Well, it's the start of Whole5, and I'm still on track. Thing is, my Whole30 Timeline experience is syncing up, um, in almost no way.
I read and re-read the timeline numerous times before starting Whole30, and many more again since. I obviously expected and planned for some variation, and I'd say my days 1-3 were more or less in keeping with the timeline (What's the Big Deal? and The Hangover), although the 3 days combined were more like a hybrid of the two phases merged into one. Since I'd mostly been eating clean already, the only sign of detox I had was a daily headache, which I've concluded is caffeine withdrawal from kicking coffee completely rather than from Whole30, although I'm not a scientist and will admit that it could be a factor. I've mostly been a little nonchalant and waiting for the other shoe to drop.
On Saturday (day 3), I was watching a live show in a theater and suddenly started sneezing in a way I recognized as not allergies. Over the course of the rest of the day, I became draggier and felt my nose and ears clogging. By the time I got home at 11:00 PM, it felt like a full-on cold, complete with a sporadic wet cough. Thanks to the congestion, I got my sleep in small increments that night and finally got out of bed yesterday morning feeling unrested. I puttered around the house the rest of the day, canceling my Sunday plans and not even making it to the grocery store, let alone the gym. I crawled back into bed around 4 in the afternoon and napped off and on, then got up around 7 to eat dinner, and got right back into bed as soon as my last dish hit the drying rack. I slept even less last night, and the crap I'm coughing up has gotten more... non-nondescript. I guess I'm officially sick, although certain sources on the web suggest this is a bodily reaction to the detox (which was my guess/hope) rather than a proper cold. (The Whole30 website categorically rules out this possibility.) I so rarely succumb to any type of illness that I'm always ready to attribute symptoms like this to something else. Maybe it's a coincidence, maybe it's the detox, or maybe it's some cruel joke of a joint effort of the two. In any event, it's fucking annoying to be getting even less sleep!
Here on day 5, I have to say I'm really not feeling the bloodlust that the timeline's Kill All the Things phase portends (even in spite of the sleep deprivation). I'm more in the I Just Want a Nap phase, which I've been in since before starting Whole30. Haha. I've been having food dreams again, which is characteristic of a later phase as well as something that happens to me anyway, but I have no cravings or desires to murder anyone. I haven't had another headache since Saturday, so The Hangover feels safely over. Staying off the scale has been the true test of willpower so far. I'm a bit incredulous about the effectiveness of this program right now, which is mostly because I've been so tethered to the scale as THE metric of results and I haven't weighed myself since before I started this whole endeavor, and since right now, I feel markedly worse, not better. I have no temptation to quit, though.
DISCLAIMER: If I'm making Whole30 sound easy, don't be fooled. A lot of work goes into this in terms of planning and meal preparation, not to mention real-time adjustments. (I did great on my day away from home all day Saturday!) I was also already eating clean before starting this, so it wasn't too much of a shock to my system to cut out the alcohol I wasn't consuming, the grains I was eating in moderation, the added sugar I was restricting, the legumes I enjoy but scarcely eat, or the dairy I took nearly exclusively in the form of milk or cheese, nearly exclusively in the early part of the day. Also, it is only day 5; that's not enough time for any kind of thorough analysis of anything, especially not a drastic dietary modification. That said, the scientific part of my brain is curious and eager to see how the full effects will bear out. This detox flu/head cold needs to GTFO, though.
In the meantime, however, I can't plot myself on the Whole30 Timeline. I'm traveling without a guide, I guess.
Off the edge of the map, mate. Here there be monsters.
