It’s hard to believe this 30 days is over.

There were a few days scattered throughout that were tough, but really?

It flew.

And at the end of these 30 days of strict paleo eating?

I lost 9.4 pounds and 6.75 inches, bringing my total loss from my highest weight (after I got sick and gained 70 pounds in 4 months) to 61 pounds.

Side note: how well does a paleo diet work for weightloss? It took me almost 2 years to lose the first 30, and 8 months of very strict calorie counting and hard working out to lose the next 15. In the past 10 weeks of eating paleo, I’ve lost another 15…with no calorie counting, no obsessively writing food down and very little exercise.

It works.

It wasn’t a perfect Whole30 – there were a few very minor bobbles, nothing major – and I chose to push through for one reason:

I’m seeking good and not perfect.
Perfect leads me to dark places, frustration and giving up.
Good is something I can sustain and build on.

The best parts?

I stayed away from the scale and the tape measure for the entire 30 days.

I remained dairy free the entire 30 days, something I’ve never been able to do for more than a week.

No refined sugar and almost no unrefined sugar. My one sugar failure was during a sinus infection last weekend, when all I wanted was hot cocoa. I made do with coconut milk, a really good cocoa powder, a drop of vanilla and another drop of pure maple syrup. It was so rich, I drank about a third of a cup and was good.

In all honesty, I should have started over…but again, my goal wasn’t perfection and I chose to focus on the good.

I’ll shoot for perfection when I do it again in January.

Most of all – and this really is the biggest success for me – I feel awesome. Even after fighting a nasty sinus infection for a few days, I feel great. My energy levels have been consistently high. Other than the hot cocoa, I’ve had no food cravings…or mood swings…or crazy hunger pains.

My relationship with food has been completely changed through 10 weeks of paleo and even more so after 30 days of Whole30 – it’s just food. And the scale addiction I’ve fought for so long – often weighing myself 2 or 3 times a day is done. I weighed last Wednesday at the end and haven’t stepped on the scale again since.

And I need to point out, again and again – not once did I feel deprived. Never. Eating out was the most difficult, but even then I was always able to make Whole 30 appropriate choices, regardless of the restaurant we were at by asking lots of questions and…well…my orders were just weird sometimes. I got over my insecurities and made the requests I needed to take the best care of myself.

I am going to give myself a little slack for the next few weeks – I’m going to add in a little bit of dark chocolate and a few baked goods…once in a while…as a special treat, which is what they should be for all of us.

Other than that, I don’t really see any other changes I’ll be making.

This feels too good to muck it up.