Whole 30 is not as easy as I thought it would be. After doing keto for three years with an add on of paleo during those delicious fatty times, and continuing caveman mode for two years after with rarely a cheat or a bite of gluten I thought Whole 30 would be just another page of that type of “dieting”.
Somehow Whole 30 was harder and my intuition on this is that in ketosis you stop craving sweets once you’re a week in. Without much fruit to stimulate that sugar dragon and enough fat to always be satiated it’s really just that first week or even three days to get through and there’s plenty of bacon fat to feel happy all the time.
On paleo, you could always indulge your dragons with honey cinnamon rolls or avocado brownies with maple cream. Because paleo has such delicious treats I never felt like I was giving anything up. Jellybliss, even keto had low carb cinnamon rolls. I didn’t even learn to truly bake until my keto life. That’s even when I learned you could make a mini cake in a mug.
Whole 30 is like suddenly being thrown in the wild and realizing how much you rely on a stove. In the back of my mind, I’ve always thought I could survive in the wilderness, but have never done it. I always thought I could survive without sweets or any baked fluffy bliss. And then I did it and realized I’ve been relying on having a cinnamon roll in some form or the other in order to stay “healthy”. Just knowing I could make some version of my mouth loves with either honey, erythritol, almond flour or unicorn kisses made it easier, even if I didn’t consume them.
Whole 30 does remind me of a diet in that way. Telling yourself you “can’t” have something suddenly makes you crave it and then even overindulge once you can taste it. Like an addict in rehab coming back out is like a “You can do it!” party with true freedom. What the Whole 30 does push though is a state of “I can have it. I’m choosing not to”. Sometimes it is hard to remember this when you “can’t” even add honey to tea when a cold creeps up the throat.
The beautiful thing I’ve learned is I can feel those cravings. I can feel the sugar dragon roar up my spine and beg my tongue to lick something sweet. I can hear thoughts playing the sound of a chip’s crunch over and over, begging me to find them. I feel bread in my mouth when I wake up and spend ten minutes remembering it was a dream and I didn’t “cheat”. All of these things allow me to confront the reality of my dragons, and I wouldn’t have without Whole 30. Aun told me a day or so ago that when they have those cravings that you can just feel into them and that you can feel into the negative and embrace those feelings instead of being afraid of them. For me, that turned into instead of fearing them or hating those feelings you can understand and heal them. There’s no need to fear yourself or the dragons when they are emotions that are arising, and since they’re arising you can now see them, hug them, say it’s okay and find self-love with a little bit of bacon.
