Help! trying to do this with allergies

[LJacobsen]

My doctor put me on a paleo diet for a month and i quit after 2 weeks because of lack of knowledge and frustration. I have sever allergies to things with vitamin c, so oranges, lemons, limes and tomatoes are off limits. And I don't tolerate eggs well. I'im having issues figuring out what I can eat and doing a meal plan and sticking to it. The hard part is I work as a cook and need to be able to taste what I prepare. I get half my meals a week from work free and when trying to follow this diet the first time it got really expensive really fast and we don't have the budget for that. Anyone else been in this situation and have insight?

[MrsStick]

What kind of restaurant do you cook at? You should be able to 'invent' concoctions with leftover fresh ingredients that are easily compliant. The basic meal is meat + veggie + fat + fruit (optional).

 

Assuming your restaurant has a variety of foods that they cook, I don't see why you would have a trouble. Grab a piece of beef or a pork chop or whatever. Add veggies. Pork chop + sauteed onions and apples and a side salad with oil and vinegar (no cheese, no croutons) is a great option. Steamed veggies with a burger patty on top and roasted potatoes is a great option. Mexican restaurant = fajitas baby (skip the rice, beans, tortillas, cheese, and sour cream). Bring a potato with you (or sweet potato) and bake/microwave it and top with the meat and veggies.

 

If you give us a better idea of what you have available at your restaurant you'll get WAY better advice. As for the food tasting...I imagine you've found a workaround to not taste food with things you're severely allergic to...why can't you do that with food in general that you're cooking for a month? If anyone asks, say you're doing an elimination diet to rule out some other possible allergies you might have. If they already know you have severe allergies to other things they probably won't ask any more questions.

[LJacobsen]

I'm a cook at a hospital kitchen. Our breakfast that we offer I have 1 option 2 if it's a good day.  We serve oatmeal, quinoa, biscuts, gravy, potatoes ( usally fried), bacon, sausage, eggs and scrambles made to order, fresh cut fruit and yogurt bar.

[GFChris]

I'm a cook at a hospital kitchen. Our breakfast that we offer I have 1 option 2 if it's a good day.  We serve oatmeal, quinoa, biscuts, gravy, potatoes ( usally fried), bacon, sausage, eggs and scrambles made to order, fresh cut fruit and yogurt bar.

 

Are there no vegetables available?  Other proteins that you can have for your meal 1?  (My hunch is the bacon and sausage you have on hand are likely not Whole30 compliant.)  Can you bring your own food to work?

[LJacobsen]

Our food for meals are already paid for, and my husband and I both rely on the fact we get 2 meals a day from work. We do offer sauted veggies but they have tomato every once in a while already mixed in.

[MrsStick]

When you say scrambles made to order, are you talking about veggie/egg scrambles? So maybe an onion/mushroom/pepper scrambled into eggs? That would probably be your best bet or bring some veggies from home to go with hard-boiled/fried or plain scrambled eggs and fresh fruit. The potatoes - they may be doable too; check your ingredients and you might be able to have them.

 

Check your ingredients for everything; you might need to not do a 100% Whole 30 with the sugar rule (in non-sweet things, like sausage and/or bacon) but keep the big ones - grains, legumes, dairy, etc. No, you can't call it a Whole 30, but even a Whole-ish 30 can give you some significant health benefits.

[LJacobsen]

I can't eat eggs, and the possibility of cross contamination with fruit if strawberries are out. this is why I had so many issues with it the first time and only lasted a week.

[missmary]

Ljacobsen, here is the tough love part: you have to want to do it. The whole30 isn't easy for anybody, but it is possible because they made it possible.

 

Could take a bowl of veggies from the omelette bar and have it alongside some other protein? Do they have sausage, for example? Could you take those veggies and eat them with a can of tuna from home? Could you nab some fruit before it gets all mixed together? If it comes premixed, could you talk with the person making the orders and suggest/request veggies and fruits that are not mixed with the problematic ones? I see lots of opportunities for meals that fit in the whole30. Start believing you can do it and give it a try.

[ladyshanny]

Is there not some protocol for people who are in the hospital who have allergies? Not to say that you can necessarily change up the entire menu but there must be some sort of protocol if a patient were allergic to certain things? What would a celiac that was allergic to eggs and strawberries eat?

[LJacobsen]

ladyshanny, we have 2 menus we sever, one that is only patients get and one that the hospital staff has access to. Missmary I'm trying to not bring food from home, i have a 2 year old and a husband to feed as well on a tight food budget. Right now im still trying to get in the right headspace to start again on 8/1 and not get frustrated again and stop.

[missmary]

Right now im still trying to get in the right headspace to start again on 8/1 and not get frustrated again and stop.

 

 

yup. you are currently not in the right headspace, that is for sure. You have gotten a lot of great advice in this thread and with every single piece of advice you have looked for a reason why it doesn't work for you. Now go back and look for the parts of the advice that can work. Start looking for yes instead of no. The whole30 is possible, and it is worth it, but it isn't easy. Stop looking for easy or expecting easy. Look for possible and make it work.

[EmilyCole]

LJacobsen,

 

It sounds like your primary problem is breakfast -- I'm going to assume that since you've mostly mentioned eggs and fruit, that by the time you get to lunch, you have many more options.

 

So, as a hospital employee myself, I have a few questions....

     1) Do your two provided meals have to be during working hours?

     2) Do you have a salad bar during lunch hours?

     3) Are salad bar ingredients available (even if only to those of you in the kitchen) in the morning?

     4) Do you have access (or COULD you have access) to a blender in the morning (maybe before you came to work)?

 

I'm thinking that if you didn't eat "traditional" breakfast foods (and thought of it as Meal #1 instead), you could be really successful on Whole30. Let's say Monday night, the cafeteria is serving baked chicken with steamed vegetables. If there was a way for that to be one of your free meals, you could easily eat that the next morning for breakfast and still have a salad from the salad bar for lunch. You'd just need to carry over "dinner" from the previous day to "breakfast" the next day.

 

And, if that won't work, I have been making a really yummy smoothie for breakfast. Part of the reason it's worked is because it's DELICIOUS and also that it's PORTABLE (I'm NOT a morning person). So, if you had access to the salad bar items that are going to be put out later in the day, you could easily make yourself a smoothie in the morning for breakfast. 

 

Here's my recipe:

     1 or 1 1/2 frozen bananas (this will take some advanced planning on your part, but totally not hard!)

     1 cup C2O coconut water (you can use any brand you like, that's just my favorite) -- you could also use compliant almond milk (make your own!!)

     2 cups spinach (or however much you can jam in the blender -- the more, the merrier!)

     2 tablespoons nut butter (almond or cashew are great; sunflower seed butter tastes EXACTLY like peanut butter)

     1/2 avocado, frozen (optional)

     (For anyone else trying this, I also add 1/2 cup frozen pineapple, but LJacobsen is allergic to it)

 

Smush it all in the blender and whirl it until it's smooth. It'll be thick (if it's too runny, try putting less coconut water in the next day) so you might need a fatter/wider straw (like the kind they have at the Boba place in the mall food court).

 

Does that sound like a solution that might work? 

 

Let me know!! I have some creative ideas because I hate -- HATE -- eggs. They're disgusting.  

[missmary]

Sorry to do this after you have taken all that time to write out your recipe, Emily, but smoothies aren't something we recommend here in whole30-land (even if pinterest and the internet seem to have a million "whole30 approved" smoothie recipes, they really are not.). Here is the scoop on smoothies:

 

Smoothies: We’d rather you didn’t

This is a very popular question, with a very unpopular answer. Smoothies (generally made using lots of fruit) are technically compliant on your Whole30, but we strongly recommend against it. Food that you drink sends different satiety signals to your brain than food that you chew. So when you drink your meal, your brain isn’t getting the feedback it needs to tell your body that it’s had enough of what it needs. Plus, smoothies are generally really fruit-heavy, and starting your day off with a liquid sugar-bomb sets you up for cravings, hunger, and volatile energy levels throughout the day. In summary, we’d rather you just eat the food, and skip the smoothie.

- See more at: http://whole30.com/2013/06/the-official-can-i-have-guide-to-the-whole30/#sthash.OuGXoF7O.dpuf

 

If you don't like eggs, try having some other protein source (chicken, beef, fish, lamb, etc.) that plus some veggies (my go-to is raw red and yellow bell pepper with cold steamed broccoli). Dip it in some mayo or guac if your meat is lean and you have breakfast. 

[EmilyCole]

Smoothies (generally made using lots of fruit) are technically compliant on your Whole30, but we strongly recommend against it. ... Plus, smoothies are generally really fruit-heavy, and starting your day off with a liquid sugar-bomb sets you up for cravings, hunger, and volatile energy levels throughout the day. 

(emphasis, mine)

 

I totally understand, but 1) this isn't a fruit smoothie (or even fruit-heavy) and 2) it's better than her not finishing her Whole30, isn't it? 

 

Plus, my initial suggestion was that she turn the previous nights' dinner into the next morning's breakfast. "And, if that doesn't work", here's a SPINACH smoothie that can potentially work. I'm sorry you didn't see my initial suggestion and only responded to the part about the smoothie; then you wouldn't have had to reiterate what I said.

[missmary]

(emphasis, mine)

 

I totally understand, but 1) this isn't a fruit smoothie (or even fruit-heavy) and 2) it's better than her not finishing her Whole30, isn't it? 

 

Plus, my initial suggestion was that she turn the previous nights' dinner into the next morning's breakfast. "And, if that doesn't work", here's a SPINACH smoothie that can potentially work. I'm sorry you didn't see my initial suggestion and only responded to the part about the smoothie; then you wouldn't have had to reiterate what I said.

 

sorry, but smoothies aren't recommended at all, even ones with spinach. It might not seem like it when you are drinking it, but 1-1/2 bananas is a LOT of fruit, especially when most people do better without any fruit at all in meal #1.

 

I totally agree with your suggestion of last-nights leftovers, but I still think it is important for people casually reading the boards to know smoothies aren't a recommended food, even if they might be "less bad" than something else somebody might choose to eat for breakfast when they are not doing a whole30.

 

really, I'm not trying to call you out or say you did anything wrong, just making sure the program information and recommendations are clearly understood. Personally, it took me a while to get the fact that my daily smoothie wasn't doing me any favors. I had to try following the recommendations for 30 days before it hit home (no mid-morning hunger/crash? check. no hemp protein gut irritation causing major breakouts? check). If I had been told keeping the smoothie was ok I probably never would have figured that one out.

[EmilyCole]

sorry, but smoothies aren't recommended at all, even ones with spinach. It might not seem like it when you are drinking it, but 1-1/2 bananas is a LOT of fruit, especially when most people do better without any fruit at all in meal #1.

 

To me, when it says "We'd rather you didn't", that's not the same as 'no'. There are things that Whole30 says 'no' to, and I'm happy to comply with those. But, this isn't a 'no'... Maybe for some people, it is (or should be) a 'no', but the guidelines don't make smoothies a no. (And maybe that's just me pushing a boundary. If it is, I'm sorry, but when someone -- be it my doctor, Whole30, or my car insurance company -- says "We'd rather you didn't", to me, that just means "keep it to a minimum", not "don't do it".)

 

But, as I scroll back through the comments, it does look like the original poster had already checked out and I needlessly resurrected this conversation. So, I will let the smoothie thing go. But, I would suggest to the powers-that-be that if smoothies are a 'no', that the verbiage be changed to 'no', not 'we'd rather you didn't'. It's misleading and gives false hope.

[missmary]

To me, when it says "We'd rather you didn't", that's not the same as 'no'. There are things that Whole30 says 'no' to, and I'm happy to comply with those. But, this isn't a 'no'... Maybe for some people, it is (or should be) a 'no', but the guidelines don't make smoothies a no. (And maybe that's just me pushing a boundary. If it is, I'm sorry, but when someone -- be it my doctor, Whole30, or my car insurance company -- says "We'd rather you didn't", to me, that just means "keep it to a minimum", not "don't do it".)

I'm sorry if this feels like splitting hairs but here's the deal: the whole30 has rules, and it has recommendations. The recommendations are that you refrain from having smoothies, even though, based on rules alone you could get away with it and still be doing a whole30. There are lots of reasons for this, but ultimately this is a made up program and the Hartwigs decided to make it that way. They set up the structure, we just respect it and try to make sure people get the most out of it that they possibly can. 

 

Here on the forum we are never going to suggest eating something that isn't recommended on the plan. That wouldn't make sense. Can you squeak by following the rules alone? yeah, but the best results come from following the recommendations too.