Your cheat - I would be interested to know how you feel in the coming days. I'm hitting day 20 tomorrow so I'm just 10 days behind you. Still waffling on whether to go immediately into a second whole30 or whether to take a few days off.
Tuesday I ended up eating a tootsie roll bite, and a mini-brownie at the recruiting event. My social function got postponed, so I didn't end up drinking any alcohol. I started the day prepared to come out of ketosis, so I spent the afternoon treating myself to some higher glycemic index vegetables. Despite the vegetables and the candy, I was still in ketosis at bedtime that night. I was surprised, but pleased.
Yesterday was my mandatory fun, and it was actually pretty enjoyable. I ordered a highly anticipated burger and fries for dinner, and had a few beers. I ended up leaving half the fries because I was full. I've done such things before, but all previous moments of french fry abandonment came from a place of discipline. Yesterday I simply didn't want any more, so I stopped eating. I really enjoyed the lack of drama.
Stopped on the way home to get some Halloween candy for the trick-or-treaters, and I ate 4 fun-sized pieces*. They tasted okay, but not amazing, and I
definitely some stomach pain after eating them. I appreciate that data point. I'm not particularly drawn to sugar, so the memory of the pain should be enough to stop any stray cravings for candy.
Moving forward, I envision a 10 day cycle. So, 10 days of clean
$ eating, with some sort of IF thrown in. Then a 3-5 days for anything I happen to be craving. Thirty days is good for discipline and resolve, but the cycle is too extended for my psyche. I get angry and depressed by day 20 because my goal has become such a lengthy trudge. It stops being about the food in any kind of way, and becomes about sticking the 30. Probably not the best method for me, so I'm not going to use it.
*had to sample each type that came in the combo pack! Otherwise things would be unbalanced.
$I'm loathed to use that word to describe eating, since it's become a semi-sanctimonious nonsense word. Restricted diet is also troublesome because the public sees the phrase
restricted as horrific, and possibly due to an eating disorder. I try to explain that my avoidance is due to allergies, but folks just roll their eyes and tell me that dairy allergies don't exist. Then I get lectures about mental health, which I don't take with very much grace. I find it all very complicated. Does this happen to anyone else?