Ready, Set, Whole30!!

To say there has been a lot going on in Livi-Land is an understatement.  2014 has not been the greatest year for our little family, but I am determined to end it on a positive note, with our chins up looking forward to 2015! With stress always comes unhealthy eating patterns, at least for me.  The last several months have been filled with days of clean eating and running (okay, okay,  sloth jogging) and days of pizza, Torchy's, and Oreos.  Thankfully I've managed to not gain any weight, but I haven't lost any either, and to be honest, I feel awful.  But tomorrow is a new day, and for me (and Nick) that means we are starting our Whole30 challenge.

You can visit the Whole30 web page to learn more (or read It Starts with Food), which I highly recommend.  I have had a few friends jump on the Paleo bandwagon and I have researched it extensively.  It just seems to make sense and I am committing the next 30 days to see how this works out for me. Before you get as confused as a I did, the Whole30 challenge is slightly different from Paleo as it does not allow you to create "trigger" foods with compliant ingredients.  (So basically I can't make pancakes out of eggs and bananas or yummy muffins out of almond flour and coconut oil!)  The Whole30 challenge is about more than resetting your body, it is also about resetting your mind and disconnecting some of the psychological associations that exist between our brains and food.  Damn the dopamine!! I'm pretty excited and anxious as well.  Good news is I have enlisted Nick and a friend to do it along with me! Woohoo...we can all be cranky pants together! We have already made our trip to the grocery store for the week.  Check out this stocked fridge (yes, that is 5 dozen eggs!)

I have posted the weekly menu on the fridge with several recipes I got from Pinterest.  Thank goodness for Pinterest! I also put up some "rules" on the inside door of our pantry.  These aren't necessarily the official Whole30 rules, but they are rules that I wanted to make sure we saw when we go into the "danger zone".

I'm also adding a little more to the challenge by picking one vegetable a week I have never cooked and trying it out. This week: butternut squash.

Funny enough, I'm not really anxious about not having grains or dairy, or my super yummy crunchy peanut butter, I'm more nervous about not being able weigh for the next 30 days. Ever since I was about 14 I have had an, admittedly unhealthy, obsession with the scale.  I would often weigh multiple times a day, clothes off and clothes on, before eating, after eating, before working out, after working out, you get the point. So the idea of putting the scale away for 30 days is a little frightening.  To avoid temptation I am going to have Nick hide it.  Let's hope he does a good job.

I plan to post daily on what we have eaten and how we are feeling.  I won't be posting the blog entries on Facebook every day, because, well, I want to keep my friends.  But feel free to come by and visit and see how things are going!   Here's to a clean, whole, (and hopefully not sugar withdrawn cranky) week!