The Whole 30 – Week 1

Week 1 of the Whole 30 is officially complete! This week, I saw a lot of really fast improvement, especially on the sleep quality and IT band pain, which was amazing! I also realized what a snacker I’ve become. The Whole 30 doesn’t forbid snacking, but they really recommend that you keep all of your eating to 3 meals a day, which was really tough for me, especially on days that I ran! Every day, right when I come home from work and after dinner, I want to grab something to munch on. Sometimes it was because I was legitimately hungry, sometimes it wasn’t. I didn’t record all of my snacking, because writing down “3 cashew halves” seemed a little over the top, but I did include my more substantial snacks (Larabars, apple w/ almond butter). But know that there was some dried fruit and occasional cashew or almond snackage happening.

Day 1

Breakfast : Broccoli Spinach Frittata (I roasted my broccoli first and added in Trader Joe’s garlic & herb chicken sausage) with blueberries, strawberries, and kiwi

Lunch : Chicken sausage and onion sauteed in ghee with roasted broccoli and an apple

Dinner : Green chile chuck roast in the crockpot with salsa, avocado, and red potato slices roasted with olive oil and Trader Joe’s 21 Seasoning Salute

Mood : Happy! Excited to see how this experiment plays out.

Cravings : I really missed my Mio. I’m sure I’ll get used to drinking plain water, but I didn’t drink as much as I normally do today, I’m sure because of the lack of flavor. I loved the menu today and didn’t feel deprived in the least, though I will admit that when I was reading a book earlier, I kept randomly seeing the word “marshmallow” appear in the text. That could just be my quirkiness, entirely unrelated to the Whole 30. It’s anybody’s guess. Also, Nutty Bars.

Sleep : Not great. According to my Fitbit, I was awake 22 times. Blech.

Day 2

Breakfast : Broccoli Spinach Frittata with blackberries

Lunch : Leftover chuck roast, roasted potatoes, salsa, and avocado. Lesson learned. I do not like leftover roasted red potatoes. One bite of them was more than enough.

Snack : Cashew Cookie Larabar (heaven in an orange wrapper) and an orange

Dinner : Chicken sausage in Trader Joe’s marinara sauce over spaghetti squash with sugar snap peas (thank you, Easter bunny!)

Mood : Thankful for Larabars!

Cravings : The Larabars are supposed to be used as an emergency backup, so I was really trying to avoid breaking into them, but a teacher that I work with had carrot cake today. An entire carrot cake, sitting on his desk. He was eating it straight out of the pan with a fork. The fluffy cake and swirly cream cheese icing…it was tempting. It also made me want Ihop pancakes with butter pecan syrup (no idea how that connection was made). But a Larabar was a much better choice than a slice of cake, so I’ll take it. And I savored every single bite of that blessed bar.

Sleep : Eh. Awake about once every hour. I was tired today, but that’s to be expected since I took myself off of my previous melatonin/caffeine habit.

IT Band : I ran this morning and at about a mile, I felt it start to ache. Not shooting pain, but by the end of my 2 miles, it wasn’t very happy with me. I foam rolled and stretched it. I hobbled just a little bit walking around at work, but I iced it when I got home and it felt fine by bedtime.

Day 3

Breakfast : Broccoli Spinach Frittata, This has been such a perfect breakfast this week. Tasty and filling!

Snack : I ended up eating a few bites of the strawberries, blueberries, & kiwi mid-morning, but I brought almost all of it home, because I just didn’t need it. Slowly figuring out how much I actually need to eat on this plan.

Lunch : Chicken sausage in Trader Joe’s marinara sauce over spaghetti squash with roasted broccoli

Dinner : Dinner date with a friend! Burger patty on a bed of lettuce, topped with avocado. It’s hard to be out in the “real” world. My kitchen is full of compliant foods. The restaurant was full of delicious looking, lovely smelling not-at-all-compliant foods.

Mood : Holy cow, so tired! A slight headache at a few different times today, but it was never full-blown. I just struggled to keep my eyes open all. day. At one point, I actually laid down on my office floor to rest my eyes for a few minutes and as soon as I got home, I squeezed in a cat nap before meeting my friend for dinner. Not normal behavior for me!

Cravings : Truffle fries, milk shakes, and wine – all offerings of the restaurant where I ate dinner. And Nutty Bars.

Sleep : I slept from 10pm to 1:24am without waking up once! Small victories!

Day 4

Breakfast : Broccoli Spinach Frittata

Lunch : Leftover spaghetti squash, chicken sausage in marinara, and roasted broccoli

Snack : Apple with almond butter

Dinner : Coconut shrimp, sauteed spinach (in the leftover coconut oil from the shrimp), sugar snap peas, and carrots. Loved the coconut shrimp, but next time I’ll add more seasoning.

Mood : Slightly irritable. On the Whole 30 Timeline, they label day 4 & 5 as “kill all the things.” I really wanted to just skip that emotion, because I happen to like all the things, but it got me just a little bit. I was irritated when Boots was pulling on our morning run and there were a few work moments where I needed to bite my tongue, which is usually pretty rare for me.

Cravings : Nutty Bars, Nutty Bars, and Nutty Bars. With a side of Nutty Bars. Are you sensing a pattern here?

Sleep : I only woke up twice last night! And I fell asleep within 15 minutes! It usually takes me closer to an hour, so that’s super happy.

IT Band : I ran 2 miles this morning and just like on Tuesday, I felt the ache kick in at about a mile. I decided to walk a little bit to see if it would help and it seemed to a bit. It was still present for the rest of the run, but it never got any worse, definitely not to the point it reached on Tuesday. And it wasn’t nearly as sore afterwards as it has been. No hobbling today!

Day 5

Breakfast : Broccoli Spinach Frittata. It looks terrible in pictures since I stuff it into Tupperware to take it to work, but it really is delicious! I’m thinking it may need to make a reappearance in week 3. Not week 2, because, well, I need variety.

Lunch : Leftover coconut shrimp, guacamole, sauteed spinach, spaghetti squash, and baby carrots

Dinner : Hamburger with homemade salsa and roasted red potatoes & onions.

Mood: So thankful for friends who, even on a busy night, make food specifically so that I can eat it on my crazy diet. And Laurie’s homemade salsa is my favorite.

Day 6

Breakfast : Medium boiled eggs, bacon (thank you, Whole Foods for selling sugar free bacon!), breakfast potatoes (red potatoes, onions, red pepper cooked in ghee), kiwi

Lunch : Leftover chuck roast, red potato slices, baby carrots, and sauteed baby spinach

Dinner : Turkey burger, avocado, sauteed brussel sprouts (shaved brussel sprouts and prosciutto sauteed in coconut oil, seasoned with balsamic vinegar), pomegranate seeds

Cravings : Chocolate raspberry souffle cake. A lady was eating it on Grey’s Anatomy, straight from the bakery box with a fork. Apparently I have a thing with eating cake whole with a fork. Who knew? And doughnuts. There’s a doughnut shop 2.7 miles away from my house, which would make a really good halfway point to fuel on a run, right? It’s all about balance.

Sleep : Only woke up twice last night!

IT Band : Pain-free! No pain before, during, or after the run. I ran 3.5 miles this morning, the farthest I’ve gone since the injury flared up almost 4 months ago! I have my eye on a 10-mile race through Garden of the Gods this summer and I am utterly thrilled that it may actually be a possibility! I wrote myself a training plan (with some expert advice from my wise BFF running guru) and I

Mood : Over-the-moon excited that I can start to up my running distance!

Day 7

Breakfast : Medium boiled eggs, bacon, breakfast potatoes, strawberries. I really looked forward to the bacon. Good thing I bought enough for weekend treats for the rest of the 30 days!

Lunch : Dried fruit. This was not my finest hour. I went grocery shopping after church and was starving by the time I got home, so instead of preparing the meal I had planned, I snacked on dried apricots, Turkish apricots, apple rings, jumbo crimson raisins, California pears, and a date nut coconut roll (heck to the yeah). It was delicious, but I basically had sugar for lunch. Oops.

Dinner : Coconut shrimp, sauteed garlic & herb zucchini, sauteed shredded sweet potato/apple/onion

Mood : Meh. My mood was a little low today for no apparent reason (even before the dried fruit extravaganza). I ended my weekend with a candlelit bubble bath. That helped.

Sleep : Again, I only woke up twice last night! And it’s the 3rd or 4th night in a row that it’s only taken about 15 minutes to fall asleep. I can’t believe it’s improved so much in a week! But I have to admit, I still just felt tired for a big chunk of the day. Not exhausted like day 3, but certainly not energized either.

Cravings : Nutty Bars and all the doughnuts (but mostly the maple kind).