Whole30: Week Three Round-Up

When my friends ask me what's been happening in my life, all I can ever start with is, "I've been really busy." One of my best friends even posted this on my Facebook wall the other day:

She gets me.

My busy-ness was my excuse for not cooking much over the last three years of crazy career transitions. This Whole30 has forced me to see that you can't use being busy as an excuse for going out to eat 4-5 times per week. That's how I've ended up with an extra fifteen pounds on my bod. 

The trick to staying on top of Whole30 and being busy is putting in the time to prepare my food every week. I'll just cook like a fiend for 2-4 hours, depending on how fancy I want to be. I like doing this on Sundays, but if I'm busy on Sunday, I'll do it on Saturday. If the weekend was spent traveling, I'll spread it out-- I'll roast my chicken on Monday morning and make some kind of stew(s) on Monday night. It is worth the time, gives me lots of choices, and saves my gut from the chicken tenders dipped in ranch that I would order if we were going out to eat. 

Right? No?

Week three was weird because of my sickness, so I spread my cooking over two days. In total, I spent about two hours in the kitchen (not counting making my breakfast every day). 

On Monday, I made coconut shrimp soup, roasted garlic mashed potatoes, and roasted sweet potatoes. On Tuesday, I made roast chicken thighs and homemade mayo. On Wednesday, I mixed things up by making this quick creamy dill salmon and eggplant fries for dinner.

Below is what I ate for the week, just to give you an idea of how I split the food from my weekly cook-up and faced PMS while on Whole30.

Tuesday-Saturday: I ate a variation of the same thing every day.
I don't mind eating similar meals almost every day for a week. I will eat leftovers every day as long as I don't have to cook during the week. And it's not like I have to choke these meals down, like when my mom got too many corndogs at Sam's Club back in the day and we had to eat corndogs every day for dinner for weeks after while holding our noses because we couldn't take it. The food I'm making is delicious, so I look forward to eating it and I'm a little sad when it's gone.

• I've always been a morning person and I find comfort in making my breakfast every day-- this wasn't something new that came with Whole30 (THANK GOODNESS). Breakfast is always some kind of green (right now I'm really into collard greens) sautéed in coconut oil, two-three eggs scrambled in OR over medium on top of the greens depending on my mood, and an avocado. If I've done a morning workout, I will throw the greens and eggs on top of some roasted sweet potatoes. I've always loved this combination and eat it every day until it gets cold outside. Then, I switch to crockpot oatmeal until my bones thaw in the spring (in my non-Whole30 life). Oatmeal is one of the first things I'm reintroducing when this is over! Please GOD, I hope it doesn't upset my gut! 

  

  Valentina hot sauce, ohhhhhh yeahhhhh. My apologies that I didn't make it look like art-- I just poured it on there.

• Lunch is cut up chicken thighs, half an apple, and sugar snap peas with a heaping tablespoon of homemade mayo. I put this chicken salad on top of spring greens and top with chopped almonds. This salad makes me so happy! I haven't gotten sick of it yet. This week I'm going to try chicken, celery, carrots, and half and apple. I don't think it matters as long as I have my mayo. 

  

  Homemade mayo is the sunshine of my life.

• Dinner this week was coconut shrimp soup over mashed potatoes, salmon and mashed potatoes with eggplant fries, or coconut shrimp soup and leftover salmon on the mashed potatoes. I didn't get sick of this soup all week either. The heat from the jalapenos felt awesome on my healing sore throat. I have no pictures of the soup because I kept eating it before I could take one. 

  

  I usually hate eggplant, but I LOVED these fries. 

• I haven't been snacking throughout my Whole30 because I'm trying to be really mindful about my eating, but between PMS cravings and a day or two where the time between lunch and dinner was insane because of meetings, I had some cashews and a few slices of dried pear. When things got really bad with the PMS, I ate a handful of frozen cherries and a Cashew Cookie Larabar. This is a huge improvement from my usual PMS Reeses and Oreo flurry.

Alrighty, now for the Whole30 predictions for my feelings this week.

Days 16-27: Tiger Blood!

Follow up to last week's question: What does Tiger blood in Jen World look like? Here are your answers, as well as other Whole30 victories:

Tiger Blood

-I woke up after two days of being sick and felt like:

-I sleep through the night, every night. 

-I feel really happy. Maybe it's the Tiger Blood, maybe not. I just feel really, really happy.

-I'm even more perky than usual in the morning.

-I look better in my clothes.

Other Victories
-I didn't give up when I was sick.

-I made it through another TWO lunch meetings at my favorite sandwich place and favorite local eatery.

-We had a celebration for a group I've been in for the past year that included food (bread, cheese, AKA my favs) and beer (Arcadia Jawjacker and New Holland Poet, WHYYYY), I didn't deter, and it wasn't too bad.
-I was on a college tour with students and we got to eat lunch in the all-you-can-eat cafeteria and the food looked delicious. I ate a lunch I brought from home.

(Interlude) Day 21: I'm so over this.

Whole30 says that during this interlude, you get so sick of Whole30 food that some people can't even eat. This isn't the case for me because I'm still having so much fun cooking. I am, however, SO OVER not being able to eat Greek yogurt, oatmeal, legumes, honey, and bread. I'm over not being able to be social because I can't really eat or drink anything offered to me.

 I'm not going to go hog wild when this is over, but everything in moderation, ya dig? I could quit now, just because I feel really good and I want to see how my body reacts to Greek yogurt, oatmeal, legumes, honey, and bread, but I've gone so far that I might as well finish it out!

Only one more week before I start reintroducing foods and I'm looking forward to it.