Whole 30 while breastfeeding-- Results!

I made it!  30 days without grains, or chocolate (that’s huge for me), or sugar (other than the previously mentioned bit that was in bacon) or even Stevia in my coffee.  What’s funny is I couldn’t wait to get back to sweetening my coffee and this morning even 1/3 of what I used to use was too sweet.   I had the weirdest experience on Sunday though—I hadn’t had serious sugar cravings in a couple of weeks.  My kids are both sick and not sleeping well and I was exhausted and cranky and just done.  THIS is why you clean out your house before you do Whole30 because if I had any chocolate in my house that day I would have probably eaten it.  I really badly wanted treats but since I had none, I didn’t eat any.  We had Thai takeout for dinner and I also could have had grains but stuck to chicken salad.  

Results: I lost 4 pounds and 2.5% bodyfat.  I know some people have crazy amounts of weight loss, but this was amazing for me because I wasn’t really trying to lose weight and am below what I weighed before I had Max. My smallest old pair of jeans I had been optimistically hanging onto forever are now probably a half size too big.  

My challenge now:  to keep treats and sugar to rare occasions (my birthday is coming! And Thanksgiving, and the baby’s birthday and Christmas.  Hmm.) I am also trying to figure out how to eat enough to fuel Crossfit AND breastfeeding which is my new challenge.  I felt like I was barely getting in enough for the breastfeeding and now I’m doing Crossfit three times a week too and my supply has dropped again.  I find it challenging to eat enough carbs—there is only so much sweet potato and squash I can eat.  Speaking of that, I had an early dinner and it is 9pm and I’m starving again so time to eat once more.

Whole 30 while breastfeeding- Making this work

Let me tell you something about having two kids under three, a job and trying to blog.  It doesn't work very well.  The last 11 months have been an adventure in trying to figure out some food issues both for me and for my baby.  He has chronic eczema.  I eliminated dairy, eggs and nuts months ago.  I determined that eggs cause him to flare, but even with that cut out, he was still having constipation and his eczema was not totally clear.  We had a stressful Summer where we had to move out of our house for three months while some structural work was done and we lived in places that weren't conducive to doing much cooking and the food choices were not great-- too much processed stuff, too much takeout and not enough vegetables.  I was stressed, exhausted and started having difficulty with my breastmilk supply, and Marshall stopped gaining enough weight.  Finally, a couple of weeks ago we moved home and I immediately started a Whole30 challenge.  I have not been 100% truly, completely squeaky clean paleo since before I got pregnant with Max, who is almost three years old.  My previous attempts were too low in calories and carbs and I would quickly crash and burn because I was starving.  FINALLY I seem to have this figured out, for the most part.

So Whole30 + Breastfeeding FOR ME looks like this (your mileage may vary):

1. Breakfast is either leftovers from the night before, or a green smoothie with coconut milk, kale, frozen berries, chia seeds, and grass fed gelatin,  I usually drink half for breakfast and finish it later.  I also have some meat or bacon on the side.  Oh also a lot of coffee with coconut milk.

2. Mid-morning I might finish my smoothie or have a handful of almonds, more coffee

3. Lunch is meat, a sweet potato with ghee, some kind of vegetable

4.  In the afternoon I either eat a second lunch or an apple and almonds

5. Dinner is same as lunch

I can not emphasize enough how important having a decent dose of carbs and eating frequently has been for me.  I haven't been working out as much as I hoped because we all came down with some kind of lovely respiratory illness (thanks preschool germs!) I am not sure if it was adjusting to fewer carbs/sugar withdrawal, or being sick but I felt HORRIBLE for the first week or so.  I still sometimes get really tired in the afternoons which I think is adrenal fatigue given that I have a baby still waking up at least twice a night.  When I remember to take my vitamins I also still take a prenatal vitamin, probiotic, extra vitamin C,  adrenal glandular, vitamin D and Fermented Cod Liver Oil.

You are not supposed to weigh yourself during whole30 but I have and I'm already down 4# and weighing less than I have in years.  This stuff works friends.

And here is the absolute key do doing whole30 with a family and a job:  you have to cook ahead.  It's your part-time job.  At a minimum dinner has to make enough for all four of us to eat for lunch the next day too, but ideally I'd get a couple days out of it.  So  I make three pounds of salmon at a time, or an entire chicken, or five steaks.  The four of us eat twenty pounds of sweet potatoes a week! (Not only do I eat them twice a day but both kids absolutely love them).  I make 10# at a time in the oven, and then put them all in the fridge to grab and reheat.  I also will roast large pans full of veggies every couple days.  By doing all of this I don't have to cook a whole meal every day and on days I work I try to make sure there is either something in the crockpot or we have leftovers since I often have to get up at 4:30 am for work and I'm usually too exhausted to think straight when I get home.

I don't make stuff that's complicated.  Baked yams, roasted vegetables, meat that's baked or cooked in the crockpot.  I rarely make things that require standing over the stove or lots of ingredients because I just don't have the time.  Throw it on a pan, put it in the oven or the crockpot-- that I can manage -- stuff I can do with a baby hanging on my pant leg and a toddler begging to help.  It isn't exciting but it works. The whole family isn't paleo yet, but we are working on it.

What I miss: I like a little stevia in my coffee and I will go back to that after my whole30 ends unless it triggers ongoing sugar cravings.  I miss eggs-- I may challenge them again soon and see how he does with them-- the eczema is 90% better most of the time, but it also is never completely gone.  I give him probiotics and sometimes zinc on the recommendation of our ND, and trying to get better about giving him fermented fish oil. I do think his weight and digestion are back on track at least. Not sure what else to do there.  My birthday and Marshall's first birthday are next month and I am hosting a big family Thanksgiving.  I'd like to stick to paleo-fied treats for those and otherwise avoid sugar.  It is my life long nemesis and I'm better off without it, even the healthier kinds like honey.

There it is, my first blog post in months and some real progress.  I'm about to turn 35 and I am feeling good about the track I am taking with my health.  

Is anyone out there? Time for a reboot

I haven't posted to this blog for over a year, mainly because it was a whole foods/primal/paleo/grain-free eating blog and I haven't eaten that way in a long time.  Until now.

I had my second baby (Marshall) three months ago.  I had a difficult pregnancy-- I was exhausted, nauseated, lots of back pain and cranky, while wrangling a not quite two year old and a nearly full time job.  It was a lot and I didn't eat as well as I should have and I definitely didn't get enough exercise.  If we have any more kids I do not want to go through pregnancy so broken.

When my second was about 8 weeks old I started really feeling ready to get my life together, stop languishing in the land of too much sugar and grains and get back on track.  I joined a new gym that does only personal training of the high intensity kind-- I like Cross Fit fine but I needed something a little more one on one given my propensity to injure myself.  And at the end of January, after Max's second birthday  I said good bye to all but a tiny bit of sugar (I still have a few bites of very dark chocolate here and there).  

I had been eating dairy for over a year, but Mars is starting to develop eczema so it's a good excuse to ditch it for awhile and see if he improves.  In the week since I've been off it my digestion has been better, so I suspect I'm better off without it. 

What's working?  Planning and cooking ahead a lot.  I work 2 long days a week, and on the other days it's not practical to cook 3+ meals a day with two little kids underfoot.  I plan our dinners on the weekend, shop for most of it, and cook ahead some stuff.  That combined with making extra every time so I don't have to cook every night is helping.  I am still struggling with how many carbs and how much to eat to slowly get this baby weight off but support breast feeding- more on that later.

So this week, here's what we are eating:

Sunday: we had beef taco salad.  No real recipe, just a bunch of cumin and garlic in ground beef, plus lettuce, avocado, salsa and cheese for the guys. Not going to lie-- we also had Phad Thai today.  Sometimes you just need take out.

Monday: leftover taco salad
Tuesday: Crock pot pot roast, yams, broccoli
Wednesday: zuchini "noodles" and meat balls
Thursday: sausage/yam/apple bake (recipe soon)
Friday: no bun burgers

What I made ahead:
egg casserole-- I throw some kind of meat (sausage, ham, ground turkey etc), some vegetable (kale/broccoli), and a dozen eggs in a 9x13 pan with some salt and pepper and maybe garlic or basil and bake it.  It was better with cheese but it's still good and it saves me time making breakfast.

yams-- between me and the two year old we go through an insane number of these. I also some times do squash but prefer sweet potato.

roasted vegetables-- I am on a brussels sprouts kick, did some broccoli too.

mushrooms-- this is seriously one of my favorite things.  Incredibly delicious on anything savory

I made some bacon too but ended up snacking on half of it.  I think bacon is my new candy.  Oops.

Lunch is always leftover dinner from the day before (or a couple days if I made tons). 

I have lost somewhere between 2-5 pounds so far-- it seems to vary.  At least it's going in the right direction-- I still have around 15-20 pounds of baby weight to go.  It doesn't come off as easily the second time, in case you are wondering. 

Time to feed the baby and think about bedtime.

An update and an introduction

First of all, I would like to introduce you all to Max, born January 23 and weighing 9lbs 3 oz. I think he is pretty cute :)


Still, that blog isn't about nutrition and now that I'm out of the throws of pregnancy I have some thoughts on food to share.

I did not have an exclusively paleo/whole foods pregnancy. I would say I ate very healthy meals of mostly protein and vegetables once the first half of my pregnancy was over and I stopped feeling so nauseated, but I also ate a fair amount of sugar and refined (gluten free) junk food too, though I did not overeat-- just could have made overall better choices.

Over the course of my 41 week pregnancy I gained 39 pounds. I admit I was a little panicked about how hard that weight was going to be to lose. By the end I was retaining a LOT of water and was very uncomfortable-- my rings didn't fit, my shoes got tight, my face was puffy, I had cankles-- it was not cute. Exercise was mostly out of the question-- I was just too huge to get around. I did discover swimming towards the end-- if I had started this sooner I probably would have done that a lot more because it really helped.

Here's me at 40 weeks, huge and puffy:


Overall, it was not optimal but in the moment I felt like I was doing the best I could.

For several weeks before I gave birth I went on a crockpot cooking marathon and cooked and froze as many protein-type foods as possible so we would have healthy food available after the baby was born as my husband, who has many other talents, does not cook at all. I also decided that in addition to gluten and dairy, which I always avoid, I was going to cut out eggs and tomatoes. (Originally this was going to be all nightshades, but potatoes have happened). I especially wanted to avoid tomatoes because when I was a baby being breastfed, my mom said every time she ate tomatoes I would scream like crazy. And too many eggs give my mom eczema, plus I tested somewhat sensitive to them in the past, PLUS I ate eggs every day in my third trimester so I thought I probably should take a break from them.

I decided to support my breastfeeding I absolutely need starch in my diet, so in addition to yams and potatoes, I am eating rice, including a little bit of gluten free rice bread. I find I digest rice well (as opposed to most other grains) so I feel fine about this.

My diet now is not exactly paleo, but it is 98% whole foods and high protein. Every morning I have a green smoothie with almond milk, pumpkin seed protein powder, kale, fish oil and frozen fruit. On the side I have two slices of rice bread with nut butter.

Lunch and dinner are some kind of meat, often salad because it's fast or sauteed kale, and potato or yam, very occasionally some rice.

I snack on apples and TONS of trail mix, which I make myself out of the bulk bins at the grocery store of various raw nuts, dried fruit and dark chocolate. I am certain I am getting far too much omega 6 in my diet but honestly I have a 6 week old, it's kind of a miracle I'm eating as well as I am, so eventually I will cut back on that but for now it's sustaining me.

Supplements: still taking my prenatal and fish oil, plus I am taking garlic and grapeseed extract, recommended by my midwife after I had a case of mastitis (basically a breast infection). I also am taking heavy duty doses of probiotics after the aforementioned mastitis required antibiotics.

I don't know if it was because I lost a lot of fluids giving birth to my 9 pound baby good genetics, or my fairly clean diet, but I lost 25 of those 39 pounds in the first two weeks after giving birth and now, at 6 weeks post partum I only have 6 pounds to go to get to my pre-pregnancy weight (though I wouldn't mind losing twice that). I definitely have some work to do in the gym to rebuild a lot of lost muscle and fix the ab situation, but overall I feel like I'm pretty much back to being myself again. (Not that I can get into my favorite jeans, but hopefully I'll get there somewhat soon).

I've been thinking a lot about how I want to raise my son regarding food, paleo or otherwise, how big of a control freak I want to be (lately M has been eating way too much pizza and other crap because I haven't been doing a lot of cooking and that's what happens when he fends for himself-- not sure I want to have gluten in the house at all when Max starts eating solid food). I haven't quite decided yet-- I'm glad I have at least six months before I have to think about real food with the baby.

After several weeks of exhaustion and anemia due to blood loss (which I probably still have-- midwife will do blood work next week) I am finally really feeling ready to start exercising again. (Unfortunately my son will not take a bottle of pumped breastmilk so it's kind of hard to leave him for any length of time, but hopefully we will get there soon so I can hit the gym).

I am not sure how much better I could have really done food wise while pregnant because so much of what I felt was hormonal, but if I had it to do over I really would have worked harder at getting exercise in the second half of my pregnancy. I let my gym membership lapse and the weather didn't cooperate very well with walking outside and honestly I was just tired and kind of lazy about it.

I'll probably post here again occasionally when I have nutrition related thoughts to share, but I post much more often over at Sassy Chicken about mommy things if you are interested.