The Whole 30 Bandwagon

Well, we jumped on the Whole 30 bandwagon that is all the craze right now. My girlfriends introduced this to me and my initial thought was "there is no way I am going to live by a set of rules for eating." I mean, this girl loves to eat. I then went home and started to research Whole 30 and discovered all the things that food is responsible for in your body. You can cure many ailments just by improving your diet. It's fascinating! I highly recommend you get the Whole 30 book and read it. I wasn't 100% sold on this way of eating until I read the book. It amazed me and if you are even remotely interested in Whole 30 I would recommend reading and researching. Besides health issues, I decided to do Whole 30 to get my old habits back. Prior to Max I was always a really good eater. I never ate sweets, said no to bread and ate plenty of veggies, fruit and fish. Oh, after my adorable son was born I got into really bad eating habits and it's mainly due to the convenience of it. I mean, it's a lot easier to pick up dinner than it is to make it on a Wednesday night when all the meat is still frozen in the house and you realized you forgot a main component in your planned meal.


For those that have not heard of it I will give you a little information on what we are doing. For 30 days Andy and I are eating only whole foods. That is meat, fruit and veggies. Nothing processed and no sugar unless it came naturally from the fruit. Absolutely no dairy (eggs are the exception) or alcohol. I love my cheese and wine, so this is a hard one for me. No dairy means no butter, but you can use ghee butter. I had to Google that one (among many of the ingredients we have been using these past 10 days). We actually like ghee better than what we were using. Peanuts are also a no-go, but other nuts are OK to eat. That means peanut butter is out, but I found a new love for cashew butter. More like a new obsession. I now LOVE cashew butter so much that I don't think I will eat peanut butter again. EVERYTHING is pretty much homemade. So, when it comes down to it, your ketchup and mayo are homemade. You pretty much shop at Whole Foods, Sprouts or Trader Joe's. Think natural!

This meal plan is a lot of reading labels and understanding ingredients. It's a lot of putting things back at the grocery store because it contains some funky word that otherwise means sugar. It's a lot of time up front. So, where am I finding the time to do this? I have no idea, but I am figuring it out. The internet is a great resource for everything Whole 30 so that you understand what's compliant and what's not. It's faster if I shop at one of the above mentioned grocery stores, but if I go to any other regular grocery store it takes a lot longer to read packages because I find myself putting everything back because it's tough out there. Those food companies can get pretty tricky with their labels. We also meal prep. We haven't been great at this since we are only 10 days in. We are still figuring things out, but I plan to do better with meal prep this weekend for next week. I think it will make the week a lot smoother.

So, how did I get Andy on board? He's a supportive husband? No, he's doing it for the health benefits. He initially said he would just do dinners with me, but then he read the book and also found it fascinating. That is how he said he would do it with me with one caveat: he will have alcohol on the weekends since we are in the month of spring training. OK, I thought that was fair.

We just finished day 10 and it hasn't been that hard for me. I did experience a major detox hangover at the end of day one, but since then it's been great. Andy's detox hangover lasted three days. He was ready to quit then, but I am very proud of him for not quitting and sticking with this. After only 10 days I feel AMAZING! So much better and definitely less tired. I have had no stomach issues and no days of being nauseous for 10 days straight. I am way less bloated and I am pretty sure I have lost a few pounds, but I don't know since I have not stepped on a scale. Andy stepped on a scale on day 8 and he lost 7 pounds just from eating healthy and eliminating sugar and the bad crap in your food.

So far I am not missing my bad food habits at all. The one thing I do miss is convenience. I have been struggling really hard with the lack of convenience with eating whole foods only. It's tough being a mom, working all day and having to make a dinner from scratch on the weeknights. I really just need to get better at meal planning. That is where I have been failing at this. I hope to plan better this weekend for the upcoming week.

So, what have we been eating? Steak (or salmon/chicken), roasted potatoes (no butter) and grilled veggies. Chicken teriyaki stir fry over cauli-rice. Hamburgers (no bun and compliant ketchup) with roasted potatoes and grilled veggies. An excessive amount of eggs, cashews, fruit and avocados. Homemade pesto zoodles with grilled chicken and roasted sweet potatoes. I plan to make a squash pie bake this weekend and zoodles with red sauce and meatballs. Everything has been very yummy so far. It's just using the right whole ingredients instead of ingredients that are filled with unnecessary foreign items. 

I will keep you posted on our Whole 30 journey and let you know the benefits we see. I will probably post again about this when we get to day 20. I do this all to be healthy and for this guy!