Meals Day 13 – 8/31/13

• Breakfast: Bacon and eggs
• Lunch: Pulled pork, home made BBQ sauce and carrots
• Dinner: Steak, roasted sweet potatoes, asparagus

Meals Day 14 – 9/01/13

• Breakfast: Bacon, eggs, roasted southwest sweet potatoes
• Lunch: Left over chicken curry
• Dinner: Pork burgers with sautéed mushrooms, and, guacamole with a side of crispy sweet potatoes

Meals Day 15 – 9/02/13

• Breakfast: “Cereal” consisting of the Cinnamon Faux-st Crunch, unsweetened almond milk, cashews, almonds, unsweetened coconut flakes, walnuts, dried cranberries. T’was delish!
• Lunch: Sautéed peppers and onions with left over steak and sausage
• Dinner: Pork ribs, collard greens, roasted carrots!

Meals Day 16 – 9/03/13

• Breakfast: Omelette with salami and half a banana
• Lunch: Burger patties with a fried egg and left over collard greens and a pickle
• Dinner: Shrimp and scallops with diced tomatoes over spaghetti squash

Meals Day 17 – 9/04/13

• Breakfast: 2 egg omelette, sausage, sweet potato hash, avocado
• Lunch: Left over shrimp & scallops over spaghetti squash
• Dinner: Grilled chicken breast, roasted butternut squash, sautéed spinach with olives, mushrooms, and sun dried tomatoes

Meals Day 18 – 9/05/13

• Breakfast: Chicken breast, omelette, sweet potato hash
• Lunch: Chicken breast, collard greens, tomato
• Dinner: Roasted buffalo wings and broccoli

The breakdown

You know… it’s been a hectic week. Hectic but it flew by. Im fairly behind on my updates, mainly because I’ve just not had time to sit down and write out in full detail how my day is going, how I felt about the food I was eating, the gym, etc. So rather than try to go back and remember, I figured I’d just give a general recap of the week based on what I do remember.

So last weekend college football kicked off, literally… it’s football. And with football usually comes beer and drinkin that beer and grilling and whatnot. It also usually signals the turn of the weather, which means festivals and being outdoors more and again, more beer and drinking. Saturday morning we loaded up the car and went to the local farmer’s market where they were having some big festival thing with all kinds of arts and crafts and chalk artists in addition to the usual food vendors that are there. We really just wanted to get our usual staple of almond butter and meat, but we decided to walk around a bit and see what all was the happs. In all honesty, it was kinda boring. I mean, there was some decent art, but we really art artsy people. I’m glad that people are talented enough to make fish sculptures out of scrap metal or whittle a hunk of wood into a bowl, but that’s really not something we need around our house. Oh, and that black and white photograph of fog rolling in over Turner Field… neat. So we made our way over to the food stuffs and picked up what we had come for and were on our way. Nothing too fancy, but it was good to walk around and enjoy the weather.

After the farmer’s market we headed off to a few other stores to pick up a few items we needed for meals during the holiday weekend. This would be the first of SEVERAL trips to the store during a mere three day span. I think in total we made 5 trips to the store in 3 days. But I digress. We both knew, by the time lunch rolled around that we were going to want a beer with our steaks while the Georgia game was on. It was a late game, and dinner would be done right at kickoff. It was merely a toasting beer to celebrate the opening of the season, not a GO DAWGS SICK’EM drunken ordeal. After all, 15 days into Whole30, you become a cheap drunk, so it wouldn’t have taken much any way. We made steaks for dinner, roasted up some vegetables and settled in for the game. Twenty minutes later we were watching an episode of Bone’s and piddling on our phones while Chase roamed the neighborhood with his friends. In reality, we’re more of a social football watching kinda crew. If there’s people around and its a good game we’ll watch it, but sitting on our couch for 4+ hours watching a football game after having one beer… not really the BEST way to spend our evenings.

So that was Saturday. I know I said I was gonna just generalize the week, and I still will, but I wanted to at least set the tone for how things would go for the next few days. Sunday was fairly straight forward. Another trip to the store and some off-the-chain ground bacon burgers from Pine Street Market. These things are unreal, by the way. Monday rolled around it was rainy and gloomy in the morning. Originally we were going to go on a Labor Day Trail Run with some people from the gym, but after hours and hours of rain we decided it best to stay home. Plus it was lightning and they cancelled the whole thing. Jess’ mom and sister were coming over that afternoon and ribs were on the menu for “lunch”. I use the term loosely because the day was really weird. Like in the morning it was raining and bleh, and when the family got here we just kinda sat around and played cards and looked through photo albums. Jess and I had some left overs from the night before around lunch time. Then the sun punched through and suddenly it was all sunny and perfect weather outside! The ribs had been cookin in the oven and as soon as they came out err body wanted to get up on the BBQ! So we ate, again… like at 3 or something. Lunch at noon when it was rainy, then lunch/dinner around 3 and it was sunny. We ate and decided that since it was so nice we would head to the pool. I know right?! Like we didn’t go for a trail run a few hours prior due to lightning and such, and now we’re heading to the pool. It totally worked out and we had a blast. BLT loves to swim and despite the water being a tad chilly we had a really fun time. The rest of the day was spent chilling and playing more cards. Chase and Jess’ sister made Monkey Bread and despite everything in my being telling me to eat a piece, both Jess and I held strong and didn’t have a single bite. When Jess’ sister and mom left, they took all the left overs with them. Whew! No more monkey bread temping us in the house!

Tuesday rolls around and its back to the grind. Well, I worked from home so it wasn’t a total grind for me, but the rest of the fam was back in their respective schools. I made it to the gym where we started our Olympic Power Lifting program and man is that fun! I’ve been wanting to lift things and get stronger for a while. I’m really glad we’re doing this program now. Food/energy/mental health wise, things were good. I can really only speak for me, but my mood seemed to be fairly even keel. No major ups or downs.

The rest of the week was par for the course. Moments of hunger, being completely satiated, grumpiness, joy, laughter, powerfulness, etc. This appears to be the norm with the Whole30. Most of what I’ve read from other people who’ve done this before have said that by week 3 things start to level out. I don’t know that things are “level” but they certainly aren’t huge waves of emotional distress. In the beginning I’d feel completely hollow and sad or I’d feel like I could fight a panda. It was a roller coaster. Now its more like a lazy boat ride and ever now and then the boat gets a bit wobbly.

I will say that by Thursday Jess and I were feeling the need to get out of the house. The boys were tired of eating frozen things from a box (granted we could probably start fixing them a bit more suitable food) and we didn’t have it in us to cook yet ANOTHER meal then clean up and do the dishes and pack lunches and all that jazz. So we went out to our favorite establishment Taco Mac… again. Surprisingly enough, its actually really easy to eat well there. They now have roasted buffalo wings. That’s right, roasted, not fried! That with some broccoli or a side salad and I’m set. They have a good selection of salads, fajitas, grilled chicken, burgers with avocado and bacon. You don’t have to get a plate of nachos and beers-a-plenty. The boys enjoyed their food and we enjoyed not having to clean up after the mess! Everyone wins!

So that was that. Technically its already day 20 as of the publishing of this, and another post should be coming out either tomorrow or Monday, but for now this should be a good catch up. Ten more days! I can’t believe how quickly the first 20 have gone by!!

Meals Day 10 – 8/28/13

• Breakfast: Pancetta omelette with sweet potato hash
• Lunch: Left over chicken and vegetable soup
• Dinner: Grilled southwest hot wings, roasted sweet potatoes
• Snacks: Banana with almond butter and raisins

Meals Day 11 – 8/29/13

• Breakfast: Turkey sausage and egg frittata
• Lunch: Half of a salad with tomatoes, crispy prosciutto and grilled chicken
• Dinner: Chicken fajitas* and broccoli
• Snack: Almonds, cashews, banana

Meals Day 12 – 8/30/13

• Breakfast: Pulled pork, poached eggs, sweet potato hash
• Lunch: Bison patty, fried egg, bacon, tomato, side of roasted green beans
• Dinner: Chicken curry (yum!)
• Snacks: Orange

The breakdown

Random McPerson: “So what can you eat on this diet?”
Me: “Well, its not really a diet as much as a clean eating / detox 30 day period. And I can eat a lot really. I eat a lot of good quality meats, lots of vegetables, some fruits, and nuts. No alcohol, dairy, legumes, sugars, etc.”
Random McPerson: “You can eat fruit? Well you know fruit has a lot of sugar in it. Like I know bananas have a lot of sugar in them. So can’t eat those right?”
Me: “Well, its not about the amount of sugar that’s naturally IN something like fruit, its added sugar. Like sweet tea, or most baked goods. Bananas don’t have ADDED sugar.”

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had that same conversation over the past 13 days. People seem to think they either know more than me or know what they are talking about when it comes to food. And unless you have a degree in food science or are a foodamatician, I don’t want to hear it. It just gets real annoying explaining to people over and over that I’m not just rushing into this thing and that I kinda know what I’m talking about when it comes to this plan more than they do.

Any way, now that my rant is over…… Let’s talk about how the past few days went. The previous few days I had been sick and it was a doozy. I mean, I was literally hocking up my lungs, my head felt like there was an actual dagger in it, I think at one point my left eye popped out from all the sinus pressure, and then my hearing went out. Well, looking back it may not have been THAT bad, but it was still a pretty crappy cold, especially for someone who doesn’t usually get them. Day 10 started off with me going back to work for the first time in a few days. I was pumped up and ready to get it, well that was until I blew out my tire. This wasn’t just like a nail in my tire, I somehow managed to get a whole the size of a silver dollar in my tire from hitting a curb! Why did I hit a curb? Well the roads in Atlanta are bajank and there was a car beside me that swerved to avoid a pothole, so I swerved to avoid them and in doing so, hit the curb. The next thing I know I’m riding in a truck to a dealership where I have to fork over $200 for a new tire. But hey, I got a free car wash out of it! The rest of the day was meh at best. I mean, after being sick for 2 days then busting up my tire I wasn’t really feelin all giddy to be at work eating chicken and vegetable soup. But alas, that was my day. Other than the tire it was rather even keel. I wasn’t overly hungry or grumpy from hunger or anything. The Whole30 thing was really just kind of a way that I ate by this point so no real issues here.

Day 11 and we have nothing in the house and again I’m home from work. The baby is still sick, I’m back to coughing and snotting all over the place and I just want this week to end. There’s a 3 day weekend staring me in the face and it can’t get here soon enough. At the gym I managed to get two new PRs (115# snatch and 48.5# TGU) and that had me on cloud nine! I did good with my pre/post-workout meals. For the most part it was a really good day. At home we didn’t have much in the way of food so we decided to go to Taco Mac and torture ourselves. We stood strong though and got items that were as on plan as we could. Our boys on the other hand had root beer, boneless wings, fries, chicken fingers, ranch dressing, ketchup, and cookies. In the end it actually felt pretty good to be able to look at those items and not really crave them like I use to. Sure I wanted one of the Sam Adams Seasonal beers or what ever latest pumpkin ale was out, but there will be times when I can have that, it just wasn’t that night.

By the time Friday rolled around, things were going pretty good. I actually made it into the office despite some lingering sickness. DragonCon was this weekend so there were lots of people in town. It usually gets pretty crazy down town, especially in the afternoon when D*Con is around, so my plan was to leave after lunch. Before that though, I was going to meet up with some friends that were visiting for D*Con. We had lunch out at an Irish Pub and despite the tastiness that permeated the menu I stuck to my guns and ate on plan once again. It was good to catch up and talk to friends and enjoy a healthy lunch. Typically I would have had a beer or two, maybe an app, then a big lunch leaving me feeling groggy and sluggish for the rest of the day. Not this time! It really is a great feeling not feeling like crap for the rest of the day just because of what I ate for lunch or breakfast.

Friday night we were home and needed a few groceries to get us through the weekend. This was definitely a turing point for us. Our usual Friday nights would consist of coming home, snacking until we decided on what to have or where to go, then loading up the car with the boys and heading to some restaurant where we would have some beer or wine, some apps, and a big meal that would leave us sluggish for the remainder of the night and most likely feeling like crap the next morning. We would inevitably blame it on not having a good night sleep or something OTHER than the food/alcohol, but in reality that’s what it would boil down to. This Friday however, we headed to the grocery store with some specific items that we needed in mind, loaded up our cart with all manner of nutritious foods and ended up cooking a meal at home! We made some curry and enjoyed some down time on the couch. I can tell you that Saturday we woke up feeling MUCH better than we would had we gone out to eat.

So that was day 10 – 12. Things are falling into place. Energy levels are leveling out. We’ve got a handle on the food and what we can/can’t eat during the program. We have a system in place for preparation and have keep a staple of food around the house. It certainly is much easier than day 1 – 3 or even 1 – 9.

Another thing I’ve noticed, and a) this might be TMI and b) I’m not sure if its related to the Whole30 or the cold, but I have been waking up at night literally dripping/covered in sweat. I mean its to the point where I’ll have to lay a towel down on the bed so that I’m no longer laying in it. It sucks to get up and go to the bathroom only to come back and freeze from laying in a pool of sweat. I know, that’s utterly gross and WAY TOO MUCH info, this is my bloggins and I figured I could write about what I want.