Day 5 (Starting to feel testy/“Get out of my kitchen!”)

Day 5 started out good. I didn’t feel any different than usual except that waking up came more “naturally”. Breakfast and lunch went smoothly and I even prepped dinner and some breakfast veggies for Day 6 while the kids were napping.

But for reasons I am still unsure of my 4-month old didn’t sleep too well and was fussier than normal yesterday. I have a feeling that this could be due to not enough calories in my breast milk – I will have to start snacking in between meals on protein or good fats to help keep my breast milk rich until my body learns to properly adjust to the type of calories/energy it is getting.

But with that I entered the early evening and dinner-making stage of the day with one kid off schedule and fussy and another who seemed to be a little needier than usual (trying to keep in mind that my “needier” child is the toddler who is adjusting to our new healthier way of eating I tried to be as gracious and understanding as I could – because even at such a young age – we are walking her through her own “withdrawal” process from all the sugar-rich and processed foods that she once was so used to).

In any case, what started as a good Day 5 quickly went down hill as I end up running out of energy at around that time anyway and it seems that yesterday my energy was even quicker to disappear. By the time my husband came home it was a miracle that dinner was even being put together as the baby was crying and the other one wanted to be held. I kind of snapped at everyone to “get out of my kitchen” at which point toddler child went into a full-blown, down to the floor, melt down and my baby required a change of scenery (which I put my husband in charge of).

By the time dinner was on the table, I wanted to do anything BUT eat (hello, stress, is that you?) I can see how we can let stress influence our eating decisions – had I not been on the Whole30 yesterday, I would have decided that we should just grab a pizza and call it a day – and I likely would have skipped eating at dinner and eaten later after the kids were in bed.

By the time the kids WERE finally in bed I was spent. It was all I could do to stay up to a more appropriate “bed-time” at which point I showered and crawled into bed not to see light again until 5am this morning. (On the plus-side – I didn’t automatically wake up between 2:00 and 3:00 a.m.  like I have been doing and I only woke up at 5 because the baby started fussing (but thankfully went back to sleep)).

Anyway, here is what Day 5 Menu looked like:

Breakfast: Scrambled eggs, spinach, pecans (this was all separate because my husband requested having things cooked separately so he could eat all the veggies first (and get them out of the way) and also so we could more accurately figure out how much of each we were getting).

Lunch: Spinach & Cabbage salad with 3 left-over turkey meatballs, kalamata olives, tomatoes and a whole avocado. I also had half a Banana & Almond Butter “Sandwich”

Dinner: Slow-Cooker Roast with onion, mushrooms and cooked with organic beef broth. On low for 8 hours. Served with Mashed Cauliflower. I added some almond flour to the broth left in the slow cooker to make some gravy – yum!  (I used to make a Slow Cooker Roast that called for 2 cans each of Campbell’s Cream of Mushroom & French Onion soup – this healthier, Whole30 version of the roast tasted 99% the same! This is one of my husband’s favorite family dishes so he was very happy that it tasted so similar and was really yummy, although admittedly he wished the cauliflower was mashed potatoes or biscuits still. Baby steps.) 

And so we made it through Day 5. In ways, things are getting easier. In ways, I can see that we still have some major hurdles to get over. See you tomorrow for Day 6!