My husband and I started Whole30 again today. We’ve done it once before, after we ate our hearts out on our honeymoon and came home feeling gluttonous and gross. If you are unfamiliar with Whole30 it’s a 3o day food challenge where you basically only eat meat, vegetables, and fruit. [You can read the rules and learn more about Whole 30 here]. We’d been planning to do it again since we finished our first month of Whole30 in July. I didn’t see as many benefits as my husband did, but I did drop a couple pounds and felt better about what I was eating while we were doing it. We felt like if we did it again, we could do it better [less fruit!] and perhaps reap more of the rewards other people have experienced from doing it [better sleep, more energy, overall better health]. We set it on our calendar to try it again in January, after the season of gluttony that is the holidays.

Starting such an endeavor on New Year’s day not only sounds a little cliche, but was harder than we expected. Distracted by the holiday, we didn’t really prepare to wake up this morning ready to go. All we could find for breakfast that was Whole30-approved were eggs. I don’t know about you, but I get sick of eggs pretty quick. Which makes Whole30 breakfasts a little tricky. So after we ate our [first of many] scrambled eggs we headed straight for the store to stock up.

Apart from not eating grains, dairy, legumes, or alcohol,  another big part of Whole30 is nixing sugar – in all forms! This makes our weekly trip to the store take a little longer as we read all the salsa labels on the shelf to find the one brand of salsa that doesn’t have sugar hiding in it. We learned the first time around that sugar can go my numerous names (dextrose, xylitol, etc.), so we become those lurkers in the store, reading every label, of every brand, of every product, to make sure its compliant with Whole30. It takes some time! 

One thing we got to help us this time around was the Whole30 Cookbook. We tried out our first recipe from it tonight – Beef and Sweet Potato Chili. It turned out really good! Kevin tends to cook chili pretty frequently, so he has his chili spices nailed down, giving it a little extra flavor. We’ll probably be eating it for several more days! Although, I do miss having  a big ‘ole slice of artisan bread to wipe my bowl with! Bread is what I missed most last time. Let’s hope these are just day 1 cravings and they don’t last!