Whole 30: Days Fifteen through Twenty Three

It's been a while since I've posted so you're getting a whole bunch of these at once.

Day 15
Whole 30 Beef Jerky
Leftover Spaghetti Squash with Lucini and Steak
LIke... 5 grapefruits

Days 16-17
Imagine Chicken Broth
Kombucha!
Bananas
Apple Sauce

Day 18
Whole 30 Approved Sausage
These Baller Wings

Days 19

Blue Ribbon Country Captain Chicken from Well Fed

Days 20-21

I had a final in Managerial Accounting and I pretty much stopped recording what I was eating. MY BAD! I think I made some ground beef, mixed some taco seasoning in, and ate it on lettuce with some avocados at one point. I know, it sounds awesome.

Day 22

Mashed Sweet Potato

Apple Pork Sausage

Taj Mahal Chicken from Well Fed 2

Day 23

Leftover Chicken

Shrimp with Old Bay Seasoning

Sweet Potato Fries

Ok, so I dropped the ball on this. I hadn't been writing down what I'd been eating (it was all Whole 30 though!) and I just wanted to put it out there before I got too far behind. 7 more days! It's practically in the bag.

Whole 30: How to Get Over Food Poisoning on Whole30

So I've been sick since Saturday night. It's flu season, I had a killer headache and the poooooops, and since I skipped the flu shot, I figured I was getting my comeuppance. But after missing 4 straight days of work, losing 10 pounds, and not being able to mentally stop myself from bathroom trips, enough was enough. 

I called the doctor's office, told 'em "I can't stop pooping", and that I thought it was probably the flu. When I got there, the doctor asked me what my symptoms were and I said I started feeling sick Saturday night with a headache and diarrhea and I haven't gotten any better since then. She asked me a few more questions which basically ruled out the flu (no aches, no fever, no coughing), and then asked me what I had for dinner the night before I got sick. I told her: raw oysters.

She just smiled and thaaaaaat's when I started to feel really dumb. Of course I knew what it was then: food poisoning. Typically, it takes 24 hours for the effects of food poisoning to start ravaging you and others who had the same food don't need to also be sick to rule it out.

For treatment she recommended not taking any more Imodium (because you need to get everything "flushed" from your body) and going on the B.R.A.T. diet until I felt better. B.R.A.T. stands for Bananas, Rice, Applesauce, and  Toast. I told her I couldn't have grains because of this special diet I'm on to which she scoffed! She even implied that my diet may have lowered my immunity and got me sick. Anyway, she said just eat a lot of applesauce and bananas if I wasn't willing to change my diet. So to stay true to Whole 30, here's what I started eating exclusively:

Imagine Organic Free Range Chicken Broth: Just heat it up on the stove, pour it in a mug, and go to town. 

Enlightened Synergy Gingerberry Kombucha: This is the first time I've had this stuff, and it is weird tasting. It's also chock full of probiotics and minerals. Might be that it's a miracle drink. 

Santa Cruz Organic Apple Sauce: Apple sauce always goes down smooth. 

Bananas & Apples

What I didn't eat was anything with fiber in it (veggies) and meat (because it's hard to break down). 

And it worked!

... and thank God it did. I was literally going to jump off of Whole 30 today (on Day 17 nonetheless) if I didn't see immediate improvement. I hope that if anyone is suffering from a week long bout of food poisoning, they have the same success by eating the foods I mentioned. You can definitely fight off food poisoning and remain on Whole 30!

Whole 30: Days Ten Through Fourteen

I definitely caught the flu over the weekend (Day 11) which, as I'm sure everyone knows, sucks. It also put a hiccup into trying some new foods (or makes meal planning a lot easier because you can't eat anything?) With the said, my wife made some Whole 30 dishes that were so DAMN good that I couldn't resist, even in my partially vegetative state.

Day Ten

Breakfast: Fried Egg and Avocado Slices

Lunch: Fruits and veggies on the go.
Dinner: Raw Oysters with Horseradish at Hank's Oyster Bar

Day Eleven

Breakfast: Baby Carrots and Hard boiled Eggs

Lunch: Nothing :(

Dinner: Chile Lime Chicken Wings with Brussels  (FRIGGEN GOOD)

Day Twelve

Breakfast: Fried Plantains (fry in a skillet with coconut oil, cumin, salt, pepper)

Lunch: Mushroom Broth with Prosciutto, Green Onions, Lime (like a faux Pho)

Dinner: Frozen Pineapple Pieces :( :( :(

Day Thirteen

Breakfast: Grapefruit

Lunch: Mixed Green Salad with Flank Steak and Tessemae Lemon Dressing

Dinner: Ground Beef Hamburgers topped with Sunflower Butter and Strawberries, garnished with Green Onions (sounds weird, tastes delicious)

Day Fourteen

Breakfast: Pineapple & Grapefruit

Lunch: Applegate Farms Lunch Meat & Leftover Hamburger

Dinner: Spaghetti Squash with Lucini Pasta Sauce and Steak bits (our "go-to")

Whole 30: Days Five through Nine

We were pretty concerned about how we would fare heading into our first work week, but we made it again. We ended up cooking a lot of food in advance and then eating it throughout the week. Maybe not the most exciting meal plan ever, but it certainly made it easier to follow through and stay on track for the Challenge! Anyway, I'm not going to list all the the snacks anymore. Rest assured, I'm not starving myself; I supplement what I eat here with fruit, carrots, nuts, etc.

Day Five
Whole30 Beef Jerky 
gimME Organic Roasted Seaweed Snacks
Whole 30 Chicken Nuggets
Ugli Fruit (This was just randomly at the store, impulse buy for sure)
Mashed Cauliflower

Day Six
Whole 30 Chicken Nuggets
Mashed Cauliflower
Collard Greens with Sausage and Carrots

Day Seven
Whole 30 Beef Jerky
Whole 30 Chicken Nuggets
Whole 30 Egg Drop Soup (chicken broth, green onions, egg)
Applegate Lunch Meat (just grabbing some slices when I'm hungry)

Day Eight
The last of the Whole 30 Chicken Nuggets (I made four pounds!)
Pineapple & Cauliflower Fried "Rice"
Whole 30 Egg Drop Soup
Orange and Grape Salad
Applegate Lunch Meat
Salmon Sweet Potato Cakes
Steamed Spinach with Onion, Almond Slices, and Lemon

Source:http://www.everydaymaven.com/2013/paleo-salmon-cakes/

Day Nine
The rest of the Salmon Sweet Potato Cakes
The rest of the Spinach
Turkey Leg in the Slow Cooker
Baked Sweet Potato

I Won't Be Able to Live Without:

• gimME Organic Roasted Seaweed Snacks: The entire package is 50 calories, making them perfect for snacking.
• Applegate Lunch Meat: The roast beef tastes like little slices of steak heaven, but it's about $6/package so....
• Coconut Oil: It's pretty much magic in a jar. BONUS: coconut is fun to say.

One Week In: The Pros and Cons of Whole 30 & Paleo So Far

I just wrapped up my first week of the Whole 30 challenge, and it is not easy. You read all the blogs out there and they're lobbing praise at the diet like it's amazing, but I want to be honest with people out there: I come from a long line of human beings who like to eat food for sustenance and we don't care who knows it. Suddenly having to be discriminating in my tastes is something I do not like. But there are good things I've noticed so far for sure. I'll give you my Pros and Cons.

PRO #1: Flat stomach! This is probably the first thing I noticed about the diet. I think I've read that dairy causes bloating in the stomach region? Sounds right, especially since there's no dairy in this diet. My stomach looks the same at the end of the day as it looks when I wake up in the morning. This is the most obvious pro so far.

CON #1: Dishes. All the time. Dishes. You have to cook all your meals if you want to eat and my God, the dishes. The piles of dishes. And am I imagining things or did my wife just use 4 pots to make hard boiled eggs? YOU USE TO MANY THINGS TO COOK, WOMAN! Just rinse the bowl out then reuse it, daaaammmmmn.

We don't have a microwave either, I couldn't really tell you why, but that certainly doesn't help this situation.

PRO #2: No smelly farts, had to put that here somewhere. I'm not particularly known for my smelly farts, but they were there. They were real. Now, there's still some farting, but they be like a lil' bubble or something. Kinda cute. I'm gonna think of a name for them.

CON #2: I am so FIXATED on food. I have thought about foods I wanted to eat that I haven't eaten in years. Literally, everything I can't eat looks good to me. On top of that, everyone around me knows this as I can't stop talking about it. Friends, I am sorry. I am sorry but you're gonna have to stop eating food in front of me because you'll make me go to a dark place.

This burger haunts my dreams:

Source: http://manmadediy.com/users/martin/posts/1602-how-to-make-a-peanut-butter-cheeseburger

PRO #3: My wife and I are spending a lot of quality time together. I love her, she's pretty. "Accidentally" bumping into her while I measure a cup of coconut flour... well, let's just say things get pretty PG-13 up in here.

CON #3: Like I said before, we spend a lot of time making food. These recipes don't really taste that great ifI'mbeinghonestwitchu. Even the ones out of the expensive books. We've definitely found recipes we like (i.e. pretty much anything with spaghetti squash, cauliflower, or almond butter) but they can be very hit or miss. When you're buying the best food from the store, misses are costly.

PRO #4: I'm getting to know my way around the kitchen a little better. I found a great way to make steaks in the oven which for some reason I'm really proud of. I guess I've always seen it as a rite of passage for a man. I also know where we kept the lemon zester which is both important AND manly. Bonus tip for everyone out there: invest in a garlic press if you don't already own one.

CON #4: There's a social cost in all this. No more brunches or dinners with friends. Go to a party, you're the weird sober guy. My friends are great, so they still want me to hang out but going to a restaurant and just ordering water... not an option.

So there they are, the Pros and Cons from my first week of Whole 30 in all their glory. I will be writing more about the cost of the diet (I've got a lot of past data on our spending habits) so I can address this from a financial perspective as soon as I can.

See ya!

2014 Project Inspiration

If you remember, one of my goals for 2014 was to complete 3 "projects" in 2014. To me, anything I can paint/stain/seal/sand/etc with materials I can store in my one bedroom apartment counts. Doesn't hurt if it's practical. Also, doesn't hurt if it's easy. Here are the three projects I'm starting off with:

1. Revamped Filing Cabinet Entry Table

Source: http://www.countryliving.com/homes/house-tours/heather-salazar-craftsman-home#slide-7

Before I was married, my then-fiance-now-wife Whitney went out with my mom for antiques and came home with this really crappy, rusty, $30 steamer trunk that was bug-eaten and looked terrible. I guess she liked it. Well, anyway, it took me close to 100 hours (mostly because I didn't know what I was doing) to strip off its canvas, painstakingly get the rust off, and refinish the thing but it ended up looking really great and unique... and now I'm really tired of the way it looks. It's the first thing I see when I come in the apartment, it's kind of short for an entry room table, and it doesn't match our apartment. I'm trying to find its replacement.

My wife pinned this filing cabinet revamp on Pinterest months ago, and I've been trying to find three matching filing cabinets for a while now. Not owning a truck and Craigslist generally being terrible means I've had no luck, but I really want to do this and I'm keeping an eye out.

2. Photography Equipment Shelves

My wife's getting pretty darn good at her photography, and as a result, we're accumulating cameras and manuals and straps and bags and lenses and other-stuff-I-don't-even-know-what-it-is. Dear God, it's a lot of stuff, and I've heard about these things called "shelves" that people put stuff on. They seem practical. I wanted to get something that looked like this...

Source: http://www.restorationhardware.com/catalog/product/product.jsp?productId=prod1860679&cm_mmc=iPad+App-_-BSSS-_-Product-_-RH_Spring_2013

... and mix it with this.

Source: http://www.thekitchn.com/a-glam-detail-on-a-budget-ikea-shelf-brackets-spraypainted-gold-kitchen-inspiration-196062

3. Baseball Bats and Axes

It's no secret that most of the people using Pinterest, which is an amazing website, are female. As a result, it's hard to find DIY ideas for men. When I came across some army surplus axes and some practice squad Louisville Sluggers and I bought them on the cheap, thinking I could do something manly with them. They're officially in the trunk on my car, just rolling around, and I don't know what to do with them. They're officially on my project list.

I'll figure something out, I swear.

Whole 30: Days Two through Four

I made it through a couple more days, so far so good. Although, if you were wondering, here's what I've been craving that's off the menu... and here's what I've been eating instead:

Day Two
Breakfast
Mashed Sweet Potatoes (made with coconut milk, ghee, and cinnamon) with Raisins and Roasted Pecans.*
*This dish was leftover from our NYE dinner.

Lunch
Mixed Green Salad with Roasted Pecans, Apple, and Lemon Pepper Chicken, topped with a hard boiled egg and Tessemae's Lemon Garlic dressing.

Dinner
Sauteed Shrimp with Garlic and Lemon
Steamed Broccoli

Day Three
Breakfast
Sauteed Shrimp with Garlic and Lemon (Leftover from Day 2 dinner... I will eat anything in the morning!)
Apple
Hard boiled Egg

Lunch
Two Hard boiled Eggs
Broccoli
Pistachios
Remainder of the Mashed Sweet Potatoes
Baby Carrots

Dinner
Roasted Spaghetti Squash (cut in half, emptied out, baked face down for 45 minutes at 375) with Ground Beef (garlic, cumin) and Lucini Sicilian Olive & Wild Caper Sauce.

Day Four
Breakfast
Roasted Spaghetti Squash, Ground Beef, Pasta Sauce from Day Three

Lunch
Collard Greens with Baby Carrots and Whole 30 compatible sausage (made in slow cooker)
Banana
Raisins

Dinner
Raw vegetables (tomatoes, carrots, broccoli, and cauliflower) off a party tray
Cocktail shrimp (without the cocktail sauce)
Hawaiian Meatballs (Whole 30 compatible recipe)
Fruit Salad

I Won't Be Able To Live Without... 

• Lucini Pasta Sauce: Pricey at approx. $9 a jar, but it's Whole 30 compatible, and convenience is important. 
• Spaghetti Squash: So easy to make and I am not lying when I say it tastes better than pasta.
• Tessemae's Lemon Garlic Dressing: Whole 30 compatible, subtle flavor, and it really went well with the fruit in my salad.

Whole 30: Day One

I get why people choose the first of January to start these self-improvement projects.  A New Year. A fresh start. Symbolism. I'm eating it up. However, I feel very confident when saying it has to also be the day with the highest hangovers per capita. Which is exactly where I found myself this morning. WHY DID IT HAVE TO COME TO THIS!?

Anyway, no more beer. No more whiskey. No more bubbly. As of today, I'm starting the Whole 30 challenge with my wife and, as an enterprising young man, I will be eating much healthier. Like vegetables. Fruits. Meats. Good stuffffffffffff.

Well thank you, sloth! You're an odd spirit animal for someone who's trying to get more active, but I can't resist the irony.

In all seriousness, I am 100% invested in doing the Whole 30 challenge. My wife and I have been doing the research, cleaning out the bad foods from our pantry, and mentally prepping for this day for some time now. If Whole 30 is all it's cracked up to be, we want this be our lifestyle from here on out. From here until the end of Whole 30 (and maybe beyond?), I will periodically be posting about my experience and what we've been eating.

Here's what I had on Day 1:

Breakfast/Lunch:
Orange
Steak (I use this method, except with olive oil. Salt, pepper, olive oil. Easy day)

Snacks:
Pistachios
Grapes
Baby Carrots

Dinner:
Lemon pepper chicken with avocado slices