In order to be the four star tour guide you deserve and efficiently take you on my journey through Whole30 I need to first take you back to the beginning and explain why I got in the car in the first place.
Last year I got pregnant (remember, not a mom blog) and it sucked. Don’t get me wrong, I LOVE my daughter, but I hated being pregnant because pregnancy hated me. I puked preeeety much every day for nine months straight. It became part of life – I’d puke in the Costco parking lot, step over it and carry on inside to buy me some giant ass muffins. And a Vitamix.
So naturally in order to combat this output of food, I compensated with input and ate EVERYTHING.
I didn’t eat A LOT of the things. I ate ALL of the things.
My daughter popped out weighing 6lbs and change and was made up of 98% cupcakes and 2% cold lo mein noodles, which were consumed mainly for breakfast. Why? I don’t know. It felt right at the time.
One Sunday I bought a birthday cake at the grocery store. Was it someone’s birthday? I dunno, probably. But not anyone I knew.
It was delicious.
Much to my surprise, when Quinn made the transition from puke inducing fetus demon to squishy adorable baby, she did not bring those 40ish lbs of late night burrito fat with her. Those pounds remained squarely on my ass. And as such I had werk to do.
So I ran lots of miles and calorie counted and did all the things that used to work pre-pregnancy, but I hit some roadblocks. Turns out pregnancy FUCKS your body up. Like rewires and shifts organs, fucked up. Some things go away forever. Some new things pop up that you didn’t invite. And most surprisingly to me, weight hangs around like the long graduated high school football captain who still comes to games hoping to score with sophomore cheerleaders.
Drastic measures needed to be taken. So I did what every logical 37-yr old white chick does – I turned to The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills for some answers.
No you didn’t.
Oh yes I did!
For those of you who are unfamiliar with the Housewives franchise, first off, how dare you. Second, on the BH version there is a Housewife named Teddi Mellencamp who happens to be, wait for it, an “Accountability Coach.” Yep, this is a real job. A job that you too can aspire to with the only prerequisite being you have a ginormously famous father with gobs of money to fund your bullshit undergraduate major until you pop out four years later with your degree and ability to invent a job title.
Now apparently Teddi has been somewhat successful as an AC and has amassed a team of these coaches and even put together a program to help little nobodies like me lose weight, look fantastic and feel like everything in life is under control just as long as we’re fitting into size 2 jeans.
I took one look at this flimsy program and said, “SIGN ME UP!”
It was 2 weeks later, after accepting my low low deposit of $500, that they sent me the meal plan that would help me realize my Beverly Hills self. This is going to shock you, but the plan was less of a meal plan and more of a “just don’t fucking eat anything” plan.
And my dumb ass, ladies and gents, paid five hundred benjis for it.
Well that wasn’t gonna work. So after a bit of arguing and questioning, Teddi booted me out of her skinny people club and sent me and my $500 refund packing. I’m sure she and the other accountability coaches had a good laugh about it over celery sticks and then for dinner they went to bed.
So I was back to square one.
But all hope was not lost! For those of you who don’t know, I work for a fitness company and my co-workers are forever talking about and trying new diets, fitness challenges and have their ear to the ground when it comes to what’s new in the health world. Whole30 has been out there for a while and many of them had gone through it, so I figured what the hell. Let’s do it.
Dave, my trusty husband, was so pleased I had chosen to avoid Teddi’s starve-myself-to-success diet, that he was more than happy to join me on my 30 day quest.
So on October 1st we took the plunge. The month would include a week long business trip to LA, my birthday and a few other carb-filled speed pumps that provided tough challenges along the way. I will elaborate more in Part 2, but for now I can say that yes, Dave and I are still married. Whole30 did not break us. But we are scarred.
Also my cat is fatter.
Stay tuned
candy for breakfast 