Halfway to Whole30 – and Thinking about Giving Up

Today is Day 15, wow! I kind of can't believe I am still hanging in there, but on the other hand it's not really a hardship. Do I miss just eating whatever whenever I like? Of course. In fact, last night I had one of those famous food dreams. I won't go into too much detail but it involved huge donuts and quite frankly, I can't remember whether I actually ate them in the dream, so... oh well.

On Friday I thought for sure it was the end of it. I had a stressful event toward the end of the work day involving a fairly new bank account (basically, KeyBank froze my account and said that it was ditching me because they found out about an instance of identity theft back in 2011 and considered me too risky, or something -- thankfully I hadn't yet transferred all my stuff over to them yet, but it was still upsetting and stressed me out!), and after that I swear all that was on my mind was how much I wanted to drink and all the stupid things I wanted to eat. I even texted my partner: "I want to stop doing Whole30."

But, then he came back with how proud he was for me sticking with it and that just kind of popped me back into reality. I realized that I was also proud of myself for hanging in there and working on bettering my habits. Shouldn't a time like this be a good opportunity for me to find a new way to deal with stressors or quell my emotions? Long story short, I didn't quit and I didn't even slip. I consider this the second major learning "thing" – number two after having successfully attended a family get-together without crashing. Those things always, always involve a lot of food – a lot of foods that I really like to eat but are definitely not W30 compliant. What I did in that case was made sure to eat a filling meal before I went, but once I got there I realized that I would be hungry anyway and should have planned better. In the back of my head I figured that there would be something there I could eat, like a veggie plate or something – not to mention that I was really only going to see everyone and not to eat. Of course, this time no dice. There was literally nothing on plan... until my cousin unveiled a gorgeous, home-grown watermelon.And then shortly after that? She handed me a baggie of freshly-picked string beans from her garden. On top of that, her sister had some Fuji apple slices that she shared with me. All in all, it was a tasty and satisfying-ish makeshift meal. Lesson learned, though – in social situations, make sure to have a Plan B.

If nothing else, I appreciate that Whole30 is teaching me these new coping skills. I have always relied on food for so many things, and it feels totally freeing to have tools like these to use for the rest of my life. It's been worth the challenge only for that, but of course I am hoping that I'll reap other benefits as well.

So far my aches and pains have not gone away at all, and I am still really dragging, energy-wise. It's like I can't get enough sleep, even with nine, ten, eleven hours a day some days. I will say that I have had a much better quality sleep, though. I sleep like the dead.

As the day goes on and I'm writing this, I am finding myself wondering if I should throw in the towel, seriously. I'm reading lots of different things on various forums and blogs about Whole30 experiences, and... I don't know. I've made it this far and hate to give up, you know? I am just so tired of feeling so tired and there is no way to know if it's going to get better or if this is just it, i.e. no "Tiger Blood" for me. Then again? It seems like most days at around this time I go through this whole thought sequence and end up putting in another day. Best I can say at this moment is what I find myself saying so often: "We'll see."