Whole30 - the Why's and the results

I'm sure you have heard of the phrase "When life gives you lemons, make lemonade".  I finally reached that point towards the end of June.  As I previously mentioned, I heard from my immunologist that my maxed out arthritis medication had stopped working.  It was hard to hear and it was yet another lemon thrown right at me.  Here are some of the previous lemons I had been dealt, it will help you to understand why I made the decision to do whole30. 
You can buy the book It starts with food here and learn why it is so important to remove certain things like grains and dairy from our diet. The book is inexpensive and easy to understand. I recommend it to everyone.

For 7 years I have battled autoimmunity.  Early January 2007 I was admitted to hospital via ambulance directly from my GP's rooms.  I was rushed to theatre for exploratory surgery which is when it was discovered that my gut had ruptured in more places than they could count.  Prior to this I had been fit and well and just felt a bit off for a couple of months. I had worked right up until 2 weeks prior to this.  That night in theatre I lost a large section of bowel, and when I woke up in ICU the next day I was told that I had chrohns disease, I had lost over 1 metre of bowel, I had multiple fistula's, the night before I had been 12 hours from death but I somehow pulled through (Praise God). I didn't understand.  No one else in my family had an inflammatory bowel diseases.  I had immigrated to Australia as a newly wed only 6 months prior.  How can this have happened?

I went on to spend 2 weeks in ICU as the infection just would not break and it compromised my blood pressure and heart rate hourly.  In the end I had 70% muscle wastage, I was fed via an IV with TPN for 7 weeks, I spent 6 months of 2007 in hospital over 8 admissions - 2 months straight on one of those occassions, I spent 9 months in a wheelchair and had random members of the public yell abuse at me because they viewed me as not physically disabled but mentally.  I spent many more week and months in hospital after 2007 and I have had a total of 6 laparotomies to get me to where i am today.

I have also been pumped full of steroids like you couldn't imagine.  As a result my weight has gone up and down more times than a yo yo in the 1960's when they made a resurgence. The only time I ever lost any weight was with excessive exercise and starvation which you guessed it made me sicker. At the end of June this year I had reached my heaviest ever and I was pretty miserable about it.  Life was more difficult than it needed to be, my joints were suffering more than they had to and my depression was definitely taking a hit. 

The news from my immunologist was just one too many curve balls.  I was not going back down the road of hospitalisation, pain, IV's surgery.  I needed to find something to help and find it quickly.  Enter paleo which I had flirted with for about a year but never stuck to for more than 2 weeks at a time.  What was going to be any different this time? I was devastated that at 32 my doctors couldn't get me painfree or even walking semi normally.  That was to be my motivation and motivate me it did! Tuesday past was my last day on Whole30 and I am feeling a lot better.  I am sleeping better, my skin is clear, I feel happy,  my energy levels are better, I can get out of bed before 11am these days, hello 7 and 8 am! (I have chronic fatigue or maybe that is had), I don't need 3 hour afternoon naps and I can walk down the stairs like a normal person without crying out in pain. My joints are improving. I had my blood inflammatory markers taken at the 3 week point and they have started to drop, the only change was whole30.

On Wednesday (day 31) I weighed myself and I was 8kgs  (17.6 lbs)down!!! Yup 8kgs in 30 days and I haven't been starved (look at my instagram account cat_keast and you will see I have feasted for 30 days). I went to the gym once when tiger blood hit so it definitely isn't from the excessive exercise that I once had to do.

I feel good and for that reason I am continuing on until the end of August.

Are you interested in doing a Whole30? Let me know in the comments section and we can support each other through it.  It is only 30 days and you have so much to gain.