I’m a big believer in the Whole30 concept and truly believe that reading It Starts With Food changed my eating habits for the better, but I’m so happy that this go-round with the Whole30 is over!
Game night eats
In our fourth week (plus a couple of days to round up to the full 30), we ended up eating a lot of repeats from the previous three weeks, largely due to me being otherwise occupied with the Vancouver International Film Fest. I watched 20 movies over the two weeks of the festival, which didn’t leave a lot of time for grocery shopping and meal prep. We fell back into auto-pilot mode; maintaining the Whole30 principles but sticking with the tried-and-true recipes rather than experimenting with more creative options.
Dinners for the week-and-a-bit included:
- Day 22: Slow cooker pulled pork with some god-awful coleslaw* and roasted spaghetti squash
- Day 23: Turkey meatballs with roasted eggplant and carrots
- Day 24: Grilled lamp lollipops with roasted eggplant and Greek salad
- Day 25: Chicken wings with roasted eggplant, carrots and spaghetti squash
- Day 26: Grilled chicken breast with roasted beets and a use-up-whatever’s-in-the-fridge salad
- Day 27: Asian meatballs
- Day 28: ‘Teriyaki’ (really, coconut aminos and garlic) steak with roasted carrots and Greek salad
- Day 29: Turkey taco lettuce wraps with oodles of avocado
- Day 30: Ginger-lime shrimp, roasted veggies
* Anyone have a Paleo-friendly coleslaw recipe they’d like to share? I basically stirred a bit of apple cider vinegar into some homemade mayo, and mixed that up with storebought shredded cabbage and carrots. The results were less than appetizing.
We had one cheat during this week. Although we scarfed down the steak and veggies on Day 28 before heading to the Canucks game, by the second intermission we were both starving and made the decision to share a White Spot burger, no fries. I can live with that.
I wasn’t trying to lose weight, but did drop about 4 pounds over the course of the Whole30. Although I had intentions of exercising (whaddya mean pinning workout moves and inspirational pictures to Pinterest doesn’t count?), I really didn’t do much beyond two to three short-ish runs each week. But my purple skinny jeans — which I deemed to be my barometer for success — fit a lot better, and I’m sleeping better, so I’m counting that as a win. (I actually took a ‘before’ photo of my muffin top in the aforementioned skinny jeans in case I wanted to illustrate how the Whole30 miraculously gave me six-pack abs in a month, but yeah, since that didn’t happen, you don’t get to see the photo…)
And what was our first stop after the Whole30 ended? Friday night, we headed straight to Earnest Ice Cream where we stocked up on four pints of ice cream: pumpkin pie x 2, cranberry and walnut, and sweet potato casserole. Seriously, Earnest Ice Cream just needs to make turkey flavoured and Brussels sprouts flavoured ice creams, and I’d be ready to serve an all ice cream Thanksgiving menu.
Brain Candy 