Day 18: Friday again!!

Well, I have survived to another Friday. Yay? I had an appointment early in the day, but not as early as work. So I got to sleep in a little AND eat breakfast at home. So I had breakfast salad. 

Breakfast : 2 eggs, a hot dog, mixed baby greens

Lunch : left overs

Dinner : steak salad from a restaurant! No cheese and my own dressing

Day 17: no more nuts!

Well, at least no more nuts for 14 days. My stomach feels better today, but that might just be because I was a little sick yesterday. Tomorrow will tell more. I bought some single packaged meat sticks to eat instead of nuts. Hope it helps! 

One of my minor complaints that I was hoping might go away has gotten a little worse. Not terrible, just notable. 🤷‍♂️ maybe one day I'll get things figured out. Til then I'll see what staying off of nuts does. 

Breakfast : 2 fried eggs, half a sweet potato, 1 meat stick 

Lunch : left over chicken and Butternut squash

Dinner : fajita without tortilla, roasted potato and sweet potato, broccoli

Snacks : cherries, apple, dried mango, meat stick 

Day 16: Downhill slope?

Well, I have made it past the halfway mark. No real differences noticed yet, but I am trying to be OK with that. I have found some easier ways to cook things, like crock pot sweet potatoes. It's great to just drop them in and come back later.

Today I roasted some butternut squash noodles under some chicken thighs and it was really tasty. And pretty! I failed to take a picture after it was baked because I was too hungry by then. But trust me that I ate the chicken cooked. 

I'm debating taking out nuts because my stomach isn't very happy sometimes when I eat them. But they're so easy! And when so many other things are of limits, it's hard to find something with fat and protein to throw in a bag. Sigh. We'll see. Maybe after I reintroduce things. But now that I type it, that seems too far off and potentially confounding. Damn it. I'll think about it tomorrow while I eat more magic bars :) 

Day 15: lots of food pictures

Hey, I took pictures of all three meals today! That wasn't even on purpose exactly. Breakfast was as I made it, in the hopes that it would be tasty. Lunch because it looked funny to me. And dinner since that's what I've been better at photographing. 

Sweet potato egg bake, in steps. I was quite pleased with my idea to use the silicone loaf pan. 

Salad with chicken sausage

Chakchouka (also spelled shakshuka) 

Days 13 & 14: Visitors and restaurants

This weekend the nephews stayed through Sunday and their mom (my sister) got to hang out, too! It was slightly easier to not eat their food while in MY house with few options for them and a lot of options for me. Mr. More Calories's parents also came into town, so they got to meet more of my family, too.

I gotta say, the paleo porridge is just not my favorite thing to the point that I'm going to quit trying to improve it and not post a recipe. With a bunch of fruit thrown in it's ok, but even then it's just ok.

One helpful thing was that Mr. More Calories had noted my increasing stress this week with trying to DO ALL THE THINGS and picked out a few restaurants where I could eat and we could feed the boys. So I had a bison patty on top of a dressing-free baby kale salad at a burger place we love while they all enjoyed burgers and fries. I did miss the blue cheese and hot sauce that I normally eat on that burger, but the salad was better than I expected. Then for dinner we went to a paleo restaurant and the boys enjoyed their rice flour chicken tenders and cassava flour pancakes while my sister and I shared whole30 compliant tacos and thai green curry.

Tonight we're headed to a bit of a splurge restaurant (thanks, parents!) where they have a few things that look compliant and his parents have already been in touch with the restaurant to confirm that they will have things to make for me. Yay!

Other than that, I have out dinners planned out for the week and will mostly have leftovers for lunch. That really is the easiest thing. I'm getting pretty good with sweet potatoes, egg, nuts, and fruit for breakfast, too. I might roast up some sweet potato and apple to have it in a different format this week. Variety is good.

I still don't really feel much difference. I know it usually takes a minimum of two weeks to see real differences, and 3 to 4 weeks isn't uncommon. I just hate being patient. I admit that it's oddly kind of empowering saying no to all the things I want to eat, but I also find myself wanting to eat everything I see, like butterfinger baking bits and hatch pepper lime sandwich cookies. Mmmm, I'm sure they're delicious together!

Saturday

Breakfast: Paleo Porridge with pecans and peaches

Lunch: Bison meat and baby kale and arugula salad

Dinner: thai green curry, brussels sprouts, chicken taco
Snacks: magic bar, peach, probably something else?

Sunday

Breakfast: Paleo Porridge with pecans and peaches

Lunch: Leftovers - thai green curry and kale sausage soup

Dinner: Something delicious, we'll see
Snacks: magic bar, cherries

Day 12: I can haz cupcake?

Watching the nephews again, and having the same issues as last weekend. But now I want one of the cupcakes sitting on my counter. A lot. Sigh.....

Breakfast : eggs, grapes
Lunch : hot dog, leftover soup
Dinner: ceviche, sweet potato, broccoli Thai curry

Magic Bars!

I made bars again, and the texture was better! I also tried a store-bought RX Bar, and I wasn't that impressed. They really are super sticky in a weird way. And kind of hard. Dates are soft, how did they do that? 

I didn't check the nutrition info on this because it's Whole30! No counting calories! But it's got 48 grams of protein in the full recipe from the egg white alone, and then there's the nuts, too. Guess I need to figure out how to up the egg whites to match RXBar's statement of 3 egg whites per bar. But maybe that's why theirs are so hard. The final recipe for me was the weight of 9 RX Bars, so it should last a while. 

Magic Bars

2/3 c almonds
2/3 c cashews
1 c packed deglet noor dates (24)
3/4 c egg white powder

3 Tbs of water, separated

1/4 c freeze dried raspberries

• Place almonds into the bowl of a food processor. Blend a bit until roughly chopped. Remove half of the almonds and place in a bowl for extra texture. 
• Add cashews to the half almonds in the processor bowl. Blend until most bits are fairly small, bigger than sand, but smaller than gravel. Pour smaller nuts into the same bowl.
• Ass dried raspberries to chopped nuts.
• Put the dates in the processor bowl and process until the size of peas. Add egg white powder. Pulse a few times. Slowly drizzle in 2 Tbs of water (I use the hole in the top of my processor) until it starts to clump together. 
• Add the date and egg white mixture to the nut bowl and mix. I found that kind of chopping at it with a hard spatula helped mix in the nuts. I ended up mixing with my hand inside a plastic baggie to get it all mixed it. Add 1 Tbs of water if it isn't hanging together (mine wasn't until I added that last bit.)

Bigger chunks of almonds for texture

Smaller bits of nuts to blend in better

Dates and egg white powder when blended and ready to add to nuts

Magic Bars, wrapped and waiting for me to eat tomorrow

Day 11: Friday! Woo!

Friday! Woo! Where's my drink? Oh, right, it's just gonna be water. Or sparkling water. Or tea. 

I did end up having Chipotle for lunch. Thank goodness for fast Whole30 compliant options near campus. And yes, I sprang for the guacamole.

That's all you get because I'm going to post the bar recipe now, too.

Breakfast: Sweet potato, pecans, blueberries

Lunch: Chipotle salad with carnitas

Dinner: Kale, potato, turnip and sausage soup

Snacks: Chomp beef stick, apple, plum, magic bar

Day 10: fundraiser happy hour - maybe not the best idea

I think I'll probably eat salad more often after this. I have a better idea of how much I need to feel full, and it's a whole lot! No wonder I was always hungry after those tiny things from most grab and go kind of places. 

After work I went to a fundraiser happy hour near my house. Great idea, right? Hang out, free bowling, free food, support a good cause. Just skip the delicious alcoholic beverages, and all is well. Right? Well, turned out that they also had free food. Brisket loaded fries and hummus and pita and caprese skewers and focaccia. Tasty, tasty free food. Oh, and sliced fruit, I did have some of that. I know myself well enough that I brought nuts and dried figs to snack on, but you know what? I don't really like snacking on nuts that much, and after 10 days I am kind of tired of them. They are easy and all that, but they just...... I don't know. I don't want them very much, even though I've always had them with something else. Maybe it's the association that I'm eating them when I don't know what else to eat? Whatever it is doesn't matter too much, because it's not going to change the fact that I would rather have something else. But there isn't really a quick, simple something else that will have some fat to help keep me full. sigh. 

Long story short - I stayed too long for the amount of food I had and had a minor meltdown once i got home because I couldn't figure out what to eat. Luckily I had talked to Mr. More Calories before leaving, and he could tell I was not thinking it through right and he had a pan hot to make me food by the time I walked in.

Tomorrow I think I'm gonna have Chipotle for lunch.

Salad lunch!

Breakfast: sweet potato with pecans and blueberries

Lunch: Salad with tuna, pepitas and homemade mustard vinaigrette

Dinner: scrambled eggs, potato, and applegate organic hot dogs (I swear a hot dog has never tasted better in my whole life)

Day 9: This would be really hard for some people

A friend came over for dinner last and we were talking about how much prep goes into food for whole30. I have a good assortment of pots and pans and tools and even bought a spiralizer, which has been great.

But there are so many people who have never even learned how to read a nutrition label (maybe they don't even try whole30?) or don't normally cook. *I* get a little grumpy by dinner time because of the prep, and I've been cooking as long as I could remember. I used to pull out the kitchen drawers to make stairs to stir whatever pot was on the stove. (And I'm just now realizing how rough it is that I felt obligated to do that at 5 or less.) But if you're a slightly slower cook, or not as into it, there would likely be a lot more salads.

It's also more expensive for me than what I normally eat. A $1.25 box of whole grain pasta has 8 servings. Last night's daikon for 'ramen' served 3 for $ 2. I am in a position to do that and it's worth it to me to see if this helps. But I'm well aware that not everyone can say the same.

So I'm sending good thoughts to anyone out there tired of spending so much time on food prep and wish everyone great luck!

Breakfast : paleo porridge, pecans and blueberries
Lunch : salad with leftover pork
Dinner : sausage, potatoes, sauerkraut, broccoli