My "Whole 30" is technically done, but I am really pleased with the results and I think I could benefit even more if I kept it up a little longer. I have a trip coming in the middle of June so I'm hoping I can keep it up at least two more weeks. I'm also loosening the rules a little bit -- enjoying a drink with friends, getting a good meal at a restaurant while on a date with my husband -- but at home, sticking to the rules.
So, what happened after 32 days? My body started feeling like mine again -- not bloated, feeling icky. I felt like I fit in my skin again. I also fit in my clothes better! I still have a muffin top, and my stomach isn't flat--that will require a lot more work, but my jeans fit again and I dropped 7 pounds. My skin still gets blemishes and my acne is still an ever present trouble, but its a tiny bit better too. I have more energy and overall have been sleeping better (just not this week).
If you are interested in knowing what other kinds of improvements they say you can experience on this reset, check out this PDF.
I told you before that I'd try to list out our favorite meals when we were finished. It's true, we did enjoy the foods we ate!
- Whole 30 Sweet Potato Mash & Curry Meat Balls by Whole Smiths
- Creamy Pesto Zoodles & Chicken by Whole Smiths
- Whole 30 Slow Cooker Beef Stew by Physical Kitchness
A few meals I attempted to make Whole 30 by substituting ingredients or leaving them out all together. Those were totally fine, just not awesome. A few meals we made were complete duds (chili and meat loaf). Our easiest meals were spaghetti squash with homemade beef ragu and salmon with roasted vegetables.
We did spent a lot more than usual this month -- we went through 6 or 7 eggs a day which means we bought nearly 4 dozen eggs a week. Eggs are not cheap these days! We had meat with every meal - ground pork and beef were more common but we had chicken and lamb too. We ate a lot of sweet potatoes, I would estimate we went through about 15 pounds.
The kids still ate their regular favorites so we couldn't stop buying bread all together. But we bought half as much! And we didn't buy any cereal (the boys were well stocked), and since we weren't eating cereal we didn't need to buy almond milk either. Chris didn't eat a PB & J sandwich for lunch every day so we didn't go through jelly or peanut butter like we used to and it was too difficult to find deli meat without all the preservatives so we skipped that too. It seemed like a lot of our go-to normal, every day foods were off limits so we just stopped buying them. (They were replaced by much more expensive foods so it's not like we saved money, but it did help to cut things out.)
I'm feeling really good -- proud of myself for doing something hard and happy with the results. I never really thought I could do it, but I did (minus a few slip ups like tasting things I had cooked for other people and using non-compliant condiments by mistake).
Thanks for following my challenge!
