Happy Sunday!! I hope you’ve all had a great weekend so far! Trav is having a ranch weekend with some of the guys in our church small group, so all of us wives rounded up our kiddos for a staycation. We slept at our friends house the whole weekend and I don’t know why, but it’s so much easier to manage your kiddos when you have another mom there! We did manage to sneak away Saturday night for moms night out. Wohoo!
You guys, Whole30 is basically done! It’s so hard to believe as it actually went by a lot faster and was a lot easier than I thought! I answered some questions below to wrap up my thoughts and then as always I posted the meals we cooked at the bottom of this post. We loved everything we cooked this week and plan on repeating some of them this next week!
Whole30 Wrap-Up:
- What was your favorite thing about Whole30? Man, this is a hard one to answer. My answer is twofold – one thing I have loved is how I’ve felt the whole time. I haven’t felt bloated the entire time I did this. I never really thought I was bloated before, but cutting out sugar, carbs, dairy and alcohol truly does make a massive difference on how you feel. The other thing I have loved is just being back in the kitchen. I love to cook with my husband, but with kids I got in the habbit of doing quick dinners like pasta thinking I didn’t have time to do anything else. But, getting into meal planning has brought a new love of cooking back and given my hubby and I some quality time together. 🙂
- Was it hard to do it when the rest of your family wasn’t? It actually wasn’t. The girls and I always eat breakfast together, so we just ate the same thing – eggs, bacon, avocado, and/or fruit. Lunch I’m usually on my own as I’m working or home with the girls, and then at dinner my husband and I eat after the girls go down to bed. I thought the things I was making might not fill my husband up being that there’s no bread, but he seriously loved every single meal we ate and was full after each meal!
- Was it expensive? Truth be told, it wasn’t that bad. I read tons of blogs before starting this and everyone said your first grocery run would be astronomical, so I was a bit worried. However, we had a lot of things already and the things we didn’t have that we had to spend a little extra on (paleo mayo, ghee, etc.) lasted the entire time so it was a great investment financially and not a waste.
- What will you do now? I’m going to go paleo actually. I have felt so good on whole30 and love that I no longer crave goldfish or gummy bears that I wanted to stay on the right path. I did however really miss red wine, so going paleo will allow me to eat similarly and still have a bit of wine. I have decided that I won’t drink during the week just because my head feels so clear and my body feels so much less bloated without alcohol, so I’ll save that for the weekend! 😉
- Are you going to add anything back to your diet? I guess I kind of answered this in the question above, but I am going to add wine back, but that’s probably all. I will give myself grace when it comes to events like large family gatherings, weddings, etc., and will be okay with having a bite or two of cheese or something.
- Did you lose any weight? I actually did. I lost about 8 lbs. Truthfully, I did this to jumpstart healthy eating habits, but losing weight was a nice little bonus since I had some baby weight I still needed to lose.
WHOLE30 WEEK 4 MEALS:
- SUNDAY: BH&G Sesame-Crusted Roast Chicken – guys, this recipe is delicious! Did you know that buying a whole chicken is super inexpensive? It’s seriously like $6 at Trader Joes to buy a whole chicken, so this recipe is really cost effective. It was delicious, too! A whole chicken obviously makes more than two people can eat, so we got to enjoy leftovers for lunch the next day.
image via Better Homes & Gardens
- MONDAY: BHG Indonesian-Style Beef & [cauliflower] Rice Bowl – this is one of the recipes we’re repeating this week. It was SO good. This dish is pretty hot, so if you don’t necessarily like spicy food then I would recommend leaving the pepper out. We also substituted regular rice for cauliflower rice and my hubby said he couldn’t tell a difference.
image via Better Homes & Gardens
- TUESDAY: Veggie salad made by trav – you guys, these nights just happy. I can’t remember why, but we didn’t get the girls down until late and I had reports to write, so Travis just whipped up a veggie salad with olive oil and red wine vinegar dressing. This is a great thing to do once a week I think to just eat up some of the leftover things you have in your fridge.
- WEDNESDAY: Pork Egg Roll in a Bowl – okay, this is another one that we’ll be repeating this coming week. It was so dang good. It was so good that Travis ate all the leftovers that night, haha. This one is also super easy to do and doesn’t require a lot of ingredients, so if you ever have a night that you need to whip up something quick, this would be the recipe to use! Our grocery store was out of ground pork, too, so we used ground beef and it was just as delicious!
image via Peace Love & Low Carbs
- THURSDAY: Dinner Out – Travis and I had a date night to see Dawes in concert on Thursday so we met some friends at Cane Rosso (a pizza place) for dinner before. Even though I couldn’t eat pizza, I had a salad with mixed greens, tomatoes, onions, and pecans, and no dressing. It’s kind of weird how used to no dressing I’ve gotten. If you need some sort of liquid though, I would recommend using lemon juice!
- FRIDAY: Buffalo Chicken Dip + Kale Salad – Friday night was spent at a friend’s house with two of my girlfriends, so I made this delicious chicken dip below for an appetizer, and we ended up eating the whole thing it was so good. So, it basically became our meal. We did have a little kale salad with a paleo dressing. I don’t have the dressing recipe, but I’ll try and find it if you want it!
image via Life In the Green House
WHOLE30 GIVEAWAY:
I’m thrilled to announce that I’ve teamed up again with my favorite #Whole30Jan bloggers to bring you an AWESOME Whole30 giveaway. Make sure you check out their blogs below and enter to win the Rafflecopter giveaway below!
You can use #Whole30Jan on Instagram to find the bloggers I’m teaming up with on this Whole 30 challenge: Life in the Green House , Taz & Belly, Life Lutzurious, Lauren McBride, Sunflowers & Stilettos, Fleurdille, A Lo Profile, Makeup Life & Love, Two Peas in a Prada, Stilettos & Diapers and Citizens of Beauty.
Our giveaway includes:
$75 Whole Foods gift card
Whole30 Book
Case of RX Bars
Primal Kitchen Whole30 Pack
Clearly Kombucha
Kasandrinos Olive Oil
