Sunday, 27 January: Whole30 Day 1

This is a little late for a "first day" post, since it's actually the morning of the third day. It's been a little tough to decide when to do my posts, since dinner usually happens late at night and I don't find myself over eager to edit photos or write late at night.

The solution is that I'll be posting the previous day's meals the next morning. Although it's Tuesday morning, I'll be posting the meals from Monday, and the title will reflect that. This is mostly a way to catalog my first Whole30 so that I remember what I ate, and also to keep myself accountable.Whenever there's a really fantastic recipe or marinade or trick that is out of the ordinary of usual cooking, I'll make sure to include it, along with pictures of what I'm eating.

Now, here's the confessional side of my beginning of Whole30. I am 25 years old, 5'5" tall, and since this past year I cannot stop gaining weight. I made the mistake of going on a hormonal birth control last April. I thought that I'd be able to deal with the possible weight gain, and I foolishly did not listen to counsel that was given me by family members about their own experiences. Some girls do wonderfully on birth control. I was not one of them. I put on about fifteen pounds in the month before my wedding, which was troubling enough. No girl wants to gain weight before her wedding. In the months since the wedding, I have gained another 15 pounds, putting my weight at 180 pounds. I am on the very line between "overweight" and "obese" on the BMI and I am done with this.

I am fortunate to have recently gotten a new job that enables me to have steady income and steady hours. For the first time since highschool, I have the time and money to invest in my health. More fortunately, I have a loving husband who is willing to do this with me. We spent the last week together purging our kitchen of anything that did not fit on the Whole30 diet, which is basically a no-holds-barred version of Paleo.

I have been loosely following a Primal diet for the past several months, and while it made me feel a little better, it wasn't helping with the weight loss. I was still drinking and eating things that I shouldn't have, and the weight kept coming. This week marks the beginning of 30 days of:

No dairy
No wheat
No legumes
No processed foods
No sugars (at all)
No starches
No alcohol
No tobacco

Anything that has been shown to have inflammatory properties has been cut out of our diet. Some people that I have told about this have voiced alarm. That sounds hard. My response has been the response that is posted on the Whole30 site:

It is not hard. Quitting heroin is hard. Beating cancer is hard. 

Drinking your coffee black. Is. Not. Hard.

So, let's do this shit.

The only meal I have to show for Sunday is my dinner. My husband and I do not eat before service on Sunday morning, and lunch was a pretty informal affair since we were running between grocery shopping for the week and catechumen class for church. Dinner was shared with friends, and was fantastic.

My husband did the honors for this meal. Wild Alaskan sockeye salmon, compliments of my parents care package last month, was cooked with a bit of lemon and fresh rosemary. It was served on top of blanched brussels sprouts, broccoli, collard greens and carrots which were drizzled with butter. It took him half an hour to make, including deboning the salmon fillets, and was incredibly filling.

Fingers crossed, and I'll see you on the other side- one step toward cleaner and leaner.