Today is the final day of the 30 Whole Days Challenge. While I was not perfect and did not eat whole foods 100% of the time (there were two instances with french fries and a couple of whole wheat bagels), I am more than proud of myself for my ability to stick to the plan. In the summary below you will see some similar themes to my thoughts after one week.

The Good:
Smoothies for breakfast are the best!!! This is a really great thing to have in the morning and really keeps me from being hungry until lunchtime. I managed to even make the time between breakfast and lunch a bit longer without losing my mind. The best thing about smoothies is that you can really just throw a bunch of things together, taste it, and adjust accordingly. I like not having to exactly follow a recipe. My most frequent combination was frozen bananas, rice milk, ground flaxseed, and peanut butter. The only downside to the smoothies is the clean-up.

Not having cheese was not as hard as I thought it would be. I never really craved cheese throughout the 30 days, which surprised me because I have often craved it in the past. I think it is one of those foods, though, that the more you have it, the more you want it, so I guess by cutting it out completely I didn’t want it anymore.

Salads are better if you don’t call them salads. I discovered that I love taking baby spinach and mixing it with salsa. I also like taking a mixture of brown rice and black beans and mixing it with baby spinach. I am just not a fan of the word salad because it makes me think of bland lettuce with a tomato or two. Not so fun.

Cooking can be fun if you take the pressure of yourself to make it perfect. It also helped that I was only making things for me, so if I messed them up, the husband would not starve.

Bananas are awesome. (although I already knew that)

Eating Out. I finally went to eat at Sweet Tomatoes, which was quite good, although a bit pricey for a salad (there’s that word again!) bar. The photo above is the salad that I ate there. I also managed to stay mostly on plan at stir-fry restaurant (the oil was the only thing item not on the approved list).

My husband was quite supportive during the whole thing and although he did get a lot of fast food during the last month, he didn’t try to get me to join in. My two french fry lapses were (1) because I was craving fried food for three days and finally succumbed, and (2) we had to hurry from work to see Glee Live and I made the conscious decision to just grab some french fries.

The Bad:

Cravings. I really craved bread a few times. One time I made a small brown rice flat bread and a couple of times I had a whole wheat bagel. Certainly not unhealthy in either case. There was also the fried food craving I discussed above. I know there are healthy options if you are craving chocolate or bread, but what can you do to stem a fried food craving other than have fried food?

Cooking is exhausting. I already went to the store to buy food for this week and I went back to some old prepared standbys because I am just tired of cooking. For that same reason, I had the same lunch several days in a row. While it is good to use up leftovers, it can also make for boring food.

This challenge made me obsess over food. I don’t like thinking about food all day long, but I really had to with this eating plan, especially early on. I had to make sure I had all the meals and snacks planned out, I had to obsessively check the contents of anything that I bought to make sure there was not added oil, salt, or sweetener. I have been doing a daily photo of myself and nearly all of them from this month were of me holding or eating some kind of food. (see below)

Overall I am glad that I did the challenge, but I do not think that it is something that I care to keep up all the time. Certainly I will be limiting my processed food from now on, but I will be having some. My goal is to find a good balance between the two. Before the challenge I was nearly all processed and during the challenge I was eating nearly no processed. I think that a diet of mostly whole foods with some processed foods is probably a more realistic long term goal for me.

I made it through week one of the 30 Whole Days challenge!* Here are my general thoughts from the first week:

1. Cooking is exhausting and time consuming when you have to prepare everything yourself. I ended up having a lot more spinach salads than I really wanted to this week, just because I was so tired of being in the kitchen preparing things. My tiredness/laziness has given me the chance to come up with some interesting stuff on my own. For example, the concoction above which is baby spinach, peas, and orange slices.

2. I like a lot of fruits and vegetables that I didn’t know that I liked. Among them are mandarin oranges and beets.

3. Smoothies for breakfast are awesome. I’ve tried several iterations, some with spinach, some with just fruit, etc. and they all keep me energized throughout the morning. I haven’t had caffeine in several months, but this gives me the kind of boost that I was used to from coffee. I also like the fact that if I make a large enough portion I can sip on it throughout the morning.

4. I am more dedicated that I thought. My husband got french fries a few times this week and pizza once and I was not at all tempted. I will admit that I did have a sip of his soy Frappuccino from Starbucks, but resisted getting one of my own. I am very excited they have them with soy now.

5. I feel good. I think I am sleeping more soundly (a shift in my work schedule giving me an extra 30 minutes of sleep hasn’t hurt either). I also lost about three pounds this week, which is a nice bonus. Although I would not say I am bursting with energy, I also do not feel lethargic like I did when I was eating so much crap.

There is probably more I am not thinking of, but those are my general thoughts thus far. I think that a week of doing something is not that difficult and the real challenge is still to come the rest of the month.

* Yes, I know that it has been over a week, but I’ve been busy. See #1 above.

Rather than posting all of my food on here each day, I thought I would just post every few days of the challenge and give you the highlights.

Sunday: Day 2

I felt really tired during the middle part of the day and ended up laying in the bed with E and the cats and watching TV for a bit, although I didn’t actually nap. I imagine the tiredness was some kind of withdrawal symptom, but I am not sure.

I spent the rest of the day in the kitchen. I made my own mango salsa! It was a lot of work and I would be must happier to just buy the stuff in the jar, although I did have quite a sense of accomplishment afterward. I chopped jalapeno, onions, mango, and tomatoes, which took forever. Especially because I took one look at the green onion and immediately had to Google “hot to chop green onion.”

Actually, I have been Googling a lot of weird (for me) stuff the past few days and I am sure it is really throwing the auto-advertising program for a loop. They are used to me searching things like “brownie recipes,” and instead I am searching for things like “how to dry roast spices” and “what to do with raw cashew butter.”

Here is the salsa, adorning some asparagus:

In addition to the salsa, I also made some brown rice and black bean burgers (see above) to have for dinner on the following day. The burgers turned out okay, but were too dry. My husband says to add oil next time, but I would like to come up with something better than that solution. The ingredients were just mashed brown rice, mostly mashed black beans, and paprika. What do you think I should add to make them moister?

I also made a few smoothies during the day, one my own concoction that I created for Monday’s breakfast. Here it is:

Oh My Darlin’ Smoothie

Makes one fairly large serving or two regular sized servings.

Ingredients:

4 clementines, peeled and separated
2 cups frozen pineapple chunks
1/2 cup rice (or other non-dairy milk)

What to do:

Blend in food processor or blender until smooth.

The flavor is great, although it is a bit more pulpy (pulpier?) than I would normally like. It was a great pick-me-up for a Monday morning.

Monday: Day 3

Starting off the day with my Oh My Darlin’ smoothie was good. I made the full recipe, so there was a lot of smoothie and it took me awhile to drink it all as I worked. That served to stave off my hunger for a bit longer than it would if I just ate something quickly first thing in the morning.

For lunch I had some leftover mini quinoa burgers, some black beans, and some applesauce. I found myself really hungry a couple of hours later and had a clementine and a Larabar.

On my walk home from work I had a banana because I knew when I got home it was going to take time for me to make my dinner. Typically I get home very hungry, which makes me crabby and quick to grab fast food. By having a pre-dinner snack, I was able to make it through the 25 minutes or so it took to make the dinner without feeling like I was going to faint from hunger. (Yes, I am dramatic when I am hungry).

For dinner I had the aforementioned meal with asparagus pictured above. The mango salsa was delicious, I must say. I ended up cutting the burger into small pieces and mixing it up with the salsa to make the burger more palatable.

Later that evening, I made myself another smoothie for breakfast on Day 4, this time using Happy Herbivore’s Neapolitan Smoothie recipe. I also made my homemade larabar-inspired winniebars.

Rounding out the evening, I stayed up past my bedtime to watch the Blackhawks tie up their series with Vancouver. Go Hawks!

Tuesday: Day 4

Because I stayed too late last night, I was pretty tired this morning, but the smoothie helped wake me up.

For lunch I had some leftover salsa mixed with dry black bean and rice burgers and a banana. It was not very filling, however, and I ended up having two clementines during the afternoon.

On my walk home I had a half of a homemade winniebar. I have not yet had dinner tonight, still trying to cool off from the walk home. (I’m not hungry when I’m hot). I am looking forward to making a peanut butter cup smoothie (only with cashew butter) for my breakfast for tomorrow. I made one on Sunday and it was super yummy.

So far my thoughts on this challenge are that it is a lot of work, even though I am eating a lot of leftovers. I am also finding myself thinking about food all day long, which I don’t really like.

Day one of the 30 Whole Days Challenge went well. I started the day by heading to Whole Foods and Trader Joe’s to stock up on food. On the way, I had a Larabar and some water. I spent some extra time at the stores, trying to find some new things and also checking labels to make sure everything was made from only whole ingredients. Surprisingly, my grocery bill was not much different cost-wise what it normally is when I buy lots of pre-made veggie burgers and similar products. I had thought that by adding so much more fresh produce, the bill would be higher.

When I got home from the store I was starving and ate a banana while I was putting all the groceries away. In fact, I was hungry quite a bit during the day and found myself needing to snack a lot. Luckily I had a fridge full of food so I snacked on mandarin oranges and raisins.

For lunch, I made a salad that included spinach, roasted asparagus, strawberries, and some leftover kidney beans. It was pretty yummy.

Eating whole foods means that things take a long longer to make. Normally a few minutes to heat up a frozen veggie burger becomes a half hour to make the patties, not to mention the cooking time. (Well, it may be faster for other people, but I am new to this and quite slow in making things). As a result, I started making my dinner way before I started getting hungry, so I wouldn’t be starving all of a sudden and tempted to find a quick fix. This is fine for a Saturday, but I am not sure what I will do during the week when I get home from work and am already very hungry.

For dinner, I made this quinoa burger recipe which was given to me by my friend B. It was not difficult to make, thankfully, but did have a lot of steps so it took me a while. I was so happy that it ended up with the right consistency to make into patties. I was a bit worried I would mess it up. The recipe was for eight small patties, so that’s what I made. I wanted to just make fewer larger patties, but then I worried I would not know how long to cook them. I think next time it would be alright, though, to just make a few larger patties, because I did not go by the cooking time in the recipe, and just went by when the patties firmed up.

Along with three of the little patties, I had some more asparagus, some unsweetened applesauce, and some red potatoes.

I had my dinner around 6:00 p.m. and was hungry again a few hours later. At least I think I was hungry. I may have just been feeling that emotional eating twinge on account of the Blackhawks getting badly beaten by the Canucks last night. I had a small handful of raisins and that seemed to do the trick.

This morning (Sunday) I had some steel cut oatmeal with applesauce mixed in and some bananas on top. I made a double serving because the last time I made it, one serving was not enough. Of course, two was too much and I could not finish it all. I had a sensation of not wanting to eat anymore, which I thought meant I was full, but now only half an hour later I feel like eating something else. I am not sure if it is hunger, though, or if I just feel like eating something.