I am going to preface this with the fact that this story may or may not contain anecdotes about poop. If you have never pooped, you may want to opt out. That's the last warning I will give. Like a prairie dog, it will pop its head out without notice.
In June, I took a spectacularly large fall down some spectacularly hard stairs. The sound I made upon landing most certainly broke some sound barriers, and the fuckity fucking fucks that I howled reverberated through our neighborhood of old people. Luckily, they are mostly all old and can't hear that well anymore. The hematoma that decided to grow out of my ass, like an alien in a Sigourney Weaver movie, made my one side look Kardashian-esque. The other side stayed firmly in the middle age mom jean category. Needless to say, my workout routine, scant as it was, was put on the back burner. I gained a good fifteen pounds in two months. I am pretty sure the hematoma weighed at least ten. The other five was sympathy wine. Pinot Grigio always understands my pain.
So, thirty sixexcruciating delightful days ago, I started something called whole 30. Before I talk about this, I will tell you don't believe them. There is no whole fucking thing in the whole 30. Not whole satisfaction, not whole weight loss, and definitely not whole poops. (There it is, I told you)
The idea behind the diet is that you eliminate alcohol (boo), carbs (my best friends), and sugars (yes, it's torture) to kickstart your metabolism and start healthy habits. I am now sitting in my basement with a Muppets thermos of wine, so you decide for yourself if my habits have been nicely kicked.
When you first start a diet like this, you have to have a catalyst. For some of us, it is not fitting into our skinny jeans. For some, it is not fitting in our fat jeans. For the rest of us, it is when we look at a picture of a family reunion and wonder when the mom from What's Eating Gilbert Grape snuck in to photobomb. So you get this brilliant idea to turn over some magical new leaves, although to be completely honest, by the end I was just turning over leaves looking for some food the kids may have dropped. They claim you will have an abundance of fresh energy. Proponents of the paleo lifestyle will start telling you all about how we go back to our caveman roots. I am a little bewildered why we would want to go back to a time where we shit on the ground while being chased by woolly mammoths, and then died in our twenties, but hey whatever works, right? I can tell you that the promise of renewed pep is about as fake as Trump's tan (Bazinga!) Zoodles get old. Yes, you read that right. ZOODLES. Those are made of spiral cut zucchini and I seasoned them with my tears. I also ate enough eggs that abortion protestors were pounding on my door, and so many leafy greens that my poop (I wasn't lying) turned a fluorescent green and scared the bejesus out of me. My webmd history really got a big workout this month.
I suffered through, though. I gazed longingly at other people's pizzas, and when no one was watching, stuck my nose in my kids' pasta just to smell the carby goodness. When my 30 day mark loomed, I started planning my cheat day. It involved a quick trip to paris where a garçon would spoil me with wads of crusty bread and cream sauces thick enough to grout my kitchen tiles. When that fell through, I was content to make pizza and drink wine in my gazebo with some girlfriends. I may have drunk so much wine that I forgot all the ridiculous things I said till I was reminded the next day, but hey- tolerance.
After my thirty days (now 36 minus my cheat day, and well... tonight and my laundry hamper of pinot), these are the things I can tell you:
If your thyroid is shitty, and your metabolism is sluggish, don't expect big things. You may or may not drop a couple of pounds doing a cleanse, but the week after you are done, they will all come back no matter how disciplined you are.
If you are a three-a-day pooper (yes, you can picture me reading smut on the toilet. You're welcome, Christian Gray) like me, you will miss your morning and evening constitutionals.
You will miss something. It may be ice cream, it may be booze. It may be pie eating contests. But you will not feel fulfilled.
I am way more fun when I am just being me. I know I am a fat me. I know I am not a heroin chic me. I know I will again never be ogled by college frat boys at dive bars, I am both insanely heartbroken and absurdly AOK with that.
In conclusion, I like me. I don't like pictures of me. I don't like the whole Jake/Kerensa, Jack Sprat/ his wife (if you don't get that reference, you don't read to your children enough) comparison. But I am fun. I am loud. I eat. I drink. I regret very little. It is who I am. I have a niche in this world, and it might be the chubby girl with the fun ironic t shirt collection, but I think I need to learn to be ok with that. I have things to offer, and maybe my fitness isn't one of them, but there are enough of the map my run posts on Facebook to cover all of us who only run when being chased by zombies. And let's face it, if there really were zombies, I would be the one who was eaten while trying to shove pudding in my knapsack. We all have to go sometime.
In June, I took a spectacularly large fall down some spectacularly hard stairs. The sound I made upon landing most certainly broke some sound barriers, and the fuckity fucking fucks that I howled reverberated through our neighborhood of old people. Luckily, they are mostly all old and can't hear that well anymore. The hematoma that decided to grow out of my ass, like an alien in a Sigourney Weaver movie, made my one side look Kardashian-esque. The other side stayed firmly in the middle age mom jean category. Needless to say, my workout routine, scant as it was, was put on the back burner. I gained a good fifteen pounds in two months. I am pretty sure the hematoma weighed at least ten. The other five was sympathy wine. Pinot Grigio always understands my pain.
So, thirty six
The idea behind the diet is that you eliminate alcohol (boo), carbs (my best friends), and sugars (yes, it's torture) to kickstart your metabolism and start healthy habits. I am now sitting in my basement with a Muppets thermos of wine, so you decide for yourself if my habits have been nicely kicked.
When you first start a diet like this, you have to have a catalyst. For some of us, it is not fitting into our skinny jeans. For some, it is not fitting in our fat jeans. For the rest of us, it is when we look at a picture of a family reunion and wonder when the mom from What's Eating Gilbert Grape snuck in to photobomb. So you get this brilliant idea to turn over some magical new leaves, although to be completely honest, by the end I was just turning over leaves looking for some food the kids may have dropped. They claim you will have an abundance of fresh energy. Proponents of the paleo lifestyle will start telling you all about how we go back to our caveman roots. I am a little bewildered why we would want to go back to a time where we shit on the ground while being chased by woolly mammoths, and then died in our twenties, but hey whatever works, right? I can tell you that the promise of renewed pep is about as fake as Trump's tan (Bazinga!) Zoodles get old. Yes, you read that right. ZOODLES. Those are made of spiral cut zucchini and I seasoned them with my tears. I also ate enough eggs that abortion protestors were pounding on my door, and so many leafy greens that my poop (I wasn't lying) turned a fluorescent green and scared the bejesus out of me. My webmd history really got a big workout this month.
I suffered through, though. I gazed longingly at other people's pizzas, and when no one was watching, stuck my nose in my kids' pasta just to smell the carby goodness. When my 30 day mark loomed, I started planning my cheat day. It involved a quick trip to paris where a garçon would spoil me with wads of crusty bread and cream sauces thick enough to grout my kitchen tiles. When that fell through, I was content to make pizza and drink wine in my gazebo with some girlfriends. I may have drunk so much wine that I forgot all the ridiculous things I said till I was reminded the next day, but hey- tolerance.
After my thirty days (now 36 minus my cheat day, and well... tonight and my laundry hamper of pinot), these are the things I can tell you:
If your thyroid is shitty, and your metabolism is sluggish, don't expect big things. You may or may not drop a couple of pounds doing a cleanse, but the week after you are done, they will all come back no matter how disciplined you are.
If you are a three-a-day pooper (yes, you can picture me reading smut on the toilet. You're welcome, Christian Gray) like me, you will miss your morning and evening constitutionals.
You will miss something. It may be ice cream, it may be booze. It may be pie eating contests. But you will not feel fulfilled.
I am way more fun when I am just being me. I know I am a fat me. I know I am not a heroin chic me. I know I will again never be ogled by college frat boys at dive bars, I am both insanely heartbroken and absurdly AOK with that.
In conclusion, I like me. I don't like pictures of me. I don't like the whole Jake/Kerensa, Jack Sprat/ his wife (if you don't get that reference, you don't read to your children enough) comparison. But I am fun. I am loud. I eat. I drink. I regret very little. It is who I am. I have a niche in this world, and it might be the chubby girl with the fun ironic t shirt collection, but I think I need to learn to be ok with that. I have things to offer, and maybe my fitness isn't one of them, but there are enough of the map my run posts on Facebook to cover all of us who only run when being chased by zombies. And let's face it, if there really were zombies, I would be the one who was eaten while trying to shove pudding in my knapsack. We all have to go sometime.
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