drinking like 3 gallons of milk a week”. During the time when I was growing up you were taught that milk was the best and healthiest drink option for you. I wasn’t a soda drinker. Skipping the soda and choosing milk instead was always considered smart. And I went all through school thinking that. I also loved the taste of milk. Have you ever chugged ice cold milk out of the carton after a night of drinking? It’s the best. THE BEST.
It’s not the best for you though. After you are an infant, your body is not the greatest at digesting milk, especially cow’s milk. In the book, [It Starts With Food], they have an entire chapter that goes over it. Some people just cannot do it at all. Drinking milk or eating any dairy leads to an entire day on the toilet. However, when I drink milk or eat dairy, I tend to break out, feel and look bloated and get sharp pains in my stomach. Any kind of negative symptom is not worth it. Some people can handle dairy with zero symptoms and I have one thing to say about that, I’m jealous.
My Ability to Lose Weight
Ok, so I’m going to say first here that I’m not overweight. This is not going to be a poor me section about how I can’t shed 5 pounds when I want to. I understand that there are others that have it harder than me and there is nothing worse than reading about some already thin person bitching about how they are having trouble losing holiday or relationship weight. BUT – I do want to point out that losing weight got harder when I turned 30. It did! When I gained that 15-20 pounds it took almost 2 years to lose it. I was working out all the time and just killing myself. I think I tried like every single diet there was. Cabbage Soup Diet (gross). Lemonade Diet (gross and hated it). Adkins Diet (no carbs? Forget it). I mean I was all over the board just looking for anything that would help. Turns out, I just needed to stick to working out and eating healthy. It took a while but I finally dropped the weight and I did it the right way.
I think my huge problem was wanting a quick fix. Log onto Pinterest right now and you will be bombarded with ads like “Abs in 10 days”, “Lose 20 pounds in 10 days” etc. These ads trick you and then make you feel like shit when you don’t accomplish whatever they are selling you in 10 days. But, I too, was a sucker for this. I wanted to lose the weight now and when something wasn’t showing me immediate results after 2 days I would move on to the next thing. In the end, diet and exercise is what did it and is what continues to keep me on the right track today.
Doing the Whole 30 is something I did a lot of research on beforehand. I read both books, [It Starts With Food] and [Whole 30], before I even considered trying this. Because, even though I have corrected a lot of food choices in my life the last year, I still have been dealing with new issues. I wake up and it’s almost like I’m getting sick. My body aches and I just feel…..not right for the first few hours. My Aunt Tanya, who went through A LOT in her 30s health wise, told me a lot of things went away after she did an elimination diet. I’m not sure if she did the Whole 30, but she did something similar. I was right away curious because I remember how sick she was. She now can eat a lot of those things she was forced to give up before due to her elimination diet and then slowing re introducing them.
Anyway – these are just some of the thoughts I was having today on Day 8. Reminding myself of what I’ve been doing the last 4 years in the quest of trying to be better. When I can drink again, I will toast to it! =)
Gurl Jonez 
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