Whole30 Challenge {A Sugar Addict's Hints for Surviving the Whole30}

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Ya’ll can see at the top of our page that our tagline is “Healthy with a little bit of happy”. If you’ve kept up with us, you probably wonder where the healthy fits in with the cakes, cookies and pies.

A Sugar Addict's Hints for the Whole30 Challenge

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If you’re super-duper Tastes of Lizzy T fans {we love you too!}, you’ve read our posts, our “About” page, and our FAQ and know that although we are bona fide sugar addicts, we also have completed a Whole30 challenge in the past and try to eat a paleo-style diet at mealtimes.

I don’t talk a whole lot about the way we eat because I don’t like controversy. There are those out there who don’t like the paleo way of life and that is totally fine. But I will say for my husband and me, we feel the best when we are eating whole, unprocessed foods, steering clear of sugar, dairy, grains and gluten. It’s not often in our lives that we’ve done without these things because clearly, they are in some of the foods that we feel we can’t live without {ahem…chocolate and peanut butter}.

We enjoy all foods, but every now and then we need a reset. Because at times food controls us. We get stressed, we run to food. We get busy, we grab convenience food. We get tired, we go out to eat and as a result, overeat. It’s an endless cycle of indulging and guilt.

This January we decided we were ready for another strict reset so we embarked on our third Whole30 challenge. I hesitated to share this with you because I didn’t want you all knowing if I did not make it the entire 30 days. Now this is just silly. Because I fail. All.The.Time. I am in no way a Whole30 expert. You can read about their program from the people who created it.

So the Whole30 is a program for 30 days. It is not meant to be a permanent way of eating, although some may go longer than 30 days. Our family? We’re lucky if we make it 30 days.

On January 2, my husband and I started our Whole30 challenge, which means we’ll finish on January 31^st. I thought it would be fun to share with you how we’re doing along the journey. Maybe you’re Whole30’ing too and can share in our pain. Or you can just laugh at us as you gobble your freshly baked chocolate chip cookies. Whichever works. 🙂

Week 1

I prepped for this Whole30 month about 2 weeks in advance. I had never done much prep work for our other Whole30 challenges, which makes it hard when you have a busy day and need to grab something and go. I spent the better part of 3 days making 15 freezer meals, egg muffins, homemade sausage, energy bars and granola. My freezer was stocked and I felt like a rich girl in her favorite store. I can’t stress enough how being prepared made me feel like I could have success this Whole30 challenge!

Saturday, January 2: Easy. We were busy with house projects and had nothing to do but cook and eat healthy meals. I created a new Italian soup (which is not good enough to share with you yet) and we ate that for lunch and dinner. Life is good.

Sunday, January 3: I breezed through the day. We had church and hosted small group at our house in the evening. I was in charge of main dish and made paleo chili so we could eat our hearts out. Maddie spent the afternoon with a friend and they baked a pumpkin bundt cake with cream cheese frosting. Seriously? If there is one dessert I have a hard time refusing, it’s bundt cake. It was super moist. It was still warm from the oven. But I resisted. Thank you, Jesus.

Monday, January 4: I had a slight headache and the word of the day was “hungry and tired”. I ran two miles, which may have made me more hungry than the other days. We finished up the chili for lunch and dinner. I was tired of soup and just plain tired.

Tuesday, January 5: I felt great during the day! I had energy. I pulled out my first freezer meal…swiss steak and green beans. Braden made us his most delicious mashed potatoes (with a little cashew milk and butter). Matt sighed while eating this meal and said, “There’s no doubt we eat good when we are on Whole30.” And that is the truth! It was such a good meal. I had a few things I needed to do for the website that evening and everything seemed to crumble quickly. Deadlines were looming. I had new technology to learn. The kids needed help with some things. I worked too long and nearly lost it. But we closed things up and went to sleep. Lesson learned that I cannot work all evening long. Downtime is so important.

Wednesday, January 6: I realized today that I snack so much without even thinking about it. I was working in the kitchen while the kids were eating lunch. They had a few bags of leftover Fritos and Doritos. That little corn chip that fell out 0f the bag onto the counter? You can bet I grabbed for it. The peanut butter jar left open? I had to stop myself from taking a spoonful before putting it away. It’s not hard to say no once I realize what I’m doing. If I think about it I don’t really want the Frito. Matt and I went out on a date Wednesday night. And guess what? We had a fun hanging out even though we didn’t have our Starbucks lattes in hand.

Thursday, January 7: I survived. They say in some stages of the Whole30 you dream about your favorite foods. This was my night for that. I dreamed I was handing out pancakes and donuts to the church youth group. And then I was at a wedding with cake everywhere. I don’t remember really wanting to eat the foods in the dreams, but I had a good laugh that 3 of my favorite foods appeared very vividly in my dreams that night. 🙂 Maddie had oodles of our homemade chocolate buttercream {the BEST frosting ever} sitting around because she was decorating Braden’s birthday cake. Ugh. Frosting is my weakness. We had slow cooker coconut ginger chicken. It always surprises me how much I like this dinner. We served it over cauliflower rice. I filled my belly and left the kitchen quickly to escape the frosting.

Friday, January 8: Braden’s birthday! I was not hungry at all at lunch. I felt a little queasy. Meat and veggies were not sounding like they would sit well in my stomach. I had fruit and waited for the feeling to pass. That made me so hungry for dinner. Braden’s birthday dinner of choice was pork carnitas. Matt and I had our shredded pork over lettuce with lots of fresh salsa on top. Then we watched everyone eat chocolate cake loaded with chocolate frosting. 😛

Overall, the week went quickly and well. Although there are definite times I want to eat all of the things, I feel so good. It helps that we’ve done this before and know what to expect. It’s worth it. One week down, 3 weeks to go.

Read about our other weeks!

Whole30 Challenge: Week 2

Whole30 Challenge: Week 3