Hi everybody! Donnelle here, the other pixie cut in the header pic! Aaaaaand today is my Day 0. Tomorrow I start my first Whole30.

Which I’m weirdly excited about! And nervous. But mostly excited. …Maybe.

Why Am I Doing This?!?

Honestly, I feel like I’ve been bloated since sometime in 2014. Something in my diet doesn’t agree with me anymore and it’s time to figure out what those triggers are (also my current diet is “Everything” and “Eating like crap most of the time despite good intentions”, so in a way it feels good to be starting at the bottom.) My suspicions are it’s both wheat AND dairy. But this is very, VERY hard for someone like me who is food-motivated. Food is my truest true love. People know me for my love for food. It’s my THING. It’s not even that I’m scared of giving up things I love for a month, it’s more that I’m scared of what I may find out on the back end. I don’t want to completely excise aaaaanything from my diet. But maybe I can at least make smarter choices for myself when I don’t want to spend the night sprawled out on the couch moaning “WHY DOES MY BODY HAAAATE MEEEEEE?!?”

SO! My primary reason- and the real crux of what Whole30 exists for- is I need to follow a true, hardcore elimination diet. My secondary reason is it’s time to break my sugar addiction (I LOVE my sweets). And my third is I wouldn’t mind kicking a few pounds off the ol’ bod.

Oh! And my husband Trey is taking this on with me at the same time. Which should be interesting, as he’s The Human Hummingbird and has an even more raging sweet tooth than I do.

Gonna make this a short post so we can get to the store to do our big weekly shop…and then cook up as much as we can tonight…oh god, the prep daunts me, I won’t lie. We’ve kinda done a semi dry-run of Whole30 for the past month by following the Game On diet on weekdays (long story short, we cut all added sugars, wheat, and full fat dairy), and frankly we’ve kicked ass on that. But we took the weekends off, and we allowed ourselves to eat 100 calories of whatever we want every day. But going full-throttle into this with no cheats is going to be inteeeeeense.

Anyway.

::Cues up Sarah Maclachlan’s “I Will Remember You”::)

So goodbye, this Char Siu Burger of the Month from The Oinkster featuring a pork patty, soy-marinated slaw, char siu sauce, grilled spam, and wontons (yes, I delayed my Whole30 start date so I could eat this burger. Bite me.)

Goodbye, Porto’s pastry case.

You’ve always been there for me.

And goodbye most of all to this ***UNBELIEVABLE*** chocolate mango passionfruit tart from that pastry case. This is a new item of theirs. I had never seen it before. Just so you know, chocolate + passion fruit happens to be my favorite dessert flavor combo of all time. Last year the birthday cake I requested Trey to bake for me was Milk Bar’s Chocolate Chip Cake with Passion Fruit Curd and Coffee Frosting (all hail Christina Tosiiiiii!)

Throw mango in the mix and I’m a goner. It’s like sugar was saying goodbye to me, too.

So don’t let your life pass you by.

Weep not. for. the memories.