See, I love to eat. I love the experience of cooking food and eating it, I love trying new foods and mixing new flavors, and I love sharing food with friends. I love food as nourishment, food as pleasure and indulgence, and food as celebration. And while I love all of these things about food, I recently started wondering if I need to take a look at my love affair with food a little more closely.

A little more than a month ago, I was noticing that my relationship to food wasn’t where I wanted it to be. I had made a habit of mindlessly eating dinner while watching old episodes of 30 Rock. My brain usually insisted on an afternoon pick-me-up in the form of a grande chai, oatmeal cookie, or other similar sweet treat. When my workmates brought in treats to work, I wouldn’t eat just one. I’d eat one, then another, then another, then… how many did I just eat? Ugh. I knew it possibly went deeper than this (that maybe my diet was also the reason I was so tired all the time), so I wanted bring attention and awareness to my eating habits and see what came up.

Around the same time, I read one of Maija’s blog posts that mentioned something about the Whole30 challenge and its positive effects. So I did a little research. The Whole30 requires you to eliminate sugar (including honey and agave), dairy, grains, legumes, and alcohol in order to help reset the way your body processes food (namely, sugar and fat)  and give it a rest from many foods known to cause inflammation. Essentially, you eat whole foods like vegetables and fruit, along with pasture-raised meats and eggs. I felt like I had been eating those things pretty much anyway, with a bit more emphasis on dairy and legumes. So I thought the Whole30 might be a good challenge and require me to think more about my food choices than I had before. Plus, it scared me to give up dairy (I love cheese) and all sugars (did I mention my sweets habit?), so I took that as a sign that I should definitely go for it.

And go for it, I did. I began the challenge on September 1, not knowing what to expect, but hoping for the best. The first few days were… interesting. Well, the first day, I felt great! I was eating lots of whole foods and good meat from the farmer’s market. I felt clean and healthy and efficient. But then the next few days came. A dull ache took root in my forehead and I wanted to just kind of lay around, take a nap, and do things slowly. (So I guess maybe I hadn’t been eating as well as I thought!) I spent the first week trying to navigate recipes and making good food choices in a number of different situations (it was a real test to have two work functions that first week that featured foods like pizza, mac and cheese, and plenty of cookies, ah!). I felt hyper-vigilant about everything I was eating and every ingredient that went into something I was considering purchasing at the store or ordering off the menu.

Things I did get to eat: Spanish Sweet Potato with Chorizo, Peppers, and Fried Egg

Oh. And my brain wanted sugar basically all the time. Every night I dreamt of eating cookies, fancy lattes from Starbucks (which isn’t usually my style), cake, pie — I’d wake up in a panic, thinking I’d ruined my Whole30, only to be immediately relieved that it was just a dream. Apparently this happens a lot to folks in their first week of the Whole30. I also had to wrestle with my afternoon ritual of a sweet treat. How do I reward myself now that sugar is off the table? (And dang, I realized just how much/often I was using sugar as a reward.) Instead, I walked. I walked around the neighborhood and had an inner dialogue argument with myself about why I was not partaking in sugar. My mind usually had a mini temper tantrum and tried to persuade me otherwise. I reminded myself it was just 30 days, and in the span of a lifetime, 30 days is not a very long time to give up sugar. Somehow, I won the mental battle.

It wasn’t always perfect. I’ve definitely had days where I’ve used fruit to temper the sugar demon, so I’m still examining my drive to eat sweets. I’m thinking it might be best to continue to keep sugar out of my diet perhaps for another few weeks. Or create a “sugar is acceptable in these scenarios” flow chart of sorts. I know I need a better decision guide than just my brain and my taste buds (and my emotions, which play their part).

Sugar proved to be the biggest issue/hurdle for me, but I’ve gained a few other great insights and effects from the Whole30.

• Better sleep. I used to wake up every night between 1-3am and, depending on my level of stress, would either go back to sleep fairly quickly or stay up for the next hour or so, my mind running a hundred miles. In this past month, I’ve slept like a baby. Out like a light and have had pretty vivid dreams to boot.
• Sustained energy throughout the day. Instead of a daily 2pm slump in which all I want to do is shove work aside and take a nap, my energy level remains steady, which means I’ve been able to focus better on projects. I’ve also felt more emotionally level and less prone to mood swings.
• Greater eating awareness. I’ve learned to ask myself, why do I want to eat this? Am I really hungry? If not, what is really going on? Which has been really helpful to begin to uncover what’s at the core of a craving and figure out how to address it. The awareness while eating has also helped me feel more grateful for the nourishment I’m able to give myself.
• Clothes fit better. While I didn’t track weight or any measurements (it wasn’t a priority this time), I have noticed that my pants fit a little better than they have in the past. Kind of a nice bonus.
• Food is less of a focus. At social events, my mind usually wants to say, “Hey let’s see what tasty things are at the buffet!” which then leads me to grazing at the food table for the rest of the night. At the social events I went to in the last 30 days, I knew most, if not all, the food would be off limits, so I found myself focusing on the people and event more. I gave my full attention to my conversations with people instead of having a mental running commentary of “When can we get back to the FOOD?” in the background. (Something that is hard to admit.)

Overall, participating in the Whole30 was a really helpful experiment for me and now I’m looking forward to reintroducing foods to see how they make me feel. I suspect that sugar is what makes my energy level dip in the afternoon, but I’m interested to see if anything else has an effect. I’m not really interested in completely going back to the diet I had before, especially knowing that I can maintain steady energy throughout the day. I’m not ready to let that energy go.

I’m really grateful I stumbled on the Whole30. I think it’s definitely worth trying if you’re interested in seeing how a diet change could affect the way you feel overall. I found it was really helpful to read It Starts with Food (the Whole30 book). I also supplemented this challenge by reading Eating Mindfully and incorporating many of the mindful meditations into my eating routine.

I’d be curious to know if you’ve had any interesting revelations in your own relationship with food: how you came to them, how they might have changed your habits. It’s so interesting to me that food can be much more than food and have effects we may not even realize.

“A master in the art of living draws no sharp distinction between his work and his play; his labor and his leisure; his mind and his body; his education and his recreation. He hardly knows which is which. He simply pursues his vision of excellence through whatever he is doing, and leaves others to determine whether he is working or playing. To himself, he always appears to be doing both.”

—L.P. Jack

I deleted all pathways I could to any sort of connectivity and put my phone in airplane mode (but ha! I certainly checked for signal every now and then!) Once on the trip and on the boat, it became easy to resist the temptation to connect: cell phone signal was hard to come by out at sea and the price for access to wireless internet was more than I felt was reasonable.

For the first day or two of the trip, I found that being without internet and social media was like an itch I couldn’t scratch. I felt a subconscious pull to periodically check in to see if there was an interesting status update, an article I “needed” to read, or if I had an unexpected (or even expected) email from a friend. If I had to stop and wait for something (wait for the bus, wait in line for the bathroom, wait for the elevator), I wanted to pull out my phone and distract myself by checking any of my old favorites. But since I deleted everything and wasn’t connected, I didn’t have that option. What to do now?

I had to learn (or relearn) to sit and wait. To be present to what is happening now, instead of tuning out reality. I was really surprised at how much I had trained myself into distraction. How much every moment of my life became either doing or distracting, not just being. Disconnecting forced a pause. And by the third and fourth day, it felt good to pause. Itch withdrawal began to subside. Breathe in, breathe out. I noticed more. I noticed the breeze coming in the port while waiting for our ferry to depart. I noticed the tall pattern our shadows made from the crowd of us waiting to leave for our excursion. I noticed the sweet and patient conversation of a mother explaining to her young child what a glacier is. I noticed the quiet rise and fall of my own breath. I really loved noticing.

I also engaged people more. Smiling at the baby in the seat in front of me. Asking the strangers near me what excursions they had done (or were about to do) that day. Admiring someone’s jacket or haircut. Sharing a joke or a laugh with a fellow line-waiter. I got a chance to exercise my conversation skills and practice listening and relating to others. I felt far more connected to the world.

The absence of the itch helped me feel more peaceful, more present, more focused, and ha! more connected. There was nothing to miss online (FOMO!), I was actually missing everything right in front of me. What else had I missed in my quest for constant so-called connectivity? What was more important, paying attention and connecting in my real life or paying attention and “connecting” to some virtual feed of things?

Returning from the trip I felt a bit anxious about how to bring this new habit of noticing and connecting with me. And to be honest, my ability to curb the itch has waned in the weeks since I’ve been back; it’s far too easy for me to get caught up in digital distraction. But what I learned during my brief period of unplugging has stuck with me. I’ve started to carve out periods of unplugged time throughout my week. When in meetings that don’t require internet access, I’ll put away my devices and commit to being fully present to the person (or people) in front of me. I’m working on focusing more in both work and life. And I think I’ll unplug for longer next time, because I think a week is just the beginning for unweaving the mental threads that bind me in digital connectivity.

It’s a beautiful state. Beautiful, gorgeous, stunning, breathtaking. These words are vast understatements in trying to describe what Alaska is like. It is a landscape that is difficult to experience without feeling peace wash over oneself, without feeling immense reverence for the wildlife and surrounding wilderness. (And believe me, the wilderness knows how to surround up there.)

And so the best thing to do is relent.

I went kayaking last weekend on a last minute whim with a friend. I’ve been wanting to try kayaking on the river for awhile now, so this trip was a real treat. We got to see the city from a different perspective, which was perhaps my favorite thing about the trip. We were smack dab in the middle of Indianapolis, yet we’re in kayaks, surrounded by water and trees. This trip only solidified my desire to snag my own kayak, one that might have room for Isabel, too.

I’ve been trying to make a habit of every Sunday morning heading out to a nearby park for a bit of immersion in nature. Something to counteract the busyness and seeming hecticness of the week. I’ve found this to be a very grounding exercise.

Living on a busy street, I’ve gotten used to the sounds of cars wooshing by nearly constantly. But I find I still notice and appreciate the absence of that sound. The woosh begins to dwindle in the wee hours of the morning, around 4am. That’s when the absence of cars becomes greater than the presence, and lasts until about 6:30am on weekdays. On weekends, and especially on Sundays, this quietness can stretch on to a very generous 8am.

During the Sunday ritual in the park, I am in the middle of the woods. I can hear a faint presence of nearby city streets, but over that I hear birds chirping, the chatter of a babbling brook, a squirrel snapping a twig on the ground, Isabel splashing through the water, my shoes crunching the ground underfoot. These are the sounds I look forward to every week. These are the sounds I commit to memory, to conjure in my mind when I need to create a quiet moment in the middle of the rush of the day.

What rituals and habits are you creating?

Busses and Birds: We’d rented a house in Austin’s South Congress neighborhood, which put us about a mile away from the action at the Convention Center and the downtown area. So, we rode the bus in and out of downtown a lot. We also noticed giant black birds EVERYwhere, chirping and carrying on. They were very comfortable being within feet of humans.

Just Dance: Every night for me was pretty much filled with one part dancing, one part meeting some new folks, one part wandering the streets of Austin and one part drinking.

Speaking of wandering the streets: The shot above was taken on one of those wanderings. I’m not sure what building this is in downtown Austin, but it’s a pretty neat one and I love the rainbow gradient (or ombré, in some circles) here.

Return to Nature: The day-to-day shuffle of heading to sessions, then heading out in the evening to mingle and drink and dance only to collapse into bed at a late hour created a great need for an afternoon of rejuvenation and relaxation in nature. This photo was taken at the Austin Botanical Gardens. A great place to recharge and face SXSW anew.

All in all, it was a great trip and really great to return to Austin. It was just as lovely as I remembered it being, and this time I got to acquaint myself with places I didn’t see last time. For that, I am grateful. Can’t wait for SXSW next year!

Once we had that goal in mind, we got to work. We laid down our plans and put them into action. Working with Amy was a joy — she is a great collaborator, easy going as well as a fluent, thoughtful writer, and she provided me with inspiration many a time (did I tell you that yet, Amy? Well, I am now.)

The outcome of our toils was far more than I expected. We had more than 100 people sign up before the month even began. And more came even after January 1. I am touched by how many folks participated in the 31 days (and I started out participating myself, but then felt more suited as a spectator for this go ’round). Everyone created really wonderful posts/tweets/otherwise — some were unexpected, all were so creative. I feel honored to be among this community of people, adventuring in big and small ways. And it showed me there are more likeminded people in my sphere than I realized.

So, there’s another delightful outcome. I learned a little bit more about my world.

To those who participated in the 31 Days of Adventure, thank you so very much. You are awesome. I send you high fives and have nothing but smiles and gratitude for your posts and tweets. And as well to those who joined in the middle or thought about joining but didn’t, stay tuned. Amy and I have more in store for all of you.

A later note: I forgot to thank Katie Levy, Sara Lingafelter, Kim Kircher and Chicks Climbing for contributing awesome guest prompts. You all rock!

So now I’m seeking to return to food awareness and put my full focus on the meal in front of me. No distractions. For today’s 31 Days of Adventure, I took the opportunity to practice this by noticing the little things while eating lunch today. I closed my eyes. I chewed slowly. I found there was a lot to notice while eating this tasty salad:

So much kale and cabbage goodness mixed in with a tangy sweet homemade dressing! Each bite was a little different than the one before. Some came with the leafy texture of kale, some with a bit more onion, some with a salty pumpkin seed punch that seemed to accentuate all the other flavors. I was really surprised at how intense the flavors and textures were when I really paid attention.

Next I enjoyed a slice of 5-year aged cheddar from the great state o’ Wisconsin:

Again, an intense flavor experience. Far more than I remember before.

I’m going to have to eat with this much attention more often.

This post is part of the 31 Days of Adventure. Follow the prompts here or at #31adventures.

So, every day in the month of January, we’ll send out daily adventures on the 31 Days of Adventure site and through our newsletter. These adventures are free, easy enough to incorporate into your day and do right in your backyard (or around the neighborhood). We hope they’ll inspire you to carry adventure with you throughout the rest of the year. Hope you’ll join us!