Recipes

I’m a whole 10 days in and as challenging as it has been I’m surprised to be nearly 2/3 of the way through the entire 30 days. Now that I’ve established a routine, it’s a lot easier to get through each day without always trying to determine what my next meal plan would have to be. Meal planning is definitely the key to not being stressed out throughout the day.  Continue Reading…

As someone who loves food, Whole30 is a real challenge for me. I’m a bit late to the party but after hearing from friends how the felt after completing Whole30, I figured there was no harm in seeing if I could make it work. 

For those who don’t know, Whole30 is more of a lifestyle choice than a diet, but it does focus first and foremost on your food. The goal is to eliminate trigger foods that may be having a negative impact on your overall health and instead consume only clean foods. At the end of 30 days, you reintroduce each item and see if there’s a culprit making you fill yucky. Specifically that means no grains (including quinoa & rice), no dairy, no sugar, and no legumes (peanut butter, soy, beans, etc). Ultimately it means killing the crutch of being able to go out and grab something to eat when you don’t have anything planned for a meal. 

I had initially decided to start on Thursday so I could shop on Wednesday and kick it all off with fresh groceries. That would have been a good idea. 

Drew surprised me with an amazing date night for our anniversary on Tuesday, so despite not having done any prep I jumped right into Whole30 a day early. Ultimately that was a bit of a rough decision resulting in mostly feeling like I was starving all day since shockingly eating nothing but fruit and salad all day was not effective. 

The key to staying full on Whole30 is eating large portions and making sure to consume healthy fats like avocados. I learned this after asking a girlfriend why I was starving – not trail and error. 

My first shopping trip was enlightening and ultimately a lot more expensive than my usual grocery bill. By starting on the outside of the store it’s easy to stock up on fresh produce and meats. I picked up bell peppers, anaheim peppers, riced cauliflower, cilantro, salad mix, avocados, strawberries and blueberries.  

In the meat department Whole30 ultimately recommends grass-fed organic meat but they know that’s not realistic for a lot of budgets so any solid steak, pork or chicken is a good meat. I grabbed a grass fed beef roast and had to go to Target for regular chicken breast because Sprouts was completely out. 

After that, it was a bit tricky. I have a recipe post to work on that calls for sausage so I needed to find a sausage option that doesn’t have any of the non-compliant items like sugar or soy. You also aren’t allowed to have any of the chemically preservatives in most deli meats. After consulting with the meat counter who didn’t actually know any answers I just read packages until I found an appropriate solution – Applegate Chicken and Apple Sausage. 

I also wanted to get some bacon and unfortunately in addition to a ton of preservatives most bacon also includes sugar. There were a few ‘no sugar options’ at Sprouts so I went with the one that was on sale, Niman Ranch, and picked up a couple packages.   

Since I was officially starving, I didn’t think I was going to survive past cooking dinner so I picked up a Plain Sprouts Rotisserie Chicken. Most Rotisserie chickens ARE NOT Whole30 approved but thank goodness this is one of the few options that is. Typically Rotisserie chicken has butter injected directly into it as well as a ton of questionable seasonings [I’m looking at you Costco and your deliciousness]. 

Next up I needed to pick up a few other Whole30 friendly things to make cooking easier. While dairy is not allowed, gee or clarified butter is, so I picked up a $10 jar [pretend there is a shocked emoji here]. Most salad dressings also include sugar and a wide variety of not Whole30 nonsense so I scoured the shelves for an option that was acceptable. Ultimately I went with Primal Kitchen’s Italian Dressing. I needed mayo for one of the recipes I saved and mayo is yet another tricky condiment. You can definitely make mayo at home but since I needed a timesaver I just picked up Primal Kitchen’s instead. Unbeknown to me, Primal Kitchen actually has a Whole30 kit of everything you need. I might give that a shot when my Mayo is running low.    

One of my recipes called for coconut yogurt to make a greek yogurt type sauce. After investigating all of the options at both Sprouts and Target it looks like the only way to get a Whole30 compliant yogurt is by making it yourself. We’ll see if that happens, in the meanwhile I’m just going to skip that part of the recipe. 

The last thing I snagged was a few Larabars for when I am hungry and slammed for time. Larabars are one of few ‘protein’ bar companies that have Whole30 acceptable products. Just like everything else, you really need to pay attention to the labels because not everything is ok. 

First shopping trip – approximately $125 

I assume I won’t spend this much every time I go to the store since I added extra staples to the list but for my typical grocery spend, this was a lot higher. I also won’t be eating out so I’m confident that the food budget will balance itself out somewhere during the month. 

With all that, I made it through day 1. I figure if I was able to achieve that much the rest should get easier from here out. 

With some prep under my belt Day 2 was infinitely easier. I started off with hard boiled eggs for breakfast. A large salad with chicken for lunch and when I got home I used the Instant Pot to make shredded chicken for stuffed poblano peppers. Yes, cheese would have improved it, but overall it was fantastic the way it was. 

Day 3 was when I realized there was no way I was eating enough food. After taking the advice of a friend I added half an avocado to my breakfast of hard boiled eggs and used the other half on my leftover stuffed peppers. For dinner I had the remaining excess filling from the pepper recipe with a big salad and a whole avocado. I felt 100 times better by the end of day 3 and wasn’t hungry. 

That night I went back to the grocery store to get sweet potatoes, eggs and more avocados – total cost $15. 

Today is day 4 and I had a baby shower to attend. Knowing that I probably wouldn’t be able to eat much at the shower I ate an extra big breakfast of sweet potato hash, bacon, eggs and an avocado. During the shower there was some fresh fruit to snack on, but I wasn’t hungry or tempted by any of the sweets or treats at the party. This evenings meal is another instant pot dish of barbacoa served on top of cilantro rice. 

In these first few days, the hardest part has been having to turn down invites to go out to dinner (bc ultimately I wouldn’t want to eat just raw fish at sushi) and training myself to eat enough to not get hungry later. I’m happy that La Croix is completely Whole30 compliant so I still get a bit of a treat when I want it and otherwise am feeling good about moving forward.

I wasn’t initially going to talk about doing Whole30, but I think posting my progress will help keep me on track. Leave me a note in the comments about how you felt after doing Whole30 and if you have any recipe recommendations I should try out! 

I also started a board on pinterest for recipes and will make notes about what I try as I go.