Hola Mi Gente,
As you may know, Ben and I are powering through our third round of Whole 30 right now. If you’re not familiar with Whole 30, this post is a good reference on what it is, and why we do it. The short version is, it’s a thirty day program that helps us eliminate some foods from our diet, so we can retrain our bodies to eat real, unprocessed food, and gain a healthier outlook on how we feed ourselves.
This being our third round makes it a lot easier because we’ve been able to develop systems, recipes, and tools that work for us to have a successful and satisfying round (after our second round I wrote about things that were helpful to us, you can find that here). After this first week I have a couple of thoughts:
- My cravings are colossal, and a lot of the time they dominate my eating life. It’s been a little challenging to NOT satiate my cravings for pasta, cheese, and wine. However, it feels really good to have the self control to say no.
- Drinking a glass of water before a meal helps me gauge when I’m full sooner, and drinking in between meals makes me less likely to reach for snacks.
- PTL for potatoes. Literally they are saving my day sometimes.
This round, as we navigate through Whole 30, I want to do a meal recap of what we’re eating so you can get a good idea of our day-to-day. Contrary to popular belief, I don’t take pictures of EVERY meal we eat so there are a few missing, but this way hopefully you can see that Whole 30 CAN be delicious, and do-able!
As you might expect, being the breakfast maniac that I am, there are a lot of breakfasts here. Because of the way my days work out, I usually don’t end up eating breakfast until about 10:00-10:30, which means I end up eating a banana or an avocado for “lunch” in between my first meal and dinner. That having been said, most of these breakfasts are super easy, and could be cooked in 15 minutes or less (a lot of times, less!).
Arugula, potato and zucchini pancake with a poached egg, smoked salmon, marinated onions (recipe in my
Burger Toppings Post), and micro greens.
Fried egg in avocado oil, scramble with red potatoes, kale, and beef hotdog + avocado, tomato, and cucumber.
Leftover carne asada,
chirmol, fried egg, and cabbage, tomato, avocado + cucumber salad.
Baby spinach, Paleo Turkey Bacon, kiwi, grapefruit, soft scrambled eggs.
Purple potatoes with sautéed red and green cabbage, fried egg, avocado, and micro greens.
Turkey bacon, red potato, radish, cabbage, and carrot scramble with a poached egg.
Sheet pan to-go breakfasts for the days Ben goes into the office. Purple potatoes, green beans, eggs, and smoked salmon.
For Ben’s lunches (and the miracle days when I eat a whole second meal), I cooked a whole chicken in my instant pot, and kept it to have on salads. I’ve found that making a large batch of a protein, be it a roast, a chicken, or salmon, helps SO much when meal-prepping for work lunches. You want Whole 30 to be as easy as possible. And what’s easier than lunches that take 90 seconds to pack?
Chicken, cucumber, tomato, arugula, almonds, marinated onions + apples, almond butter, and dried mango for snacks on Ben’s in-office work days.
Red and green cabbage, rainbow carrot ribbons, baby kale, arugula, shredded chicken, mandarin slices, shaved almonds, lemon juice and everything but the bagel seasoning. This is one of my favorite salads! The mandarin slices add little flavor explosions to
every other bite.
One of my most famous instagram-stories recipes is always this chicken. Why? It takes 2 ingredients, and it’s SO full of flavor. We ate this with a fried cauliflower rice mix with broccoli, scrambled eggs, carrots, and red cabbage.
One of my FAVORITE new meals this round is this Whole 30 ‘Ramen’. Made with
bone broth, carrot ribbons, cabbage, skirt steak,
and zucchini noodles.
Whole 30 may take away my beloved beans and rice (😭😭😭), but there’s no way we’re making it to day 31 without some of my favorite Latinx sabores. This carne asada was SO good, all I did was sub coconut aminos for the soy sauce in my
drool-worthy-short-ribs marinade, and voila! Also shown, chirmol, cabbage + tomato + cucumber + avocado salad, and plantains.
Ahhh, spaghetti squash, making me miss pasta a little less. Paired with this meat sauce and grated almonds, I almost felt like I was eating the real thing! Also, thanks to my
instant pot, it only took 7 minutes to cook the spaghetti squash (versus 45 mins in the
oven!) 🎉🎉🎉
I hope this round-up was helpful for you as you decide whether Whole 30 is right for you/ Navigate your Whole 30 weeks. If you’re looking for more resources as you prepare, or just as you search for healthier meal options, I have a whole category for Whole 30 related posts that you can find,
here! I’m also cooking a lot on instagram stories and sharing a lot of my tips and tricks there. If you don’t already, you can
follow me there to get the inside scoop!
Love, love, love,
Related
Mary-Beth is a creative, food-obsessed, Georgia transplant living Chicago. She is proudly and fiercely Latina, and more specifically Chapina. In her day to day she is a food educator to students around Chicagoland aged 3 to 80+, both virtually and in-person. She is passionate about cultivating the truth that every person has an understanding of food that deserves being brought to the table, and that time in the kitchen can be sacred, passionate, and an act of love for self and others. Outside the kitchen you can find her at the intersections of infertility, chronic illness, and a deep love for the dignity of all humans. She hopes to create a space that is holistic about the role of food in the social, political, relational, and physiological dynamics of our world.
