By the end of Day 8 (Friday) my husband had all but thrown in the towel. For a man who doesn’t fancy many vegetables to begin with, the amount of veggies we were eating and the number of times a day we were doing so made it next to impossible for him to do. He was STILL gagging them down and was down-right miserable by dinner. He had hinted to the fact that he may want to stop his Whole30 journey. Ultimately, it is his decision and although I think he would have benefitted from completing it, I don’t know his body the way he does and if it was time for him to stop, then I support his decision. For him.
For me, I want to keep going. I NEED to keep going. I have learned a lot already – not just about food, but about myself. I have lots of reflections from this past week to write and share about – but not much time – so check back soon for those. For now, I just want to catch you up on where we are, how I did on Day 8 & 9 and show you what the menu for each day was.
As I alluded to above, my husband decided to end his Whole30 on Friday night. For me, his decision required even tougher resolve on my own part to keep going. It would have been easy to just throw in my towel too. It would have been nice to break my Whole30 and join he and my daughter out to lunch on Saturday. It would have been all-too-simple to say that doing the Whole30 on my own and cooking different things or watching them enjoy foods I wasn’t having during my Whole30 would be too hard. But I chose to be strong. As you know, this journey is about more than the food and the physical fitness I hope to achieve, it is also about my spiritual “fitness” as well. The practice of self-discipline, of training, of finishing what I start, of equipping myself to do what God puts before me, of denying myself, all of these things and more help to encourage and produce spiritual strength and growth. From the get-go this journey has been based on 1 Corinthians 6:19-20 – My body has been purchased and with it I am to honor the One who purchased it (with what I put into it, with how I take care of it, and what I produce with it) – so I will be strong, and I will carry on and see my Whole30 through.
Day 8 was not too rough. In fact, there aren’t many things I can recall that are noteworthy – so I will share the menu and move to Day 9.
Day 8 Menu:
Breakfast: Turkey sausage crumble, steamed spinach, half an avocado
Lunch: Left-over hamburger with freshly sauteed onions & mushrooms, avocado and left-over sweet potato fries.
Dinner: Pecan Crusted chicken, Browned Brussel sprouts with shallots and brown butter, and steamed carrots. I also had a half banana with almond butter.
I DID take a photo of dinner because I thought it was pretty and I will share my process for cooking the browned Brussel sprouts in a future post, so keep an eye out for that.
Day 9 was tougher. The toughest so far, in fact. I don’t know if the fact that my husband stopped his Whole30 played into it or not, but it was a rough day.
For one, I was tired. I wanted to sleep in. I wanted to just roll out of bed throw a breakfast bar and berries on a plate for my daughter and grab a muffin for myself, but I didn’t. Instead I rushed out of bed (because I slept a little later than I should have) got ready and then prepared breakfast. Then it was time to take my daughter to gymnastics. Typically we all go and while my husband is in class with her, I run errands with the baby and we all go out to lunch afterwards. I thought about packing a salad and just tagging along, but there were other meals that needed preparing so that I wouldn’t be in the kitchen 90% of the weekend, and I am just not comfortable bringing my own food into a restaurant. (You CAN eat out on the Whole30 – it requires a lot of “annoying” the waiter/ress and cook/chef with questions like, how is that cooked, with what, etc. and to not only do that but also keep two kids happy and quietly sitting down for the extra time it takes to get all those questions answered is just a little unrealistic for now… for me. If you can do it, more power to you!)
Anyway, so I was tired of cooking. I was feeling a little left-out. And then when I least expected it, I started having some cravings. The first one happened on my way out the door to go pick up a few things at Wal-Mart. I knew before even walking out the front door that I would be fighting a craving for candy… in particular, chocolate. So I made the decision before I left to bring water and be strong. I succeeded, but it was one of very few times so far that I felt like I was going “without”.
Then later in the evening we went to Sam’s, my daughter asked to try some dark chocolate covered blue & Acai berries, I let her indulge (remember, she isn’t doing a strict “Whole30 – we’re just “cleaning” up her foods) – she liked them. A lot. And she was covered in chocolate. I REALLY wanted to try one to see how they were. Then the Icee. I LOVE myself an Icee. If it wasn’t such a pain to get both kids from the car and run into a Circle K I would buy WAY more Icee’s than I do…or did. Let’s just say if they sold Icee’s at a drive-through I would have had, on average, an Icee a day. Costco doesn’t have Icee’s… but we are new to Sam’s… and they do. And I wanted one. But again, I resisted and instead sipped my bottle of water.
Of course, the best laid plans didn’t go as planned, and we were out of time to cook dinner AND have the kids to bed on time. So I made an executive decision since my husband was off the Whole30 to grab him and my daughter some take-out from a BBQ restaurant and I would eat left-overs again for my own dinner. That was a wake-up call in it’s own way. Life is going to happen just like it did last night. We are going to run out of time for a well-cooked meal some days. Which taught me that A) I should have some quick go-to items that are ready to eat for nights like that and B) I maybe need to make better decisions about time management (I had a feeling it would happen because we didn’t give ourselves enough time to do all we wanted AND get home to cook, but I took the risk anyway). So… lessons learned.
The last challenge for Day 9 was our “movie night”. We rented a movie last night, which normally would be my excuse for stocking up on “movie theater” candy and soda and making a night of it while we watched the movie. Heck. Movies are usually just another medium through which I can come up with a good reason to have candy/junk food I don’t need. So it was a little weird to not do that during the movie last night. But I didn’t miss it as much as I thought I would.
That about wraps up the hurdles for Day 9. Most of them were psychological… and in reality I think those are my hardest hurdles to clear. The physical hurdles have been far less difficult to handle and quite honestly, fairly absent to begin with.
Here is my Day 9 menu:
Breakfast: Scrambled eggs, spinach and mushrooms with turkey sausage crumble
Lunch: Left-over pecan crusted chicken, brussel sprouts & shallots, sweet potato fries and half an avocado
Dinner: Left-over pecan crusted chicken, sauteed spinach, tomatoes and mushrooms. I had a banana with almond butter after the kids went to bed (about 45 minutes after I finished my dinner). Typically I try not to eat anything outside of my 3 meals each day, but today just didn’t work out that way and so I did what I had to do. It didn’t re-ignite any desire for snacking or dessert later in the evening, so I think I am safe.
Sorry this blog was so long, but now we are caught up again. On to Day 10!
No comments:
Post a Comment