Fair warning, this is one of those posts that I care about writing, but probably no one else will care about reading. If you are interested in how Whole 30 has been going for me, read on.
Let's talk about how hilarious the universe is, and how right at the end of my Whole 30 stint, one week before going to Hawaii, I encountered my greatest challenge yet: Teacher Appreciation Week.
Tips for Surviving Whole 30
1. Plan it leading up to a vacation. This is great motivation! The first two weeks are okay - it's all new recipes and exciting spices and fast results and enthusiasm. But then come the two weeks where you are starting to hate eggs, and even nuts are getting a little lackluster, and you're not quite tired of sweet potatoes, but you are definitely tired of trying to buy them and for some reason finding them out of stock yet again at Walmart. But if you make it through the first two weeks, you only have two weeks until your vacation, and you kind of have to see it through to the end at that point. Plus, then you get a vacation to congratulate yourself for your amazingness! Which you will totally deserve.
2. Just make it easy on yourself and eat peanut butter. And store-bought mayonnaise.
3. Don't plan your Whole 30 month to coincide with Teacher Appreciation Week. You may recall that this is my absolute favorite week of the entire school year. This week of love and gifts and notes and cute printables attached to free food....it just doesn't get much better than that!
This year was a little different. I still loved it! Just maybe not as much. The theme was "How Sweet it is to be Taught by You," and right away, when I saw that, I knew that I was in trouble. Not only was my door decorated with donuts and a sign proclaiming that "We Donut know what we would do without you!," but also, my desk was decorated the entire week with more things I couldn't eat. Cupcakes, cookies, Oreos, candy bars, chocolate, and cinnamon rolls.....I was dying. All of these things that I would have loved any other month were suddenly so sad to look at!
4. If Teacher Appreciation Week does happen to coincide with your Whole 30, it's still okay. Lots of the things you get will be wrapped and non-perishable, meaning you can save them and eat them later.
5. Other gifts you get are not non-perishable. Things that fall in this category would be, like, the fancy cupcakes, homemade cinnamon rolls, chocolate-drizzled popcorn, these perfect-looking cookies all bagged up with a bow and a printable note about how "We are smart cookies because of you!".....yep all those things. You can't eat them. You have to give them away. Don't unwrap them and smell them, just to see what you're missing. Don't stare at them all day long. Don't ask other teachers how it all tasted. Just grit your teeth and give it to another teacher and then go think about your vacation.
In the end, I ate one bite of a {holycowdelicious} cookies'n'cream kinda Oreo cupcake, and I did eat the apples in the Ruby River apple cobbler they fed us for dessert on Thursday. I'm sure they were loaded with sugar but I didn't eat the whipped cream with it or the crumblyness on the top. I feel like this is okay.
Do we all agree now that that vacation is absolutely necessary after all this??
6. If you do need a dessert (you do), I discovered a good one. It's super-easy!
-Put a bunch of pecans and walnuts in the oven at 350* for 5 minutes, or until toasted.
-Take them out and drop them in your blender.
-Add a bunch of honey and some cinnamon and salt.
-Blend it all up.
-Eat it on apple slices.
The good news is, it's almost over! And despite my one bite of Oreo cupcake, I am really proud of Stephen and I for actually sticking it out this long. In some ways it was harder than I thought it would be, but for the most part, it was easier than I'd expected. tT
And I loooove how it looks on Husband......holy hotness. Just wait for our Hawaii pictures ;)
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