Whole 30 Recipes and Meal Plans

I am no meal expert, y'all. Some nights I eat cereal and call it a day. Other nights I am on my game and concoct a yummy meal that I put on repeat.

Since cereal is not in the cards right now, and whipping meals up on the go is not the name of my game, I've been diligent about scouring Pinterest and other websites for recipes and ideas to keep this girl from going hanngryy. (You can see my Whole 30 Pinterest board, here)

Saturday mornings are when my meal planning/grocery list prepping goes down. The only bad thing about Pinterest is that 99% of your pinning friends are not on board with your clean eating so they be pinnin' stuff like this:

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and you be like:

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The struggle is real. I love you, Pinterest, but I hate you oh, so much!

Moving on. 

Monday, October, 6th:

Breakfast - Eggs baked in avacado skins with the avacado baked in the middle of the cookie sheet. Basically you scoop out some of the avacado, place it in the middle of the cookie sheet, crack an egg in each of the halves, and bake at 350 for about 15 mintues.

Verdict - Freakin' disgusting...literally I was gagging.

My friend Caitlin told me about this recipe and it has been her favorite so far from Whole 30. I texted her telling her that it was gag worthy, and I'm going to say I just screwed it up, someway, somehow. The texture of the eggs was like rubber and the flavor of the whole things was awful. Never will I ever do this again because I can't get the taste out of my head. Cait, you need to make this for me!

Snack - Apple with almond butter.

Verdict - This is like candy to a person who isn't allowed to have sugar...so good.

Lunch - Leftover crock pot pork, broccoli, carrots, and strawberries.

Pork rump roast, coconut aminos, whatever spices you want. Cover pork in aminos and spices, put in crockpot on love for around 4 hours. We got a pretty small roast, so it didn't need a full 6 hours.

Verdict - It was alright.

The pork was't bad, but it wasn't good. It was edible and just blah. It was sort of dry and the gravy from the crock pot wasn't enough to make it taste better. Maybe using better spices or something would do the trick. 

Dinner - Beef stir fry. 

Cup up steak sauteed in cocout aminos. Then add any veggies you want and add about 2 cups of water, simmer until veggies are soft.

Verdict - Once again, it was alright. Not Chinese food stir fry worthy. The meat was tough and it just needed more spices.

Dessert - Another apple with almond butter while staring at Chris was was eating this:

Rude.

Tuesday, October 7th:

Breakfast - 2 scrambled eggs, a banana/strawberry/spinach smoothie.

Verdict - Compared to yesterday, delicious! The eggs were eggs and the smoothie was interesting with no milk or yogurt. I just added ice and a little water. It wasn't bad, but I won't be putting in the effort to make it again. Plus, Whole 30 suggests that you not have smoothies because drinking your food messes with your brain and a lot of this program is training your brain to not be emotional about foods.

Snack - Apple with almond butter.

Lunch - Leftover stir fry, carrots, and a kiwi.

Dinner - The last bit of the pork with veggies. 

Chris's dinner? Just a large pizza and a Pepsi. Kill me now.

Dessert - A kiwi...a lone little kiwi.

Wednesday, October 8th:

Breakfast - 2 scrambled eggs, a banana, and strawberries.

Snack - Apple and almond butter.

Lunch - Leftover stir fry, carrots, and a kiwi.

Dinner - Baked chicken thighs with veggies.

5 boneless, skinless chicken thighs. Preheat oven to 350 and bake for 20 minutes. I just added random spices and a little olive oil.

Verdict - Really good! Chris said this recipe was a "repeater." Winning!

Thursday, October 9th:

Same breakfast and snack as the day before.

Lunch - Left over baked chicken and broccoli. And, as usual, a bag of carrots.

Dinner - Chipolte! I had parent/teacher conferences this whole day so during my break I found out that I could have Chipolte! If you're doing Whole 30 you can have the salad with carnitas, guacamole, and tomato salsa. That's it! Because of the oil they use, you can't have the fajita veggies and they glaze their other meats with honey, so those are a no-go. 

Verdict - It was gone in 3 minutes when I got home...

Chris came home with a foot long Subway sandwich, a bag of Cheetos, a large Coke, and three cookies. I could have swatted his toosh into the next county. Fo' real, dude?! I didn't know he had cookies until he warmed them up in the microwave that THE WHOLE HOUSE SMELLED LIKE A COOKIE!

Friday, October 10th:

Same breakfast and snack.

Lunch - This was a struggle. Because I had ate all the leftovers and had Chipolte the night before, we literally had no meat I could eat. Our fridge was empty of options for me. All that was left was pico de gallo, an avocado, and some spinach leaves. So what did I have for lunch? Spinach leaves topped with a diced avacado, pico, and lemon juice. I also had carrots and strawberries.

Verdict - To be honest, it wasn't that bad! I was dreading it, but it was not as bad as that egg thing I ate on the first day! It was fresh and the lemon juice was a smart addition.

Dinner - Mooyah! I got a lettuce wrapped burger with onions, pickles, avocado, and mustard.

Verdict - The smell of the fries were killing me, but the burger was pretty good. I miss my ketchup though.

Some recipes I tried out last weekend:

- This chili recipe. The best thing I had made yet, plus there are plenty of leftovers.

- This homemade mayo recipe. This went straight in the trash. So gross.

- These sausage balls. I can't wait to finally have more than eggs and fruit for breakfast. These are SO good!

- These sweet potato fries. Not bad! I still prefer regular white potatoes, but these were better than nothing! I just found out we can have all potatoes, so I am pretty pumped about that! I also looked up the sugar grams in a regular sized serving of Mooyah's sweet potato fries...yikes! 25 grams of sugar in those babies! You might as well drink a Coke or have a shake!

Whole 30 Confessions

Hello friends!

After Thursday's post revealing that I am doing the Whole 30 challenge, I had no idea so many of you had done it, are doing it, or want to hear all about it. I can tell y'all are going to be what keeps me going because Chris and his Cokes and cookies are not helping the cause.

If you have been around here for awhile, you know that I keep things pretty honest and I'm not good at the whole "of course eating celery instead of cookies is great" thing.

So, let me be honest, last week sucked. I was hungry, grumpy, in a brain fog, and all around pretty much wanting to gorge on pizza and ice cream. I was irritated at having to cook so much, only to wind up with a meal that wasn't even 1/100 as good at the Little Caesar's pizza Chris was eating. It was not good.

After some requests, each week I will try to let you know my grocery list and the meals I plan on eating. I think this will help me stay organized and it will help you decide if this is for you or not!

I have found the hardest thing is snacks. When I get home for school, I want a snack. It used to be a bag of chips or bowl of ice cream. Last week it was an apple, banana, orange, or a bag of carrots. Noting equivalent to ice cream, or chips.

Before I started this, I thought my eating habits were pretty good. I felt like my protein shake with fruit and Greek yogurt was a good start to my day. The Belvida breakfast biscuits I had for snack were delicious and a better choice than other snacks I could have opted for. For lunch I usually had left overs from the night before, and my dinners were normally a meat and some veggies, or spaghetti and some veggies. On the weekends Chris and I would normally go out to eat, but then again, nothing I ate I ever felt was terrible or loaded with carbs and sugar. Oh how wrong I was.

During the Whole 30 challenge you can consume absolutely no sugar, added or natural (fruits don't count). None. That eliminates basically everything. Almond milk, yogurt, bread, spaghetti sauce, noodles, grains, cereal, granola, Belvidas, and pretty much everything else I was eating. Of course my beloved Cokes, pizza, and ice cream are out the door, which has not been easy.

Last week I could tell that my brain was lost. I made so many dumb mistakes that even I was dumbfounded as to how much my brain relies on sugar to get through  my day. I am usually pretty with it and I wouldn't be one to consider myself to have a lot of "blonde moments." By Wednesday I had: put face wash on my loofah, opened the deodorant and just stared at it not knowing what to do next, put leftovers in their containers and went to the trash to throw them away, got out an apple to cut, but stood there for two minutes thinking about what I needed to do with this apple, left the bathroom door at school unlocked and someone walked in, called my classroom phone looking for a parent, walked around looking for my keys and they were in my hand, walked around looking for my phone and it was also in my hand, and this is just to name a few.

Y'all, that is bad.

I went to bed before 8:30pm every night last week. As in I was dead asleep by 8:30pm. I also noticed that I did not toss and turn as much as I used to and never once did I feel sick from my acid reflux, something that is a huge blessing.

I am typing all of this out to say that here I sit on a gorgeous Sunday afternoon feeling really good. Do I want sweets, yes, 100%. Do I crave them? Yes, 100%. But, I feel better. My brain is functioning better, I feel more alert and less like I am about to pass out at any moment. I feel skinnier and less blah. I feel healthy.

Tomorrow I will be back with some recipes I made this weekend, the hits and the misses! I won't lie to ya...if I say is is bad, it is probably pretty nasty! I was a cooking fool this weekend and I feel much more prepared going into my second week of the challenge.

Happy Monday!

Linking up with Leann and Kimberlee!

Whole 30 Challenge

A couple weekends ago I met up with Caitlin to talk about The Lovely Lookbook (click here to go link up your fall colors since my linky wasn't working last Wednesday!). While we were talking she mentioned that her and her husband are trying out the Whole 30 program. She explained to me the premise of it and I thought it sounded doable.

I left Starbucks and called Chris and told him about my new plan to only eat whole foods for 30 days. He said, "Can I still have Blue Bell and spaghetti?" to which I replied ," Nope." He quickly came back with, "Yup, I'm out." Then he decided to say, "I'll bring you home some wooden pallets from work since that's just about how your food will taste during this challenge. Plus, they're organic since they are pure wood, so they fit all the challenge rules." Hardy-har-har, Mr. Tucker.

Jokes aside, I chewed on the idea of only eating whole food for 30 days. No sugar at all. No added sugar, no fake sugar, no sugar. No pasta, bread, beans, or ice cream. No yogurt, no almond milk. Basically, I can't have most of what I eat. I thought about the idea for a week and, after a night sitting on the bathroom floor because of acid reflux, I decided, I'm in.

This is my thought; I can do anything for 30 days. YOU can do anything for 30 days.

With Chris a no-go, I knew I needed to get mentally ready for Cokes to be opened in front of me and ice cream to be ate every night after dinner. So what did I do last weekend? Ate ice cream and drank Coke basically for three days straight. No wonder my stomach hurt so bad.

Just like my year of no shopping challenge, I knew some planning had to happen.

Last Saturday I read all there was to know about this challenge. I made notes and wanted to be really educated since screwing it up would completely defeat the purpose. I scoured Pinterest in search of edible whole food recipes, made my grocery list, and set out to Sprouts for the first time in years.

Why am I doing this, you ask?

Mainly because I am working my tail off in the gym every morning. I have come to love going to workout in the mornings, but I am definitely negating what I'm doing by chowing down on crap day in and day out.

Another main reason, my acid reflux. I have struggled with this since my freshman year in high school. I have been on every medication for it and nothing seems to work except getting my diet right. I am tried of waking up during the middle of the night with a sour stomach, and Chris is tired of waking up with me.

So, for roughly 30 days (at least 25, I started the challenge Monday) I will be eating nothing but whole foods. I say roughly 30 days because we go to West Point and NYC at the end of this month and I don't want to starve if nothing is available for me to eat. I am going to try my hardest to stick to it while in New York, but my main goal is to make it to October 30th.

I will be tracking my progress, not my weight. I am not doing this to lose weight and it is not a diet because the program says I can eat as much of any whole foods as I'd like. I will be tracking inches around my waist and I will just be keeping tabs on how I am feeling. I want this to be a lifestyle change, not a thing I do for 30 days then toss it to the wind.

And as for Chris Tucker, well he gets what I cook, so like it or not, he is doing a version of the program as well!

I can't wait to share recipes with y'all and let you know how it is going!

Have you ever done a whole 30 challenge?