Day 11

I was trying to identify how I feel lately. I think I just feel fine. I definitely don’t feel bad, but I’m also not feeling great with tons of extra energy and vigor. Also, my stupid mouth rinses for my dental work impact the flavors I taste significantly. So even though one of the desirable outcomes from cleansing the diet like I am is to actually “taste” real food and know the subtleties of flavors without added sugars, I still get to enjoy the mask of nasty medicine film over everything. Ho hum.

  • Breakfast: surprisingly… egg cups!
  • Lunch: leftover home fries with ground beef, guac, and salsa
  • Dinner: salmon with butternut squash and green beans

Day 9

Challenging day. The wedding we attended tonight was a potluck. It actually wasn’t too bad having the crock pot in my office because I was right there and couldn’t really smell it. However, by the time we got to the venue and waited around and waited some more I was getting desperate for food. There was lots of authentic Mexican cuisine and I was starving, but I didn’t cave. Finally we ducked into line out of turn and got our food. There was one other dish that we could eat- smoked pulled pork. Our chicken curry was excellent though. It’s a shame we had to share. Then we packed up the baby and headed home. I will need a feasible long-term game plan for events like that when these 30 days are up. It would have been easy to eat a lot tonight. 

  • Breakfast: egg cups
  • Lunch: leftover stew
  • Dinner: chicken curry over cauliflower with pulled pork

Day 8

Busy day! Yesterday I went to Sprouts and was surprisingly disappointed by how many foods were not acceptable to the plan. I was especially disappointed by the dried fruit. It mostly had sugar or sulfur dioxide. But who knew Sam’s Club would have so many simple foods? So today we have a bunch more meat, nuts, and produce in our stock. We made food to take to the wedding we’re attending tomorrow evening (both for us and to share). We made food for our friend who recently had a baby. The next batch of egg cups are made. And we got through our meals for the day. Phew. 

In trying to find the name of the preservative in the dried fruit just now, I realize I am probably consuming too much fruit. I’d been thinking it has not been as difficult as I thought it would be to give up sugar. But my raisin intake has gone up in the past week. And as I think back, I have had plenty of fruit sugars, especially today. I suppose I better try to improve on that front going forward. 

Despite the fruit gut check, I’m calling week 1 a success. 

One more pleasant surprise: Pace Picante Sauce has no forbidden ingredients. Yay easy salsa!

  • Breakfast: eggs
  • Lunch: shrimp in salsa with mango over greens- excellent!
  • Dinner: eggs over home fries with salsa

Day 7

Started the day with a group run. There was homemade Mexican food afterward. Thankfully I actually had somewhere to be afterward so I had a valid excuse not to go in and be tempted. 

In the evening we had dinner with some friends. It was somewhat of an awkward arrangement. They are observing a vegan diet for health reasons. So there wasn’t much overlap between what we can eat in common. We ended up bringing our own food to their house for dinner. Their tabouli looked delicious. We could share a salad and fruit for dessert. 

  • Breakfast: egg scramble
  • Lunch: fridge scavenging 
  • Dinner: beef soup

Day 6

Let’s start with a quote from the instructions for the Bluetooth headphones my mother recently purchased:

“Pairing is a process to connect Bluetooth equipments each other. It will crreate a pemanent and safe link betweeb your equipments and provide them with quick service fron Bluerooth without using any password.”

I would discourage you from purchasing that brand of headphones, but there is no brand listed on the packaging or the equipments themselves.

We were going to make salmon cakes for dinner. However, when we opened the can it wasn’t nicely processed like tuna. It was a cooked portion of the fish crammed into a can- bones, scales, and all. Yuk. Also, probably not the best food choice for me with stitches and a delicate hole in my mouth that is trying to heal.

And for my final thought of the day, just betweeb you and me, I’m wondering whether improving my health is worth all the extra dishes at the end of the day.

  • Breakfast: same same same
  • Lunch: leftovers leftovers leftovers
  • Dinner: crab cakes on greens with asparagus

The good news is that there will be no leftovers for lunch tomorrow.

P.S. The grouchy stage is not complete. There were just lots of things to talk about this time around.

Day 4

The ice cream cake was back again today. But Fat Wednesday was pretty mild: just breakfast burritos. For the record, Fat Wednesday refers to the  Wednesday team meeting at work that turned into a weekly potluck that turned into a calorie fest. All that said however, people at work have been pretty supportive of what I’m doing with Whole30. They have asked lots of questions and can see that I still have lots of good options to consume and don’t have to worry about counting calories. And they all know that their own belts have suffered the wrath of Fat Wednesday.

  • Breakfast: egg cups
  • Lunch: Leftover spaghetti squash and salad (pecan pie Lärabar’s are pretty good!)
  • Dinner: beef & snow pea stir fry

Day 3

Ice Cream Cake
Work temptation

Today at work someone brought homemade ice cream cake. The homemade sour dough bread was easier to ignore… and it wasn’t even Fat Wednesday.

  • Breakfast: egg cups
  • Lunch: pulled chicken and broccoli leftovers, more egg cups
  • Snack: almond, cashew, and raisin gorp
  • Dinner: spaghetti squash and sauce

Day 2

Turns out that dental work is impactful to the Whole30 plan. The supplements I need to take to promote bone regeneration all have banned ingredients… meh. I’d rather this tooth issue gets resolved right than fret over why my vitamin D has sugar in it. And having to eat easy-to-chew or preferably liquid calories translated to chew delicately. My preferred post-dental trauma treat is a milkshake. But besides drinking from a straw being banned for the next several hours there are a number of things wrong with milkshakes in the food plan as well. Instead I went to watch Deadpool. 

We discovered a food that missed the pantry purge: cooking spray. Why the soy? Here’s hoping for a good substitute. 

  • Breakfast- eggs with leftover turkey chili and a tomato. 
  • Lunch- leftover potato and turkey chili. 
  • Dinner- shredded chicken, broccoli, applesauce, and leftover cauliflower rice (in very small delicate bites).