My Whole30 Journey - Day 1

Here it is...Day 1 of my Whole30 challenge. But first, I feel like I need to put a disclaimer in here. So here it goes:

Disclaimer: I am not in any way affiliated with Whole9 (the company who came up with Whole30). When I claim that something is "Whole30 compliant" it is because I have read the book, "It Starts With Food", and believe from what I read that I know what I'm doing. However, I could always be wrong so please check it out for yourself if you plan to complete your own Whole30. This is my account of my personal Whole30 journey.

OK. Now that we got that out of the way.....

According to the whole30 website, the first day is the "So what's the big deal?" day. They basically say that during the first day you're feeling empowered by making good choices and are wondering why anyone would say this is hard. The next part cracks me up. It goes on to say, 

"This delusion is somewhat akin to the first episode of any given reality show on which the contestants are herded together and forced to live in one house." - (See more here)

So, just as they predicted; I'm feeling pretty good today. Here's what today looked like:

Breakfast 
Today's breakfast may not have been 100% compliant because I actually went out to breakfast. But, I tried my best. I got a scramble that had 2 eggs, ham, onions and green pepper. Instead of the toast and home fries that came with it, I got fruit. The ham most likely had added sugar and they may have cooked the eggs in butter. But, it's day 1 and I actually think I'll do this for longer than 30 days so I'm not stressing about it.

The kids and my husband had a scrambler that I made with eggs, onions, green peppers and chicken sausage. Now, I will say that I don't think the chicken sausage is actually compliant but we used it last time and my husband still had really good results so I think I'm not going to worry about it. It has less than 2% of sugar - the sugar would make it non compliant, but I made the choice that for us it is close enough.

Lunch
Breakfast actually kept me satisfied for about 3 to 3.5 hours. Which actually tells me that I should have a bigger breakfast. According to the book, you should eat 3 meals a day and avoid snacks. Your meals are supposed to be satisfying enough to last 4-5 hours. But, it is definitely a learning process so they say it's OK to snack if necessary.

Lunch was canned tuna (this is the tuna I used and it is SO good, but pricey) mixed with homemade mayo (this recipe is amazing and really so easy) and put on top of some lettuce. I then had carrots and sugar snap peas with homemade ranch dressing and grapes.

I did not love the ranch dressing. The recipe used the homemade mayo as a base, but added coconut milk (and other seasonings) to it so it has an obvious coconut flavor. I'm not a huge coconut fan so I didn't care for it. If you like coconut, you would probably love it! Mary (who doesn't like store bought ranch at all) said it was WAY better than store bought, but still just OK. I plan to try another ranch recipe that basically just uses the mayo and then adds seasonings to it to make it "ranch". I think I might like that better. I'll let you know! :)

I packed my husband's lunch to take to work this morning. He had a salad with chicken, pecans and oil/vinegar to dress it. I gave him some raw veggies with cashew butter as well. The kids helped me pack their lunches and were so excited (we'll see how long this lasts). They each had 3 deviled eggs (made with the homemade mayo), carrots and/or sugar snap peas (Mary had both, Robbie only had carrots), ranch (Robbie) or cashew butter (Mary) and grapes. Perhaps tomorrow I'll try to take a picture of their lunch.

Mary came home from school saying that she needs 4 deviled eggs tomorrow. However, it turns out that she only ate 2 little carrot sticks, 2 sugar snap peas and didn't finish her grapes. I knew the transition to eating lots of veggies would be a tough one for her. Robbie also said he needs 4 deviled eggs, but he ate all of his veggies (he also didn't like the ranch, but just ate the veggies plain) and all of his grapes. So I'll tweak their lunches tomorrow.

Snack
I did get hungry between lunch and dinner so I cut up an apple and had it with some cashew butter (in my Scooby Doo bowl).

The kids are very used to having a snack when they get off the bus. They were also hungry today since we're learning how much we really need to eat to keep us satisfied between meals. Robbie ate an apple and then tried a larabar and ended up only eating half. Mary tried the larabar and didn't like it, she had an apple and a deviled egg since she was still hungry.

Dinner
I found a recipe for meatballs and was eager to try it knowing that there's no way it could compete with my mom's meatballs! I also made spaghetti squash for the first time for a meatballs and spaghetti dinner. The consensus of dinner was YUMMO! The kids and the husband all had 5 meatballs (I had 4). The kids were not crazy about the squash (and to be completely honest neither am I), but they ate it. They made sure to take each bite of meatball with squash on it. There were no complaints of being hungry between dinner and bed (and dinner was early - before 5:30). But the kids don't usually eat after dinner so this isn't a huge adjustment.

The Lowdown of Day 1
All in all we had a very successful day 1. Mary told me that it was her friends birthday at school and doughnuts were brought in and she didn't even have one! She also said that all of her friends had Easter candy in their lunches and were teasing her (jealous, Mary?!?!) and she was still compliant! I LOVE it!

The biggest hurdle today was what to drink at dinner. The kids wanted something other than water, but there really isn't much you can drink during the whole30. I would like to try flavoring water with some fruits, but I just haven't done it yet. I also think I ate a little more fruit than they recommend (and I know the kids did, but I don't care about that). They recommend something like 1-2 servings of fruit a day and I think I had about 3 - so really not bad.

It's a good thing that day 1 was such a success because looking at the timeline, things are going to get a little rocky from  here until about day 16!