Whole30 Day 4

I think I have some good news, this morning was a first for a long while. After eating breakfast I didn't feel a sudden drop in energy. I've been getting really tired after breakfast for quite some time now. I don't notice it with the other meals as much, although after dinner I'm usually winding down anyways. I've tried switching out my breakfasts and dropping different components - OJ, jam, flour. But no luck, and frankly I only did it for a few days which retrospectively wasn't enough time to let the system reset. This morning I had what I'm considering my new norm for breakfast, not too different than before. Before, I used to have two soft boiled eggs, two slices whole wheat toast with jam or honey and a glass of OJ or fruit smoothie (odwalla style). Now it's the two soft boiled eggs and sweet potato with sausage hash. And it was faster to prep too. Since I had cooked a big batch of the hash and just needed to zap.

Meal 1: soft boiled eggs and sweet potato hash

- two eggs

- 2/3 sausage

- 2/3 sweet potato 

- 1/4 onion

- 1/4 red pepper

- 1/4 cooked spinach

- 1/2 tbsp olive oil

I'm not clear on when to eat the meals though. I'm still figuring out this part. The idea is to have three regular, consistent meals every 4-5 hours. Your body then gets on a rhythmic cycle of processing the food. Last night I did end up skipping meal 3 which I probably shouldn't have done but wasn't terribly hungry and was tired. But then this morning I had a snack mid-morning of a helping of monkey salad. I'm still learning in how to truly listen to my body and think the munchie feeling wasn't from being hungry but stress eating - I can't find some mail (ugh).  I'm also not totally focused on my food when eating.  I'm used to having "company" either by watching a show or listening to a podcast. Not sure if that effects my meals too. 

The main conundrum is the eating cycle period. I usually feed the cats at 6 am and 6 PM and eat around then too. And then eat at noon. But that is a 6 hour gap, not a 4-5 hour gap as recommended. Today, I tried moving my first meal up to 7 am and am thinking I'll try eating meal 3 at 5 PM. My understanding is that after the 30 days you listen to your signals and adjust when you eat, but during the thirty day period, you switch to a regular eating pattern as a start. 

Lastly to report, I did not sleep great last night. Again not sure if it's the jet lag and weather, or the middle of the night bathroom breaks. Usually I sleep pretty well, can get to sleep quickly and only have one bathroom visit, if at all, during the night, and wake up at the same time each morning, sans alarm clock. Hopefully this straightens itself out one way or another this month. 

Meal 2: salad and salmon with avacado, green onions and almonds

Meal 3: chicken, tomato + basil, asparagus

And I had some sliced strawberries in he here somewhere, I believe at the end of meal 2. They were supe ripe and needed to be eaten. They did seem to taste much sweeter. I don't know if it's because of my change in leptin and things are tasting sweeter, or they were sweeter from being more ripe.