Before starting the Whole30 I had serious concerns about my ability to make it 30 full days without any dark chocolate. I wasn’t sure if it was the chocolate itself, the sugar or the caffeine. I quickly realized it was the sugar. I had been eating a mostly Paleo diet for several months but didn’t realize how much sugar was still creeping in. While I had stopped eating white sugar and HFCS years ago I would have honey with my breakfast just about every day and cane sugar also snuck in daily in my dark chocolate and occasionally in ginger ale.
The first day without any sugar was intense. I didn’t know how I would possibly make it through the challenge. I read in the support group that the best way to short circuit the sugar craving cycle is to have healthy fat so that your body gets the message that you are well nourished. I had a banana mashed with lots of coconut oil and cinnamon when I felt like I couldn’t stop the craving. Amazingly, as intense as the feeling was it quickly disappeared by the second day. What a relief!
Observations
- I generally don’t get hungry between meals anymore (I used to snack a lot more often) and I’m rarely hungry in the middle of the day. Most days I eat breakfast and then don’t eat again until 3 or 4 pm.
- My teeth feel really clean, even when I haven’t brushed them in a while. (I can even feel the difference in the texture of my teeth vs. my fillings, which I never noticed before.)
- Hunger and satiety feel different; generally more subtle than before. (New for Peter: not feeling stuffed after eating. It’s the carbs that make you feel that way, and I had given most of them up months ago.)
- There have been times when I’ve finished dinner and still been hungry. My body seems to want most of the food either early in the morning or late in the evening. I had to remind myself early in the week that what’s important is what I’m eating not how much I’m eating.
Meals
Day 1:
- Breakfast: Fried eggs with parsley, tomatoes and avocados and a grapefruit.
- Lunch: Hamburger with dijon. Carrots sautéed with ghee and ginger. Handful of frozen raspberries.
- Dinner: Aromatic meatballs (minus the cream), carrots with ghee and ginger and kale braised with onions, garlic and bone broth.
Day 2:
- Breakfast: Pear and two hard boiled eggs, coffee.
- Lunch: Avocado.
- Dinner: Shrimp and steamed brussels sprouts.
Day 3:
- Breakfast: Eggs, sweet potatoes and homemade chorizo.
- Lunch: Leftover chorizo and sweet potatoes with tomatoes and a pear.
- Dinner: Slow cooker beef stew, based on Robb Wolf’s Paleo Beef Stew.
Day 4:
- Breakfast: Two eggs with mushrooms, tomatoes and parsley and half of a grapefruit.
- Lunch: leftovers from last night.
- Dinner: Chicken liver with mushrooms, sauerkraut, and fermented carrots. Apples fried in ghee and cinnamon (not pictured).
Day 5:
- Breakfast: Eggs with caramelized onions, tomatoes, parsley and thyme and fried sweet potatoes, half of a grapefruit.
- Lunch: Hamburger with chopped rehydrated sun-dried tomatoes, covered with tomato paste.
- Dinner: Roasted chicken and steamed carrots with olive oil.
Day 6:
- Breakfast: Omelete with shrimp and avocado (still cooking).
- Lunch: Leftover chicken salad (chicken, homemade mayo, celery, parsley, ginger, cayenne).
- Dinner: Flounder with ghee, artichoke and homemade spicy mustard-mayo for dipping.
Day 7:
- Breakfast: two soft boiled eggs
- Dinner: Turkey leg/thigh roasted with thyme over carrots, celery and onions. Cooked cranberries with an apple.
Peter’s lunches
- Hamburger, sweet potatoes, tomatoes, fermented carrots and garlic, chicken bone broth, and an orange.
- Hamburger with mushrooms, half of a roasted acorn squash, blueberries and coconut flakes.
- Hamburger with carmelized onions, tomato paste and sauerkraut, sweet potatoes fried in lard, apple, coconut flakes and walnuts.
Snacks and treats
- Leftovers
- Chicken bone broth
- Soft and hard boiled eggs
- Avocados
- Grapefruits
- Coconut flakes
- Roasted acorn squash
- Apples
- Small amount of walnuts and dried fruit (Peter only)
- Coffee or espresso
- I tried almond butter (on celery) for the first time.
Baby’s reactions
One of the main reasons I decided to participate in the Whole30 was to try to address the baby’s food sensitivities. Here’s what I’ve observed this week:
- After a couple days of no sugar in my diet, his frequency of urination decreased significantly to as long as 3 or 4 hours during the day and 6 hours at night. EC is so much easier now!
- Of course the baby picked this week to really start eating (previously he would munch on food but let most of it fall out of his mouth). He ate half of a slice of pear – chewed, swallowed and everything. Then he had diarrhea all evening into the next morning.
- We tried not giving him any solids but after a couple days he started grabbing my plate and the food on it and crying until we let him have some food. So I hoped the pear was too much sugar, and decided he would only get meat/veggies.
- He had munched on carrots with no problem before so we gave him some (very soft) carrots the last night of the first week. He ate a significant amount. This morning (the first day of week 2) he had diarrhea again with what could have been pieces of carrot in it. He had diarrhea during the day with blood in it.
- I’m not sure if the reaction was the carrots he ate or the almond butter I had last night since it was a new food. He also ate part of a piece of paper he found on the floor. I think the almond butter was the culprit though since he’s had problems with other nuts. Too bad because it was darn tasty.
Congrats on making it through the first week. It’s interesting to read what your meal are.
Your meals look delicious. Will you add other foods back in after the 30 days?
The idea is that you are “reseting” your body during the 30 days and then you can experiment with adding foods back and see how they make you feel. Given how extreme the baby’s food intolerances have been I might try to continue for longer. I would like to add honey back in smaller amounts I think. Good question!