BlueKoala

Baby Bear, I *love* the chicken and apple sausage! Actually, I love all Aidell's stuff, but IIRC the chicken and apple is the only one that is W30-compliant, or at least it was the last time I looked at their product labels. Day 2. Digestion has settled down (wasn't having any major problems, just some grumbles here and there). M1/2: Three egg omelet, spinach, scallions, guacamole. Until I was typing this out, I hadn't realized that I didn't eat lunch today. Breakfast was a little late because I slept late, then I got busy in the afternoon and forgot to eat. M3: Giada de Laurentiis's Garlic Citrus Chicken with roast potatoes and broccoli. This is one of our favorite recipes for when our orange and lemon trees are producing a lot of fruit, as they are doing right now. My lunch for this week is going to be Well Fed Weeknights' Dirty Rice. It is already made and my lunch for tomorrow is packed. I'm also making the salmon cakes from It Starts With Food - the mix is chilling in the fridge right now and I'll make the cakes and put them in the oven in just a bit. The rest of our week's meals have been planned out, written down, and shopped for, so I'm feeling very accomplished. My NSV today, which has nothing to do with food or mood or health or anything else like that, is that I finally managed to pack away the Christmas ornaments and put the tree out by the curb. YAY! I think I spent more time dreading this process than I did actually doing it.

Day 1 of the W30, Day 10 without junk food or Diet Coke. Mood is good, no cravings, not tired, and I'm happy to be back on track. M1: Two hard boiled eggs. We were running an errand and I needed something fast to eat in the car. M2: WFW's Tex Mex Skillet with salsa and guacamole. M3: Aidell's chicken and apple sausage with peppers, onions, kale, and tomatoes. We had no leftovers, everybody in the family scarfed it down. I need to do some meal planning tomorrow and some cooking too, so I can stay on track this week. I do have to travel a bit for work on Monday - nothing too far, just an hour or so out of town for a business event, and I do know where the Chipotle is over there, but I'd rather bring my own food with me if I can. Hope everybody else is hanging in there and having a good weekend.

Day 9, but I'm going to have to reset tomorrow. M1: Three egg omelet with smoked salmon and spinach, one banana M2: Leftover chicken with potatoes and parsnips. M3: Dinner out with family involving heartfelt discussion of difficult family issue that suddenly came up today. (Nothing OMG-we're-doomed, just....stuff to talk about.) Restaurant was excellent, I picked food that was probably pretty much compliant, but I also wound up having some wine (was thinking about sparkling water on the way over but the wine was on the table when I arrived and it was good), so, yeah, I get to start over tomorrow. On the one hand, I definitely could have committed fully to W30 in this circumstance and I chose not to. On the other hand...the situation in which I am inadvertently thrown into a family thing in an excellent French restaurant with a carafe of wine in front of me is not one I am likely to be facing on a daily basis. I'd be more worried if I had to restart because I ate a bag of Cheetos or a can of Diet Coke from the break room at work (because seriously, those suckers are there all day every day). So despite this setback, I still have to say that I am making progress, and I'm in a better place today than I was on January 2. Back on Day 1 tomorrow. Excelsior!

Day 8. No idea if my pants are tighter or not, today I wore a knit dress specifically to avoid considering this issue, and tomorrow I am wearing leggings, so there. M1: Two HB eggs, one banana. M2: A giant bowl of more leftover chicken with potatoes and parsnips. Still not tired of it, which is good, because I still have a serving left. M3: Another late day at work, so dinner was Instant Pot salmon filet with a little (compliant) brown mustard and a side of sauteed spinach. Simple, fast, good. This is the kind of habit I need to be getting myself into - as fun as it is to plot out menus and spend some time putting meals together in the evening, sometimes I just come home tired with no ideas or energy to spare and want to put some food in my face in a hurry. Last night I went to bed at about 8:30 PM and slept for 9 hours. It was lovely. I'm sleeping a lot longer than before I started the W30 - not sure if I've been sleep-deprived all along or if this is just part of my body's adjustment process and will even out eventually. For now, I'm just going with it.

Day 7. I still need a nap. M1: Compliant smoked salmon, homemade mayo, capers. Capers are a vegetable, right? M2: Leftover chicken with potatoes and parsnips. Snack: Almonds again, but not so many as yesterday... M3: Not very hungry tonight, so I made myself some more cauliflower and sweet potato pilaf, and had it with a hardboiled egg and some sparkling water. One week down, go me. I seriously may go to bed early tonight, I'm just wiped.

The absence of alcohol might be relevant for me, as well, because I do love wine even though I know it's not really good for me. Although last time when I was doing W30 reintroductions I noticed that my heart rate jumped up noticeably after I added dairy back into my diet, so I suppose it could be anything. (Stalking my health signals on Fitbit is just so mesmerizing, for some odd reason.)

...also, I really like your cardinal salt-and-pepper shakers.

Re the pictures: do you log into the forum from your phone to upload them? I love looking at pictures and it seems only fair that I use some, but I'm kinda techno-challenged...

Day 6! (And I do need a nap, even though my Fitbit is giving me great grades on my sleeping patterns) M1: Two hardboiled eggs. Which I cracked open on my car's gear shift and ate in the convenience store parking lot while my car was gassing up, stashing the shells in a sandwich bag, because I'm classy like that. M2: Leftover pork roast chopped up and mixed in with the leftover butternut squash. M3: Chicken Thighs with Parsnips and Potatoes, in the Instant Pot. Again, these came out really nicely (I have yet to have a bad recipe from the Whole 30 Slow Cooker!) The chicken is covered with lemon slices, which I thought would have to be removed before eating, but instead they just fell apart into tangy citrus deliciousness. Maybe next time I will add a second lemon. Snack: Probably way too many almonds, but work was crazy so I got home late, and then my Instant Pot took its sweet time coming to pressure, and I was hungry and trying to stave off disaster. (WHY has my teen not finished off the *&^% Ritz crackers from New Year's??? There they were, sitting on the counter, making me think forbidden thoughts. So I had some almonds instead.) Tomorrow's meal plan calls for us to clean out the leftovers from the fridge, and we have plenty. So instead of doing my usual evening veggie-prep, I made more hard-boiled eggs. For some mysterious reason, all the ones I made last week have disappeared.... I'm eating plenty, sleeping well, but still feeling a bit indefinably under-the-weather. Very proud of myself for how well I'm doing but trying not to get too cocky. Still have to get past Days 10 and 11... BTW, I signed up for Melissa's daily text messages and I am finding them really helpful. External accountability is important for me (if you are familiar with Gretchen Rubin's Four Tendencies, I am a classic Obliger) and I like getting the little happy GIFs from her after I indicate that Y, I did stick with the Whole 30 today. Highly recommended.

I have noticed similar drops in my Fitbit heart rate when I do the W30. Not sure if it's the lower carbs or what, but it's kinda freaky to consider that what I eat can affect how rapidly my heart beats.

You are absolutely right. I am getting so much more done - not so much of that "oh crap I just wasted a whole evening doing nothing" feeling - and I'm going to bed earlier, which is making a huge difference, although I'm still not getting up as early as I'd like. Baby steps.... Day 5 (so I'm on the safe side of the thing-killing; rest assured that no things were killed in the making of this post) M1: Three hard-boiled eggs and a handful of almonds. I definitely need to raise my breakfast game, but you know what, as long as I'm putting W30-compliant stuff in my face in the morning, it's all good (for now, anyway). M2: Leftover BRCC chicken again. I was so full I couldn't finish all the veggies, so I left them in the office fridge as a possible snack for tomorrow. M3: The Whole 30 Slow Cooker's Short Ribs with Cauliflower-Sweet Potato Pilaf. Wow, this was good - everybody in my family loved it - and I have to say that eating like this on a weeknight (a Monday, no less) felt pretty decadent. All I had to do in the morning was put everything in the crock pot, and at the end of the day it took me maybe 15 minutes to make the pilaf and render down the sauce. The riced cauliflower-sweet potato mix came premade from the frozen vegetable aisle at the supermarket, so the only veggies I had to chop were the carrots and onions that went in with the ribs. Not sure why I am doing so much with the Whole 30 Slow Cooker book this time, but the recipes have been great so far. My usual W30 go-to is Well Fed Weeknights, which is a book I absolutely adore, but it's nice to try some new recipes, and it's really nice walking in the door to a house that smells like dinner. Tomorrow I am trying Chicken Thighs with Parsnips and Potatoes - I think I'll probably wind up making it in the Instant Pot after I get home since I just took the chicken out of the freezer a half hour ago, but I'm still going to peel and chop the veggies up before I go to bed tonight. Doing it last night was like a signal to my brain that "This is important - you are going to stick with this." Have a great evening, everybody

Day 4. (Spoiler: I did not kill any of the things. I did not even want to kill anything.) M1: Three egg omelet with some compliant smoked salmon, spinach, the leftover scallions from last night, and a dab of my homemade mayo (an impulse add). Not sure mayo and omelets really go together, but mayo and smoked salmon does, and I was hungry, so I ate all of it. M2: Leftover Blue Ribbon Country Captain Chicken with leftover cauliflower rice pilaf. My husband also had this for lunch, he liked it so much, so I'm thinking I probably need to add the recipe to our weekly household meal rotation. M3: Roast pork tenderloin and butternut squash (from The Whole 30 Slow Cooker). The butternut squash came out beautifully, but the pork roast was a little dry - still good, though. Tomorrow's breakfast will probably involve some of the leftover butternut squash, and I'm going to bring the last of the BRCC Chicken with me to work for lunch. (My husband can't have it; I made it and that means it's MINE, bwa-ha-ha.) Tomorrow's dinner is Whole 30 Slow Cooker braised short ribs with cauliflower-sweet potato pilaf and I already chopped up all the veggies, so all I need to do tomorrow AM is throw everything in the crock pot and turn it on. So far, my mood is fine. It's kinda surprising to me how much more I get done in the evenings now that I have to sit down with lemon water or LaCroix or tea instead of wine; instead of parking myself in the recliner all evening with a book or my laptop, I find myself thinking, "eh, you know what, maybe I'll just go put the laundry away, then." Hmmm.

Oh, great, I just looked up the timeline and Kill All The Things starts tomorrow. (I know, I know, the timeline isn't gospel, but....) I can get through this, she said brightly to herself.

Day 3. M1: Another three-egg omelet with spinach, mushrooms, tomato, and guacamole. (I'm one of those people who can eat the same thing day after day after day. It takes me a long time to get bored with a meal that's working for me.) I also had some leftover roast potatoes from New Year's Day. Snack: Some almonds and dried apricots. M2: WFW's Tex Mex Skillet again, with salsa. I still have another lunch-sized serving of this in the freezer that is going to be a work lunch some time this week. (I almost forgot to eat lunch today! It was 1:30 and I wasn't feeling hungry but I was also so sleepy I couldn't keep my eyes open. Then I thought, "Wait a minute, it's been six hours since breakfast! I need to eat!") M3: Well Fed's Blue Ribbon Country Captain Chicken, with cauliflower rice pilaf. I've never made the chicken before, but it was excellent, and the cauliflower rice pilaf is one of my favorites. Exercise: Long walk on the beach this morning. I sat down and plotted out my meals for the next few days and then I went grocery shopping. January is a crazy work month for me so I'm going to take full advantage of my slow cooker and my Instant Pot as I clean out the meat stores from my freezer.

Not in Cleveland, but good luck!