As I've blogged in the past month, Avery and I just completed the whole 30 last Thursday. It is quite an accomplishment for someone like me, and as hard as it was at times, I am so glad I did this.
Why did we do this? I would never say that I ate unhealthy, but by health standards, I really did. Avery and I kept saying we were going to eat healthier, and of course I had a lot to do with that because I am primarily the one grocery shopping and cooking the meals. My sister had just completed this and felt better and I know a few others who have done this too. I thought, I've never read the book, but I will do some google research and we will do this. I know from past experience that "cutting back" wasn't working too well for me. So this is what we did:
Basically, that meant meats, fruits and vegetables and we drank a lot of water!! Here are some photos of some of our meals (most of these I have posted on the blog last month).
BREAKFAST:
Breakfast was usually eggs, fruit and avocado.
fresh fruit
No sugar added bacon - This is the only approved bacon. I added bacon in our rotation once a week.
I also added these into our rotation a few days: Egg muffins with onions, peppers, and ground turkey that I added sage to in order to make as close to sausage as possible.
Again, lots of eggs!
LUNCH:
Avocado soup
We ate some salads, but didn't feel like we were eating salad every day. I grilled some chicken strips which I had in the freezer and would pull out to serve on a salad a few times for lunch. I made an avocado dressing once, but the rest of the time, we ate our salads with no dressing. The juice from the tomatoes helped and I always add avocado to my salads for extra flavor too. We also ate some soups for lunch, which was a nice change. Some days we had leftovers from the night before.
DINNER:
Stuffed peppers with ground turkey and onions, served with criolla potatoes (the kind we eat here) and carrots.
Shrimp, squash, zuchinni, and avocado
Carrot fries
I only made these once, but they were good.
Grilled chicken, platano chips carrot fries, and salad
Shrimp, broccoli, onions and peppers
Grocery shopping on the whole 30
A few of my thoughts/tips on the whole 30:
- The goal of whole 30 is to be full from meals where you don't snack. A few times, we had an apple for a snack, but honestly, snacking between meals didn't exist for the most part.
- Meal planning is critical to this program in my opinion. Even if you just do that for 2 or 3 days at a time, you have to know what your next meal is to have the right foods in the house.
- We eliminated most snack foods before beginning. Yes, the girls still ate normal and had some snacks, but there were no typical sweets in the house. Once or twice, I had to make cookies for the girls to take to school, but I just baked the cookies and washed the bowl, tray, etc. as quick as possible and put the cookies away to not have any "remains".
- The program recommends you not weigh during the 30 days because although weight loss will probably happen for everyone who does this, that is not the end goal. The end goal is to have a healtheir approach to eating and be aware of what we put in our bodies. Avery and I ignored this rule :). I wanted to know there was some progress to make this all "worth it". In the end, Avery and I both lost 9 pounds each. I have much more to go, but I am about to travel to the states and enjoy frozen yogurt any chance I get :). I do think that doing this program will help me in making much better choices overall though.
- For me, timing was important with this program. I wanted to wait until a non-holiday time period on the calendar and one with no special events, like birthdays. We did have Mother's Day during our 30 days, but it was so late in the program, I was adjusted to eating this way. At one social event, I did turn down homemade oatmeal chocolate chip cookies by a fellow American. That was hard in the moment, but I didn't miss it by the time I got home.
- We were both very tired the first 10 days. This is different for everyone, but I think it was our body de-toxing from eating sugar in most of our foods. This program has different results for everyone and has different affects on everyone too as we all have different body types.
- Lastly, If I can do this, anyone can do this!
Here are some funny sayings (some I got from my sister) related to the whole 30:
