Whole 30 Road Trip Blues

Sorry for the silence after my last update…it was not intentional and I’m not slipping back into whiskey land, promise! We took our annual summer road trip to Texas, and then I had to recover. A lot.

Wait, first, I love y’all. I’ve seriously been crying over the comments on my last post. Not pretty little one-tear-escaping-down-the-cheek crying, either. Ugly, Katniss-cry-face weeping. Your comments mean so much to me, I don’t quite know how to express it. But thank you, so much.

Remember how I promised you I was going to write more, much too much more, about the Whole 30? That’s totally happening right now. Because like a lunatic, I attempted to stick rigorously to the Whole 30 while driving* 4 kids and a dog 1300 miles across the country.

It actually went okay for the first 36 hours. The morning we left I shredded a chicken I had roasted the night before, mixed it with homemade mayo, green and black olives, capers, lemon juice, and shredded carrots, and stuck it in an ice chest with some fruit, leftover sweet potato hash, and sandwiches for the kids. We stopped along the way and grabbed some Larabars and roasted plantain chips from Trader Joe’s, and I spent the first 12 hours on the road satiated and supremely pleased with myself.

That night, we stopped in Destin to meet up with my parents. We had decided the trip would be easier on the kids if we spent a day at the beach in Destin before making the other half of the journey, and my pre-packed compliant yum totally got me through breakfast and lunch. I figured it would be a breeze to find a restaurant that could make me a steak and steam some veggies. I was on day 24, and I was feeling confident. Very confident. Too confident.

By the time we had showered off the sand and rested for a bit, it had been nearly 5 hours since my last meal. I knew I needed to eat — soon — but I hadn’t counted on the magical wonderland my parents took us to for dinner.

It was, no kidding, a magical wonderland. It was like this tiny little boardwalk-thing tucked back in a bayside community, but like the TARDIS, it was so much bigger on the inside. There was a ropes course, a playground, an arcade, shops, a zillion restaurants, a merry-go-round…I mean, it was awesome. The kids were out of their minds with excitement. I wanted to be, too — after all, I love a dangerously high ropes course as much as the next adrenalin junkie — but instead I went out of my mind with hanger.

Here’s a funny thing about the Whole 30: it totally changed how I experience hunger. Usually I know I’m hungry when I feel hungry. This can range from a bit of empty-belly-snacky-feeling, all the way to straight-up I’ll-eat-my-own-arm hunger pains. But right around day 6, I stopped feeling hungry. I legitimately did not feel hunger in the same way I had for my entire frickin’ life. I actually started forgetting to eat, something I thought only happened to people with a special kind of super-lucky brain damage. But instead of getting hungry, I got angry. Not, like, slightly irritable or mildly cranky, either. No, I hulked the eff out.

The Ogre figured it out, naturally, and began to replace his standard (ineffective) response from “go calm down” to “go eat something”, which actually worked, like some kind of voodoo. It was incredible. It turns out that the kryptonite to my emotional instability is not taking shots,  but taking care of myself. Who knew?!

Unfortunately, in the midst of a carnival of delight, my need to eat likerightthissecond took a backseat to making sure Sienna didn’t scale the ropes course without a harness. I went from happy to hangry in 15 minutes, and then progressed so far past hangry that I began to believe, with every fiber of my being, that the Whole 30 was entirely responsible for everything that was wrong in my life.

By the time we finally got to a restaurant, I took my revenge on the Whole 30 by ordering not only a gin and tonic, but this delicious crab-stuffed-shrimp-thing, cooked in butter and served with with buttered rice. The only thing that kept me from diving into the bread basket was guilt, and the prickly beginnings of a headache that cropped up after my third sip of gin and tonic.

Of course, halfway through the drink I had a full-blown headache, rapidly approaching migraine levels. I put the drink down, finished the fish and vegetables, and vowed never to stray from the Whole 30 again.

Then I had a bite of Liam’s ice cream.

And Sienna’s.

And Charlotte’s.

Fortunately, the gripping stomachache and fierce headache that lasted all night and into the next day convinced me yet again that my evening of debauchery was so not worth it. Unfortunately, staying compliant for the rest of the road trip proved impossible. Nevertheless, I got back on the wagon once we made it to Texas, firmly resolving to start over, according to the rules, and do the reintroduction phase like a responsible adult instead of losing my shit like a kid in a candy shop.

I’d love to tell you how fantastically that resolution is working out for me, but that’s a whole ‘nother post, and Lincoln just stripped his diaper off and ran away squealing. Duty calls. (heh heh)

*of course I didn’t actually do any driving — even though I wanted to and offered repeatedly — because I have terrible vision and zero depth perception and am the worst driver in the world, even worse than your grandmother, so the Ogre doesn’t let me drive unless it’s absolutely necessary. I get back at him by narrating our entire trip from Folly’s perspective, in a special doggy voice. It’s a win-win.