Help! I am about to jump off the wagon...

[CrunchyLutheranMommy]

We just finished Day 6 of our first W30 and I am ready to quit.

 

It's not because of cravings, they really haven't been as bad as I thought they were going to be.  I feel great, I have more energy, my DH looks great, we have been eating all our meals together, my almost 4 year old daughter had four horrid days of sugar withdrawal and now is doing wonderfully... but despite all these benefits I just don't know if it's worth it.  

The biggest thing I'm struggling with is that before we started the W30 we were getting our routine back in order and our lives back on track after the holidays.  We were doing so well.  Things were running really smoothly.  We are in the middle of an adoption and this is a busy time of year for my DH at work, so there's just a lot going on.  But we had a plan and we were doing well!

 

Enter Whole30... this last week has just been survival mode all over again and I can't handle it.  We were in survival mode all last year with DH finishing school, taking a new job, moving, starting the adoption, adjusting to our new life, etc... and I felt like we were finally coming out of that!  But now we're right back where we started.

 

Our entire day now is focused on making meals (I'm nursing so I need FIVE a day!), the kitchen is one heaping mass of chaos all the time.  I can't really simplify meals more than they already are... we had boiled eggs and sweet potatoes for dinner for heaven's sake!  Also, we're just eating what we can afford.  This is expensive and I'm trying to do the best with what we have... which requires MORE thought and MORE preparation.

I am depressed.  I want out of survival mode.  I don't want to relearn good eating habits right now.  I just want to quit and get the rest of our lives in order and then worry about nutrition.  I just can't believe in this moment that super healthy eating trumps everything else in our family life.

So someone give me leave to jump or tell me why I need to keep going with this!

[Tina R]

I hope you hang in there. I would hate to think that you made it through the sugar withdrawls for the family only to give up now. I know it is expensive and I understand. I have been purchasing meat that has been discounted 30 - 50% off at my grocery store. It is not grass fed but it works. I have also been eating a lot of tuna and salmon (including Well Fed's Salmon cakes).

 

Whole30 posted this on the website yesterday. Maybe it will help you . http://whole30.com/2014/01/do-you-really-want-to-quit/

[Guest]

I hope you stick around too. I'm on day 2 and all the meal planning and cooking and washing dishes is making me a bit kooky. But I want this. I need this. I know being a mom and a new one at that has to be even harder. It's not an easy task that we're committing to. It takes perseverance, knowledge, willingness, strength, and telling yourself you're so worth it. I'm with Tina I buy what is within my financial reality and that means huge discounts on a lot of items. Congratulations on being so successful thus far. I hope to see you at the end with me smiling, and if not, I hope to see you.

[CAK911]

Can you deliberately make leftovers at a few meals? We double and triple our food a lot of times when we do cook -- especially for things that go in the oven, that rarely adds much more set up -- just so that we'll have leftovers to eat on other days.

[annabel]

You're in the hardest days right now, it will get easier.  

 

Do you have a slow cooker? - get something easy into it every other day at least. (even if it's just so that you have leftovers for lunch or something to chuck in the freezer so that you'll have a quick dinner another night)

 

Make a big pot of soup that can be part of your veg for several meals.

 

My ultimate easy meal is to throw a few chicken breasts in the oven wrapped in foil for about 25-30 minutes and boil up some carrots, cauliflower and frozen green beans.  I always cut my cauliflower into florets as soon as I buy it so it will take up less room in the fridge, so the carrot is the only real bit of work there is.  And then add some sort of fat (coconut milk and decaf coffee even)

 

But, there's nothing wrong with deciding that this isn't the right time for you to commit to a Whole 30.  Keep your daughter off the sugar, continue to employ some of the Whole 30 principles in your life, and save the proper Whole 30 for when you really have the time and energy to devote to it.  I'd give yourself another week though to see if things fall into place though before you decide to stop.

 

Good Luck.

[Paichka]

The slow cooker, for real.

 

If you're feeling like a slave to the kitchen, have you tried cooking in batches?  Whenever I chop veggies, I always chop more than I need and freeze the extra -- that way when I need a chopped onion or something, I already have baggies of them in the fridge.  Make double or triple servings and freeze the extra -- that way when you can't face another night in the kitchen or things are just chaos, you can take out a container of something compliant and blitz it in the microwave.  That saved my life yesterday -- the hubs and I both work demanding jobs (we're in the Army), and we have two little ones and one on the way, so when I got home at 6:30pm with the 2 year old and the 4 year old whining their brains out (the 38 year old wasn't much better ) for dinner, I grabbed a container of chili I'd made about a week ago and nuked it.  That over a handful of raw spinach was dinner for me and the hubs, while that over spaghetti noodles was dinner for the kids (they aren't fully paleo). 

 

I also love scotch eggs -- I make a bunch of hardboiled eggs, then wrap ground pork or sausage around them (about 4 oz per egg, or just enough to fully cover it), and bake for 20-25 minutes.  That plus some homemade mayo and compliant mustard makes at LEAST one of my meals per day.  I also eat a ton of raw veggies -- carrots, cucumbers, snap peas, etc for my breakfast and lunch meals, just to make it easier on myself.  At least once a week I make a roast chicken or pork butt in the crockpot so we have a bunch of shredded chicken or pork in the fridge -- add some sauce (I love the sunshine sauce from well-fed) and viola, dinner.  I buy a metric ton of frozen steamfresh veggies when they're on sale, so we always have bags of green beans or whatever that I can throw in the microwave.  Meatballs also make a great make-ahead-and-freeze protein source.

 

That said, I also agree with the above that if you want to take a knee on this and come back to it later, there's nothing wrong with that.  Sometimes we have to get other parts of our house in order before we can tackle overhauling how we eat -- but if you can give it a little more time to see if it gets easier, maybe it will. 

 

Good luck!

[CrunchyLutheranMommy]

Thank you everyone for the helpful replies!!  I am doing a lot of these things already, I think it's just going to take some time to get in the groove of it.  DH and I talked about it and I really expected us to decide we couldn't do it right now.  But the more we talked over how wonderful it has been for our daughter the less we felt we could stop.  It is hard, but I'm going to try to reorganize things to make it a little easier the next few weeks.

Those first days were brutal for our almost four year old (thankfully the 18mo is still nursing a ton and this hasn't seemed to affect him at all!) but once we got past that awful phase she is blossoming.  She's a completely different child!  No more tantrums, no mood swings, she's sleeping better at night and she's not turning to food for comfort anymore.  She is such a joyful child to be around, I had no idea that so much of what she was struggling with was food related, I mean I knew some of it was... but not to this extent.

Not to mention she's eating incredibly healthy food and enjoying it!  We just couldn't give that up.  It wouldn't be fair to her.  I don't want her to have to go through retraining all her bad food habits when she's my age.  I would rather it just be second nature always.

Thanks again for the encouragement! Feeling better about making it through our Day 7 today!

[Sarah T]

I bet that over time as you get more used to it any additional time you're spending cooking will be made up for in time saved from not having to deal with poor DD's moods.  

 

That being said, I heartily agree with people who say prep is key. Bake a dozen sweet potatoes all at once - they reheat well. Or chop them, put them in water and into the fridge. Then they are easy to fry up in coconut oil for dinner. Cook a bunch of chicken all at once (same time as the sweet potatoes!) that can be used for dinners later in the week (or lunches or whatever). 

 

I have every faith that you'll find short cuts over time that make this easier.

[Emily]

Being in survival mode stinks; I get it! In September we were 12 days into a W30 when the 1000-year flood hit. We couldn't evacuate the family and dogs and continue on with the W30 and I had no second thoughts there!

 

But we are back again!

 

Are there ways you can make your life easier and keep to the W30 or maybe leave the W30 but still keep the new habits that you are enjoying (your daughter sounds like she has made a big change). 

 

Things that we accept that aren't perfect but we do anyway:

 

--buy "wholly guacamole"(guac in packages) - our kids are more likely to eat salads with guacamole and removing the step of having to make the guacamole helps out.

 

--I haven't been able to find spaghetti sauce in a jar without sugar. (Ridiculous!) I buy and use one with sugar and just accept it. Not perfect.

 

--we are more liberal with Larabars for the kids than is actually W30 approved

 

--I know not everyone can do this. But when we are doing a W30 we relax with our food budget and buy all kinds of "treats" -- Bubbies sauerkraut, different kinds of olives, peppercinis (our kids love these in salads), horseradish (plain, not mixed with anything, but great when mixed with homemade mayo), pomegranates, … things we don't normally buy.

 

I agree with the others too… make as much food as possible whenever you cook! I currently have four spaghetti squash in the oven. The five of us will likely eat half for dinner, leaving half for another day. Roasted veggies can be frozen. Stuffed eggplant can be frozen, so can spaghetti squash spaghetti. This weekend we had two crockpots going - one with a roast and sweet potatoes (all dry in the crockpot, wrapped in foil), one with chili. I still have chili in the fridge now. 

 

You know what is right for you, but--especially if this is your first W30--I hope you power on. At the same time, survival mode is miserable. It is a big focus of mine to stay *out* of survival mode. Good luck to you!

[JJB]

 

--I haven't been able to find spaghetti sauce in a jar without sugar. (Ridiculous!) I buy and use one with sugar and just accept it. Not perfect.

 

 

Do you have Costco in Colorado? I buy Kirkland brand marinara...no sugar!

[cleverhandle]

Rao's Marinara appears to be compliant too.

[bookluvingbabe]

So is Muir Glen's canned sauce.

[Paichka]

Canned sauce is a great option -- it's generally cheaper and you can add your own spices.  We buy Rao's when it's on sale, otherwise I just go spice-crazy on the canned stuff (added chopped onion, garlic, basil, oregano, etc -- sometimes a hit of balsamic) and call it a day.