Day 10 Update on Our Whole 30 Journey

 The Good

1. The food has been amazing. I feel so good about feeding the kids a variety of colors each day and them actually liking it. They do complain about missing some foods, but it's not as bad as I thought it was going to be. 

2. Nathan and Hailey's eczema has improved. I was too ambitious and introduced Hailey to nuts, (she's allergic to some of them) starting from the safest, ending with the most dangerous. She loves walnuts. I think she's pretty much over the almond allergy, but pistachios and cashews are still inflammatory for her. 

3. My face is less oily at the end of the day and my dry cracked heels are looking and feeling smoother.

4. We've discovered the magic of cacao nibs. Anytime we have fruit, we will add some of these "chocolate sprinkles" for a bit of a crunch and antioxidant boost. The kids actually will eat them plain. I feel like it's an acquired taste because they have grown on me.  

The Challenges

1. Cooking 3 meals a day while homeschooling and having to entertain a 3 year old (with minimal screen time) is time consuming. I am getting better at time management and multitasking. 

2. Keeping the house clean is tough. Every free moment, I'm prepping or sometimes I just need a moment to just put my mind in a vegetative state for literally 5 minutes. 

3. Feeding a finicky toddler new foods is a bit challenging. Unless she is actively helping me prepare the food, Hailey will be very specific about what she wants to eat: peas or avocado, white chicken, chup chup (luckily she's ok with eating whole 30 approved ketchup) and cold (hard boiled) egg. 

Considering this request is only about 30% of the meals, I'm actually pretty ok with her eating this meal. I have canned chicken (or leftover chicken), frozen peas and hard boiled eggs ready to go for those days where the dinner that I just spend so much time cooking just doesn't look appealing to this 3 year old. It's not what I normally do (I am a 1 dinner mom), but she has a heart condition, and she's the 3rd child, I'll make you a different meal while we are going through Whole 30. 

4. Figuring out how much to cook. I feel like before our bodies switched from Carb-burning mode to real food burning mode, we were over-eating because our body was craving the starchy food items. Now, I'm actually pretty satisfied after having 2 sausage patties, instead of the 4 that it took to satiate my hunger. 

Here's a dump of the foods that we've been having the past 10 days. 

Coconut Curry with veggies

Veggie Frittata + apple sauce + coconut milk coffee

Salmon Patties + mashed purple potato + fruit salad

Sausage Patties+ caramelized onions+ roasted okra/beets + sweet potato mash

Fruit salad with cocoa nibs

sausage sweet potato and egg breakfast sausage with roasted fries and avocado

Salmon Patty + sauteed greens + avocado + roasted fries

Sweet potato avocado "toast" apple sauce, fried egg, roasted okra

Chicken chowder

Stuffed peppers

Frittata with too much veggies (most of the kids didn't like it)

Chilli with baked potato

Apple slices + almond butter + cacao nibs 

Pan seared Salmon + salad + roasted beets

Chicken chowder puree + sausage patties + purple sweet potato "toast"

Kalua Pig + Cabbage

Chicken Meatball Soup

Leftovers for breakfast

Bunless burger with all the fixn's + roasted fries

Sweet potato-beet-okra mash + fried egg

Leftover-chilli + broccoli (unusual, but delicious combo)

Pork Ribs + roasted cauliflower + kale chips and left over shrimp

Pan-seared 5 spice pork chops + roasted green bean-purple sweet potato

Riced cauliflower

Chicken Tikka Masala

Sausage patties +caramelized onions + fried egg + spinach, coconut milk, strawberry, mango, banana smoothie (I know, not allowed officially, but I needed to get some spinach into Hailey and this is the easiest way to do it. (otherwise, the food was so rich and I think the smoothie was so refreshing)

Canned Salmon Salad (kids actually said their favorite meal was salad!) 

Make-ahead frittata for the next few days (I put in less veggies this time)

Chanterelle Mushrooms cooked in Ghee

Steak + Coriander Potatoes + roasted Broccoli + Chanterelle Mushrooms 

According to the book today is the day when most people who quit do. We are pushing on and looking forward to the "tiger blood" achievement that comes around day 15. 

Hailey is still craving lots of fruit, and I'm giving it to her as long as she eats a reasonable amount of non-sweet foods. 

Meals are generally pretty filling and the kids have forgone most morning snacks. In the afternoon, we each have a handful of nuts, maybe a small half of a fruit and that usually holds us over until dinner. 

Hailey loves (and really can only have a lot of) walnuts. We also have pistachios and cashews around. 

Day 2-5 Everyone was generally more cranky and irritable. 

Day 5-10 I feel like our bodies have adjusted to the new diet and while we have cravings for sweets and oatmeal, we are able to get over the hump. 

My main concern is whether or not the kids are getting enough calcium and Vitamin D. They normally drank about 8-12 oz. of milk a day and had cheese sticks for snack almost daily. I have noticed that their nails seem to be more brittle, in that they have been complaining of chipped nails, but I'm not sure if that is correlated. 

I'll update again in about 5 days when we supposedly reach "tiger blood" stage.