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It seems like doing a Whole30 in January is becoming a lot more common these days. I know several friends who have never even thought about doing a Paleo diet who have done Whole30's this time of year. Even if you aren't keen on forever changing your diet, doing a 30 day reset like this is a pretty great way to clean up the junk you stuff in your face, especially the junk you stuffed in your face over the holidays. At least for a month. But I do think it teaches you to think about your food choices more on a more permanent basis as well.
I explained why I wanted to do a Whole30 this month in my last post, which was basically that some of the healing I have done of the last few years has been a bit reversed by my bad food choices recently. Certain health issues that had gone away were starting to come back, and those I don't want hanging around for long.
This post shows you what I have been eating and any other relevant information, like the workouts I do, how I felt on that day, etc. I do work full time in an office so that's why many of these are in Pyrex containers.
First though, my main tips for surviving the first week of Whole30:
- Leftovers are king. I cook HUGE meals at night (like doubling and tripling recipes) so that I can eat the leftovers for lunch and breakfast over the following days. This saves so much time in cooking later so you don't always feel like you are in the kitchen, and it helps if the rest of your family isn't eating Whole30 as well so if they have rice or pancakes you can easily just take something out.
- Leftovers for breakfast are awesome too. Especially if you only need some for yourself. A single serving of this, another single serving of this other thing left in your fridge and you have a meal. Instead of throwing out small portions of food that won't feed the whole family, consider saving it for your breakfast. With a quick reheat you are done!
- Before you start your Whole30 (or even while doing it) flip through cookbooks to find out all the recipes you can have. It really helps change your mindset to see all that you CAN have rather than think about all the things you can't have. Make a list of the recipes that sound really good to you so you can reference them as you go.
- Snacking helps in the beginning when you have major sugar cravings. I tend to like snacks of protein or fat rather than carbs like fruit since carbs just tend to draw out the sugar withdrawal.
Onto the week…
Day 1:
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Breakfast: Mashed cauliflower (mixed with bacon fat), cabbage and carrot slaw mixed with lime juice and macadamia nuts and sauerkraut, and Suja green juice. When I was on AIP in 2014 I learned to love leftovers for breakfast. They are so handy and quick, plus I have noticed they seem to keep me fuller longer than typical breakfast foods. You don't need huge servings either – if you have just one small thing of this and another small thing of that you can put it all together like I did here.
Lunch: Taco salad of mixed greens, an avocado, half a sliced red pepper, and a “dressing” made of mayo, chili powder, sea salt, and lime juice. The right container has leftover taco meat which is ground beef with a homemade taco seasoning and diced red pepper. I mixed both bowls to eat, but I heated the ground beef up in the microwave and then placed it in the other bowl.
Snack: Toasted Almonds – raw almonds tossed in a pan with coconut oil and then tossed with fresh chopped rosemary, thyme, and truffle salt. (I found my truffle salt at Whole Foods but you could use just plain sea salt or sea salt and a touch of truffle oil).
Dinner: Mustard Chicken Thighs (recipe from Practical Paleo by Diane Sanfilippo) and roasted broccoli. The broccoli is broccoli, melted coconut oil, minced garlic, red pepper flakes, sea salt, and pepper roasted at 425 F for 30 min.
Workouts: I did a short 15 min pilates mat workout to a video I have and then 2 15 minute brisk walks outside at work.
How I felt: Today I felt great in the morning. Which was surprising since it was the first day back to work in 3 weeks and I had been sleeping in like crazy, so 6 am should have been more of a shock. I quit caffeine today though (I had started drinking it again when on vacation in mid-December). So my usual migraine headache set in around 11 am and I tried all the usual tricks to get rid of it naturally but nothing worked so I eventually took some Tylenol that has caffeine in it. Not ideal but it was necessary for me to not want to jump in front of a high-speed truck.
Day 2:
Breakfast: More leftover taco meet scrambled with 2 eggs, an avocado topped with Cholula hot sauce and sea salt, and some Suja green juice. I scrambled the eggs at home and then just reheated it all in the microwave once I got to work.
Lunch: Leftover mustard chicken thighs, broccoli, and cabbage slaw. I am weird and like to mix things into one big bowl for lunch, so I cut the chicken up and tossed it all together, slaw and all.
Snack: Black olives. I notice in the beginning of starting something like Whole30, AIP, etc that I get lots of sugar cravings and want to snack more than usual. Most likely due to my um, huge dependence on sweet foods the last few months. After a week or two I usually don't need to snack as much. But so in the beginning I let myself snack as much as I want, but typically try to stay more towards protein and fat. An apple or any other high carb snack like fruit would probably just continue my sugar dependence, and that would kind of defeat why I am doing all this.
Dinner: Pepperoni Pizza “Pasta” (recipe by Danielle Walker in Meals Made Simple) over sweet potato noodles (see here how to make those), and Creamed Brussels Sprouts (recipe by Kelly Bejelly in her book Paleo Eats).
Workouts: Did a short 20 min yoga video and three 15 min walks at work.
How I felt: Today I felt great. All day. No complaints!
Day 3:
Breakfast: Scrambled eggs, a homemade breakfast sausage patty (using something similar to this), and some leftover broccoli from 2 days ago.
Lunch: Leftover dinner from last night. Noticing a theme yet? I tend to cook a LOT of dinner (like doubling or tripling the recipe) and then it becomes lunch and breakfast for several days.
Snack: Sardines – I work from home on Wednesdays since my son gets early release from kindergarten and when I asked him to split a tin with me he was SO excited! Slightly weird if you ask me 🙂 I mean, I like them but not like jump up and down like them.
Dinner: Slow cooker Asian BBQ Chicken (without the honey, recipe in Make Ahead Paleo by Tammy Credicott) and leftover sweet potato noodles. My family had white rice mixed with coconut milk.
Workouts: I did a 15 min MMA (mixed martial arts) workout on Dailyburn.com (trying that website out for a month). Also walked 10 mins twice to the bus stop and back.
How I felt: Today I felt awesome. Hence why I did a more cardio-centric workout than pilates or yoga.
Day 4:
Breakfast: Leftover Pepperoni Pizza “pasta” topping and brussels sprouts from dinner on day 2 and some Suja green juice.
Lunch: A leftovers salad. I had some leftover Asian BBQ chicken and sweet potato noodles that I placed over mixed greens and some Tin Star Foods cultured ghee. (I warmed the chicken and noodles up in the microwave and then placed it on the greens).
Snack: Green tea and a spoonful of coconut butter. I had some sugar cravings this day so have found coconut butter to be awesome in dealing with that. It's slightly sweet but doesn't contain any sweetener so it almost feels decadent. This coconut butter was from a jar I have stored in my desk, but freshly made coconut butter is incredible – so creamy and delicious!
Dinner: Thai Beef Stew from Meals Made Simple by Danielle Walker over a Carrot Parsnip Puree, and a kale salad. The kale salad is one bunch of kale massaged until soft, a few tbs of avocado oil, a tbs of sesame oil, juice of 1 lime, a handful of sliced almonds, a handful of dried cranberries (sweetened with apple juice) and sea salt.
Workouts: None
How I felt: Ugh, not good. Day 4 is typically the day people start feeling yucky during a 30 day effort like this, but I don't necessarily feel sugar cravings, it was more I felt like my cough/cold was getting worse. I have to watch hard workouts like I did yesterday because they tend to overtax my body when it's trying to heal. Not quite ready for them yet.
Day 5:
Breakfast: Leftover Asian BBQ chicken, broccoli, sauerkraut, and Suja Green Juice
Lunch: Leftover Thai Beef Stew, carrot and parsnip mash, and kale salad. Forgot the kale salad was in the dish before putting it into the microwave so it turned out a little less than desirable.
Snack: I grabbed a handful of almonds on my way to a meeting so no pic.
Dinner: Kalua Pork with pineapple salsa (diced pineapple, cilantro, diced bell pepper, and diced onion), a boiled artichoke, and mayo.
Workouts: I did the same 15 min Pilates video as Monday plus one 15 min walk.
How I felt: Better today, the cold/cough was much better. Wasn't super hungry in between meals, just wanted a small snack to tide me over.
Day 6:
Breakfast: Scrambled eggs, an avocado topped with Cholula and sea salt, and 2 slices of Canadian bacon. I honestly do not know if the bacon had sugar on it since we threw the label out, but I suspect it probably did. I am a little more relaxed in my approach towards bacon than the official Whole30 Program is as it's hard to find sugar-free bacon and I don't want that to stop me from actually DOING the Whole30, so a teeny tiny bit from curing doesn't stop me. I also had some decaf coffee.
Lunch: Waldorf tuna salad . My kids love this one (heck, so do I!) because it's served on apple slices. So fun!
Snack: I mixed up some macadamia nuts, toasted coconut chips, freeze dried cranberries, and a pinch of sea salt. I got the idea from Caroline Potter's book All-American Paleo Table
Dinner: Meatza from Mel Joulwan's Well Fed (I did the pork/bell pepper/carrots with Sunshine Sauce version) and roasted Romenesco. For the Romenesco I cut it into small pieces, tossed with melted coconut oil and sea salt, roasted at 425 for 30 min, and then tossed it with chopped black olives, and juice of 1 lemon.
Workouts: I did a 20 min yoga video.
How I felt: In the morning I didn't feel so energetic but by the end of the day I was feeling pretty good.
Day 7:
Breakfast: 2 fried eggs, leftover carrot parsnip puree, and a short rib which was leftover from a meal a few weeks ago, frozen, and thawed overnight in the fridge.
Lunch: Leftover Meatza and romenesco.
Snack: Ants on a Log with almond butter, dried cranberries, pumpkin seeds, and shredded coconut.
Dinner: Mediterranean Chicken (a Wildtree Freezer workshop meal), and roasted asparagus
Workouts: None
How I felt: TERRIBLE! Today I had zero energy. I slept 10 hours last night and still took an 1.5 hour nap. I thought for sure I was getting sick, but I really think it's the whole no-sugar thing finally catching up with me. I say this because I went back into my logs for when I did AIP and sure enough, right around the 1 week mark I had a day or two where I felt like I couldn't move. I'm no doctor but I assume it's due to the insulin response in my body. Here's to hoping it gets better tomorrow!
See week 2, week 3, week 4 of my Whole30
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