Things are crazy right now under our little roof! I’ll explain more later, but let’s just say that when I started the year off on a resolution spree- wanting to take advantage of a fresh start, make changes and try new things- I had no idea that life was about to throw me a curve ball, forcing me to take my idea of a ‘fresh start’ to a whole new level!
Despite life being hectic, things have actually been going fairly well on the resolution front! Our progress with reducing waste has been kind of a two steps forward, one step back sort of thing. Slow and steady, but I’ll take it! Shortly after beginning our mission to reduce waste, we also took on the Whole30 challenge as a family. In a lot of ways I feel like these two goals complement each other nicely – If I am going to reduce waste by making things from scratch, I might as well make Whole30 approved versions – but at the same time, the complete overhaul of our diet threw so many new foods and ingredients at me all at once, I couldn’t quite tackle everything (not while keeping my sanity, anyway). I opted for making whole 30 mayo, ranch, ketchup, muffins (yes, I know there is really no such thing as whole 30 compatible muffins), and ghee while allowing myself to purchase other packaged goods like almond flour, coconut milk, and pickles ( I did make hubby find some in a glass jar rather than the plastic container he originally picked up though – baby steps). I also conquered my fear of bringing reusable containers to use at the deli!!!
I don’t know why, but this was a big one for me. I am not one to rock the boat and I didn’t want to make anyones job harder, but the friendly butcher happily complied and I even got a compliment from the cashier as I checked out. No sideways glances or anything! We haven’t been perfect, but between all of our efforts, we have managed to reduce our waste by at least half!!! At the beginning of the year our trash can was routinely overflowing every week by garbage day, but the past two weeks it has been only half full!!!
I’ve shared a little bit of our whole 30 journey over on Facebook, but haven’t really talked much about it over here. We began the diet a couple of weeks ago, and like our progress with reducing waste it’s been more of a two steps forward, one step back sort of thing. While getting back on track with healthy eating was definitely one of my resolutions for this year, I wasn’t quite planning on going the Whole 30 route until we were at the book store with the girls one weekend and happened to run into Melissa Hartwig, who was there doing a speaking event and book signing! After hearing my sister-in-law rave about her experience doing Whole 30 this past December, I was intrigued and half listed as I helped my kiddos select their books. It sounded interesting and fit overall with the type of whole foods diet I was already wanting to get back on, so I grabbed a copy of her WHOLE30 book as we checked out!
I poured over the book all weekend and decided to start the program the following Monday. The first day was awful for me! I think it was in part due to my overall lack of sleep the week prior, but between my mombie status and taking away my carbs, I was not a pleasant person to be around! Things did get a little better from there though. I finally got some sleep and ended up making three trips to the grocery store that week to restock on healthy snacks (we are eating 3+ dozen eggs a week and I can never buy enough bananas!!!), which improved my mood, but sadly not my stomach. I don’t typically have a lot of stomach problems, but the first week of Whole30 tied my stomach up in knots (my husband on the other hand, who has terrible acid reflux, noticed a pretty quick and dramatic improvement with his issues). After a week of suffering with heartburn, indigestion, and all sorts of other nasty symptoms, It was pretty easy to declare a ‘cheat day’ when my nieces first birthday rolled around on day 6. We ate chips, sandwiches, cake, you name it, and kept the ball rolling by taking the family out to dinner where we continued to indulge. The next morning Hubby was definitely paying for it, but my stomach felt surprisingly better!
As tempting as it was to carry on my good fortune and throw in the towel for good, I actually was enjoying preparing healthy meals at home and knew that getting back on track was in the best interest for the whole family. The next day was back to reality, and except for one little latte, at the grocery store, we stayed pretty well on track throughout the week and my stomach continued to improve! Overall I think we have decided that doing a true whole30 is not in the cards for us right now. We just have too much going on in our lives at this time to stick to it 100 percent, but I can say that as a lifestyle this is generally something that we will be embracing for the long term. For now we are ok with sticking to whole 30 compliment meals at home while allowing ourselves a little freedom every once in a while when we leave the house or attend get togethers. Perhaps, at some point, we will be able to do a true 30 days of compliant meals to get the full experience but for now, we are eating a lot healthier in general and I am proud of our progress!