Whole30 Challenge

A few weeks back, I found out about the Whole30 challenge and decided I wanted to give it a try. I got Eric on board and we decided to start at the end of May after Memorial Day. Tonight starts the first of our Whole30 challenge. Basically, you are very restricted on the food you can eat. It's a month-long detox for your system - it's like hitting a reset button. No sugar, no grain, no dairy, no legumes, and no crazy chemicals or preservatives. Mostly, you can eat meat, eggs, vegetables, nuts (no peanuts), and fruit.

On Friday, we made a trip to Whole Foods to prepare for the month. There's lots of things I had never heard of - I didn't know there was almond flour and I had never heard of ghee or clarified butter.  We walked out of Whole Foods and spent about $120. I'm pretty sure we didn't have enough ingredients from that trip to make one meal! Granted, we were picking up pretty obscure items that will hopefully last a few weeks. The next day, I went to Kroger and left with my cart filled with fruits, veggies, meats, and a few things for Alec (he's not taking part in Whole30). It was strange not having to grab a bunch of packaged food (chips!) and Diet Dr. Pepper. The whole trip to Kroger was $208.

This sounds like a lot of money for a week, but when you consider this is all our meals for the next 7 days it doesn't sound too bad for us - we spend A LOT of money on dining out.

Here's the meals and snacks I'm planning to make this week:

Easy Chicken Marinade with Tomato and Avocado Salad
Pulled Pork as lettuce wraps with this BBQ sauce
Banana Muffins
Sweet Potato Casserole
Tex Mex Muffins
Fruit Smoothie
Banana Ice Cream

Thank goodness for the web - there are a ton of recipes out there to keep you on track and to keep the food interesting. Variety is important for me, I can't eat the same thing everyday. It was a little daunting to put away the groceries and realize that everything I bought for food this week needed some form of preparation.

My hope for the next 30 days is to change the way I fuel my body and how I feel (I'm not trying to lose any weight).  I'm a sugar junkie! I eat pretty good most days of the week but sugar is my weakness. I eat 1-2 sugary foods (desserts, ice creams, candy) a day on top of the sugar that's just in everything. I have bad sugar crashes in the afternoon and my blood sugar fluctuates and leaves me starving, shaky and weak. It's also going to be difficult to give up cheese and yogurt for the next 30 days. I also hope this gets us out of our eating out all weekend and gets us into the routine of eating at home.

For now, I'm just going to take this one day at a time/one meal at time. Here's to a healthier me in 30 days! :)