WholeFamily Whole30 – Half Way

Day 15! Can you believe we made it?

I contemplated posting once-per-week, but I did that when I did a successful W30 back in 2016, and you can read all about it over here. Further, in order to achieve my 2019 goal of blogging more, I’m hoping to post twice a month on the 1st and 15th of each month going forward, instead of “all-the-sudden trying to climb a mountain that is too big” with posting weekly etc, so lets start with a realistic goal shall we? What do you think?

So, we’re I’m officially HALF WAY DONE with our “WholeFamily, Whole30”. (Spoiler Alert!)

Can I just tell you guys how lucky I am that my family is was doing this with me? When I did this on my own back in 2016, it was so hard! The fridge and cupboards were stocked with “non-compliant” food and I had to will power my way through it a few times.

The subsequential other times I tried doing a W30, back in January 2017, February 2018, and September 2018 I failed miserably despite wanting to succeed.  This time, since we only have Whole30 food in the house (upstairs anyway), there isn’t a real possibility to slip.

Jason: Ended up going off the program as of Friday the 11th, but agreed he’d stay W30 at home. I think this is a great compromise. He works construction, so his lunch choices were limited unless he wanted a salad for lunch, which he did not, and he wasn’t on Whole30 for himself, but rather in support for me. The amount of money we were spending in nuts, and compliant jerky/snacks was a pinch ridiculous for “sympathy eating”, and I could tell he was miserable, so I cut him off from feeling obligated anymore, and his mood lifted.

Kay: She is still on plan as of today. Her friends at school think she has some kind of medical condition. One kid at lunch thinks she must have diabetes if she can’t have any sugar anymore, and another kiddo commenting that “It’s just not natural to not have added sugar.”

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I think her lunches looked pretty darn good (and as you can tell by all the fruit, the girl is not lacking in the sugar department)!

Truth be told though, I think we’ll wean her off the program this Friday night, however. As a growing pre-teen, she needed more calories but just wanted fruit. The girl plowed through two pints of raspberries in one sitting. We decided her fruit addiction needed to stop, so as of the 18th – she’ll be in re-intro mode with some high-quality full fat, grass-fed dairy.  Hopefully, 18 days was long enough to get some stuff out of her system. I’m genuinely interested to know if she is dairy or gluten (or anything else) sensitive due to frequent complaints of tummy pain.

She did say, she still wanted home lunch however unless the school’s hot lunch was irresistible. Sounds 80/20 textbook Paleo to me! We shall see.

Me: I’m still going strong! (Don’t worry, I’m not bailing). This has been my best attempt yet. I feel in control, and not overly missing, “All the things”. The food choices I’ve prepared have been better, and I’m snacking a lot less which tells me my meals are balanced right. I’m also feeling – AMAZING. My painful heartburn, which plagued me nearly every day, along with bloating has completely gone away.

My ‘severe’ shoulder/back pain/inflammation that would nearly take my breath away, (that I blamed on our bed not being comfortable) all but disappeared. (Clearly, it’s not our bed, it was inflammatory foods.) Further, despite only getting an average of 6-hours of sleep I wake up in the morning completely refreshed. No more waking up in the middle of the night, tossing & turning while I process sugar from my nightcap(s) of wine and sugary snacks that went along with said wine. (Ahem pretzels/chips & salsa).

So – for the next 15 days I will continue to cook W30 dinners for my family, while also re-introducing foods for our daughter.

As for me – Cheers to the next 15 days!

Share:
– Do you have any resets that you’re doing in the month of January?
– Do you experience chronic inflammation such as upper back/shoulder pain, or acid reflux?

Have you ever tried paleo, or removing potentially inflammatory foods?

JAM packed Saturday!

Miss K was supposed to have a soccer tournament today, but with most of the fields still saturated the tourney was called off. So we decided to head up to Minnesota Fresh Farm, and handpick strawberries. Neither me or my daughter had ever picked berries before today, and it was on my goals to continue to fill up her memory bucket! After we take home our haul and make jam we’re headed out to the Minnesota Zoo with Jason’s brother Jeremiah and his girlfriend Amillie for a fun filled family day!

(Scroll down for all the pic’s)

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Woke up early and headed to the farm up the road! We’re going to make homemade jam today before we head out to the zoo!

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Me and my girl being strawberry pickers! We were the first ones to pick this year! (They don’t open for appointments until tomorrow, but they let us sneak in! ~ Thank You!)

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Working on getting lots of berries for homemade freezer jam!

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Look at that load! We have lots for jam and plenty to spare for a chicken strawberry salad tomorrow on Arugula and Kale!

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Destemed, slicked and now time to mash mash mash!

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Starting to look like jelly, or the beginning of strawberry wine!

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Time to stir in the sugar and pectin!

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And finally scoop all of that into jars. Let sit for 30 minutes, and then pop them into the freezer! Easy as… JAM!

Let It Go! ~ Dinner

Inspired by many of my friends posting tonight about their kids singing “Let It Go” join me on a brand new series titled… “Let It Go”.

Sometimes I have a hard time letting things go…. Over the next several weeks join me on my new series of letting things go. From cooking, to parenting styles, lessons on forgiveness, and spring cleaning!

I am definitely the planning ahead of time type of girl.  I cannot stand anything more than not knowing what I’m going to be doing in a particular day. In fact I found a very nifty app called the Cozi Calendar which has all but changed my life, and you might want to check out if you’re the kind of person who is like me… Everything from school activities to evening activities is completely synchronized between my husband and I’s iPhones. Now there is never the, “You never told me that we had xyz going on tonight…” Seriously, filling in my tasks, and outings in my calendar/planner gives me one of the greatest joys in life. (Moreover I do not argue with you that I am a weirdo.)

For years, I have definitely been the meal planning type of wife and mom. Oftentimes I’m planning  at least a week in advance if not a few weeks and sometimes even a whole month. I would be hardly caught dead ordering fast food for the night, (and I do not judge those of you who do) although the occasional pizza delivery or Chipotle slips, but the truth is, I absolutely LOVE cooking. In my next life I am definitely going to be an executive gourmet chef, or maybe start a food blog… or maybe this will start turning into a food blog!

I’ve never quite understood women who didn’t meal plan and thought to myself, “How did they know what to eat for dinner?”

I love having my dinners for the week written very neatly in my calendar, and on my meal chalkboard next to my stove with hyperlinks to the menus that I am going use for that night.

What is happening though is that generally on Fridays or Saturdays after work I would hit the grocery store with my list of items that I needed to buy for the next week or two. But of course the inevitable happens. Schedules get overloaded, emergencies come up and I’m not having the time to prepare these extravagant meals… So we would either call for pizza or make something completely different using only a quarter or half of the ingredients I had allotted for that particular day.

Thanks to my church I now keep a budget. Like a corporate style budget for my family. While seeing what our actuals were for the month of March I discovered that we spent over $600 on groceries! Yes you read that right… for a family of THREE and that was ONLY groceries! I hang my head in shame. I can tell you we probably did not eat $600 dollars’ worth of groceries…

So… my husband and I decided to alter our plans to be a tad more on the fly! Sure I still have ideas of what I want to make for the week, or the next several days, but instead of shopping for a whole week or month, I now just get what we needed for a particular night or the next couple nights, and then using the left over ingredients up in the next few nights dinners. Plus on the account of the fact that we have so much venison and poultry there is no reason to be spending that much in groceries.

So far we’re already drastically under March’s budget actuals. (Moreover we are only a third through April!) We have a lot less waste, and there is more room for creativity on my part. I have even been throwing together dishes that sound good in my head without following any kind of recipe and its really freeing. Absolutely freeing.

Stay tuned my friends to the series, “Let It Go” over the next few weeks.  What are some of the things you need to let go of? Comment below!