Lately, I’ve been totally failing on the eating front. Well, that may be a bit dramatic. I still eat quite a bit of healthy foods, but now I just tend to eat a lot of unhealthy foods too. But I have always been healthy and have always had quite a bit of self control when it comes to eating. Aside from my nightly handful of Enjoy Life chocolate chunks (which I had just recently started eating), I didn’t buy sweets at all. I didn’t bring bread into my house. I stopped eating yogurt because it just is really not friendly to my digestive tract. You know, things like that… Just being in tune with how my body reacted to foods and keeping those things out of the house.
Lately? Well, it’s been quite the eating shit show over here. I used to be able to easily pass up the peppermint bark pretzels and chocolate and peanut butter drizzled popcorn, but now? Those sneaky treats just keep on making their way into my shopping cart, and then I eat them all. Sometimes in one sitting, sometimes in multiple. (Just a side note here: Those peppermint bark pretzels are seriously amazing. I mean, they may be up there as my number one favorite store bought dessert. I can’t even put into words how freaking delicious they are.) I also used to be able to look at the box of Dunkin’ Donuts on the break room table at work and pass them by, but those days are long gone. A donut and three donut holes? Sure. Why not?!
The sad thing about this is that my body is getting accustomed to this type of eating again. I will never forget visiting my sister in Wisconsin a few years back. I had been eating strict Paleo for a solid five months, and I’d say that I ate Paleo 99.9% of the time. I was even eating Paleo at Mexican restaurants, and all I ever want is chips, cheese dip, and a bean burrito. But I stuck to my diet. And I was totally fine with it. I mean, I ate Paleo baked goods occasionally, but I had no problems with eating that way. It became easy. But when I went to visit my sister, we made some muffins and they were so freaking good. I ate three of them. (I could easily kill three muffins now like it’s no big deal.)
I actually just came across this picture of those exact muffins! They were pumpkin cream cheese muffins. No wonder they were so good!
After my muffin gorge, I went to bed. I woke up in the middle of the night and was miserable. I was sweating, my heart was racing, I was nauseous, and I felt insanely uncomfortable. It was like there was a rock sitting in my stomach and I had literally never felt that before.
(Another random site note: I was a vegetarian for 13 years and expected to feel that way when I started eating meat again because I thought my body wouldn’t be used to it. Oddly enough, I have never had that reaction to any meat product. The fact that it was so severe to bread after just five months of not eating it was crazy to me.)
I’ll really never forget that experience. Clearly, my body doesn’t tolerate bread. I just never knew it because I had never gone without it before I started eating Paleo. If you read about a lot of food intolerances, you won’t even realize you have them because your body is in a constant state of inflammation. Until you cut the foods out, you won’t notice your body react to them. And I had a major unexpected reaction.
Lately, I notice when I binge eat sugary stuff at home and then sit down and relax, my heart is definitely beating faster than usual. It’s that same response that I had to bread, but it’s not nearly as severe because my body is already constantly inflamed from eating these foods on a daily basis. It just gets worse when I eat a bunch at once.
I have no idea why it suddenly became so hard for me to go back to Paleo. It wasn’t a hard transition the first time around. Then again, I was living on my own, not pregnant, living at a CrossFit gym pretty much, and my best friend who I spent all of my time with was eating Paleo too. I know how much better I feel when I cut out certain foods, but it has been so hard to get back on track. And I know it isn’t time. I was working close to 60 hours a week back then and I was working on my bachelor’s degree online, plus going out all the time. Yet I still managed to shred my own sweet potatoes to make hash every week and cook literally every single thing that I ate.
Anyway, so I have no idea what the point of this was. Maybe that I need to somehow find a way to motivate myself to eat healthier. You would think growing a baby would be enough motivation to make sure he’s growing healthy in there (especially since the effects of glyphosates on babies in utero seem like to they could cause some serious health issues- although I think further research needs to be done and I’m sure Monsanto would have a field day trying to hide those studies). Perhaps I’ll just blog about this more frequently until eating healthy becomes more of a habit again as a way to kind of hold myself responsible. We’ll see.
Fun fact: I also maintained my heaviest weight while eating Paleo. I was 105lbs, but also lifting heavy. I easily grew and maintained muscle though and never used protein powders. So I know I was properly fueling my body for muscle gain.
I just scrolled through my mobile uploads and found a picture from that time! So much muscle! Man, I miss those days! Also, I forgot how much fun I had back during that single year (2012- when Jon and I were broken up. I also had some harder times, but overall, it was quite the fun year!) And now I’m having a baby and life will NEVER BE THE SAME! Waaahhhh!
Anyway, time to go relax for a few more minutes before heading off to LA Fitness for a quick and easy workout (I’m doing CrossFit for the next 3 days, so nothing crazy today).