A little about me...

Well, hello and thanks for stopping by! I'm Clara, and I am a self confessed carb addict. And it has done nothing for me. So I have decided to make a change. And that change just so happens to be doing my first ever Whole30.

Before I launch into describing what all that means (although if you have come across this blog, you probably already know), I will tell you a little bit about how I came to discover the Whole30. And I apologise in advance, because it is quite lengthy!

I have had issues with fluctuating weight and yo-yo dieting for around 15 years. It pretty much started when I got my drivers licence and had the freedom to go through the McDonald's drive thru. Again. And again. And repeat. While I was at uni, I decided I needed to lose weight. I was still living at home and didn't have a huge amount of money, or know how to cook very many meals, so I signed up to Lite 'n Easy (for those not in Australia, this is a service where you order all your pre-prepared meals to your door, breakfast, lunch, dinner and snacks at a set calorie limit). I did it for about 3 months and lost 13kg and was happy. However I didn't learn how to cook, so once I stopped, the weight gradually came back. When I finished university I was back to the size I was before. So I joined Weight Watchers. Again, after a certain amount of time I reached goal, became a lifetime member and hovered around that weight for a while, but the weight kept creeping on. I then heard about Ultralite. It involved having shakes, eating a limited variety of foods and very little in the way of carbohydrates, to get to the state of ketosis. Yep, i had to pee on sticks daily to make sure this was happening. The things we do for weight loss, huh?! Needless to say, once i stopped doing this after losing 7kg, I put all the weight back on again, and fairly quickly.  I was also starting to get migraines, and was diagnosed with gallstones and had to have my gall bladder removed.

Fast forward a few years, I got married, had a baby and gained a whopping 18kg during pregnancy. I only lost about 5kg once my first son Josh was born. I stayed the same weight for the next 6 months, then decided I would start going back to Weight Watchers again. Not only to lose weight, but also to get out of the house on my own for a little adult conversation! I ended up getting back to my pre-baby weight. Then I was pregnant again. By the end of my second pregnancy I had put back on all the weight. I also had developed terrible heel pains, and was diagnosed with plantar fasciitis and a heel spur. I spent 6 months wearing supportive sneakers and prescription orthotics all day, every day. One year after my second son Ethan being born, I decided to something about it. I saw an advertisement for the Michelle Bridges 12 week body transformation. I had a few friends who had done it and had amazing results, so I thought, what the heck, I'll give it a go! Paid my $200, and got right into it. As with all things, I tend to go all or nothing. I followed the program to a T, nutrition wise and exercise. It was exhausting. At least 1 hour of exercise per day for 6 days, as well as eating 1200 calories per day. After my first round I had lost 9kg. I was pretty proud of that effort and enjoyed the food and exercise, so I signed up for another round. This time I was a bit slack and didn't follow it exactly, so I lost 6kg. I got down to about 63kg. My ultimate goal weight was 58kg. Doesn't sound like much but I am only 157cm (5'2" in the old language). At this stage I found i was pretty exhausted from all the exercise and I got sick a lot with coughs and colds because my immune system had gone on hiatus. My migraines were terrible. I couldn't take codeine or other strong painkillers for them because since having my gallbladder removed I have had a terrible reaction to them and end up writhing in pain in waves for 4 hours until the drug is out of my system. 

I started seeing a chiropractor, and have Bowen and Dorn therapies at a naturopath. I have also found that I am on the way to being insulin resistant, I have reactive hypoglycaemia (sweats, shaking, foggy brain, feeling erratic and this all results in binging on any carbs I can get my hands on, only to end up with a massive migraine). I have to eat every three hours or this is what happens.

I have been trying to clean up my diet. I bought Bikini Cookbooks (BCB), I now have the whole collection and I love them. I use them daily. But I still found I was binging on carbs when i was in a rush and felt my blood sugar dropping. The fear of the migraine meant I would scoff a bowl or two of nutrigrain for lunch some days when I got home from work. So recently, to avoid this, I have been ordering Lite 'n Easy breakfasts, lunches and snacks, along with using BCB recipes for dinner (I still have to feed the family after all!!). So doing this over the last 5 weeks i have lost about 4kg. I still get the odd migraine and feel the effects of the reactive hypoglycaemia if I wait too long between meals. 

Last week I was browsing Facebook and saw a link to a blog. Unfortunately I can't remember which blog it was, but basically it was about how the Whole30 had erradicated her migraines. Well, this caught my attention big time. I read the article and was intrigued to find out more. I bought the kindle ebook It Starts With Food, by Dallas and Melissa Hartwig, the brains behind the Whole30, and read the book over the next 4 days. I found myself nodding through the whole book. It just seemed to be about me. And it scared me. I don't want to end up with any of the lifestyle diseases they talk about in the book. We all know what they are. Cardiovascular disease. Type 2 Diabetes. You know the drill. I was already displaying some of the symptoms. The reactive hypoglycaemia. Blood tests have shown i have a fatty liver. I have had gallstones. Plantar fasciitis. What was I doing to myself! 

So the decision was made. I am spending the next few weeks planning, researching and organising myself for my first Whole30. And I can't wait!