“I resent you.” I said to my husband, but I instantly regretted it.
It’s not his fault that he can eat whatever he wants, whenever he wants. It’s just hard to watch him eat a ton of carbs, junk food, and candy all night while I’m doing my intermittent fasting.
I apologized afterward to make sure he didn’t take it personally. Following the Wahl’s Paleo Plus diet is helping, but it’s a slow change and I’m impatient. So I was getting sick of following it. So many veggies! No sugar, eggs, dairy….it was all starting to get to me.
It was no surprise, then, that I jumped at the chance to cheat.
We went to tiny town Alberta for a hockey tournament and I made ZERO effort to stay on track with my diet. I know. Terrible. But it’s almost as if I had to prove to myself that my diet was working. Spoiler Alert: I did.
The first day, we were there for dinner. My lunch had sucked so I was pretty hungry. The hockey girls were having a pizza party after the game, which I couldn’t eat. Josh stopped at Subway so that I could grab a GF 6″ sub. It had the possibility of being cross-contaminated but there was processed meat and gluten-free (full of additives) bread, so I didn’t care. I was eating junk food!!
I was hungry maybe ten minutes later. I was hungry that entire weekend. Plus, I didn’t feel the greatest that night: sluggish, fuzzy around the edges and empty. I had eggs and potatoes the next morning at the hotel breakfast but the eggs made me feel gross and I threw out the rest of the white potatoes. That entire day, I snacked on Larabars (more sugar than I was used to!) in a desperate attempt to feel full.
That night, Isabella chose A&W. Ultimate junk food!! I was so excited to try the Beyond Meat Burger. I had waited so long to try it and now was my chance- way sooner than the year I thought I would wait while I did WPP.
My first impression was that it was okay. The texture was kind of sponge-y and it seemed thin. I thought the lettuce would cancel out the grease but it sat kind of heavy in my stomach WITHOUT making me feel full- which was a weird sensation. It was good but didn’t live up to the hype for me.
Which was unfortunate, because it didn’t make what happened next worth it.
The kids rushed back to the hotel to go swimming with Josh. I decided to hang back and have a hot bath before reading. My bath was quick, just a warm-up in soap-free water. I noticed while I was bathing that my arms were itchy. I thought maybe they were too dry because of the heat from the bath. It quickly became apparent that wasn’t the case. As I watched the itchy dots climb up and around my arm, I was reminded of having chicken pox: It was the same sensation of being itchy, flushed and suddenly too tired.
Frantically, I was texting my mom terrible hotel-lamp lit shots of my arm, like this one:
asking her if it was hives. She works in a nursing home and has seen everything at one time or another. While I waited for an answer, I kept swallowing to make sure that my throat wasn’t swelling.
My mom said that it sure looked like hives. As the night went on, my arms and legs were covered in them. I went to bed at 9pm with Hunter just in hopes that I could get to sleep and ignore the itchiness. Sleep came easy since my body was so taxed and fatigued.
The next morning the hives looked like a memory and I just felt tired, not itchy or feverish. While I was watching Isabella play hockey, I looked up the Beyond Meat ingredients. The major downside to having an allergic reaction to fast food is that there are SO MANY INGREDIENTS AND ADDITIVES. Darn you, junk food! I haven’t pinned down what it could have been.
I came back home with a new conviction to follow the WPP diet plan. All weekend I felt tired, moody and HUNGRY. I was bloated, my IBS symptoms flared up and felt achey. I had to take an anti-spasmodic twice while I was away to keep my gut calm and make it stop cramping and freaking out.
Once home, I fell asleep on the couch, hungry and exhausted.
The next day, motivated to get back on track and flush the poisonous food out of my body, I did a quick meal-plan based entirely on Terry Wahls’ meals from her book.
Now that we have been back more than a week and I’ve been eating the WPP way, I feel MUCH BETTER. Always full, more energy and no need for an anti-spasmodic. YAY.
That doesn’t mean I don’t resent the easy way that Josh can eat some nights! It still happens- but I do recognize that I’m different and need to eat the way that makes me feel good. Since my body purrs when I eat clean, with a focus on non-starchy veggies and great protein, I’m going to keep doing it.
What kind of diet makes YOU feel good??
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