Whole 30 Rambo Style

[Gamma Rambo]

So, Hubby Bo and I started our first W30 yesterday, March 2. Day one went pretty good.

 

Bo was exhausted from a tough stressful workweek followed by an overnight trip out of town. He laid on the couch most of the day recovering from cortisol/adrenaline overload. I took a stab at a "Weekly Cookup" as described in WF.  I browned 3 lbs of ground beef with a pound of diced liver mixed in (  shhh, don't tell Bo!) and a pound of ground lamb. I also had my first successful incidence of homemade mayonnaise creation (huzzah for the new food processor!!!) and got so excited about it that I made a second batch and then mixed up some tuna salad.

 

Today I ate a good breakfast @6:00 and was full when I finished, but now it is 9:30 and my brain is screaming "hungry" at me. I don't believe it, though. I think it is a combination of habit and boredom - my old pattern was to snack at my desk all day, I think mostly because my job is occaisionally a little dull. So I am determined to hold out until 11 before I dig in to my lunch.

 

 

Day one log:
 

Breakfast - scrambled eggs in lard with diced carrots, seasoned with clarified butter, garlic powder, and Tim's Smack yo Mama Hot Spice blend

 

Lunch - breakfast leftovers

 

Dinner - Chicken, broccoli, cauliflower, and carrots stir-fry seasoned with garlic, onions, and coconut aminos

[Gamma Rambo]

Day two is in the books - mild sugar hangover symptoms, and I woke up at about 2 a.m. this morning and couldn't get back to sleep, but otherwise still feeling pretty good about this (so far).

 

Day two food log:
 

Breakfast - scrambled eggs in coconut oil with broccoli, seasoned with cumin, coriander, clarified butter, and chili powder
 

Lunch - Chicken, broccoli, cauliflower, and carrots stir-fry leftovers (Bo),

celery boats with tuna salad and a can of wild-caught sardines in olive oil (Gamma) (probably too much protein not enough vegetable)

 

Dinner - taco salad: Ground beef with a little chopped liver, heated in lard with fire-roasted tomatoes, homemade salsa, cumin, garlic powder, paprika, and chili powder served over a bed of mixed greens and spinach tossed in homemade mayonnaise.

 

Day three so far:

Breakfast - scrambled eggs in coconut oil with broccoli, seasoned with cumin, coriander, clarified butter, and chili powder
Snack - YAWP! bar (flavor "Naked") (I need to learn to eat more at breakfast to fix this mid-morning hunger problem)

 

[Gamma Rambo]

Well, day four has dawned and we are a bit ahead of schedule according to the timeline. Bo woke up this morning nauseated and with "bathroom troubles" and could not even eat his sweet potato and scrambled eggs. I am just .... so ... tired. I think my body just caught on to the fact that I am expecting it to make energy the "hard" way, from fat and protein instead of sugar, and it isn't going to get the little emergency cafe mocha that it is used to on drag-my-butt mornings.

 

Day three log:

 

Breakfast - scrambled eggs in coconut oil with broccoli, seasoned with cumin, coriander, clarified butter, and chili powder
Snack - YAWP! bar (flavor "Naked") (I need to learn to eat more at breakfast to fix this mid-morning hunger problem)

Lunch - leftover taco salad over mixed greens, celery sticks stuffed with tuna salad

Dinner - deconstructed hamburger salad over mixed greens with homemade ranch dressing (WF), seasoned with Pepper Plant sauce and crushed garlic, with garlic mashed cauliflower from NNP.

 

Day four so far:

 

Breakfast - two small baked sweet potatoes with clarified butter, cinnamon, and nutmeg, plus 3 eggs scrambled with garlic powder and salt then topped with oregano, basil, and chives.

Packed for lunch - leftover ground beef and mixed greens with ranch dressing (small portion, I didn't cook enough to have the right amount of leftovers, learning experience) plus celery sticks stuffed with tuna salad and a YAWP! bar (Coconut Chai flavor)

[Physibeth]

Welcome to the W30!

 

I would advise you to try to avoid the YAWP bars as they are mostly dates (from what I can tell) and therefore sugar bombs. Especially if you are having sugar cravings. These are like Larabars and should be treated as emergency food. So it is ok to stash one in your purse for those "OMG I could eat a raw horse and I can't get my hands on any food" moments but don't plan for them.

 

Glad to see some starchy vegetables in your meals today...this will definitely help with the energy.  

[Gamma Rambo]

GTG, Physibeth - I will just keep them in my wall locker along with my "emergency protein" tins of sardines.

 

So, day four came and went and we feel mostly pretty okay. My husband's "tummy troubles" are gone for now and he enjoyed breakfast this morning as much as I did. This has been his struggle - he has been a breakfast-skipper his whole life. But now he's starting to enjoy it. I think it makes him feel a little pampered that I am willing to cook for him while I still have sleepies in my eyes and haven't had coffee yet.     

 

I'm still feeling a bit tired and run down, but not at all as bad as yesterday. Whoo hoo!

 

Day four log:

 

Breakfast - two small baked sweet potatoes with clarified butter, cinnamon, and nutmeg, plus 3 eggs scrambled with garlic powder and salt then topped with oregano, basil, and chives.

Lunch - leftover ground beef and mixed greens with ranch dressing (small portion, I didn't cook enough to have the right amount of leftovers, learning experience) plus celery sticks stuffed with tuna salad and a YAWP! bar (Coconut Chai flavor)

Dinner - Bo ate his "leftovers" from the breakfast ... actually his whole breakfast was left over, because he was too nauseated to eat any of it. I had a big pile of tuna salad on an even bigger bed of spinach and mixed salad greens.

 

Still not sleeping well. I guess it's reasonable that 30+ years of chronic insomnia isn't going to go away quickly with just a week of problem-food elimination. I did get Bo to turn the thermostat down to 68 last night, that helped some (at least all the times I woke up I was able to go back to sleep faster).

 

Day 5 so far:

Breakfast - 3-egg omelet filled with fire-roasted tomatoes, seasoned with basil, oregano, and garlic powder.

Packed for lunch (and dinner) - ground beef with a little added liver mixed with more fire-roasted tomatoes, seasoned with oregano and cumin, plus butternut squash seasoned with clarified butter, cinnamon, and allspice.

 

 

I have two "quasi-challenges" coming up. Tonight I have to go straight from work to a ministry team meeting and won't be home until late - and the restaurant where the meeting is being held is a sandwich shop that doesn't have anything compliant on the menu that sounds palatable to me (a plain salad with no cheese and no dressing would be technically compliant, but not very filling  )

 

And then tomorrow night I am having friends over for dinner.

 

THE PLAN:

 

For tonight, I just packed a double portion of my lunch - so I have enough beef/tomato mix and enough butternut squash for two meals. And if that turns out to not be quite enough to get me through, I added three celery boats stuffed with sunbutter. I'll just eat all of that before I enter the restaurant, and then have water with lemon when I get there. Luckily even though the meeting is held at a restaurant, there is no particular pressure to eat there - most people choose to, but some don't. Whew!

 

For  tomorrow night (entertaining) my menu is:

 

NY Strip Steaks (Bo is in charge of these, he is the family steakmaster!)

~and three of the nummiest sounding pages out of WF:

Velvety Butternut Squash

Coconut Almond Green Beans

Berries with Whipped Coconut Cream

[Gamma Rambo]

Day five was exhausting, but I survived. I don't think the food had anything to do with the exhaustion, it was just a "life happens" kind of day.

 

The plan that I had made to get through the restaurant meeting worked like a charm. The meeting happened in a town about two hours away from my home (closer to my work) so I went there straight from work because going home first didn't make sense. The downside to that was that I was in town three hours before the meeting started, with nothing in particularly to do. The upside - this distant town has my nearest Whole Foods Market.

 

So I shopped there, scored some early-season asparagus  and Brussels sprouts and also picked up a super-soft bamboo-blend sleep mask. I have no idea what happened to my lovely old satin one, but a poorly placed streetlamp in my neighborhood, combined with not-entirely-lightproof curtains and hubby's insistance on being able to see the digital clock, makes a totally dark sleeper cave into a non-option. Sleep masks are my best option for now, so I am always on the hunt for a comfortable one that doesn't squeeze my head too tight or slip out of position and render itself useless at 1 a.m. when I need it most!

With an hour and a half still to kill, I found a craft store and wandered about, looking at great swatches of fabric and amazing colors of paracord (I bought several yards of neon lime green!). That was enough to keep my mind occupied and away from cookies and milk until it was time to head back to my car and eat my pre-packed meal 3. I love it when a plan comes together - the meat/tomatoes and celery/sunbutter portions I packed were so filling that I didn't even have room for the butternut squash.

 

The meeting ran late, and then I had a two hour drive back home, so by the time I had put away the groceries and unwound a bit, I got to bed more than two hours past my regular bedtime. I really don't like doing that - I've fought with this insomnia demon for so long that I really jealously guard my bedtime and waketime routines, but ... life. Luckily major interruptions like this only come up two or three times a years.

 

Bo woke up this morning with the tummy troubles again, severe nausea. He has decided to give up coffee, he thinks that has something to do with it. Or at least, he is going to be serious about following the recommendation to wait until AFTER meal 1 before coffee.

 

Day five food log:

 

Meal 1 (6 a.m.) - 3-egg omelet filled with fire-roasted tomatoes, seasoned with basil, oregano, and garlic powder.
 

Meal 2 (11:30 a.m.) - ground beef with a little added liver mixed with more fire-roasted tomatoes, seasoned with oregano and cumin, plus butternut squash seasoned with clarified butter, cinnamon, and allspice.

Dinner (6 p.m.) - ground beef/liver w/ fire-roasted tomatoes and celery sticks stuffed with sunbutter (Gamma)
             ground beef and mashed cauliflower (Bo)

 

Day 6 so far:

 

Meal 1 - three eggs scrambled with salt, pepper, and chives, served over a bed of mixed brocolli/cauliflower/carrots seasoned with clarified butter and seasoned salt.

 

Packed for meal 2 - tuna salad over a bed of mixed greens, butternut squash with clarified butter, cinnamon, and allspice (Gamma)
                                ground beef w/liver over mixed greens (Bo)

[Gamma Rambo]

Day 6 went great - both Bo and I felt good all day, lots of energy. I slept better last night, as well - still woke up several times during the night but felt pretty good when I woke up at 5. I did a few things, ate breakfast, and then ... crashed like a Harrier. Took an almost two hour nap. I'm up and mostly functional now, but that magic energy from yesterday seems to be gone, I'm making myself do some work and cooking but I really feel like going full-on couch potato for the rest of the day. In happier news, my "Slow Cooker Roast Chicken and Gravy" from NNP is just finished up and it smells amazing!

 

Day 6 Food Log:

Meal 1 - three eggs scrambled with salt, pepper, and chives, served over a bed of mixed brocolli/cauliflower/carrots seasoned with clarified butter and seasoned salt.

 

Meal 2 - tuna salad over a bed of mixed greens, butternut squash with clarified butter, cinnamon, and allspice (Gamma)
                               ground beef w/liver over mixed greens (Bo)

 

Meal 3 (aka the "Well Fed Dinner Party") - NY strip steak seasoned with Ras el Hanout, Velvet Butternut Squash, Coconut Almond Green Beans, and Berries with Whipped Coconut Cream

It is a really good thing that Melissa Joulwan's recipe for Caramelized Coconut Chips only made a very small batch. I used most of them as described on the berry desert, but I did have a few leftovers and I did nibble. If there had been more than just an ounce or so left over, that could have quickly turned into food-with-no-brakes for me. I don't think I will make those again during this W30 ... wow! Talk about too much temptation!

 

Day 7 so far:

 

Meal 1 - Three hardboiled eggs mushed up with olive oil mayo (Gamma)
            Scrambled eggs with mixed broc/caul/carrots (Bo)

Meal 2 - ground beef w/liver and fire-roasted tomatoes, leftover coconut almond green beans 
 

[Gamma Rambo]

Slow and steady improvement - I am still not sleeping all the way through the night, but it does seem easier to fall back to sleep after my 2 or 3 middle-of-the-night random wakeups. Bo and I both woke up refreshed this morning, and with appetite.   

And Michelle Tam's (NNP) recipe for Slow Cooker Roast Chicken and Gravy is the bomb - even though I couldn't get my paws on any compliant fish sauce and had to sub in coconut aminos. Every grocery in town including the Whole Foods two hours away has fish sauce with either "sugar" or "evaporated cane juice" in it. I guess it is time to do another Amazon order.

 

Day 7 Food Log:

 

Meal 1 - Three hardboiled eggs mushed up with olive oil mayo (Gamma)
            Scrambled eggs with mixed broc/caul/carrots (Bo)

Meal 2 - ground beef w/liver and fire-roasted tomatoes, leftover coconut almond green beans 

 

Meal 3 - Slow cooker roast chicken and gravy, leftover butternut squash with clarified butter and allspice

No random hunger or snack-attacks at "off meal" hours, whoo hoo!!!!!!!!

 

And the carcass from the roast chicken, along with some chicken necks and feet from my amazing local rancher and a bunch of onion/celery/carrot scraps that I've been accumulating in the freezer are in the pot becoming stock. My house smells great! I've been making and canning homemade chicken stock for a long time, so this isn't "new news," but it still makes me super happy every single time.

 

Day 8 so far:

Meal 1 - Baked sweet potato with clarified butter, cinnamon, and ground cloves
Meal 2 - leftover roast chicken and gravy on a bed of mixed greens/spinach

 

After church today it will be time for another "weekly cookup" - can the stock, pre-cook some ground beef, more mayonnaise and probably tuna salad, more clarified butter (I want to try the Better Butter from WF2), and I don't know what all else.

 

In unrelated (well, it is food related but I won't eat it for months) news --- our garden seed starts are up. We have dozens of itty bitty broccoli sprouts, lots of pickling cucumbers, and just a few of the teeny spinach sprouts have poked their little heads up. I need to get my onion sets into the ground soooooon!!!!
 

Bo figured out my "secret ninja trick" with the liver hidden in with the ground beef, but he doesn't mind. He knows it's healthy, he said as long as I hide it in chili or in ground meat like that so that he can't taste it he doesn't care if I sneak it in on him. 

[Gamma Rambo]

Day 9 has dawned, the sun is out, the weather is mild, and I'm feeling GREAT.

 

Still woke up twice during the night and then about 4:30 so I didn't bother trying to go back to sleep (my alarm goes off at 5)

 

Day 8 food:

 

Meal 1 - Baked sweet potato with clarified butter, cinnamon, and ground cloves
Meal 2 - leftover roast chicken and gravy on a bed of mixed greens/spinach

Meal 3 - hamburgers with mustard/garlic brussels sprouts (from WF2)

 

Day 9 so far:

 

Meal 1 - scrambled eggs with fire-roasted tomatoes

Meal 2 - tuna salad on a bed of mixed greens/spinach and some leftover butternut squash

[sweetcee]

Hi Gemma!  Your meal planning sounds great.  I've never made the NNP roast chicken- I've never cooked a whole chicken before, but that recipe is so tempting...

 

I eat a lot of meals on the go (I consult at multiple schools and have a weird schedule), so I am always on the hunt for awesome recipes that I can eat cold, in my car, super classy-style..  Big salads are not my favorite, as I'm allergic to so many things that make 'em taste great, but I am obsessed with meatballs.  They pack so well and my favorite recipe tastes even better cold, in my opinion.  I do ground beef, sun dried tomatoes, spinach (that I chop up in the food processor), 2 eggs and some cashew meal or coconut flour, along with Italian seasoning and red pepper flakes.  Sometimes I eat them with tomato basil sauce, but they're great without as well.  Just in case you ever get "stuck" again!

 

 

-Christine

[Gamma Rambo]

Day 10. Weather still gorgeous - I woke up cranky today for no reason at all, but I got a lot better on my ride in to work (call me crazy but I love my hour-long commute!) The sun rose at my back as I was coming over the bridges ... life is good!

 

Bo's tummy is back on track. It seems to be every other morning that he is too nauseated to eat. If it happens again I'm going to suggest that he take it to work and eat it at his desk - maybe he will be better able to keep food down at 7:30 than he is at 5:30.

 

I am still sleeping poorly. I had my last glass of water (with original flavor Natural Calm) last night right after dinner, I was done with it by 7:30 p.m. but I still woke up three times during the night to go to the head. Tonight I will try to be done drinking by 6:30 to see if that helps. I don't know what else to try at this point - I've got the sleep mask, got the earplugs, got the routine (same bedtime every night, same wakeup every morning, same wind-down routine, etc. etc. etc....), got the "no electronics in the bedroom" rule covered, got the magnesium both oral and transdermal. The more I implement every good sleep hygiene habit I've ever heard of, the more frustrating it is to have another night of interrupted sleep.

 

Day 9 Foods:

Meal 1 - scrambled eggs with fire-roasted tomatoes

Meal 2 - tuna salad on a bed of mixed greens/spinach and some leftover butternut squash

Meal 3 - grilled pork chop seasoned with Ral el Hanout (WF), brocolli/cauliflower/carrots sauteed in clarified butter

 

Day 10 so far:

Meal 1 - three hard-boiled eggs mashed up with homemade mayo (I couldn't finish it all, ate about 3/4 of it and got queasy)

Meal 2 - leftover steak, mixed greens with the rest of the HB eggs/mayo on it, plus some extra mayo, an apple

 

My research project for the rest of this week is to pre-decide what we can order off of the Ruby Tuesday restaurant menu. We have a long ride this Sunday out to meet a new sister chapter of our motorcycling organization. This requires a big healthy breakfast, and we will still be hungry when we get to the restaurant (it's three hours to get there, and then we will ride with them until about 1:30 p.m. before we stop to eat) and lunch is going to require more than just greens off the salad bar or we won't make it home safely. Off to the internet I go!

[Gamma Rambo]

Christine, those meatballs sound WONDERFUL!

[Gamma Rambo]

Wow, it's been a crazy couple of days! I'm still here, though. All is going well, still have some sleep disturbances but they appear to be slowly improving. My normal pattern is to have moderate-to-severe insomnia every night for two or three months, get steadily stupider and crankier until I feel like I'm going to become a danger to society, and then crash and burn and sleep like the dead one night, wake up the next morning feeling like steaming dog poop (? yeah. always. dunno.), and then sleep pretty well for a few weeks until the cycle starts over. I may be approaching that crash point now, hard to tell.

 

Bo is feeling pretty good, overall, but he is not sleeping real well either here lately.

 

In any case, the past few days:

 

Day 10:

Meal 1 - three hard-boiled eggs mashed up with homemade mayo (I couldn't finish it all, ate about 3/4 of it and got queasy)

Meal 2 - leftover steak, mixed greens with the rest of the HB eggs/mayo on it, plus some extra mayo, an apple

Meal 3 - Chicken split breasts with leftover gravy from Slow Cooker Roast Chicken, asparagus

 

Day 11:

Meal 1 - scrambled eggs with butternut squash

Meal 2 - leftover chicken, salad

Meal 3 - seasoned ground beef served warm over mixed salad greens

 

Day 12:

Meal 1 - tuna salad in celery boats

Meal 2 - Sardines, leftover butternut squash

Meal 3 - Beef stew (stew meat dredged in coconut flour w/cumin, cardamom, and garlic and browned, then cooked w/carmelized onions, carrots, sweet potato chunks, and apple chunks in beef bone broth)

 

Day 13 so far:

Meal 1 - scrambled eggs w/carrots

Meal 2 - leftover beef stew

[Gamma Rambo]

Another gorgeous day. Bo and I took a ride out through some twisty back roads to clear our heads. I am getting on into the "stupid" stage of sleep-loss, but he is keeping me from going completely off the deep end. Like last night, I meant to roast a whole chicken for dinner. So yesterday morning, I went into the freezer and took out two packs of ground meat for today's chili, and what I thought was a whole chicken.

 

That was not a whole chicken. It was a package of assorted necks and backs that I bought specifically to make stock with. 

 

So I used one of the packs of ground beef and took another one out for the chili. But that is just the kind of silly frustrating mistakes I am now making regularly, a month into nightly disrupted sleep. 

 

In happier (foodier!) news ... our baby broccoli sprouts are developing their first sets of true leaves. The pickling cucumbers are almost ready to transplant into bigger pots. And the Cherokee Purple tomato sprouts are going CRAZY, I expect them to start yelling "feed me, Seymour" any day now.

Other than the sleep deprivation and stupititude that goes with it, I feel REALLY healthy.

 

Day 13:

Meal 1 - scrambled eggs w/carrots

Meal 2 - leftover beef stew

Meal 3 - meatballs in "lazy cook's marinara" (two cans of diced fire-roasted tomatoes, simmered for half an hour, with a few Tbsp. of tomato paste thrown in; bacon wrapped asparagus (W30 bacon from USWM)

 

Day 14 so far:

Meal 1 - leftover bacon/asparagus, small portion of scrambled eggs w/carrots

Meal 2 - tuna salad on a bed of mixed greens

 

And simmering (and emitting fragrance) in my kitchen right now.... Chocolate Chili!!!!

[Gamma Rambo]

So... I'm still here

Bo and I stayed on the wagon (so to speak) - I just got lazy about logging everything I ate because it was basically all the same stuff over again.

 

We finished our 30 days on Mar 31, we both feel great. We are re-introducing just so that we know what we react to, but neither of us right now are interested in regularly eating sugar or grains at all any more, and if we ever bring dairy back into our regular diet it will probably be more "a little bit of parmesan as a condiment once in a while" rather than "drink a glass of milk" because that just does not even sound good any more.

 

I am not "pain free" but my fibromyalgia pain has reduced dramatically. My sleep is still disturbed, I am looking into other possible causes for that. I have an appointment with my dentist this afternoon to get fitted for a mouthguard, I have some symptoms that indicate a possible teeth-grinding problem.

 

I started last Friday going back to the gym regularly, I have wanted to for ages but with the fibro pain and the unpredictable energy levels it all seemed so futile. Now I'm super motivated and having a TON of fun picking up heavy stuff again (well, it isn't really that heavy yet because I'm still getting back into it, but it will be!!!!) My first major goal is to deadlift my bodyweight. And don't care if I'm 47 or not, I am going to learn how to do pull-ups.

 

Bo randomly bent over to pick something up the other day and said "whoa, hey, check this out! I can touch my toes!!!" He is sleeping like a baby, hasn't had a single symptom of a depression flare-up since week one, and does not take naps on the couch after work anymore - he comes home and immediately starts some yard-work or auto/motorcycle  maintenance project.

 

My mother-in-law was just diagnosed with an autoimmune disorder - dermatomyositis - and was going to try some other metabolism-altering diet, my husband convinced her to try a W30 instead. She and my father-in-law started yesterday. She is reading ISWF and I bought her Well Fed and Well Fed 2 as a "welcome to the looney bin" gift.

 

My hands-down favorite new recipes learned during this experience:

• Slow Cooker Roast Chicken and Gravy (Nom Nom Paleo)
• Olive Oil Mayonaisse (Well Fed - seriously, I can see myself turning this into food-with-no-brakes and eating a whole jar with a spoon if I'm not careful)
• Coconut Almond Green Beans (Well Fed)

 

 

So, yeah - I'm a lousy daily updater, but a very happy and healthy W30 finisher!!!!