In a nutshell, Whole30 isn't a diet or even a lifestyle change. It doesn't cost any money, or involve any crazy supplements or replacements that say they're "natural," but were processed in a plant and come in a jar and are wicked expensive. It's basically eating lean meat proteins, lots of veggies, some fruit, and some healthy fats and oils for 30 days to rewire and repair your digestive system and the hormones that control it. To "undo" all of the damage that's been done by the way a typical American eats.
Casey's top recommended read from 2013? It Starts with Food by Dallas and Melissa Hartwig. Not even kidding.
This was the first book to explain to me why I can and will eat an entire box of Oreos in one sitting and that the fact that I can and will isn't a character defect.
Anyway, we've been talking about doing this together for a couple of months. And we landed on January. We figured..."After the holidays." "After traveling."
So we set a date to start--Monday, Jan. 6.
Now the program recommends that you PLAN to start this. You know...clear ALL of the tempting, bad for you, junk out of your cupboards, and get rid of it. Plan meals, grocery shop, stock a pantry...
Yeah, right.
Problem #1--I have three teenaged children. No breakfast cereal in the cabinets for 30 days will equal rebellion and mutiny. Ditto to no milk in the fridge.
Problem #2--Over break, I bought two bags of FairTrade certified chocolate chips at a college classmate's fair trade store. With Christmas money. It's stinking hard to find FairTrade chocolate and it's NOT cheap. There's NO WAY those were going in the trash. Or even to the neighbor's house. I"m not that nice.
Problem #3--Try as I might, preparing for things ahead of time just isn't in my nature. I do my best work in the 11th hour. I've been rewarded for procrastination too many times to change my ways now.
This brought us to the morning of Day 1.
Bleary-eyed, I headed downstairs to see what could possibly be put together for breakfast. (It is important to note that we returned home from a 15 day vacation on Saturday. This was the following Monday. And no one had been to the grocery store.)
Day 1 Breakfast was not promising.
Fried eggs and a microwaved bag of frozen mixed veggies. Not even kidding. It looked something like this:
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Actually, it looked exactly like this, minus the vegetables. Sadly, the vegetables were even less photogenic than the eggs.
It's no wonder Better Half left for work feeling dubious that we would last a DAY, let alone 30.
Enter my new sister-in-law, Susan. The state of New York declared her legally part of our family when she and my brother got married this past August. I claimed her long before that. Anyhoo...
She and Nathan ALSO decided to Whole30 during the month of January. But she was rocking it a little bit differently that I was.
Like this:
And this:
And this:
And, well, I'm just a teensy bit competitive. So after that horrible breakfast, and Susan's Facebook posts, I decided to step up my game.
I rid my house of anything that was going to tempt me to cheat, (breakfast cereal and boxed macaroni and cheese just aren't a temptation for me, so Better Half and I get to maintain the illusion with our kids that we're in charge for a little bit longer) EXCEPT for those chocolate chips, which I stashed in my deep-freeze. I have plans for them the MINUTE we're done with our 30 days. :)
And I made a menu, and a grocery list, and went to the store.
Mealtimes improved.
Here's what I learned/noticed from this whole business:
1. Healthy food won't kill you.
2. It tastes really good.
3. Even kids will eat it. (A note on feeding kids: I don't have picky children. I honestly don't know if this is because we've always had an "A little or a lot?"... "No worries. If you don't like the dinner option, perhaps you'll like the breakfast one in the morning," approach to mealtimes, or if I just got lucky.) But our kids have eaten absolutely everything I've made and declared it "make again" or "Hella good." (Fun Fact: "Hella" is some sort of Bay Area expression that means "very" or "a lot." Somehow, it has worked its way into my Southern California son's vocabulary. Which I am "hella" excited about. Not even.)
4. There is a reason most of these healthy food epiphanies come out of places like California, Texas, and Florida. Healthy, fresh, food is CHEAP here. And accessible. I can buy two pounds of fresh green beans for $0.99. A bag of frozen is over $1.00. My sister-in-law had to do a lot more legwork to find stuff in the winter in Brooklyn. So unless you live in a place of perpetual spring and summer, know that attempting something like this will be dicey in the winter and much easier in spring and summer.
5. It's nice to have a partner in crime. Or several. If for no other reason than conversations like this:
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or so you can send "You SUCK" texts to your brother when he drinks a beer and eats a cheeseburger in front of his wife (Solidarity, Sister!), or so you have someone to call up and say, "Do you think I can substitute toasted almond flour for breadcrumbs and omit the Parmesan in my copycat recipe for Unforked's amazing "Hail the Kale" salad? (Thanks, Amanda!!)
We stayed strong. All of us. Or most of us. :o) Which brings me to...
6. One of the purposes of this whole things is to "Slay the Sugar Demon"--reset how your body craves those over-the-top, factory-produced, sweets. Yeah. This particular part of the program hasn't worked on me. At. All. I am certain that I need to hire an Exorcist for my sugar demon. I would happily eat a plate of brownies right now if my sheer competitiveness and legalism wasn't kicking in to get me to the finish line.
7. Eating out sucks when doing something like this. Eating socially at all is dicey. Better Half and I have been SO lucky. We've had three house guests during the past 24 days and they have all been FANTASTIC sports about Whole30. They've eaten everything and even told us it was good (see #1). I've made more meals at home in one continuous streak than I think I have in my entire. married. life. I'm kind of proud of that. And really tired of it. :)
8. Except for the Sugar Demon thing (and some things are just bigger than home fixes and require professionals), we have experienced all of the health benefits that were promised. We sleep better. We have less aches and pains. Our workouts are better. Slowly, we are starting to crave healthy, good food.
9. There is something to this "gluten is really bad for you" thing. The only intentional "cheating" I've done was to take Communion at church on Sunday. A communion wafer tinier than the size of my fingernail. Three hours later, I had an unbelievable headache and felt like I was going to be sick. Not even kidding. When I add foods back in to my diet, foods with gluten will not be on the list.
10. My jeans have more room. Better Half's jeans have more room. And our recycling bin has more room. This is largely due to the fact that egg cartons, (which we now buy in massive numbers) take up way less room than wine bottles.
Complete honesty here? Super looking forward to a wine bottle or two in the recycle bin, and a dark chocolate wrapper or two in the trash can come February!
In other and completely unrelated news--
I got my hair trimmed and colored on Tuesday. Conversation after school.
J: Wow, Mom! Your hair looks really good!
Corb: Oh. You got your hair cut? I just figured you fixed it differently today.
Me: Didn't you notice the color difference?
Corb: Well, yeah. But I just figured you washed it or something.
Sigh.
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