1 week into Whole30-- recipes and products I love!

One week down, three to go!

We're officially on day 8 of our Whole30, and I seriously have ZERO complaints. I'm drinking black coffee, eating tons of food, enjoying all the food, and I feel amazing. Scroll to the end if you care for my fave recipes so far and must-have gadgets!

If you don't know what a Whole30 is, first I highly recommend the book! It Starts With Food. Whole30 is a 30 day elimination period of strict eating to get several potential allergens and irritants out of your diet so that upon strategic reintroduction, you're able to pinpoint which foods may cause you distress. This means no dairy, gluten, grains, legumes, sugar, or artificial sweeteners. If I forgot anything, oops! Read the book.

There's a huge focus on QUALITY meats. Grass-fed, grass-finished, wild caught... all the good stuff.

My energy levels are steady, my sweet tooth is subsiding more every day, my running is strong, my recovery is great, and so is my sleep. Ever since getting pregnant with Rhett, my diet has been mostly clean, but it was also ambiguously so. At closer examination, it was really pretty bad with a little healthy mixed in. My veggie intake was minimal and sugar was much too common. I toyed around with tracking macros, but my thinking around it was pretty disordered. I definitely prioritized sweet treats into my carb macros over quality fruit and veggie carbs. I guess I felt like being active balanced all that out. News flash: it really doesn't.

Anyways, I don't care about pre-pregnancy weight versus current weight cause weight doesn't give me my whole picture of health. What I care about is fitting comfortably in my clothes and being able to physically perform at whatever I want to do. I'm doing that and that is what makes me happy! My body is starting to feel like my own again and that's no small thing at 5 1/2 months postpartum.

Now, I don't have any food intolerances that I know of, but I'm super curious to see how reintroduction goes. My diet has never been specific enough to know how certain foods affect me. Bloating and GI upset are never fun, but I've also never attributed them to specific foods.

Marcus and I intend to use this cleaning up of our diets as a springboard for how we plan to continue to eat to model healthy behavior for Rhett. We don't want him to be a sugar-addicted hellion, and I know that's laughable to a lot of people. It's easy to have idealistic thoughts of what we will and won't do parenting-wise, but the way we see it, it's irresponsible of us to feed our growing guy a ton of things we know to be extremely detrimental to health. Is my kid gonna have a cupcake? At some point, sure! But I also want the bulk of his diet to look like what we've got going on right now-- tons of high quality veggies, meat, and fruit. I can't imagine buying many things out of those middle grocery store aisles in the future. Sure, I was raised on Kraft mac and cheese. I mean YUM! But my mom didn't know better. Nutrition culture has shifted so much in recent years, and the knowledge of the problems associated with processed foods is so much more widespread now. I can't know and believe how awful a diet full of sugar and artificial ingredients is and still feed Rhett that way. So hold me to that if you see me reaching for Lucky Charms and Poptarts, k?!

Okay so what have I been eating?!

Grass-fed beef burger with Primal Kitchen avocado mayo, mustard, and red onion with bibb lettuce as bun substitute AND the most delicious smashed red potatoes with garlic and ghee. I will seriously never ever buy instant potatoes again because these were easy and amazing.

Homemade chicken salad over fresh spinach with roasted potatoes-- these potatoes are better than french fries! No, I don't have potatoes at EVERY meal, but I am eating a bunch of both white and sweet potatoes because I'm nursing. The chicken salad is so easy to make! I use either boiled or crockpot chicken-- chop chop chop or shred about 3-4 cups of chicken to 1/2 - 3/4 cup Primal Kitchen avocado mayo, 1/4 - 1/2 cup chopped red onion, 1 tsp salt, 1 tsp pepper. The longer it sits, the more onion flavor it gets! These are approximate measurements cause I tend to eyeball everything :)

Alright I LOVE breakfast food. I don't get tired of it and I'll have it for any meal, gladly. Most mornings look like this-- a piece of Whole30 compliant bacon (surprisingly hard to find!), diced potato, bell peppers, spinach, eggs, and avocado. Some days I scramble, some days I fry.

This chili. OMG. If you follow me on Instagram, all of this is super redundant. Sorry bout that. But this chili is so darn good. Marcus hates leftovers, but he's happy to have this stuff. He also hates beans so is happy to have the sweet potato chunks in there instead. I got the recipe off Pinterest, but I'll outline the changes I made below.

-I've made this with both beef and turkey. I like it both ways!

-I use whatever color onion I have, preferably red or vidalia.

-We eat lots of garlic, so I err on the side of more here.

-I just buy the large 29 oz tomato sauce (make sure there's no added sugar)

-Muir Glen brand of fire roasted diced tomatoes! Yum! Or any brand of compliant fire roasted tomatoes. Minced, diced, whatever.

-Quality chicken broth or stock is easier to find and doesn't make a difference in the final product

-I didn't have oregano the first time I made this so I substituted italian seasoning, which works just fine

+We love peppers of all sorts, so we added a ton of chopped bell peppers (any and all colors), poblano peppers (huge flavor booster here!), Hungarian wax pepper, and fresh jalapeno.

-Brown your meat and drain it. Toss everything in the crockpot and cook on low for 8 hours.

OR

-Brown meat and drain. Boil sweet potatoes in beef or chicken broth for 8-10 minutes, then turn heat down to low, add in everything, give it a good stir, and let simmer for an hour or so. Stir every so often and take a big whif because you won't be able to resist.

Things that will make life much much easier:

-I found this french fry cutter at Beall's outlet. I just bought it but I'm already a huge fan! It handles white potato much better than sweet potatoes, though.

-ONIONS! Ugh! I love to eat em, hate to cut em. This chopper makes me very very happy. Whole30 forces you to cook a LOT. And that means a lot of chopping fresh veggies. So this thing makes all that much quicker and easier.

-Not pictured: a spiralizer. I found a Vegetti (haha terrible name) at Walmart for like $15 I think. It's easy to use, and I really like "zoodles" now. I just dry them out a little and saute them in olive oil and garlic salt.

Anyone else Whole30ing?! How are you feeling so far? Any tips you'd throw my way?