Menu Plan: Week of May 4 - Whole30 Detox, Week 2

Whole30 Cleanse - Week 1

The cleanse is going quite well. The food is no problem, but that comes from lots of research, planning, and preparation.  We did a lot of prep work to have veggies ready to eat.  On the second day I had a bit of headache (as expected) but it was barely anything. They say the second-day headache is directly related to the amount of crap you ate before the cleanse, it's your body working through it. Luckily I'm a pretty healthy eater, I can't imagine what it must feel like for those people who drink several diet Cokes per day and eat fast food regularly. 

Breakfast egg bake - potatoes, peppers, onion, and black olives.
And half an avocado for healthy fat.

Breakfast also looks like this.
Scrambled eggs with mushrooms, spinach, peppers,
sweet potato, and avocado.

More egg bake - chorizo, spinach, tomato, green chile, and black olives.
Mashed avocado on top.

I'm supposed to be aiming for three meals per day to ensure you're eating enough protein and fat and also to make sure you're not having snacks (which tend to be sugary and uncontrolled), but I'm still hungry between meals.  It's getting a little better because I think my body is adjusting.  The hardest thing about being home all the time with nothing to do is that there aren't a whole lot of real distractions to keep you busy. I have lists of random chores that I work through each day, but none of them are actually important or busy enough to ensure I don't get distracted. The best is when I'm out of the house running errands.  

Taco salad for lunch.

Lunch of homemade breakfast sausage and leftover roasted veggies.

I've come to realize how much I usually taste things that I can't have right now - licking my sticky fingers after making a PB sandwich for Sonny D, testing the temperature of his ultra-creamy coffee, checking to see if toast is too crunchy to feed to him (ended up toasting a second time to warm up a leftover piece and it was too toasted/dark).  Just so many habits to break. Like snagging one of his gummy vitamins because they're good. 

Dinner of zucchini noodles with pesto and baked fish.

My attempt at french fries didn't work, too crowded on the baking sheet.
We still ate them!

Homemade BBQ sauce to go with shredded pork.  Turned out great!

Chicken with roasted veggies and sweet potato with cilantro pesto.

Husband Jeff found that his vitamins had soy in them so lucky he was able to switch to a different bottle we already had.

My favorite snack is pork rinds dipped in homemade mayo. Crunchy, creamy, tasty!  Pork rinds are awesome, they don't have any carbs and are less calories than potato chips. And homemade mayo is great!  I used extra-virgin olive oil that has a strong olive taste which is a little overpowering.  I'm glad I got light olive oil for my next batch so it's a little more milk.  I'm the only one who eats the mayo, but that's not a problem, I put it on a lot of things. 

Post-workout snack, pork rinds with mayo!

We've inspired some of our friends to look into what they're eating.  One gal is reading ingredient lists for added sugar and another friend is modifying what he eats to be more focused on protein and veggies without grains or sugar.  

I've found that I'm the only one in the family who eats celery or cucumber.  So sad.  And it's hard to really eat much of either of them if you're not dipping them in yummy hummus (not on the cleanse because it's made from legumes).

I thought I ate pretty healthy but apparently I still have a sugar habit.  I realize that throughout the day I want to occasionally have a little taste of something sweet. I keep trying to tell myself it's because I can't have anything sugary that I want it so much, but I don't feel that way for bread so it must be an addiction.  I definitely know that I was using sugar for a quick burst of energy, before my exercise classes I would have something small and sugary like 3-4 jelly beans. And we've definitely been substituting fruit for sugar, we've eaten four container of strawberries in just one week and two each of blackberries and raspberries.  We put almond butter or sunflower butter on them as a dessert.  I'm going to try to reduce the amount of fruit this week.   

I'm not having coffee during our cleanse since I found that coffee without both cream AND sugar is disgusting.  That's ok though because I don't need it for the caffeine since I drink decaf anyway.  

I thought breakfast would be hard, but we've made a couple big egg casseroles with potatoes and veggies and meat and it's fine.  I don't actually miss my oatmeal and I thought I would have a huge problem with that.  

We've gone through a lot of eggs on this detox, we bought three dozen eggs last Sunday and we needed more eggs before the end of the week.  Eight eggs went in our first egg bake (enough for 4 days) and I also made a dozen hardboiled eggs for supplementing lunches and quick workout protein.   The rest of the eggs went into individual breakfasts after the egg bake was gone and for Sonny D's breakfasts.  This Sunday I bought four dozen eggs and we immediately used a whole dozen to make this week's egg bake.  

We're eating a lot more food, I went grocery shopping several times to supplement what we already had.  But in other ways we're not eating much, like some of the veggies are sticking around a while. 

Zipper dog hanging out resting on my slippered feet at dinner.

Non-Whole30 Stuff

Sonny D loves swimming lessons.  Jeff took him to the pool for open swim on Friday and he had a great time jumping in and diving for the weights.  It's so great to see him work with his swim instructor and be so happy after each activity.  

We found some time on Saturday to start working on my coffee station.  Jeff cut out the boards and I drilled out all of the holes to connect everything.  Only need to glue it together and then screw it together and then paint it! 

Husband Jeff cutting out wood for my coffee station.

I'm using the Kreg jig to make holes for my coffee station.

And I have to declare that Craigslist is great.  I listed a Crate & Barrel rug on Friday and sold it a day later for $200.  And then later that same day we drove out to someone's house and bought a tagalong bike for Sonny D.  It connects to the adult bike and rides along behind like a tandem bike.  The kid can pedal if they want or just hang on and look around.  They went out for their first ride to try it out and I thought they would go around the block and come right back but they were gone for over an hour.  Money well spent!

Husband Jeff and Sonny D heading out on tagalong bike.

Menu Plan

It's Cinco de Mayo on Tuesday so I've got a theme of Mexican food this week.

I'm having a hard time planning veggies for our meals.  We seem to eat a lot of some things and nothing of others.  It's pretty easy to make something with whatever we've got around, either fresh or in the freezer or pantry. I also feel like we're stuck on the same veggies -- green beans, cauliflower, and broccoli.  I need to consult my Whole30 shopping list for some ideas of other things to try. 

• Monday - Mexican shrimp salads with roasted carrots
• Tuesday - No dinner because Sonny D goes to grandma & grandpa's and we've got Zumba class.  I'll have a couple hardboiled eggs and a handful of nuts before class.  After class I have some more protein and a sweet potato. 
• Wednesday - Continuing the Mexican theme with chile con carne.  It's going to be sad since we can't have beans in our chili and that's our favorite part.  But I'm going to upgrade us from regular ground beef to large meaty bites of beef chuck, hopefully that will satisfy us.
• Thursday - Having leftover chili for dinner before I head out to a board meeting for our Korean adoption group.  I love having leftovers around for minimal effort.   
• Friday - a quick meal of hot dogs before we head to family fun night at the local rec center.
• Saturday - I want to hit the plant sale at the local community garden.  I don't know what they'll have, but my garden planning is banking on them having what I need to finish my garden.  I don't have a dinner planned, but I've got a recipe for a Mexican chicken taco soup that uses pumpkin puree and I might make that.  Or if the weather is really nice we'll plan to get something from the meat market and grill out.
• Sunday -  Heading to the northside farmers' market like usual.  I'm glad it's already going but sad because there isn't much available yet and what is there isn't appealing.  I usually like rhubarb to make a rhubarb cake but we can't have that.  I also make a rhubarb puree for my oatmeal, but not eating that either.  And rhubarb isn't going to be any good without any sugar added.  And I like asparagus, but Husband Jeff doesn't like it much so I can't count on that for a veggie for dinner. 
  It's Mother's Day and we're having a meal with my in-laws.  I said I would come up with a couple things to make, but I haven't done that yet, gotta look at my bookmarks and Pinterest board for inspiration!