fighting overcarbsumption

I'm five days into my second Whole 30 and it's been a combination of emotions.

I gave up coffee. Whole 30 doesn't require this, but Arbonne's 30 days to healthy living does, and so I haven't had coffee since Monday. I've had a pretty persistent headache all week. A few of the days I took Aleve, including today, and it's still here. So that's definitely not my favorite part of this.

Someone this week asked me, "Why coffee?" It's acidic. What I've learned about food in the past year since I began consulting with Arbonne is that ideally, our body should be alkaline rather than acidic. In an alkaline state, your body can relax, it doesn't have to work to "fight off" chemicals or rescue itself from ingredients in our foods that are not in our best interest. Check out this link for a cool graphic and see where your favorite foods lie on the pH scale! I also found this article (not sure of the source, but seems legit). In addition to the acidity, I always flavor my coffee with a sugary, flavored creamer, and if I can't have creamer, then may as well just forget it.

On day two I had zero energy. Like I couldn't even return a text in the evening, I just wanted to lay there with my eyes closed. My energy ebbs and flows, hasn't leveled out yet, but I did go for a run/walk last night after school so that was good!

The biggest thing has just been the ongoing narrative in my head, about the cookies, carbs, and wine in my vicinity. I haven't cheated once, but I have to seriously talk myself out of it each time. As I'm rereading It Starts With Food, I'm reminded that this isn't my fault - we are living in a world of FrankenFood - it's all manufactured to get at our senses of pleasure, but it's not nutritionally sound. To compound this problem, because of the overcarbsumption, the signals in our body do not function properly. We're eating superficially flavored and chemical-laden foods, but because they have zero nutritional value, the hormones in our body don't tell our brain we are full. So we keep eating and the pattern continues.

Why is this happening? Money. Nabisco wants to sell you massive amounts of Oreos, so they process the cookies with the best chemicals so you can sit and eat the whole pack in one sitting, getting not one ounce of nutrition, and since your hormones probably aren't working right, you never become full.

There's so much more behind the science of this, I am not even fully grasping it yet, but I highly recommend the book.

I tell myself this is hard, but then I read this:

So, I will persist, and hope for a dream of wine or Oreos.