Well, Day Three sucked.
Lack of preparedness, Alicia being sick, and intense cravings/mood swings almost put me over the wall. But, here I sit, Day Four, having gotten through Day Three without caving.
Breakfast was the only meal I got a picture of because it was seriously the only meal worth photographing. I sautéed mushrooms and onions, then added GUESS WHAT?!?!?! Three fried eggs. That’s right, more eggs.
I did apply my homemade hot sauce liberally, and truth be told, it was a great breakfast.
I also sliced up some tomatoes and sprinkled some pink salt on them. They were store-bought so they weren’t great, but they added a nice contrast to the eggs.
Lunch was leftover lettuce tacos from the night before. Ugh. I just sort of powered through it. Lunch will be tough for me as long as I continue to eat leftovers, and I’ll continue to eat leftovers because it’s really difficult to get up and fix breakfast AND lunch. Maybe I should try this meal prep thing.
As an aside, I did make it through the mid-morning without a snack. However, I broke into my almonds at about 2 p.m. I have my seventh graders that hour, and we’re working on research projects, and I could feel myself getting a little cranky.
I got home and ate five pickles. Five. They were tiny pickles, but I ate five, and drank pickle juice because that’s allowed and don’t judge me. I also ate an apple.
Dinner was a shitshow. Alicia had set out turkey and ground beef, and then got to feeling puny, and I was pissy because, no carbs, and so I had to think of something. My plan? Turkey burger patties with sautéed onions, garlic, and mushroom powder, then I made a sauce out of drippings, chicken stock, and almond milk. I also sautéed onions, mushrooms, zucchini, and asparagus for a side. My patties were undercooked, so that sucked, but three minutes in the microwave fixed it.
Alicia also brought home some raw almonds, and I tried my hand at roasting them. I popped them in a 350 degree oven for 15 minutes, let them cool, then added a teaspoon of light evoo, salt, onion and garlic powder, and cayenne. I wound up eating them all as a bedtime snack.
As previously mentioned, today is Day Four, and we’ll see how it goes. Hopefully supper will be a shade better this evening, and I’m really going to try to stay away from all the “snacks” that I’m indulging in, even though they’re compliant, and even though Erica is telling me it’s okay. Day Two of the Whole30 was not as bad as Day One.
This was, I think, due partly to good planning. We made a grocery trip the night before (see yesterday’s blog), and picked up some things for the day.
One of the things I picked up was asparagus, because I freaking love asparagus, and I’d seen someone in our Facebook group talk about asparagus and eggs for breakfast. Since you basically eat eggs forty-two times a day on this plan, you have to think of ways to church them up. So I did.
That is roasted asparagus, topped with three over easy eggs fried lightly in clarified butter. I also added a few drops (half the bottle) of a really good hot sauce, which Erica then mentioned might not be compliant. So what did I do yesterday? I MADE MY OWN FREAKING HOT SAUCE.
That’s right, jalapeños, dried Carolina Reapers, tomato paste, smoked paprika, apple cider vinegar, beef stock and a few other compliant spices. It’ll peel the paint off your car, and it tastes pretty dang good if I say so myself.
Back to the meals though. I did get hungry about halfway between breakfast and lunch, and luckily I was prepared.
I doled out exactly twenty-eight almonds and ate them slowly, thinking about how good they’d be loaded up with sugar and syrup and all the things I would never put on almonds but that I want to put on them now.
Lunch was leftovers from Day One, steak and mushrooms with hot sauce. It was freaking phenomenal and made me wish I had made more. One of the things I’m trying to do though is to make sure I’m eating smaller portions. Yeah, I’m pretty sure I can eat all I want on this plan, but that doesn’t mean I need to abuse it.
I found a recipe for Whole30 tacos online yesterday, and essentially begged Alicia to let me make them. Another short shopping trip after school, and I had the ingredients for the tacos, as well as the ingredients for the aforementioned hot sauce.
I mixed up my own taco seasoning, and I forgot the oregano listed in the recipe, and that sucked. It wasn’t as good as the taco seasoning I buy in the pre-made packets, and I don’t care who you are, it’ll never be better and you won’t convince me otherwise. But it was tasty, and it’ll do.
Scooping that beautiful taco meat onto green and crunchy romaine lettuce instead of taco shells was probably the most depressed I’ve been on this whole plan, and it was just Day Two. I threw some fresh onion, tomato, and avocado on as well, and enough of my hot sauce to drown the sadness in my heart.
A lot of people get mad at me for being able to tell a difference in my body so quickly when I make a diet change. But the plain and simple truth is, my diet was SO TRULY TERRIBLE, that any changes I make get noticed very quickly.
As a result, the following things have happened: I’ve noticed my stomach is laying flatter in the mornings when I wake up, instead of being bloated; my skin is less oily; I’m colder, which means my blood sugar is dropping; and I feel like absolute shit.
Day Three will be interesting, I brought leftovers from last night’s dinner, and Alicia set out turkey to eat tonight. I don’t know exactly what we’re going to do with it. In the meantime, I’m going to try to make it without a midmorning snack.
Day ThreeYesterday my wife and I began the Whole30 food program. I hate to think of it as a diet, it’s more of an eating change.
The basic tenements of the program can be found here.
We didn’t really have the groceries on hand to begin the right way, but I have a couple of Yeah Write buddies who are in on it, and I wanted to give them some support.
I weighed on Sunday. I am 324 pounds. I have man tits. My gut is enormous. I’m currently taking three medications for diabetes (Metformin, Glyburide, and Invokana), a pill for blood pressure, and a pill for a fatty liver, as well as an antidepressant.
Something has to give.
So yesterday was Day One.
I had two poached eggs for breakfast. That was it. That was a poor decision on my part, but it’s what we had. For lunch, tuna. No seriously, that’s it, tuna with pickles. I ate that meal in the teacher’s lounge and wanted to cry afterwards.
I was mean to students, moody, and determined to go get groceries for a better dinner. So when I left school, that’s what I did.
Dinner was sirloin steak, sliced thin with mushrooms, garlic, and a sauce made from beef stock, fish sauce, and oregano. My god it was amazing. I put the larger portion in a container for lunch today. That was a difficult thing to do.
I also made clarified butter, which is something I’ve never done before. Something else I did was buy only myself dinner, and didn’t get anything for my wife and kids. Alicia pointed this out to me when she got home, and because we’ve begun depriving our bodies of things it thinks it needs, she pointed that out to me in a rather angry fashion.
I had a church league basketball game last night, and my performance was awful. Not that it has even been grand (not since high school), but I missed every shot I took and airballed a three. Embarrassing.
Even tougher was coming home. I was starving (or so I thought), and I wound up eating plain salsa (Whole30 approved) and pistachios. I went to bed hungry, but (sorry for being personal) I got laid, and that helped a lot. It also helped that Villanova beat UNC in the National Championship game.
Today is Day Two, or Day Twenty-Nine, depending on my mood. I’m going to try to post every single day, even if it’s just words and no pictures. I’ve accidentally discovered that food photographs way better when it’s healthy, and so I’d like to document that for you guys.
I also don’t plan on posting anything on public Facebook until the deed is done. Then I’ll post the link to Day One, and people can follow it through.
Well, let’s do this thing.