R8D31

In Whole 30 circles people use shorthand to talk about where they are in the Whole 30 and how many times they've done it: a newbie one week in might title a post R1D7 for Round 1, Day 7. I finished my eighth Whole 30 yesterday, and I am in the same place I always am when I finish it.

Pro: I am productive and happy and I've lost half of the pounds Donald Trump loaded onto my behind with his figurative Bobcat of incompetence and would-be autocracy (and money-laundering racist sexual-assault-justifying WHOA I MIGHT NEED A LITTLE RESCUE REMEDY HERE).

Con: I am ready for a little more variety in my diet, and my family is even readier.

The Whole 30 is deeply weird. I've said some version of this before but I think it every dang time: it just doesn't make sense to me that the lectins in my legumes are keeping me from being my most productive self. And yet-- something in that combination of restrictions unchains Productive Jamie from wherever she lives in between Whole 30s, and says to her "go get 'em!"

My husband is more supportive about all this Whole 30 business than I would have predicted, but he thinks it must be a placebo effect. I...don't buy it. One day during my second Whole 30 I was dealing with a particularly stressful iteration of the unbloggable issue most likely to launch me face-first into the Pit of Despair, but I had no urge to sit on the couch and eat Pringles by the handful until I felt marginally better. Instead I marched upstairs and brought down the mending pile, and I angry-mended until I reached the bottom and felt marginally better. You guys, there were, like, strata in that mending pile. We're talking years' worth of mending. The geologists are probably still irritated with me for disturbing a relevant artifact. Does Productive Jamie care about hypothetical geologists? No, she just wants the mending done. 

Here is another weird Whole 30 con: Productive Jamie is not necessarily the most understanding version of me. In general the Whole 30 makes me sweeter and more even-keeled. I can say, hey, it's no big deal to spill a glass of water at the dinner table. I made brownies for the kids tonight because I knew I wouldn't be tempted to eat them. But a few years ago when my husband agreed to write the parent portion of an Eagle Scout application I was furious about what seemed like procrastination. "Why is this taking so long?" huffed Productive Jamie. In hindsight it is obvious to me that if you ask someone who hates to write to complete a writing task with a very soft deadline, some delay is normal.

So. Onward. I have restraint issues with sweets, so it works best for me to avoid them entirely except on special occasions. (Like Christmas-and-Easter corporate special occasions, not like I-finished-the-grading solo special occasions that then morph into I-read-two-emails-that-totally-counts special occasions.) I hate to say that I think gluten makes a difference in the way my brain works, but alas, I think gluten makes a difference in the way my brain functions. So I'll mostly avoid it, but not worry about legumes and brown rice.

The priority is being a calm and happy version of myself, living out my vocation faithfully. I also won't complain if the remaining Donald Trump weight disappears.