Whole30: The beginning

Yesterday, Chris and I started the Whole30 diet. If you're not familiar, it's basically a paleo diet--no gluten, added sugar, dairy, weird additives, and legumes--for 30 days. This is not something I was ever planning on doing. People who know me know I'm obsessed with candy, chocolate, cheese...pretty much everything you can't eat on the Whole30. We decided to go for it because Chris has had some gastrointestinal issues that haven't been solved and it would have been difficult for me to eat differently than him because he's the chef out of the two of us. (Also, I was reading about Whole30 on the website and it made me feel guilty for wanting to cheat, haha.) I figured I could do it. It's only 30 days, and yeah, it's probably going to suck at some point but a body "reset" sounds like a good idea to me. Plus, as far as times of the year to do something like this, now seems like the best time. There aren't any major holidays, and we have no travel planned.

We went grocery shopping on Sunday for the week and picked up a lot of fruits and veggies, a good amount of meat, some canned goods, and likely not enough snack foods. Snacking might be the most difficult part of the next month; I'm a huge snacker, especially while I'm working. Yesterday I just had a few nuts and fruit leftover from lunch to munch on in the middle of the afternoon, only I polished it all off only an hour after I had lunch. We're not even supposed to have tree nuts that often so hopefully I figure out some good, filling snack foods pronto! (Please let me know if you have any good Whole30 recipes or snack ideas! I'd love to hear them.)

Over the weekend, we purchased journals so we can keep track of what we eat. I also have been writing down how I feel so I can get a hang of cravings, emotions associated with them, how filling foods are, etc. I need to remember to bring it to school with me so I can avoid having to remember how the day went once I get back home. We also boxed up all of the food in our pantry that we can't eat (and that will still be good in a month). It was slightly depressing filling the box with some of my favorite things to eat!

Despite the inevitable challenges, I hope the next 30 days teaches me to be more aware of what I put into my body and help me make better choices when it comes to eating things that make me feel good emotionally and physically. Also, since we are basically limited to only water as far as drinks go (no alcohol...), I think this will also help me with my resolution to drink more water!

I wasn't planning on blogging about it that much but I hope to do some more kind of "review" posts like these just to document this process since I've never done a diet like this before. If you have done the Whole30 before, please let me know how it went! I'd love to hear any tips, tricks, favorite recipes, ways to combat cravings, etc. :)