Thoughts on my Whole30

I'm glad it's over. 

I think it is good to shake up the way you eat from time to time, but for me having been Paleo for a long time, I seem to do a lot better on Paleo with dairy and wine than on the stricter Paleo path.  I gain weight if I replace heavy cream with coconut cream, mostly due to the carbs, and no doubt the calories.  (To get the right milky balance in my coffee, I need a lot more coconut cream than I do heavy cream...)

I've tried to switch to just plain tea, but it just doesn't do it for me unfortunately...

During the past 30 days, I ate a lot of the same thing. Due to that fact that I commute two hours each day, I find that my time gets cut to the point where when I get home the idea of jumping in the car and going to the store to get the ingredients for something exciting just doesn't appeal to me. This could be avoided by planning, but planning also takes time and so does grocery shopping, and I find it far easier to fall back on one or two staples that I can remember to pick up the ingredients for on the weekend. I know, it's kind of sad really...there are so many great Paleo recipes out there, this would have been a great opportunity to try them out! But instead I stuck to what I was good at--roasting chicken, sauteeing veggies and ground beef, searing steak, throwing together salads, stir fries, slicing tomatoes and baking, scrambling or poaching eggs.

The other thing that sort of got in the way of my enjoyment of it is that I really don't enjoy the paleo pure fat sources that I need in order to do a well balanced ketogenic diet. In my usual paleo with dairy, I use butter and cream and sour cream liberally.  For paleo it is straight animal fat, avocado, coconut milk (and oil) and nuts.  It is really easy to overdo nuts, coconut milk and avocado when you are relying on them for fat and need to limit your carbs...Also trying to keep the appropriate ratio of O3 to O6 is tricky when you include nuts...

So long story short, the Whole30, while a good exercise in practice, actually worked against me a little this time.  But it gave me some goals, and made me reflect on what I eat...I am motivated to make bone broth and eat more pro and prebiotics as I carry on!