Whole 30 is for sure all the rage with New Year's resolutions arising. Yellow Car Boy and I successfully completed the 30 day challenge, and despite the inconvenience and emotional roller coaster. I thoroughly enjoyed the experience. I'm so serious.
The Bad I'm going to get the negatives out of the way, and then I'm going to share all of the amazing things. Whole 30 was pretty inconvenient, especially in the beginning. You're so limited on what you can eat, which means you eat at home a lot, and there is a lot of food prep. People would ask us to go out to eat, and the answer was almost always no because we did not want to start over/ we're competitive. The good news is, Whole 30 is really popular, and grocery stores have caught on. When we started, I had a hard time finding "approved" products at Kroger and WalMart, but it's much easier now. Also, after probably the second week, I finally knew what we could and couldn't eat, so I wasn't reading as many labels. The Ugly The other negative was the emotions. For a few days, I felt a little batty. Apparently I had quite a connection with chocolate that I was desperately missing, and well I just wanted sugar. I also had some bizarre dreams including one where I dreamed I ate a donut, and I had extreme guilt for days. It's for real. The Good During Whole 30, I slept like our cat when he's been on multiple outside adventures. I had an amazing sustained energy. It wasn't like energy from caffeine, it was like natural energy. Crazy, right? But my FAVORITE part of all was not feeling bloated. It was amazing. While not participating in Whole 30, I am a bloater. I'm constantly poofy. I, unfortunately, didn't lose any weight (I really shouldn't say unfortunately because it's not at all what it's about), but without the poof, my clothes did fit better. Yellow Car Boy dropped weight and dropped it quickly. But remember- that's not what it's about. Yellow Car Boy has Type 1 Diabetes, and it really helped his blood sugars despite the few times we gorged on fruit (this is also a no no). The Musts You must read the Whole 30 book. It really doesn't take long, and there are parts you can skip over honestly, but you need to know why you're doing what you're doing. Because at some point during the thirty days, you're going to wonder why you would do such a thing to yourself, or you'll convince yourself it is ok to eat cheese because cheese is healthy, so you need to eat all the cheese. You can even read the most important things online (https://whole30.com/whole30-program-rules/). You must be willing to commit to thirty whole days, and if you mess up- technically you have to start over. But I'm going to be really honest. There were a few things we bent the rules on, but I slept ok and didn't have extreme donut dream guilt. For instance, we had a difficult time finding compliant sausage, and I'm not a huge egg eater, so we settled for an almost compliant sausage (Jimmy Dean All Natural https://www.jimmydean.com/products/fresh-sausage/roll-sausage/premium-all-natural-regular-pork-sausage). The one non-compliant ingredient is cane sugar, but hey it's cane sugar, and it was less than 2% of the entire thing. We also made pancakes with compliant ingredients and put honey on them once or twice. Honey is a no-no along with making "treats" despite using compliant. The book explains it's a mind thing. My cravings conquered my mind, and the pancakes won. Again though, no donut dream guilt. It was still a better choice than the two chocolate covered cherries I just threw down my throat. You must be organized. Meal planning and being prepared are absolutely necessary. I purchased a monthly chalkboard calendar, and it was a Whole 30 saver. I planned dinner for the entire thirty days, so grocery lists and shopping were super easy! We usually did the same thing for breakfast (fruit, applesauce, and sausage or bacon), and we typically had leftovers for lunch. Good to Know There are TONS of recipes on Pinterest and the Internet in general. Jay's Baking Me Crazy was one of my go to websites (https://www.jaysbakingmecrazy.com/category/whole30/). My advice is to keep it simple. Yellow Car Boy and I are busy people. Aren't we all? I'm also a picky eater. We had to do what worked for us. Some of the recipes are really complicated. They frustrated me and made me feel defeated. Unless you're super kitchen savvy, I recommend not going with those recipes. Do Whole 30 with friends. Having a community is so helpful. The accountability and support is huge. I have a group of friends that started an iMessage feed, and it was amazing. We all shared recipes, successes, failures, and products we found that we enjoyed/were on sale. Keep snacks with you at all times. It is easy to fail when you're hungry, and you will be hungry, because vending machine snacks are typically not Whole 30 approved. Some of our go to snacks are applesauce, fruit, nuts, Lara Bars, and pickles (all in moderation and as always check the ingredients to make sure they're compliant). Keep your eyes peeled for Whole 30 recipe, grocery list, and tips posts. Yellow Car Boy and I are getting geared up for round two! Comment below if you want share your Whole 30 experience or have questions!
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