Eating enough?

[SelWhole30]

Hi There! 

My husband and I just started Whole 30 yesterday. I want to make sure we are going to be eating enough as I would LOVE to avoid dizziness and all that. Below are the meal plans for this week, can anyone confirm if that is enough or if we should be adding another fat to the mix? We do not like Avos - like really do not. 

 

- Breakfast --> Spinach, Egg, Bacon Quiche (made from the real plan app) + Banana + Cold brew coffee with splash of almond butter 

- Lunch --> Handful of roasted rosemary chicken (palm of hand) on mixed greens with olive oil dressing and a handful of raw almonds 

- Mid-afternoon --> Mixed Berries (blueberries, blackberries, raspberries - about 1/2 cup) 

- Dinner --> Small beef and bacon patty on bed of lettuce with compliant dijon mustard and roasted sweet potatoes 

 

Later in the week:

Breakfast --? 1/2 sausage and hard boiled eggs + banana or apple + cold brew coffee 

Lunch --> Bowl of asian chicken salad with olive oil or seasame oil dressing

Dinner --> Korean pork chops with steamed green beans 

 

Does this work? Just want ot make sure we are NOT starving our bodies so we don't throw ourselves off. We aren't hungry between meals and it's day 2 right now. 

 

Thank you! 

[Maria45]

Hi.  I am new to this.  Today is my Day 30, but it's my first round and - no doubt - I made some mistakes.  I'm going to give you advice and hopefully someone, like a moderator, will jump in with additional advice.

First, it's awesome that you and your husband are doing this together!  So many people have struggles because their significant other does not support what they are doing.  

Second, unless you are doing a workout and need a pre/post workout snack, the end goal is to get yourself to eating 3 full meals (with no need to snack because you feel great between meals).  At the beginning, you may need to snack and that's okay.

Third, when you do need a snack, fruit only is not a good option.  If you need to snack, go with a protein or a healthy fat... or possibly even a small amount of both.

Fourth, fruits are meant to be occasional, so you don't really want to have fruit every day especially if you are dealing with sugar issues.  The last thing that you want to do is to trade in a piece of apple pie for a sweet apple.

***** Fifth, your meals are WAY TOO LOW ON FATS.  The first breakfast should contain more than a "splash" of a fat.  I don't see any fat with your first dinner.  For your "later in the week meals," I don't see a healthy fat for your breakfast or your dinner.

IT IS MY OPINION THAT YOU WILL BE STARVED IF YOU EAT THIS WAY.  I think that you need to carefully select a healthy fat for every single meal.  If you don't like avocadoes, try nut butters or nut milks, perhaps.

So - fewer fruits, more fats, and A TON OF VEGETABLES WITH EVERY SINGLE MEAL.  I often have 3 veggies in a single meal.

I hope that I was helpful and I wish you the very best!

Maria

 

 

 

[kirbz]

Good on you for being so mindful about portions! It's a great way to start, but as your hunger signals start to normalize, don't be afraid to listen to them! Everyone will be a little different!

That being said, I do have a few additional tips that may help: 

• Eggs, when they are your only source of protein, should be as many as you can hold in your hand, which is 3-4 for most people (so, if your quiche is 8 eggs, you want to be eating half of it for a serving)
• Aim for 2-3 cups of vegetables with your meals
• Bacon counts as fat for Whole30 purposes
• Nuts can be disruptive for a lot of people so it's recommended that you only eat a closed handful every couple of day; so be wary of relying overly on nuts for your fat source (if you like olives, they can be a good "add-on" fat where you eat a heaping handful with a meal just for the sake of having some fat; coconut flakes work as well)
• Most people do well with at least one fist-sized serving of starchy vegetables each day 

I hope this isn't too much information! Best wishes to your and your husband!

[Jihanna]

Agreeing with what's been posted above, and also wanted to point out...

- It's okay to eat the upper end of the recommended amounts, and even to go over it at times if that's what your body needs. I can't do just a palm-sized portion of meat with my dinner, for instance, I need more protein than that so I typically will eat about 2 palms. For meals where we've done burgers, I've cooked them as 4-ounce patties and eaten 1.5-2 of them every since time (along with a massive amount of veggies to go with it).

- I'd suggest not leaning on fruit too much. Fruit is an excellent way for a sugar dragon to dupe you into keeping it awake and kicking, so if you feel like you're reaching for fruit because what you really want is a candy bar or dessert or whatever, it might be worth it to leave the fruit off your plate for a few days.

- Don't be afraid to change up your portion sizes or even the proportions of your macros if you think it'll help, or if you want to test to see if something works better. I've found this to be especially important for me as I deal with my monthly cycle, because my dietary needs definitely change throughout the cycle and if I tweak things to meet those needs then I feel better overall.

- Realize that "servings" in a recipe are based on a set standard, whereas a Whole30 "serving" is based on one's own hand. So unless you and your husband have the same size hands, one of you will undoubtedly have more food on their plate than the other if you're both following the suggested serving guidelines... and that's totally okay.

I'll leave it at that, since I'm prone to write books if I let myself go  

[SelWhole30]

Awesome! Thank you so much! Real quick, if bacon counts as a fat than didn't our dinner which contained bacon count as such? All good, because we are def going to up-play the fat content and down play the fruit based on this. We have nuts and nut butters but didn't want to rely on nut butters to replace like peanut butter. I'm cooking tonight for the next few days (our meal prep days are Sunday and Wednesday) so if possible , did I adjust correctly below (knowing that we will use our hands to determine). 

Breakfast-

• One whole cooked sausage (protein and fat?) +
• 2 hard boiled eggs (3x for husband)  sliced on bed of spinach and kale 
• Nut butter pack with Cold brew coffee nut pod - when no nut butter pack will drizzle olive oil over the spinach and kale (does this count?)

Lunch - 

• Asian Chicken and cabbage hash which includes:
• Cooked chicken, Cabbage, fish sauce, sesame oil, coconut oil, onions, carrots 
• Should I add cashews or 1/2 an avocado for this? Again, worried about too many nuts. 

Dinner - 

• Korean Pork Chops and Steamed Green Beans with Ghee on top 
• includes coconut aminos, garlic, pork chops, coconut oil, green beans

I will most likely put some fruit in there on one of the days but keep it not to every day as suggested. The reason I need so many bananas is I have a potassium deficiency so I do need to eat those kind of often but I only eat them in the mornings which previously I never had sugar in the AM, also I don't love bananas - doctor makes me eat them lol. I will stay away from Fruit as much as possible in the afternoon as that is when my sugar dragon beast emerges. 

My biggest problem is that we are using the Real Plans App recommended by Whole30 and they put all these meals together verbatim (the first ones I posted) including the fruit so we assumed they followed the program as we specified whole30. I even made a bit more portions to ensure we were eating enough - is it safe to assume that Real Plans is not actually something we should use and if so, should they not be pushing it on the Whole30 site? I also realized that one of the recipes they put on our whole30 included maple syrup. Seems like it is not the best app as previously recommended by Melissa and team which is a bummer. Not sure if anyone has had similar problems. 

[Jihanna]

Real Plans is a Whole30 partner, but not a part of Whole30 in and of itself... so it's totally possible to do one using Real Plans' W30 plan but it's also possible to go without a meal planner entirely. I personally must have more control over my meal planning, so I'm typically reviewing a few new recipes each week to add to my online recipe box, then build my weekly meal plan based on weekly sales in my area... that way, I'm not planning a bunch of meals that require chicken if chicken isn't on sale, unless I've already got some freezer meals ready to go. Some people prefer to have the work done for them, and it's awesome if that works for you, I'm just not someone who can give up that much control!  

Drizzling olive oil over your veggies definitely counts as fat (think about about a thumb's worth when doing that). When you can use avocado in place of nuts, I would do so, maybe even mixing it in with something else to change the flavor/texture if that helps you guys eat it. I actually hated avocado in any form prior to my first Whole30 round, and by the end of it I was eating half an avocado with at least one meal each day; I do still prefer it when it's in bites of other stuff, but I don't abhor it like I did at first.

Bananas are certainly the go-to for potassium, but not necessarily the only option... and quite a few on the list in that article are very much Whole30-compliant. You'd obviously have to avoid the beans  but hopefully that'll help you find some good ways to include more potassium in your diet without having to rely on a fruit you don't particularly enjoy.

No more thoughts from me for now... it's time to go start dinner.