Stuck at Home and frustrated - Day 16

[StephRN]

My husband and I are on day 16 of Whole30 and I'm starting to get frustrated. We work 5 12-hour shifts one week and the next week we only work 1 12-hour shift. Meal planning and cooking takes up every spare second on the weeks that we work and the week that we have a lot of free time I feel like we are stuck at home. We tried to go out to eat Sunday night to Five Guys after a 12-hour shift so I wouldn't have to cook, and it was expensive and my husband wasn't full. He ended up eating leftovers once we got home. Yesterday we went to Chipotle for lunch and got compliant food but it didn't taste amazing to me and $12 is expensive for what you can get. Im getting tired of cooking and cleaning. And half of the food we are eating isn't even that amazing tasting to me. I don't like any salad dressings that we have made or even the ranch, so eating salad every day for lunch is getting very hard to choke down. I feel like all I want to eat is meat and fruit but sometimes nothing sounds appetizing. Sorry for the rant but I'm just not sure Whole30 is worth it right now.

[QuilterInVA]

Why are you having salad everyday for lunch? Why don't you batch cook one day and then you can eat all week with minimal preparation. Eating at home is much better than anything you can get eating out. You have to ask a lot of questions to get compliant food when eating out. www.meljoulwan.com (Well Fed cookbook author) has batch cooking directions on her website and really good food. As far as amazing, really is every meal your've eaten before amazing? I've enjoyed what I've made. It sounds like you are looking for excuses to quit. I hope not. Meals can be quite simple, grilled chicken breast, broccoli and a sliced tomato with olive oil and vinegar. A pork chop, baked sweet potato, green breans, ghee. You don't have to make that many recipes.

[ShannonM816]

I was going to suggest a weekly cookup, especially to get you ahead on the weeks when you work so much. You might even look into freezing foods so you can stock your freezer and be able to pull out quick meals -- I know meatballs freeze well after cooking, and so do things like salmon cakes. I keep frozen (uncooked) burger patties in the freezer (I use Bubba Burger, because they're easy, but you could make your own too) -- They can be cooked from frozen in 10-15 minutes, I can steam some veggies if I'm really lazy, or roast them if I have a little more time.

 

For lunches, they don't have to be salads. Check out these no recipe required ideas for inspiration, or do leftovers.

 

Eating out on Whole30 is hard, and often the food just doesn't live up to expectations, but that doesn't mean you have to stay home. You could pack up a picnic and head to a park or botanical garden or even the bazillion different festivals that seem to pop up in the spring -- if you've got food in the car, you don't have to buy festival food, you can go and listen to live music or walk around and enjoy the sights or whatever. Or make going to the farmers market an outing you do together one day each week. It takes some effort, but it is possible to find events that don't center around food that let you get out of the house and have fun.

[StephRN]

One problem is that my husband eats so much there are never leftovers. Haha. And we have a small fridge so I try to do that when it's our work week. Especially since I don't want to cook much when we get home from work. The main thing is that on our days off we like to go hiking and exploring which usually means we bring sandwiches for lunch and eat out in different cities. But I can't see a way to do that on this. Because we need to be home to eat lunch and then be home to cook dinner too. I'll look into that website though. I think I don't like oil or vinegar or any of the dressings because they don't include sugar! I feel like I don't like most foods on whole30 because they don't have sugar =\ But that is the point I guess is to get rid of this sugar dragon! =\

[Physibeth]

For hiking you can wrap your sandwich stuffing in lettuce or collard leaves. Not all meals need to be warm. I've been having to eat lunch a lot on the go lately so I've been making chicken salad or tuna salad and eating it with a fork or putting it on sliced cucumbers. Lots of portable cold veggies you can snack on. Part of this process is unthinking your normal meals. It's hard but it is worth it. 

 

After your 30 days and your reintroduction eating out will get easier again. You'll know what is worth it and what isn't. Just keep reminding yourself it is just 30 days and take those days to work on your relationship with how you eat and prepare your food. Hang in there!