Many of you know that I really dedicated myself to losing weight starting in January 2013. Even through the stress and chaos of relocating across country, I stuck with it and lost about 75 pounds. I never got to my final goal of 100 pounds, and then the holidays hit, and bad habits snuck back into our routine, and then we had our second move in a year and bad habits became the complete norm. In fact, most of this year has been a yo yo, on again, off again. I'd do well leading up to a trip for work, and then I'd succumb during the trip and then it would take a week or two to get back to eating better again resulting in a couple more pounds gained back each time I'd slip. My method of weight loss was just documenting everything I ate and counting calories to burn more than I take in. And that works. The science made sense to me. There are two big "buuuuuuut's" coming.
1) My objective was simple. Eat fewer calories than I burn. The quality of those calories was never a consideration for me. In fact, I never ate breakfast. My morning calories came in the form of an iced venti nonfat caramel macchiato with 3 extra packets of equal or splenda. I would often skip a meal or cut back on a meal in order to "budget" for our evening bowl of "light" ice cream while we watch tv. It was our routine, and I was staying under my calorie limits so I was meeting my very limited objective in black and white.
2) Food, particularly bad foods, even after being on the diet for 9 months, still had a hold on me and it was a daily battle to overcome the temptations. Full transparency here... after the holidays and our move to the new house and settling into new routines, my NET weight loss was down to only 42 pounds. I had put on 33 pounds over the course of a year. Not good.
Here's a visual of my progress towards the goal... the third slot will remain open until I get there.
A friend at work switched to eating the Whole30 style regularly and has never looked better and I can tell she's never felt better. She does a fairly loose interpretation of it and doesn't sweat the details too much. For her it was mostly in support of her husband who was looking to lose weight and get healthier. He's had an amazing transformation by the way! We talked at length about her diet the last couple times I saw her, and I was thinking there's no way I could give up pasta (even whole wheat!) or cheese (even low fat!) forever. She said she used to eat bread and pasta and cheese and even sweets regularly too but now she just doesn't and doesn't miss them. It got me thinking, the things I'm most reluctant to give up are probably the things that have the biggest chemical hold on me and the things I should try hardest TO give up. Like why should I be sad about not eating things that make me fat and lazy? So I researched the Whole30 for a full week. I looked up recipes to get me excited about preparing foods in a new way, and I cleaned out our kitchen and made a huge shopping list to stock up for week 1. To prepare for that first week, Brent and I were in the kitchen for about 8 hours cleaning and chopping vegetables, making sauces and bases for meals to make it easier throughout the week. It was a LOT of work. So much work, in fact, that I was already doubting the longevity potential of this lifestyle.
With the Whole30 program, there's no membership or fees or meetings or products to buy. Just follow the rules if you dare. :) You can read all about it in more detail here but here is the summary:
On day 1, I woke up feeling like I got run over by abus train. For starters, we were on an all out bender the night before devouring the last of the naughty treats in the house, you know, doing our part to rid the kitchen of any temptation once the 30 day challenge started. We'd been eating takeout and treats all week, but that night we hit a new low. We split that 6 pack of inside out carrot cake cookies from Trader Joe's, I had a candy bar, and the remaining baked tortilla scoops with salsa. In addition to the carrot cake cookies, Brent had a pack of Mike and Ikes and drained the last of the Mint Chocolate Chip ice cream in the freezer. Again, full transparency. :)
On top of the REALLY poor nutritional decisions, my allergies had been so bad that I didn't notice the transition into a cold or sinus infection or whatever it is I got the first couple days. I kept thinking it was just allergies, but my nose wouldn't stop running long enough to lay my head down on my pillow. I broke down and took some Benadryl, which I never do. I fell asleep quickly, and then woke up at 3am as though my life depended on being awake. So day 1 was even harder than it had to be.
On day 2, I was sicker than I've been in as long as I can remember. I was up and out of bed a total of 3 hours all day, and then still slept through the night. It was awful. I think it was partial flu - awful head cold or sinus infection plus sweats, chills, and all over achies. But then it was partially that my body was in detox and protesting this new lifestyle. :) On one hand it was miserable. On the other hand, I got to sleep through day 2 which is one of the worst to get through I'm told!
The first week I tried a lot of funky recipes outside my comfort zone, and truth be told, I didn't like most of it. I tried some new foods and flavors and decided it's just not for me. In fact, with the exception of 1 recipe, the chocolate chili, which is life changing, I wouldn't make any of the recipes we tried in week 1 again. By the way, I recommend doubling the tomatoes and topping the chili with a big dollop of guacamole. If you like crunch on top, which I could take or leave, try some shredded cabbage or unprepared slaw mix bags.
The good news is that when you take the complex new recipes out of the mix, it gets a whole lot easier and faster to prep meals or throw something together. Literally, a meal should consist of a protein, 2 servings of veggies, and a fat. It doesn't matter if you eat a hamburger as your protein for breakfast or scrambled eggs for dinner if that's what you have in the fridge. We improvised on breakfast a couple times and were eating leftover pulled pork roast as our morning protein. There are only 2 "recipes" or multi-step/flavor dishes I'm still making regularly and I plan for those and we really enjoy them. Both of them use zoodles, or zucchini noodles. If you don't have a spiralizer, you can grate the zucchini by hand. It won't look as pretty or as much like real spaghetti though.
So what did we eat exactly?
For breakfast, almost without fail I have had 2 scrambled (organic) eggs, 2 pieces of bacon, and a big pile of sauteed fresh kale every day. It's not just any bacon, because 99.999% of all bacon out there has added sugar. I was lucky to find Pedersen's Natural Farms No Sugar Hickory smoked bacon with no added nitrates or nitrites. It looks like this and I've found it at 3 local stores now which is a huge win!
I use ghee in the pan to cook all of that. What is ghee? Ghee is, new to me, is a type of clarified butter. What's clarified butter? It's real organic butter that's slowly cooked to draw out the water and milk solids thus making it non-dairy. I believe it's used in a lot of Indian cooking. It doesn't need to be refrigerated, and it looks and tastes a lot like butter. There are lots of reported health benefits to ghee, so do check it out even if you're not willing to commit to a full diet change. I've been buying Purity Farms organic ghee in a jar that looks like this:
We switched our normal coffee beverage from iced syrups with milk and a hint of coffee through a straw over to hardcore grownup Cafe Americanos from Starbucks (2 shots of espresso with 2 shots of hot water) No milk, cream, or sweetener of any kind. It was an adjustment but now we're hooked! We even got a fancy espresso maker (for my birthday) to enjoy good coffee at home.
Brent doesn't like eggs, which is putting it mildly. So when we have bacon in the fridge, he has a big pile of kale and some bacon. When we don't have bacon, he has what we call monkey salad, which we stole from a blog called Good Cheap Eats, whose author completed a Whole30 challenge as well. "Monkey Salad" is a sliced/chopped banana with a handful of nuts (no peanuts!! we have stocked up on organic raw pecans, cashews, and almonds) and a handful of unsweetened organic coconut chips. It's yummy, though while it's all allowed on whole30, be careful not to get sucked into a nightly snack of it which defeats the spirit of the diet. :)
Speaking of snacks, just say no. The fact is, we're eating a lot of food at mealtimes. We even added a third meal by eating breakfast, so generally there's not a real need to snack other than the emotional or psychological pull, which is what the 30 days aims to overcome. When I can't resist I have a handful of nuts and raisins which is a far cry from the bowl of ice cream we used to have nightly, lowfat or not! Or maybe a handful of grapes.
Lunches are all over the place. When we have leftovers from dinner the night before, that's our go-to. When there are no leftovers, we've gotten in the routine of grilling up a big batch of chicken, chopping it up and throwing it in the fridge to add to salad that we prepare on demand. A typical salad is spinach or a power greens salad mix with chopped tomatoes, red and yellow bell peppers, sometimes some diced celery, and chicken for brent. I add a hardboiled egg or two which is new to me but I really like how it tones down the bite of the balsamic vinegar. We are back to using just extra virgin olive oil and balsamic vinegar as dressing. The balsamic is organic and has no added sulfates. Read thy labels!!! We tried a homemade ranch dressing recipe as a spinoff of a homemade mayo recipe that Brent liked but I just couldn't gag it down. It was too oily tasting for me. I need to try again with a modified recipe I think though for now I'm fine without mayo in my life. :) There have been days where we ran out of salad greens too. On those days we made due with raw veggies and a few slices of prosciutto. Again, read the labels. Many packed prosciutto imposters out there have sugar and added yuckies. One of my favorite go-to quick picks in the fridge is celery sticks dipped in organic almond butter with raisins. Nut butters aren't the best source of protein but it works in a pinch when you're in a hurry or out of everything else in the fridge. :) Not to be a broken record, but pure almond butter should just have almonds in it. Nothing else. Certainly not a list of 12 ingredients as most on the regular grocery store shelves do!
Dinners have gotten so much more simple on the second half of this journey. Instead of getting fancy with recipes, I just make sure we have a meat with plenty of vegetables. None of it has to coordinate and it's so much less stressful.
Sample Dinners:
So you can see it's mostly pretty basic stuff. Meat and veggies. The big challenge now is to keep the fridge stocked with fresh veggies. I'm not a fan of frozen veggies, and you go through a LOT when you need 2 servings per person 3 times a day, 7 days a week. That's 84 cups of veggies in a week just for the two of us! Before you cook them, imagine the room it takes up even in a large fridge. Almost an entire shelf is devoted to fresh kale alone!
COST
I'll be honest. Our grocery bills have never been higher. It's sad, but true, that it costs more to buy organic produce and grass-fed beef/organic chicken/wild shrimp. And I've never bought so much produce in my life! 2 cups per meal per person adds up fast. However, takeout isn't cheap either, and we're not doing that anymore. When my day revolves around food, I'm fussy about what I make for dinner, which used to lead to food spoiling before I could make it. "I don't feel like [brocolli] tonight"... after too many nights of that, it goes bad and right into the trash. Now, I cook whatever needs to be used up first because I don't really care as long as I'm getting a protein and 2 veggies. Our family nights out to get frozen yogurt at $20 a pop at least 3 times a week adds up fast too! And we're saving about $350/month by kicking our Starbucks habit! So it's quite possible that we're spending less on food overall with all factors considered. Even if it does cost a little bit more, it's worth it to get rid of the garbage in our diet.
RESULTS
Brent and I lost 15 pounds each, 30 pounds combined! Neither of us feel that boost of energy we should be feeling, and he's not sleeping well. Sleeping better is supposedly a benefit of this dietary change that neither of us has realized yet. My energy is far lower than before I started this diet, so in troubleshooting I'm hearing that perhaps I'm not eating enough, which doesn't seem possible given the size of our plates! The other suggestion is to get more sleep, and I know I'm not getting enough. So those are two things I need to work on.
One unexpected benefit is my seasonal allergies have been FAR less bothersome, even on RED ALERT high allergy warning days!! That's a well documented benefit of eating raw/natural but it wasn't on my radar even though I really suffer the most in the fall with allergies. They've been so minimal over the last few weeks! Yay!
Food tastes different to us now. We can taste it. We've been tainted by processed garbage for so long that I didn't realize how naturally sweet raisins are! When we remove the processed stuff from our bodies, we rid ourselves of the chemical and psychological cravings for it. Walking down the candy aisle has no impact on me now... walking through a movie theater and smelling the buttery popcorn does not make me want to eat buttery popcorn. That part has been truly unbelievable for someone whose life has always revolved around food. Even Brent, who is generally a VERY healthy person--you know the type -- doesn't quite feel himself
I learned that I have sugar demons, and I probably always will with sugar in my life. A little makes me crave a lot. I think it's best if I just avoid sugar for the rest of my life, and now that I've gotten it out of my system, I think that's actually do-able! We'll see how I do through the holidays!
I learned that reading labels is an essential nuisance since packaged foods have a ridiculous amount of added crap. Case in point. Here are 2 brands of prosciutto that look the same to you when you're shopping until you read the label.
1) My objective was simple. Eat fewer calories than I burn. The quality of those calories was never a consideration for me. In fact, I never ate breakfast. My morning calories came in the form of an iced venti nonfat caramel macchiato with 3 extra packets of equal or splenda. I would often skip a meal or cut back on a meal in order to "budget" for our evening bowl of "light" ice cream while we watch tv. It was our routine, and I was staying under my calorie limits so I was meeting my very limited objective in black and white.
2) Food, particularly bad foods, even after being on the diet for 9 months, still had a hold on me and it was a daily battle to overcome the temptations. Full transparency here... after the holidays and our move to the new house and settling into new routines, my NET weight loss was down to only 42 pounds. I had put on 33 pounds over the course of a year. Not good.
Here's a visual of my progress towards the goal... the third slot will remain open until I get there.
A friend at work switched to eating the Whole30 style regularly and has never looked better and I can tell she's never felt better. She does a fairly loose interpretation of it and doesn't sweat the details too much. For her it was mostly in support of her husband who was looking to lose weight and get healthier. He's had an amazing transformation by the way! We talked at length about her diet the last couple times I saw her, and I was thinking there's no way I could give up pasta (even whole wheat!) or cheese (even low fat!) forever. She said she used to eat bread and pasta and cheese and even sweets regularly too but now she just doesn't and doesn't miss them. It got me thinking, the things I'm most reluctant to give up are probably the things that have the biggest chemical hold on me and the things I should try hardest TO give up. Like why should I be sad about not eating things that make me fat and lazy? So I researched the Whole30 for a full week. I looked up recipes to get me excited about preparing foods in a new way, and I cleaned out our kitchen and made a huge shopping list to stock up for week 1. To prepare for that first week, Brent and I were in the kitchen for about 8 hours cleaning and chopping vegetables, making sauces and bases for meals to make it easier throughout the week. It was a LOT of work. So much work, in fact, that I was already doubting the longevity potential of this lifestyle.
With the Whole30 program, there's no membership or fees or meetings or products to buy. Just follow the rules if you dare. :) You can read all about it in more detail here but here is the summary:
Yes: Eat real food.
Eat meat, seafood, eggs, tons of vegetables, some fruit, and plenty of good fats from fruits, oils, nuts and seeds. Eat foods with very few ingredients, all pronounceable ingredients, or better yet, no ingredients listed at all because they’re totally natural and unprocessed. Don’t worry… these guidelines are outlined in extensive detail in our free shopping list.
No: Avoid for 30 days.
More importantly, here’s what NOT to eat during the duration of your Whole30 program. Omitting all of these foods and beverages will help you regain your healthy metabolism, reduce systemic inflammation, and help you discover how these foods are truly impacting your health, fitness and quality of life.
- Do not consume added sugar of any kind, real or artificial. No maple syrup, honey, agave nectar, coconut sugar, Splenda, Equal, Nutrasweet, xylitol, stevia, etc. Read your labels, because companies sneak sugar into products in ways you might not recognize.
- Do not consume alcohol in any form, not even for cooking. (And it should go without saying, but no tobacco products of any sort, either.)
- Do not eat grains. This includes (but is not limited to) wheat, rye, barley, oats, corn, rice, millet, bulgur, sorghum, amaranth, buckwheat, sprouted grains and all of those gluten-free pseudo-grains like quinoa. This also includes all the ways we add wheat, corn and rice into our foods in the form of bran, germ, starch and so on. Again, read your labels.
- Do not eat legumes. This includes beans of all kinds (black, red, pinto, navy, white, kidney, lima, fava, etc.), peas, chickpeas, lentils, and peanuts. No peanut butter, either. This also includes all forms of soy – soy sauce, miso, tofu, tempeh, edamame, and all the ways we sneak soy into foods (like lecithin).
- Do not eat dairy. This includes cow, goat or sheep’s milk products such as cream, cheese (hard or soft), kefir, yogurt (even Greek), and sour cream… with the exception of clarified butter or ghee. (See below for details.)
- Do not consume carrageenan, MSG or sulfites. If these ingredients appear in any form on the label of your processed food or beverage, it’s out for the Whole30.
- Do not try to re-create baked goods, junk foods, or treats* with “approved” ingredients. Continuing to eat your old, unhealthy foods made with Whole30 ingredients is totally missing the point, and will tank your results faster than you can say “Paleo Pop-Tarts.” Remember, these are the same foods that got you into health-trouble in the first place—and a pancake is still a pancake, regardless of the ingredients.
On day 1, I woke up feeling like I got run over by a
On top of the REALLY poor nutritional decisions, my allergies had been so bad that I didn't notice the transition into a cold or sinus infection or whatever it is I got the first couple days. I kept thinking it was just allergies, but my nose wouldn't stop running long enough to lay my head down on my pillow. I broke down and took some Benadryl, which I never do. I fell asleep quickly, and then woke up at 3am as though my life depended on being awake. So day 1 was even harder than it had to be.
On day 2, I was sicker than I've been in as long as I can remember. I was up and out of bed a total of 3 hours all day, and then still slept through the night. It was awful. I think it was partial flu - awful head cold or sinus infection plus sweats, chills, and all over achies. But then it was partially that my body was in detox and protesting this new lifestyle. :) On one hand it was miserable. On the other hand, I got to sleep through day 2 which is one of the worst to get through I'm told!
The first week I tried a lot of funky recipes outside my comfort zone, and truth be told, I didn't like most of it. I tried some new foods and flavors and decided it's just not for me. In fact, with the exception of 1 recipe, the chocolate chili, which is life changing, I wouldn't make any of the recipes we tried in week 1 again. By the way, I recommend doubling the tomatoes and topping the chili with a big dollop of guacamole. If you like crunch on top, which I could take or leave, try some shredded cabbage or unprepared slaw mix bags.
The good news is that when you take the complex new recipes out of the mix, it gets a whole lot easier and faster to prep meals or throw something together. Literally, a meal should consist of a protein, 2 servings of veggies, and a fat. It doesn't matter if you eat a hamburger as your protein for breakfast or scrambled eggs for dinner if that's what you have in the fridge. We improvised on breakfast a couple times and were eating leftover pulled pork roast as our morning protein. There are only 2 "recipes" or multi-step/flavor dishes I'm still making regularly and I plan for those and we really enjoy them. Both of them use zoodles, or zucchini noodles. If you don't have a spiralizer, you can grate the zucchini by hand. It won't look as pretty or as much like real spaghetti though.
So what did we eat exactly?
For breakfast, almost without fail I have had 2 scrambled (organic) eggs, 2 pieces of bacon, and a big pile of sauteed fresh kale every day. It's not just any bacon, because 99.999% of all bacon out there has added sugar. I was lucky to find Pedersen's Natural Farms No Sugar Hickory smoked bacon with no added nitrates or nitrites. It looks like this and I've found it at 3 local stores now which is a huge win!
I use ghee in the pan to cook all of that. What is ghee? Ghee is, new to me, is a type of clarified butter. What's clarified butter? It's real organic butter that's slowly cooked to draw out the water and milk solids thus making it non-dairy. I believe it's used in a lot of Indian cooking. It doesn't need to be refrigerated, and it looks and tastes a lot like butter. There are lots of reported health benefits to ghee, so do check it out even if you're not willing to commit to a full diet change. I've been buying Purity Farms organic ghee in a jar that looks like this:
We switched our normal coffee beverage from iced syrups with milk and a hint of coffee through a straw over to hardcore grownup Cafe Americanos from Starbucks (2 shots of espresso with 2 shots of hot water) No milk, cream, or sweetener of any kind. It was an adjustment but now we're hooked! We even got a fancy espresso maker (for my birthday) to enjoy good coffee at home.
Brent doesn't like eggs, which is putting it mildly. So when we have bacon in the fridge, he has a big pile of kale and some bacon. When we don't have bacon, he has what we call monkey salad, which we stole from a blog called Good Cheap Eats, whose author completed a Whole30 challenge as well. "Monkey Salad" is a sliced/chopped banana with a handful of nuts (no peanuts!! we have stocked up on organic raw pecans, cashews, and almonds) and a handful of unsweetened organic coconut chips. It's yummy, though while it's all allowed on whole30, be careful not to get sucked into a nightly snack of it which defeats the spirit of the diet. :)
Speaking of snacks, just say no. The fact is, we're eating a lot of food at mealtimes. We even added a third meal by eating breakfast, so generally there's not a real need to snack other than the emotional or psychological pull, which is what the 30 days aims to overcome. When I can't resist I have a handful of nuts and raisins which is a far cry from the bowl of ice cream we used to have nightly, lowfat or not! Or maybe a handful of grapes.
Lunches are all over the place. When we have leftovers from dinner the night before, that's our go-to. When there are no leftovers, we've gotten in the routine of grilling up a big batch of chicken, chopping it up and throwing it in the fridge to add to salad that we prepare on demand. A typical salad is spinach or a power greens salad mix with chopped tomatoes, red and yellow bell peppers, sometimes some diced celery, and chicken for brent. I add a hardboiled egg or two which is new to me but I really like how it tones down the bite of the balsamic vinegar. We are back to using just extra virgin olive oil and balsamic vinegar as dressing. The balsamic is organic and has no added sulfates. Read thy labels!!! We tried a homemade ranch dressing recipe as a spinoff of a homemade mayo recipe that Brent liked but I just couldn't gag it down. It was too oily tasting for me. I need to try again with a modified recipe I think though for now I'm fine without mayo in my life. :) There have been days where we ran out of salad greens too. On those days we made due with raw veggies and a few slices of prosciutto. Again, read the labels. Many packed prosciutto imposters out there have sugar and added yuckies. One of my favorite go-to quick picks in the fridge is celery sticks dipped in organic almond butter with raisins. Nut butters aren't the best source of protein but it works in a pinch when you're in a hurry or out of everything else in the fridge. :) Not to be a broken record, but pure almond butter should just have almonds in it. Nothing else. Certainly not a list of 12 ingredients as most on the regular grocery store shelves do!
Dinners have gotten so much more simple on the second half of this journey. Instead of getting fancy with recipes, I just make sure we have a meat with plenty of vegetables. None of it has to coordinate and it's so much less stressful.
Sample Dinners:
- Crock pot beef pot roast with baby carrots and gravy adapted for beef instead of chicken from a paleo slow cooker chicken recipe from nomnompaleo.com
- Chicken Breasts baked in the oven drizzled with olive oil and both sides sprinkled with paprika, chili powder, garlic, onion powder, cinnamon and then I add buffalo hot sauce for the last few minutes. Serve with any side veggie - we like green beans with diced red peppers and onions. I could eat this chicken every night!
- Chili over a bed of cauliflower "rice" (food processor-pulsated raw florets roasted in the oven with a drizzle of sesame oil and lime juice) maybe with a side salad or just top with slaw and guacamole to drive up the veggies.
- Grass fed hamburger grilled and on a bed of sauteed kale. Oven roasted asparagus (olive oil and garlic) on the side? Sliced avocado and/or tomato too!
- Chicken or steak strips cooked skillet style with lime juice and garlic with peppers, onions, brocolli and a big scoop of guacamole. Sometimes we'll have it over cauliflower rice if we have it, other times we just amp up the volume of the peppers, onions and brocolli.
- "Pad Thai-ish" made with zoodles instead of rice noodles or pasta, and the nutty flavor in the sauce comes from sunbutter (sunflower seed butter) instead of peanuts. I use jumbo wild-caught shrimp but chop it up sometimes to make it easier for the kids to eat!
- Pesto-like chicken and zoodles - this is one of my favs! The sauce is made from cashew milk (cashews soaked in hot water and then drained and blended with some of the water reserved) and basil, garlic, lemon juice. Tastes VERY much like pesto sauce. I make it with baby bella mushrooms, sun-dried tomatoes, sugar free bacon, and chopped asparagus over a bed of zucchini noodles.
- Slow cooker kalua pulled pork with roasted cauliflower and brocolli florets drizzled with olive oil and lemon juice, and garlic.
So you can see it's mostly pretty basic stuff. Meat and veggies. The big challenge now is to keep the fridge stocked with fresh veggies. I'm not a fan of frozen veggies, and you go through a LOT when you need 2 servings per person 3 times a day, 7 days a week. That's 84 cups of veggies in a week just for the two of us! Before you cook them, imagine the room it takes up even in a large fridge. Almost an entire shelf is devoted to fresh kale alone!
COST
I'll be honest. Our grocery bills have never been higher. It's sad, but true, that it costs more to buy organic produce and grass-fed beef/organic chicken/wild shrimp. And I've never bought so much produce in my life! 2 cups per meal per person adds up fast. However, takeout isn't cheap either, and we're not doing that anymore. When my day revolves around food, I'm fussy about what I make for dinner, which used to lead to food spoiling before I could make it. "I don't feel like [brocolli] tonight"... after too many nights of that, it goes bad and right into the trash. Now, I cook whatever needs to be used up first because I don't really care as long as I'm getting a protein and 2 veggies. Our family nights out to get frozen yogurt at $20 a pop at least 3 times a week adds up fast too! And we're saving about $350/month by kicking our Starbucks habit! So it's quite possible that we're spending less on food overall with all factors considered. Even if it does cost a little bit more, it's worth it to get rid of the garbage in our diet.
RESULTS
Brent and I lost 15 pounds each, 30 pounds combined! Neither of us feel that boost of energy we should be feeling, and he's not sleeping well. Sleeping better is supposedly a benefit of this dietary change that neither of us has realized yet. My energy is far lower than before I started this diet, so in troubleshooting I'm hearing that perhaps I'm not eating enough, which doesn't seem possible given the size of our plates! The other suggestion is to get more sleep, and I know I'm not getting enough. So those are two things I need to work on.
One unexpected benefit is my seasonal allergies have been FAR less bothersome, even on RED ALERT high allergy warning days!! That's a well documented benefit of eating raw/natural but it wasn't on my radar even though I really suffer the most in the fall with allergies. They've been so minimal over the last few weeks! Yay!
Food tastes different to us now. We can taste it. We've been tainted by processed garbage for so long that I didn't realize how naturally sweet raisins are! When we remove the processed stuff from our bodies, we rid ourselves of the chemical and psychological cravings for it. Walking down the candy aisle has no impact on me now... walking through a movie theater and smelling the buttery popcorn does not make me want to eat buttery popcorn. That part has been truly unbelievable for someone whose life has always revolved around food. Even Brent, who is generally a VERY healthy person--you know the type -- doesn't quite feel himself
I learned that I have sugar demons, and I probably always will with sugar in my life. A little makes me crave a lot. I think it's best if I just avoid sugar for the rest of my life, and now that I've gotten it out of my system, I think that's actually do-able! We'll see how I do through the holidays!
I learned that reading labels is an essential nuisance since packaged foods have a ridiculous amount of added crap. Case in point. Here are 2 brands of prosciutto that look the same to you when you're shopping until you read the label.
Notice the ingredients: Pork, Salt. That's what prosciutto should be.
Here's another brand:
Notice the list of ingredients is a lot longer than it should be. General rule of thumb: don't buy it if it has more than a couple ingredients - ideally you want ONE ingredient indicating it's far less processed.
We've learned it's possible to dine out on occasion and stick to the spirit of whole30. We were out of town last weekend and did just fine by asking for some slight tweaks when we ordered. At a mexican restaurant we asked them to cook our fajitas in olive oil instead of butter or soybean oil. We skipped the tortillas, cheese, etc and just ate the meat and veggies with guacamole, pico de gallo, and lettuce. At Ruby Tuesday we got "Prime USDA" hamburgers, grilled zucchini, and a salad bar with olive oil and vinegar.
NICE TO HAVE ITEMS
Coconut oil and ghee are two new groceries to me, and I now stock them regularly. In addition I've found I really like my $30 Cuisinart stick blender. I use it for gravy, sauces, stubborn avocados for guacamole etc. I bought it to make easy mayo, which I ended up hating, but will try again with a different recipe and oil. A spiralizer is great to have (we used this a lot on a low cal diet as well because zoodles are practically negligible calories compared to pasta!) For my birthday mom and dad got me a food chopper from the Pampered Chef and I use it twice a day! LOVE LOVE LOVE it! I even use it on the spinach in our salad to make a fully chopped salad. It's so much more appealing to me. And I've converted to cooking almost exclusively on cast iron which I also love! I have two more large cast iron pans on the way.
WHAT ABOUT THE KIDS?
The kids are not following whole30, though they eat what we eat at dinner, which means at dinnertime they're not getting grains, cheese, soy etc. However, they do drink milk with their meals. They've never had sweets, other than fruit, accessible to them except when they're at mammy's house! I'm not trying to prevent the kids from ever having sugar, but I do think they'll make healthier choices growing up if they're raised around healthier foods and develop a palate for raw, natural foods. They're not at an age where they consistently finish their dinner every night, so unless they had some sort of allergy I wouldn't limit their dairy because I can always count on them drinking their milk even if their plate is untouched!
WHAT'S NEXT?
On a typical Whole30 journey, we would start introducing the items we eliminated from our diet one by one to understand our body's reaction to them. For example, maybe I find dairy doesn't have any noticeable affect on my digestion but maybe grains do. Either way, we've decided we don't need to add anything back to be satisfied with what we're eating for now so we're going to stay gluten, grain, soy, dairy, and sugar free for the time being. I'm 43 pounds from my ultimate goal. That feels like a long way to go, but I have no trouble envisioning us sticking with this diet for the long haul. Exercise will help too if I can only drag myself outside to do it! Brent's pushing through the energy issues so I can too... hopefully. :)
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