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 ;)
Showing posts with label Whole 30. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Whole 30. Show all posts
Friday, May 15, 2015
Wednesday, May 6, 2015
A Weekend at the Capitol
Stephen was not a happy camper this semester.
I've already explained why, so we don't need to go into that again. The point is, it's over now!! To celebrate, I planned a little weekend getaway and enlisted my BFF's, the Dating Divas, to announce it to Stephen.
It was so fun planning everything out! I got a substitute for my class on Monday and set everything up for us to leave on Saturday, after the Real Live Wives club met for breakfast. I told my kids and got their input. Some of their advice, I followed.
"You should really think about bringing a tent. My family always brings a tent when we go camping."
"Just make sure you don't drive too fast, cuz my dad got a ticket last time when we were driving to Las Vegas."
Some of their advice, I ignored.
C: How is he going to pack?
Me: I'm going to pack for him!
C: But how will you know what to bring? What if he doesn't like it?
Me: He won't care, he doesn't really care what he wears.
C: Oh! So.....you should pack a bikini for him!!!
*Laughter erupting all around the classroom*
Me: ....What? I don't want him to wear a bikini!
C: No no! Wait! I got it! You should like, give him a sleeping pill, and then when he's asleep, THEN put him IN the bikini!
*Even more laughter*
Me: But I still don't want him in a bikini, why would I do that?
C: Because he'll think it's so crazy!
Yes. Yes he would.
While Stephen hung out with his family on Friday night, I borrowed ropes and climbing equipment from our friend Brandon (who is single and I need one of my best friends and/or sisters to marry him because he is that great!), pulled the ladder out of our backyard jungle, got down all the camping equipment, marinated some chicken, put water bottles in the freezer, packed the trunk, put all our clothes in a little baby suitcase, and set up my handy little Dating Divas treasure hunt. I changed the last clue just a little - on theirs, the treasure is a movie night in the car (like at a drive-in theater or something).
When Stephen found the last clue, he also saw all the stuff I had packed in the trunk. I told him to get in because we were going somewhere. He had thought I was just planning a date, and he was so surprised! For the first two hours, he had no idea where we were going.
I chose Capitol Reef as our destination because it's only about 3 hours away, and neither of us had ever been there. They don't have climbing, but they do have rappelling! Which I thought would be fun, to try something a little different.
We had just enough time on Saturday to check out Chimney Rock and the Fruita campground, which was full, before we needed to set up our own camp.
In the end, we mostly just hiked and camped and explored the park on foot and via car. It is beautiful!! Our campsite was in the "primitive camping" section, and it was so private. There was a table, fire pit, and tons of wood from the last campers. We couldn't even see another campsite. It was just so unpopulated that it felt like we were the only ones there. Actually, the moon was there too. And it was very full. And quite intrusive.
We ate sweet potatoes and marinated chicken, and cuddled up to read Jurassic Park together. This was a good idea and a bad idea, because it is a really good book, but then I was afraid that a velociraptor was going to attack our campsite.
We also ate at the Rim Rock restaurant, which I highly recommend! The only thing about it that I didn't appreciate was when I told the waitress that I didn't want croutons on my salad, and Stephen tattled on me that we are doing Whole 30, and then she brought rolls back.
"I know this doesn't really work with your no grains thing, but we usually serve rolls with the meal," she said, waving them under my nose. "They're really good, it's our own in-house recipe. Do you want them?"
"They look so good!" I said. "But it's okay, we don't need them."
She smiled. "I'll just leave these right here in case you change your mind," she said.
#what.
So then Stephen had to take one for the team and eat them both. {And brag about it....}
I loved this weekend! We got lucky with the weather - thunderstorms were threatening, but we always missed them. We did come back to our tent on Sunday night and it had obviously been rained on, but we were in a different part of the park that had thankfully stayed dry.
One other thing I really loved about it was that the car charger wasn't working, for our phones. So I spent most of the time with my phone turned off, and only turned it on when we needed directions back home. It was so nice to not have to worry about anything except where we were and what we were doing.
Next stop: Hawaii!!
I've already explained why, so we don't need to go into that again. The point is, it's over now!! To celebrate, I planned a little weekend getaway and enlisted my BFF's, the Dating Divas, to announce it to Stephen.
It was so fun planning everything out! I got a substitute for my class on Monday and set everything up for us to leave on Saturday, after the Real Live Wives club met for breakfast. I told my kids and got their input. Some of their advice, I followed.
"You should really think about bringing a tent. My family always brings a tent when we go camping."
"Just make sure you don't drive too fast, cuz my dad got a ticket last time when we were driving to Las Vegas."
Some of their advice, I ignored.
C: How is he going to pack?
Me: I'm going to pack for him!
C: But how will you know what to bring? What if he doesn't like it?
Me: He won't care, he doesn't really care what he wears.
C: Oh! So.....you should pack a bikini for him!!!
*Laughter erupting all around the classroom*
Me: ....What? I don't want him to wear a bikini!
C: No no! Wait! I got it! You should like, give him a sleeping pill, and then when he's asleep, THEN put him IN the bikini!
*Even more laughter*
Me: But I still don't want him in a bikini, why would I do that?
C: Because he'll think it's so crazy!
Yes. Yes he would.
While Stephen hung out with his family on Friday night, I borrowed ropes and climbing equipment from our friend Brandon (who is single and I need one of my best friends and/or sisters to marry him because he is that great!), pulled the ladder out of our backyard jungle, got down all the camping equipment, marinated some chicken, put water bottles in the freezer, packed the trunk, put all our clothes in a little baby suitcase, and set up my handy little Dating Divas treasure hunt. I changed the last clue just a little - on theirs, the treasure is a movie night in the car (like at a drive-in theater or something).
When Stephen found the last clue, he also saw all the stuff I had packed in the trunk. I told him to get in because we were going somewhere. He had thought I was just planning a date, and he was so surprised! For the first two hours, he had no idea where we were going.
I chose Capitol Reef as our destination because it's only about 3 hours away, and neither of us had ever been there. They don't have climbing, but they do have rappelling! Which I thought would be fun, to try something a little different.
We had just enough time on Saturday to check out Chimney Rock and the Fruita campground, which was full, before we needed to set up our own camp.
In the end, we mostly just hiked and camped and explored the park on foot and via car. It is beautiful!! Our campsite was in the "primitive camping" section, and it was so private. There was a table, fire pit, and tons of wood from the last campers. We couldn't even see another campsite. It was just so unpopulated that it felt like we were the only ones there. Actually, the moon was there too. And it was very full. And quite intrusive.
We ate sweet potatoes and marinated chicken, and cuddled up to read Jurassic Park together. This was a good idea and a bad idea, because it is a really good book, but then I was afraid that a velociraptor was going to attack our campsite.
We also ate at the Rim Rock restaurant, which I highly recommend! The only thing about it that I didn't appreciate was when I told the waitress that I didn't want croutons on my salad, and Stephen tattled on me that we are doing Whole 30, and then she brought rolls back.
"I know this doesn't really work with your no grains thing, but we usually serve rolls with the meal," she said, waving them under my nose. "They're really good, it's our own in-house recipe. Do you want them?"
"They look so good!" I said. "But it's okay, we don't need them."
She smiled. "I'll just leave these right here in case you change your mind," she said.
#what.
So then Stephen had to take one for the team and eat them both. {And brag about it....}
I loved this weekend! We got lucky with the weather - thunderstorms were threatening, but we always missed them. We did come back to our tent on Sunday night and it had obviously been rained on, but we were in a different part of the park that had thankfully stayed dry.
One other thing I really loved about it was that the car charger wasn't working, for our phones. So I spent most of the time with my phone turned off, and only turned it on when we needed directions back home. It was so nice to not have to worry about anything except where we were and what we were doing.
 |
| I woke up like dis. |
 |
 |
| This place is stunning and you do need to go. |
Next stop: Hawaii!!
Tuesday, April 28, 2015
Whole 30 Week 1 - Still Enthusiastic
So, I'm 1 week into Whole 30.
Seven days.
An eternity.
Actually, it's not that bad. Truthfully, I am really enjoying it. And I'm not just saying that to trick myself. I've been feeling very strong, and my six-pack is already starting to come in, so that's fast enough results for me to be a believer.
Here's my basic life:
Monday - Friday. Err morning, drink a green smoothie. I pre-packaged frozen fruit, flax seeds, and spinach in ziploc baggies in the freezer, and I just throw one of those and some almond coconut milk in the blender. It is so loud and wakes up probably the whole neighborhood and most likely makes our renters hate me. I hope they wear ear plugs or have a loud fan roaring at them all night and they miss it. For lunch, I have leftovers and an apple and lil cutie. I go home after school, we work out at UVU, and then for dinner, we have whatever I planned :) It's a great life. Here are the challenges I have faced (and overcome!) so far:
Seven days.
An eternity.
Actually, it's not that bad. Truthfully, I am really enjoying it. And I'm not just saying that to trick myself. I've been feeling very strong, and my six-pack is already starting to come in, so that's fast enough results for me to be a believer.
Here's my basic life:
Sunday, plan the menu. Prep meals for the week that I can prep. Create a grocery list. Look through ads so I can ad match at Walmart.
- a donut for Coleman's birthday
- crepes for Danielle's wedding reception uhhhhhh they looked so good!
- also the wedding cake but I don't really like wedding cake and this one was green so that wasn't too hard
- lemon cake for dessert on Sunday - that I made, people.
- candy at Alex's house
- all the candy all the time in my drawers at school
- also all the granola bars!!
- soup, bread, chocolate-covered strawberry, and roll at Zupa's when I went with friends on Saturday. I literally picked off the chocolate and ate the strawberry plain'ol
- all the candy at Stephanie's dessert party for her graduation
- also the Nutter Butters there which for some reason looked so freaking good
- also the chocolate fountain. I just ate strawberries and bananas because that was all I could eat!
- the jelly beans we gave our kids on Sunday
- the Reeses peanut butter cups we gave Aleya (one of our girls at church) for her birthday
- the free popcorn at Ace Hardware where we got fertilizer
It was so hard!!! But also, not that hard at the same time. I don't really miss those foods. If I was hungry I think it would be harder, but I've so far been really good at planning meals and prepping them ahead of time, and so I feel full after meals and enjoy what I'm eating, so it's good. It is also easier because Stephen is doing it with me. We follow some rules but not all.
- white potatoes are technically allowed, but we don't eat them.
- they limit fruit and I'm like I will never limit fruit, thankyouverymuch
- if you want mayonnaise or almond coconut milk, you have to make your own. .........we do not.
- they say no beans and I'm like that's stupid, and we eat beans.
- they also don't allow you to make fries / chips out of sweetotatoes or other vegetables, or like pancakes out of bananas and eggs, because that's tricking yourself and psychologically you still feel like you need those foods. But I'm like whatever, if I'm just slicing my sweetotato and putting salt on it and baking it, then I can have these fake chips.
- apparently peanut butter is also not allowed, and neither are peanuts. But other nuts are so I don't participate in that discrimination.
- fruit juice isn't allowed but we welcome it into our smoothies.
Full disclosure, I did have a mini-meltdown this week. Natalie had a play on Thursday, so we got a salad at Wendy's, went to the play, and then didn't get home until 10, and then Stephanie graduated on Friday, so we didn't eat either dinner I had planned for that night, either. So I was starving for basically two days in a row, and on Friday, after Stephanie's graduation party, this conversation went down:
me: I'm soooo hungry.
Stephen: I'm not even that hungry. I just want to go to bed!
me: Can we please go home? I need food.
Stephen: Let's just stay here, they have food and it's free!
me: I can't eat any of that! I've literally had nothing but strawberries and bananas and I'm starving!
Stephen: I can make you some eggs?
me: I'm just so hungry.
Stephen: Well, what do you want?
me: Okay Stephen I am not a rational person right now! Stop talking to me like you're expecting a logical response! I just want food to be in me! Like this isn't good! I'm supposed to eat! I'M STARVING!
Stephen: Okay, so you want me to make you some eggs, or do you want to go home.....?
Me: What did I just say? I WANT FOOD
Stephen: Well I'm just trying to figure out what you want -
*Me throwing myself dramatically on the bed*
Stephen: Okay! Okay sorry! I'll make you some eggs.
So he made me eggs and bacon and I stopped being a monster.
Conclusion? If you're going to do Whole 30, get good at saying no. Also, convince your Stephen to do it with you. He is a fantastic support.
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