Good morning friends! Well, I have some disappointing news to share. I have broken the Whole 30 cycle. Wahhhh. I am not one to give up easily when provided with a challenge, so I want to fully explain what happened and why I have decided to forego the ‘strictness’ of the Whole 30 for the rest of the month.

If you have been a reader of APOG you are aware that I am a cheese enthusiast. Before going Paleo, cheese was included in every portion of my meal, and I’m embarrassed to say, sometimes the cheese was even gross canned/ liquid queso.

Once stepping into the Paleo lifestyle, I had not eliminated cheese entirely from my diet but limited it to a one meal a day accompaniment. Diving into the whole 30 meant that I needed to eliminate not only all cheese, but all dairy period. No milk, no cheese, no yogurt etc. I was doing well with the lack of dairy in my diet until last week when the missing calcium in addition to the heat began to wreak havoc on my stomach. I felt sick, weak and the thought of eating meat grossed me out.

The BF had suggested I try eating a piece of cheese to see if I was indeed missing some calcium in my diet through food. Eating the cheese was by no means the “cure all” but it didn’t make my symptoms worse either. By eating the piece of cheese (and a couple more after that)- I have broken the 30 day strict challenge.

Just because I ate cheese does not mean I’m going to throw the rest of the challenge to the wind. I still plan to heavily limit alcohol consumption (I was having a glass of wine with dinner a couple of times a week) and eliminating sugar. Sugar is a slippery slope for me. If I have one piece of sugar, I instantly want 15 pieces.

So in the end do I feel like I failed? A little, but I have learned more lessons about my body’s limit and what works best for me. The Whole 30 is no joke, and there may be a point that I try it again. But now I need to take in the lessons learned, and apply them to my eating habits while training for my first full marathon.