Day 9: Shush... I'm trying to listen

One of my main goals for this Whole30 is to finally be able to trust my body and the signals it is sending me. Given my eating habits and lifestyle, I was a sugar-burner (probably still am, but I'm transitioning). My body only knew how to burn sugar for energy. It had no idea that I had this vast resource of energy in the form of fat because it couldn't access the fat since it was so focused on the sugar. You may or may not know, that your body can only store a limited amount of sugar - enough for about 90 minutes of high intensity energy. Hence the reason that long distance runners eat those glucose packs after about 90 minutes. Not only are their own glucose stores empty by that time but they need an easily accessible source of energy to keep them going. Fat is harder to get to. If you keep pumping your body full of sugar, it will use sugar, because it's easier. Sugar is like the eager and willing first date, and fat is like the coy date who plays hard to get.

So all that to say, if my body is burning sugar and not fat, I'm going to feel hungry more often since I have a limited supply of energy to work with, which is going to lead to bad nutrition choices more often. My body will be saving all the fat because it doesn't know what to do with it, and searching for more sugar. But we've already decided that sugar is not nutritionally good for me. Coming full circle, how can I possibly trust my body to signal what I need when I've trained it to regularly look for such nutritionally void food. How can I possibly listen with all that noise!

Need a real life example? I was at work the other day, had a beautiful Whole30 breakfast and had to remind myself to eat lunch around 1pm because I just wasn't that hungry. I did eat something because I'm trying to stick to 3 good meals a day with little to no snacking. As I was eating, I listened to my body, stopped when it told me I was full, and enjoyed the rest of my day with no thoughts of food, snacks, or cravings. On my way home, I realized I still wasn't hungry and was happy in my new comfort level of not feeling ravenously hungry on the way home and raiding the pantry for before supper snacks. I was thinking that I must be switching from a sugar burner because I felt energetic during the drive home (not like my usual zombie-like drive home) and I didn't even focus on food. Then I decided to stop for the mail. On my way to the post office, I passed a Mary Brown's. For those of you out there who aren't familiar with Mary Brown's, it's a fried chicken chain here in NL similar to Kentucky Fried Chicken but better. Mary Browns uses fresh, never frozen chicken and they have seasoned, salty taters and yummy gravy. But it's still fast food, deep fried, nutritionally void, crap food. The minute I saw that sign, a thought popped unbidden into my head. Guess what it was? "Oh, I'm starving! I really wish I could have some Mary Brown's". Can you believe that? Not even 5 minutes before that I had been thinking how satisfied I was; how I should prepare just a small supper since I wasn't that hungry. Clearly, my body was still a little confused. I'm not sure if that would be categorized as a craving or not but once I realized what my mind had just said, I slapped my own hand and told myself not to listen. It was just noise. Consider that conversation... I'm sure I looked a bit strange in my car talking away and telling myself not to listen to my self... "it's just your brain, sending bad signals, white noise really. Don't listen to your brain, listen to your body, your belly, your energy level. Besides that stuff is really gross and totally not worth it. Think of all the delicious food you have home in the fridge in the form of nutritionally dense foods that will make you so much more healthy!" And I did, think of all that yummy food at home and minutes later I was back in the same place that I started thinking that I wasn't that hungry because I felt quite satisfied.

Today, I read a great piece on Mark's Daily Apple called "When Listening to Your Body Doesn't Work". It's a two part series and part one was originally posted on Aug 1. Reading his post really made my Mary Brown's experience hit home. I need this Whole30 to filter out all that noise! This is something that Nicole and I talk about often. I need to be able to trust my body. Broken trust takes time to rebuild, and I didn't even realize that trust was gone until now. But I'm working on it with this Whole30. The trust will come back and we both (my body and I) will have a much stronger relationship because of it!

Food Diary
Breakfast/Lunch: leftover taco meat, heated with salsa stirred in, broccoli slaw with curry mayonnaise, green apple and almonds
Supper: Barry and I went to Ashley's for an amazing supper this evening. She prepared broccoli fritters, mashed cauliflower and roasted rack of lamb. She also served us banana "ice cream" and coffee, my first taste of dessert of any kind since the Whole30 started. YUM!!!!