Whole30-Week 1 Overview & What I Ate

Week 1 complete. Let me repeat that…WEEK 1 COMPLETE!! As I sit here counting down the days of Whole30 (a program focusing on eating whole foods where one cannot have added sugar, no grain, gluten, legumes, alcohol, no dairy) I wanted to provide an overview of week 1 and what I ate. Fair warning: this post is a lengthy one, but one that was so much fun putting together as I can’t believe it’s been a whole week that I haven’t had any added sugar. None! And that’s even after attending a family birthday party and a road trip.

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Day 1:
I have heard that you’re supposed to feel great day 1, but to be honest I felt absolutely horrible. I had a headache all day and just felt crummy (and was suuuper tired and kind of cranky towards my husband, sorry babe!). It was like I was eating and just couldn’t get full but didn’t feel like eating any more (gasp!). I’d heard that this is only supposed to happen towards the mid-end of the program. So who knows. But here’s what I ate day one:

• Breakfast: Sweet potato hash (1 1/2 sweet potatoes, 2 bell peppers-1 red, 1 yellow, 1 onion, 2 garlic cloves, salt pepper and a little olive oil for cooking it) and 2 eggs – I used a little bit of olive oil, but it formed this super crisp skin and I didn’t end up eating the second egg.
• Snack: 1 banana
• Lunch: Leftover pot roast with carrots and parsnips (recipe coming soon!)
• Snack: raspberries and strawberries
• Dinner: Perfectly Baked Salmon with zucchini and asparagus on the side (I simply cut zucchini and asparagus and tossed them in olive oil and seasoned them with salt, pepper, garlic salt and squeezed half a lemon over them and put them on an aluminum foil lined baking sheet and baked them along with the salmon.)
• Snack: I was starving! I found these amazing date bites at a natural grocery store that I will be recreating, it is just dates ground up and formed into logs and rolled in raw coconut flakes.
• Misc: I had 2 cups of tea and drank more water than I ever have, it just seemed like I couldn’t get enough water. I also figured out how to make plantain chips (omg best thing ever, recipe here) and made some guacamole for the next few days, so I had a few plantains dipped in guac.

Day 2:
I woke up and felt fantastic! I think I’d gotten the whole ‘sugar hangover’ thing that people talk about in day 1. All day I felt awake and full of energy.

• Breakfast: Sweet potato hash with 2 eggs, this time I used Ghee to make the eggs, and they were soooo yummy! Ghee is clarified butter, I found it at the natural grocery store next to the butter. I ended up eating both eggs and only a few bites of the sweet potato hash and putting more than half in a Tupperware container for another time.
• Snack: 1 banana
• Lunch: Leftover salmon and veggies
• Snack: Plantain chips and guacamole, handful of almonds and 1/2 cup of raspberries
• Dinner: Rosemary and garlic roasted rack of lamb and vegetables (recipe coming soon!) I could not get over how amazing this was, I found the rack of lamb at Costco and will definitely be putting it on my list to make again.
• Snack: Half an apple with a little bit of almond butter

Day 3:
So I woke up about half an hour before my alarm went off (4:45am!) and thought I had a headache. First thoughts were ‘oh no, not day 1 again,’  but I had a glass of water and breakfast and then felt totally fine again for the rest of the day. This day was also a little challenging because I went to my husbands grandmothers birthday party. I told my mother in law ahead of time that I was doing Whole30 and she kindly baked me a plain chicken breast and I cooked up veggies for dinner. SEEING ALL THE FOOD, and then being asked to serve food I couldn’t eat…yeah that was a little hard! I actually got so filled up by dinner i didn’t need any dessert (first time ever!)

• Breakfast: 2 hard boiled eggs and 1/2 an apple
• Snack: Plantain chips and guacamole
• Lunch: Leftover roasts and vegetables (recipe coming soon, same as Monday’s lunch)
• Snack: Banana and 1/2 cup of raspberries, handful of almonds
• Dinner: Baked chicken breast, baked potato and a side of vegetables
• Snack: Handful of raspberries
• Misc. I was so full halfway through dinner that I didn’t even end up finishing it

Day 4:
I woke up again before my alarm clock ready to go! Today I woke up at 4:50am and my husband was very confused lol. Today was an odd combination of being full and then 5 minutes later being hungry, and then I had the biggest dinner failure. My boss (who didn’t know I was doing this) brought in cookies…the most delicious looking cookies…in 3 flavors…from Panera!! I spent 2 plus hours trying to prepare dinner and didn’t like the way it tasted to the point where I went to the grocery store and bought baked tenderloin and steamed vegetables (I was THAT girl at the deli counter asking how the meat had been prepared, I felt so pretentious….me: ‘oh, there’s butter on that salmon, how about that beef, how was that made’ the answer is that it was baked in a little bit of olive oil and fresh herbs….the poor deli clerk looked at me ‘is that ok?’ YES!!) Also, I had the most intense craving for chocolate in the afternoon. When I got home I found my husband (who is not doing Whole30 but is happily eating the dinners I’m cooking) eating chocolate. I had a few choice words lol, but then he told me about victory poses and how proud he was of me, so I felt better.

• Breakfast: 3 hard boiled eggs
• Lunch: leftover Salmon and vegetables
• Snack 1: 1 apple with a little almond butter
• Snack 2: 1-100 calorie packet of Wholly guacamole and baked plantain chips
• Dinner: baked beef tenderloin with steamed veggies, asparagus and a few potatoes, I was full and ended up putting half my dinner back.
• Snack: fresh cut pineapple chunks
• Misc: I just keep reminding myself that I’m not feeding my sugar dragon, and then to do a victory pose when I made a good decision lol.

Day 5:
Woke up again before my alarm at 4:50am which was nice since I had to pack and get everything ready for our little weekend trip up north. Every year we drive about 4.5-5 hours north of Milwaukee to visit my husbands grandparents. It’s beautiful at any time of year, but in the winter with the fire going it has a certain magical quality to it. This was my first ‘road trip’ while on Whole30 and I didn’t want to be tempted by road trip snacks, so I packed a bag full of snacks that I could eat. It was quite funny making my husband dig around through the snack bag for a little apple sauce packet I NEEDED that second.

• Breakfast: 2 eggs cooked in ghee and half an apple
• Snack: 1 banana
• Lunch: leftover beef tenderloin with steamed vegetables, asparagus and a few potatoes
• Snack: road trip snacks included a packet of Gogo Squeez apple sauce and a 100 calorie packet of wholly guacamole and plantain chips
• Dinner: leftover beef tenderloin with steamed vegetables, asparagus and a few potatoes
• Snack: raspberries and a date bite
• Misc: having to explain that I couldn’t eat any of grandma’s delicious food was tough, but then having to watch everyone enjoy it….super tough! She’s an amazing cook and dinner looked so good.

Day 6:
Ok, so now you know we’re up north, we’re with grandma Rita who is an amazing cook. I was told there was going to be polish sausage for breakfast and I immediately thought that I wouldn’t be able to eat any. My mind immediately went to my struggle finding packaged sausage that didn’t have sugar as an ingredient. Then I found out that the sausage was made by one of my mother-in-law’s friends. I casually asked her if she wouldn’t mind asking what the ingredients were, and low and behold it was just meat and spices, no sugar! Hallelujah! Since I had packed my ghee, I shyly brought that into the kitchen, and grandma Rita was like ‘I love clarified butter, lets make breakfast together so you can eat it’. I teared up! And, it was the BEST BREAKFAST I’d had all week! We cooked the polish sausage, and then made breakfast potatoes in olive oil, and then made scrambled eggs with parsley in ghee (we literally just scrambled the eggs and added parsley.

• Breakfast: polish sausage, breakfast potatoes, scrambled eggs with parsley, fruit salad
• Lunch: Flank steak with a bell pepper and 1/2 an onion
• Snack: fruit salad, Gogo Squeez apple sauce
• Dinner: plain hamburgers (just ground beef) with boiled carrots, green beans and potatoes with a sauce of lemon juice, ghee, and parsley.
• Snack: raspberries and a date snack
• Misc: wish grandma Rita could cook for me always, because everything was delicious, like super duper delicious. Around lunch time I had a little freak out session. I was hungry but my husband wasn’t, I hadn’t packed any food besides the leftovers that I had had the evening before and I NEEDED to go to the grocery store. On the drive up I kept seeing little butcher shops that were open and kept saying ‘we should go check out that butcher.’ Clearly my subtle hints didn’t work because we didn’t stop, so when I said I needed to go to the grocery store my husband was all like ‘why didn’t you say anything earlier’ and I was like ‘I DID!’ In his defense, I do love stopping in little butcher shops and cheese shops wherever we are, so he didn’t realize that my reason for stopping was out of NECESSITY lol. After my little trip to the grocery store whereat I bought a flank steak, bell pepper and an onion – total of $3.61) I discovered that that is a fantastic and super quick meal option for me. ALSO, grandma Rita made this little sauce with a dab of ghee, lemon juice, and parsley that she poured over my vegetables for dinner. It was so amazing, definitely am going to be doing that a lot!

Day 7:
I felt super tired and exhausted all day. It could have had something to do with the fact that we drove back home from up north in the evening to beat the snow storm, but still, all day I felt like I was just tired!

• 2 eggs and leftover sweet potato hash
• Snack: 1 banana and almond butter
• Lunch: roasted carrot and cauliflower soup with a lemon garlic chicken breast on the side
• Snack: plantain chips and wholly guacamole 100 calorie pack
• Dinner: chicken roasted with lemon and garlic with a side of roasted Brussels sprouts, beets, and cauliflower with a ghee/lemon/cilantro sauce
• Snack: Gogo Squeez apple sauce
• Misc: I roasted vegetables for a few meals. I divided a making sheet into three sections with aluminum foil and then roasted Brussels sprouts in one section, 2 beets peeled and cut in another section and cauliflower and 1 russet potato cut into pieces. All the veggies were cut into little pieces and tossed in olive oil, salt/pepper/garlic salt.

Words of wisdom:

• Stock up on fruits and vegetables to the point you think you’ll never run out. Because you will, after like day 2!
• You’ll have to go to the grocery store for the littlest things. My husband ‘where are you?’ Me ‘at the grocery store!’ My husband ‘but you just went yesterday’ Me ‘I NEED GHEE and raspberries!’
• Do this with someone you can commiserate with that doesn’t mind swear words. I can honestly say I wouldn’t be able to do this without Lynn and her sister, the three of us text through the hard stuff.
• Have a few backup meal options in mind for if things go wrong (for example, when my dinner failed on day 4, I now know that one grocery store sells baked meat and steamed vegetables! On day 6 when we were up north I made flank steak with a bell pepper and 1/2 an onion, it was delicious and only took 10 minutes to make.)
• Watch this TED talk and start doing victory poses. Every time you make a smart decision (for example when you eat a piece of fruit instead of that brownie you’re craving, do a victory pose)
• Get your Tupperware, mixing bowls and baking sheets ready. Never have I used so many containers in my life!
• PREP! So much prep and planning is involved (because you can’t just grab anything out of the pantry), but it’s worth it.
• Lastly, my husband is not doing this with me…he can eat whatever he wants, but that I’m going to take pictures of him and make fun of him for feeding his ‘sugar beast’ LOL

Products/things I’m loving*:

• Gogo Squeez apple sauce – this unsweetened apple sauce is so yummy and perfect for on the go (think road trips and snacks!)
• Ghee – clarified butter, this stuff is amazing, perfect for frying eggs
• Wholly Guacamole – this stuff is a total life saver when you don’t have time to whip up a batch of guacamole
• Yogi Black Chai Tea – I love the bold flavor of this tea, I’ve been drinking it constantly
• Tupperware – never before have I used ALL the tupperware in my house, this 50 piece set has been a lifesaver
• Pyrex Bowls with lids – these are amazing for storing food as well as mixing
• Baking sheets – I’ve been doing SO much roasting, baking sheets have been my saving grace
• Aluminum foil – to line said baking sheets
• Almonds – perfect for on the go snacks!

Stay tuned for week 2! I’ll be sure to keep you posted. Have you ever tried Whole30?

Disclaimer: some of the above links are affiliate links, if you purchase amazon products through my store at no cost to you, I will earn a few pennies (still haven’t made enough to buy a full cup of coffee – or box of tea in this case – yet, but a girl can dream, can’t she?) As always, thank you for supporting the brands and products I love that make the Sweetphi blog possible.