So, foster care showed me I wasn’t a quitter, but I still struggled with having any willpower. I want to go into a high school graduation speech and talk about how the Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines willpower as blah, blah, blah.....but I think we all know what willpower looks like and envy those who have an abundance of it. I suck at delayed gratification. I know what I want, and I want it as soon as possible. I don’t play the long game. I find a direct route to my goal and make a beeline for it. Well, under-forty-Shannon did that. The improved-wiser-Shannon understands that success is measured by one’s ability to delay gratification (Side note, is there anything more doucey than when someone starts referring to themselves in the third person. I’m so sorry. Not sorry enough to delete it, but I am a little sorry). This is something I’m trying to teach Wrigley and myself at the same time. I have replaced what I once viewed as willpower with delayed gratification. I understand it’s importance and I practice it everyday in being a Christian. Doing the right thing is hard, but it’s worth it in the long run. Now let’s apply that to food.
I remember a time when I just ate what I wanted, when I wanted, without a care in the world. It felt good in the moment and I would joke about people who were eating healthy saying things like they should just shut up, eat their salad and be sad. It was a simpler time filled with homemade baked goods and never-ending chips with queso. I told myself I was happy not worrying about my food choices. I even fanaticized about opening up a restaurant that caters to fat people and call it “Fat Dumb and Happy’s.” Well, when I was confronted with the idolatry of my relationship with food, I had to be more deliberate in my eating habits. I can’t claim to serve God if my life reflects my service to fast food restaurants. I didn’t live like the people you see on My 600 lb Life. My eating habits weren’t shocking and I’m fairly active, but there is something wrong with how my body processes food and I need to be more careful than most. I just haven’t wanted to do anything about it because it was easier to ignore it and as I said earlier, I didn’t really plan on living very long, so why not enjoy the time I have.
For the past few years I had had a front row seat to my best friend’s dramatic weight loss. I saw her eat weird and I did my best to support her efforts. I admired what she did, but knew I didn’t want to live that way. I didn’t want to spend so much energy thinking about my food. I just wanted to live and not trade my love-of-food idol in for another one. It didn’t seem like a life I could (or want to) sustain. Then she went off the deep end. She decided she was going to do the most hardcore diet I have ever seen, Whole30. This is the diet I see people do who don’t need to diet because they are already fielding offers to do fitness magazine covers. She hit her goal weight, ran a half marathon and now she was going to do this. Why?
If you are unfamiliar with Whole30, here is a synopsis of it. It’s an elimination diet that resets your body and helps restore its proper function. For 30 days you eliminate potentially problematic food then gradually reintroduce them to see how foods affects you. It can help you lose weight, have more energy, sleep better and eliminate pain just to name a few benefits. I copied that verbatim from my Whole30 Day by Day journal where I was supposed to write an “elevator pitch” explaining what the Whole30 is. Here are the rules:
- Eat real foods that are whole and unprocessed
- Do not eat any sweeteners of any kind
- No alcohol in any form, even in cooking
- No grains, including corn, of any kind
- No legumes including beans, peanuts or soy
- No dairy regardless of the animal it comes from
- No additives like carrageenan, MSG, or sulfites
- No baked goods, junk foods, or treats made with approved ingredients
- Don’t weigh yourself
- No slips, no cheats, no excuses (you have to start over if you even take a bite of off-limits food)
As the author says, “Cancer is hard. This is not hard.” She lies. If you have a food addiction, this extremely hard. I see people all over the internet saying they are rocking their Whole30 by eating their compliant pancakes. There is no such thing as compliant pancakes. You violated rule number 8!
Pineapple! (See, I followed through) So, my friend is going to do this plan and make us all look even worse than we already do. She talked about it ALL THE TIME. I thought it sounded completely crazy and wondered why anyone would even want to attempt this. Well, in March 2017, Steve and I decided to do it. I don’t even remember why. I knew I wanted to get healthier and I knew if I wanted drastic results, I was going to need to do something drastic. To truly follow this plan is tough. To do it on your first try without any slips is hard. To do it with a new baby and a difficult pre-teen is harder. To do it when you’re morbidly obese most of your life is near impossible.
Well, call me a unicorn, because I DID IT! I even enjoyed it most of the time. It was fun (and still is) to talk to my friend about weird food stuff together and get excited about finding bacon without sugar in it. I felt great! The constant joint pain I felt went away. I was sleeping through the night. It helped me view food as fuel instead of entertainment. So sorry, I slipped back infomercial mode.
Pineapple! I felt like a freaking rockstar because I successfully completed my first diet ever and it was one that healthy people struggle to do. It taught me such an important thing about myself. I can do hard things. I don’t give up because it’s hard, I dig deeper. I have the power of the Holy Spirit living in me and I’ve been promised that I can do anything that is right with God through the strength of Jesus. For almost my entire life food has held this power over me and made me believe I was helpless against it. That sounds so stupid to be under the spell of an inanimate object, but that’s how it felt. Whole30 broke that spell and gave me confidence like I’ve never had. I felt like a badass. Like the way you felt after watching the latest Wonder Woman movie. It caused me to do a total 180 on the way I viewed food and health and I was ready to make permanent lifestyle changes because for the first time in my life, I believed I could.
Then Little Red died. You know that story from the last post, but what I left out was how all my good eating habits went out the window. It started slowly with eating all the delicious carb overloaded meals well-meaning friends and family brought us. It continued to decline as I started eating fast food at least once a day until I hit my all-time highest weight of around 370 lbs. The physical pain was amplified because of how good I had felt months prior. I was in a bad place physically and mentally. I was extremely dissatisfied with my life and couldn’t imagine my husband was content with me or our marriage. He never said anything negatively to me about it, but how could he not be disappointed with the woman he was stuck with for the rest of his life? I imagined him hitting a breaking point and just leaving one day.
But that’s another story, for another post.
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