The Whole30, Week 3: Now With Dr-Recommended Cheating!

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Whole30 Week 3 Foods

Unless you’ve showed up at my house at 9pm with a cheer-you-up cupcake or are super close family, you probably don’t know that I have this minor heart thing. But I do.

And now everyone knows.

And in the spirit of the Whole30 – and what I’ve learned because of it – I’m going to share a little more than I normally would on the internet. But I promise you two things:
1) There will be no discussion of digestive functions.
2) There will be no discussion of lady parts.

I cross my not-always-efficient heart.

So that heart thing. I occasionally suffer from PVCs (premature ventricle contractions). Flare-ups have pretty much been traceable to my three favorite self-inflicted, jerk-face dwarfs: Over-Caffeinated, Over-Stressed, and Over-Anxious. (Sometimes Over-Beered is there, too… but she actually helps keep those last two under control 🙂 )

I say “suffer” but it’s mostly a mental thing – it’s completely unnerving and rattling to suddenly feel your chest rattle with a THUNK (pause) flip FLOP (pause) KERPLUNK. For 2 &^%$@!# hours straight.

And sometimes, those pauses seem to feel like you have enough time to think, “Um, did my heart just STOP?! And is it going to start again on its own?!”

Oh, look. And there’s Over-anxious, right on cue.

Again.

According to some doctors and their tests, it’s also completely benign and mostly traceable to external factors. With some adjustments, those THUNK (pause) flip FLOP (pause) KERPLUNKs fade to less-distracting palpitations, and then barely noticeable flutters… and then away completely, of course, no where near as quickly as they show up (they do like to take their sweet time).

But on an occasion when I’m 16 days into The Whole30, doing just about everything by-the-book, and am neither over-caffeinated, over-stressed, or over-anxious (much less over-beered), a new round of THUNK (pause) flip FLOP (pause) KERPLUNKs was completely unexpected. And left me wondering:

What the heck did I eliminate from my diet that has disrupted the clearly delicate balance that keeps my heart beating on-rhythm.

I immediately re-added foods that had been in decently heavy rotation prior to starting the Whole30 (due to being relatively good sources of heart-healthy magnesium and potassium) – bananas, beans, and quinoa – and remembered to take my daily vitamin.

And after a few days, those THUNK (pause) flip FLOP (pause) KERPLUNKs have settled into the less-distracting/almost unnoticeable phases of being on their way out.

Moral of the story? Nothing is ever one-size-fits-all.

And my body will clearly do anything in its power to get a bowl of charro beans for lunch 🙂

The scale says I haven’t lost any weight this week, so after 3 weeks, I’m still down a total of 7.5lbs. I can’t wait to take measurements again at the end of next week. Things fit so differently now – far more than I’d ever expect out of “just” 7.5lbs. Like my bike helmet! And speaking of…

You know what we did on a beautiful Spring-in-Texas Sunday? Busted the bikes out and rode 10 miles on the new bike trails by our house. After not riding in ages. And it was not hard. At all.

Except for that one Tourmalet-esque climb after I dodged an 8-yr old and lost all my momentum. So then we had to take a short break to look at the resident alligator.

Here’s a quick & dirty look last week’s menu. (I’ve linked recipes and then just tweaked as necessary for Whole30 compliance. Except the beans, of course.)

Breakfast
Still loving those leftover green vegetables topped with the runny yolks of couple of eggs.
Also, a poached egg on top of a bowl of drained pinto beans is kind of magical.

Lunch
Beans & quinoa or dinner leftovers + some of those 1/2-lb of strawberries we’re getting from the garden every day.

Dinner
King crab legs + clarified butter + asparagus
Filet oscar (bearnaise made with clarified butter) + roasted asparagus
^ Twice (Thank you, timely sale at HEB)
Barbecue Chicken Stuffed Sweet Potatoes + grilled broccoli (using clarified butter, and minus the cheese) + pinto beans
^ Twice!
Lettuce-wrap chicken fajitas + black beans + guacamole

6 comments… add one
  • Yikes, that heart business sounds scary. Glad the changes you made to the diet seem to have made things better! Kudos on your success with the program 🙂

  • Delia

    J has a similar heart thing. His will beat a few times…then take a long (well, it seems long) break. Usually stress induced. Plus, since he’s been in the hospital twice for other heart related concerns (spending a week on the cardio floor) it can be a bit scary. I totally get it!

    I’ll add that to my list of reason for not wanting to try Whole 30. 🙂

  • Oy I’d be so scared if I had those PVCs to worry about! I feel like I’d constantly be wondering when the next one would come on…which would lead to even more of them!

    Anyways, I think it was smart of you to add back in bananas, beans and quinoa…I mean those are all absurdly healthy things so I can’t imagine they’d ever deter weight loss in any way. I’ve never heard of anyone getting fat from eating those three!

  • I am glad your PVC is benign. It must be scary. I really hope they reside to never be felt again.

  • Glad you figured it out–scary! Your dinners sound great and the weather there? So jealous as I look out at snow flakes falling!

  • So, I flew with the hubs to Texas two years ago. We checked into our hotel and were just relaxing in the room (I think I was watching him play some dumb RPG game on his phone) when my heart did something pretty similar to what yours did. Heartbeats were seriously irregular, my pulse was crazy, felt like it was kinda pounding in my chest, stopped beating for too long…. It stayed that way for probably 5 or so minutes before it slowly went back to normal. I’d had palpitations before, but never experienced the freakiness of that. Had I been at home, I would’ve gone to the doctor, but because we were car-less and would’ve had to call a squad (and I was still alive), I let it go. It happened one more time the next day (at a far decreased intensity), and has never happened again.

    I’ve wondered what the heck it had been for years, and I bet this was it. I had just attributed it to flying, but now I’m wondering if it’s that crazy TX climate. ;P Glad you were able to get your body back on track. Maybe your heart just wasn’t in the Whole30. Buh-da-bum. (Sorry. Couldn’t stop myself. I’ll try harder next time.) Glad you’re okay!

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