Welcome to The Whole Bettie!

Welcome to my new blog! Starting a blog is a step out of my comfort zone, but my primary goal is to share some of what I’ve learned (and will learn) on my Whole30 journey (if you don’t know what Whole30 is, check back! I’ll do an overview in an upcoming post).  My secondary goal is to keep this blog to keep myself accountable in my food choices, fitness goals and other parts of my healthy lifestyle.

It’s no coincidence that I start this blog just as I’ve finished my October Whole30.  This last round was particularly hard because I wanted to give up so many times. I thought that since I’ve done this three times before, I was a pro at making good food choices and therefore didn’t need a reset.  But I’m so glad that my smarter voice won out! I reminded myself that it is only 30 days.  I reminded myself of all of the non-scale victories I would get out of this.  And I did. My skin looks great, my energy is through the roof, I have no bloating and even some chronic neck pain I was having has subsided. Oh, and I lost 7 pounds.

If I just completed my fourth round of Whole30, than you know what today is: Reintroduction Day 1.

Confession time:  Though this is my fourth Whole30, I’ve never done a proper reintroduction period. I know, I know.  It may seem kind of pointless to have done Whole30 and not do it to plan – after all, that is the point! So, I’ve made the commitment to do it right this time. I have a plan and this blog is part of it.

I’m a bullet journaler, so I started by adding a reintroduction page to my bullet journal.  I plan on keeping track of what I ate, both on the reintroduction day, and the monitoring days that follow. Then I’ll track how the food I ate made me feel.  We’ll see. Maybe I’ll find that I’m good with everything, but I have the sneaking suspicion that gluten makes me bloated and dairy gives me a cough.

I’ll check in here to give a summary, too. See? Accountability. So, here’s to day 1 and legumes!