Once upon a time this was a fashion blog, back when I actually got out of pajamas and didn't live in yoga pants and Nike Free Run sneakers. But for now, its my Whole30 experience.
So, I’ve had a lot of people asking me about this Whole30
business I’ve been doing. I will say
that it’s been challenging, but not impossible.
And if you know me I’ve spent my last few years living off Pizza
(delivery AND DiGiorno) Ice cream dates with Cambria, Easy Mac and lunch meat
sandwiches. My Cardio has involved
chasing Cambria and I haven’t lifted more than her current weight of
28lbs. I tried giving CrossFit another
shot after Cam was born, but had to take her with me, and well, it went exactly
how you’d imagine taking a 10-month-old to CrossFit would go…
After getting pregnant with Frankie George I just did the
typical mom thing and I gave up. “I have
two kids, I have no time to work out or eat healthy, I’ll never look good
again! I’m just going to embrace these hips and mom pooch, eventual FUPA and
just rock it in some high waisted jeans.
Thank sweet baby Jesus they’re in style these days!”
I’ve seen a few people sharing success stories on Facebook,
with Beachbody, AdvoCare, all that different stuff and I knew I had to do
SOMETHING. I’m not one to just accept
the cards I was dealt (hence my once IBT’s are now voluptuous DDD’s) so I knew I
needed to do something. I was saving
Lipo and a tummy tuck as my backup plan!
Kellie had asked me if I wanted to join this 30-Day workout
Challenge that her CrossFit trainer was starting. It would be 40 minute, at home workouts that
we’d do every day, for 30 days. So, I
decided to give it a try! I needed to start somewhere. Erica had previously told me about Whole30
and that she was going to try it and upon reading all the rules I said, “NO
WAY! that sounds impossible!” I legit thought she was crazy, but she’s also
gone Vegan before, so I knew she had better will power than I do.
I started my 30-Day Workout Challenge and decided to start
eating “clean” while I was doing it. I’ve
always thought of myself as a fairly healthy person, who “sort of” watched what
I ate. I wasn’t a huge fast food person,
I would check fat and calorie content on stuff most of the time, but this
journey took me down a new path of checking ingredients and looking for added
sugars and that opened a whole new world for me!
I was shocked and appalled at the foods that had added
sugars that weren’t even sweet foods!!! I’ve written a Facebook post about it
(
Here) so I’ll spare those details.
I was going on vacation and knew I’d “cheat” a little on
vacation, although I did stick to clean eating for most of my trip, but wanted
something to whip me back into my healthy habits after some binge drinking and
cheese eating, so I decided to give this Whole30 thing a try.
So, Whole30, what is it exactly? Proteins, fruits and
veggies, that’s basically it! No dairy of any kind, No legumes (not even peanuts,
they’re a legume, who knew!?) No sugar, real or artificial (not even honey,
cane sugar or agave nectar) No grains of any kind, No alcohol (kind of obvious
but think it needs to be stated). So that’s it, folks! There’s a section on the
website for more detailed allowances.
I started on March 1, the first day of Lent. Lucky for me I had
already detoxed most of my bad habits during my 6 weeks of clean eating leading
up to vacation. So, I didn’t have any
sugar withdraws or anything during my Whole30.
But I did wake up on day 5 (of clean eating) with the worst headache and
was shaking so badly I couldn’t even hold my phone to text. I had meal prepped some breakfast (Recipe
below) and had it in Tupperware in the refrigerator, so I could get some food
in me to get a handle on myself, because I’m not going to lie, I thought I was
dying! You will actually feel like death before you feel better, but you must
know that it’s detoxing years and years of sugar, alcohol, and carbs, and it
will definitely make you sick when you aren’t feeding your gut yeast those
things that it thrives on.
Speaking of gut yeast, I suggest a good Probiotic. I didn’t get one until Day 19 and I think it
helped with some stomach issues. Gas to be blunt, from about day 9 and on I was
so gassy, but couldn’t quite figure out what in my diet was causing it. I read in a forum (it’s apparently a common
side effect) that it could be your stomach releasing all your bad gut yeast
from your body and expelling it. I ended up getting “
Garden of Life RAWProbiotics for Women” from a health food store for about $36. Amazon sells them
also. After about 2 days of taking them, the gas has finally subsided. Sorry to
be gross, but that’s definitely something to be warned of!
Here are the
"rules" from their website. Definitely give it a read, I needed that little pep talk it gives
towards the end, about how you can do anything for 30 days, and that it’s not
hard. Yes, it’s true, beating Cancer is
hard, choosing the foods you are putting into your body and making smart
decisions about them is NOT hard.
Day 1: I had a breakfast scramble for breakfast (I’ve
literally had one every single day of Whole30 thus far, and every day since
January 16 and I’m STILL not sick of them, I thought for sure I’d get sick of
eggs but I haven’t, and I’m obsessed with them, I actually look forward to
breakfast because it’s usually the only thing I have meal prepped and ready to
go as of lately, and they’re super-fast and easy to make)
Marcy’s delicious Breakfast Scramble:
6-8 Eggs (depends where I grocery shopped that week if they’re
organic, free range all that jazz or just regular old $.89 eggs from Marc’s.)
1 medium zucchini
1 onion
½ green pepper
½ yellow pepper
½ red pepper
1 handful of fresh spinach
½ pound ground turkey or breakfast sausage (If I have it on
hand at the time, I’ve made it plenty of times with no meat at all, just make
sure the sausage has no sugar in the ingredients section)
1 tsp Ghee (Clarified butter) It’s allowed on Whole30, I
found it at Krieger’s and it tastes JUST like butter and is delicious! I don’t know
if I use a tsp. just enough to sauté your veggies, I do a lot of guessing and
not a lot of recipe following.
Sauté up all the veggies in the ghee then beat the eggs in a
bowl and once the veggies seem cooked to your liking (again, just a lot of
guessing going on here) add your eggs and I use a spatula (I bought a new one
like
THIS for making these) and once all the eggs are cooked, throw in the
spinach and just toss it around and mix it in until it’s wilted.
I then separate them into 4-6 Tupperware containers and in
the morning, I grab one and heat it up, then throw on a little Pico de Gallo
and half an avocado and enjoy! Which I have done, every day, for 65 days thus
far!
I had a small bowl of strawberries and blueberries for a
snack and I was basically starving ALL day! I’m not sure if it’s gotten better
as this diet has gone on or I’ve just gotten used to the pain, but I don’t feel
AS starving anymore. It says to limit
nuts, but that’s the only thing that’s gotten me through this diet. I snack on nuts A LOT. No peanuts of course
as they are not allowed on Whole30, but I bought some mixed nuts with Almonds,
Cashews, Macadamia nuts and I killed that sucker in 14 days! (It had 30
servings in the jar, I suppose an average of 2 servings of nuts per day isn’t
THAT bad, but it’s certainly not good) I also survived on Almond Butter (you should
make sure what you buy is JUST Almonds in the ingredients, and at $13.99 a jar
you’d think I’d have savored it a little longer, but I also killed that sucker
within about 2 weeks!) They say that Almond butter should only be consumed “occasionally”
and I hope by “occasionally” they mean 3 heaping spoonful’s after every meal
because that’s how much I ate and I still lost weight.
I don’t actually know how much weight I’ve lost because you’re
not allowed to weigh yourself on Whole30.
I weighed myself when I started and I’ll most likely post a follow up
post when it’s all finished. But since
starting this whole journey (I sound like a contestant on the F-ing Bachelor) I
have lost 2 pants sizes! I went from a size 8 to a size 4 in one stores jeans
and a size 29 to 27 in another stores jeans (Thank God for leggings, am I
right?)
Ok, I have serious ADD and I’m jumping all over the
place. This seems like a good time to
wrap up this initial Whole30 Post. Check back for follow ups, recipes and some
of my tips and tidbits for getting by if you are thinking about trying it, and
I’ll probably start posting a little more frequently about raising hellions, I
mean kids, fashion, life, cleaning, beauty, etc.
