On a beautiful summer day in Chicago, I caught up with my friend over an early dinner. She ordered a very simple salad at an already healthy café. “I’m doing this program where I eat a lot of whole foods. I’m staying away from sugar, dairy, alcohol, wheat, soy, even legumes.” She had gone to her sister’s wedding the week before, and the bride looked great. When asked what she did, the sister explained that she had done the Whole30 diet for a couple of weeks. Inspired, my friend decided to do the same. A couple of months later, I remembered this and decided to invest in the Whole30 book. When I hosted a New Years party for a group of friends and announced that my husband and I were starting this program, I was surprised to discover that half of them had tried it before, and a friend even offered me her Whole30 cookbook.

The reasons I’m doing this are to see if changing my diet can 1) improve my sleep, 2) stabilize my mood, 3) help me cut down on snacking on sugary foods, 4) identify whether I am lactose intolerant or not, 5) awaken the six pack lying underneath my layers of fat. First, I occasionally go through periods of time where it’s difficult to fall asleep, and it’s not always necessarily when I’m under stress. Second, I’ve been feeling a lot more irritated lately, which makes me wonder if the recent overindulgence in holidays foods had anything to do with it. Third, my habit of eating every two hours have started affecting my body in ways I never imagined it would. Last year, I went into the dentist and discovered a cavity. When I asked how that happened, since I have good dental hygiene, the response was exactly the same as what my dentist had told me several years ago: “you don’t leave enough time between meals, so your mouth doesn’t have time to neutralize.” Fourth, on the rare occasions that I have milk or icecream, my stomach doesn’t feel well. My grandfather was extremely lactose intolerant, so it’s possible it’s in my genes. Fifth, I’m pretty diligent about working out and am pretty sure I would have a six pack if I didn’t eat so poorly. So, I’ve decided to give this Whole30 thing a shot and see where it takes me.

Day 1 felt easy. Well, it actually didn’t start off very well. I proudly took out my spinach frittata out of the oven, set it on the stove, and set down the hot pad. In the two seconds I used to set down the hot pad, I had forgotten that the skillet was still hot and accidentally grabbed the handle with my bare hands. That combined with my rushing to hop on a work call prevented me from eating no more than a quarter of the frittata. An hour later, I realized my hand was swollen up and I was starting to feel nauseous from the incredible pain, so I headed to the immediate care center. I was nervous that I was going to have to take some medicine since the ingredients might interfere with the Whole30, but luckily, I was only prescribed a cream that eased my swelling and pain. I rushed back home to continue working, and realized it was already past lunch time. I attempted to make a protein salad with homemade ranch dressing, but lacking on time, I stuck to just mayonnaise drizzled over my lettuce and avocado, and salmon. I also ate a banana, which was completely unnecessary. I was already full, but I ate it because I felt like I needed to make up for what I didn’t eat for breakfast, and just in case that extra potassium would be good for my burn. In the late afternoon, I had another quarter of the frittata as a snack. For dinner, my husband and I made ground meat, tomato sauce, and roasted spaghetti squash. After a couple bites, I said, “I can’t eat anymore. I’m so full,” to which my husband replied, “you’re probably not used to eating this much protein.” A few bites later, I again mumbled that I was too full, and my husband said, “You need to stop eating if you’re full. You can’t just eat a lot of food just because it’s healthy.” He was right. I set my plate down and saved the rest for breakfast.

What I realized today was that cooking all of these meals was a tremendous amount of work. Cooking a full breakfast on a work day made me feel like I was starting off the day in chaos. Dinner took over an hour to prepare. We had to run the dishwasher three times. My husband and I decided that going forward, we would make food for the week on Sunday night.

I didn’t notice any changes in my mood. I was still stressed out about the same issues at work and my career. Perhaps because of my burnt hand, I kept clumsily dropping things and almost slipped off of my chair when trying to store my backpack at the top of my closet. Alone in my apartment, I said out loud, “today isn’t my day.”

Overall, the Whole30 didn’t feel hard. The meals were filling and I didn’t have any cravings for foods I couldn’t eat. Let’s see how tomorrow goes.