Whole30: Day 1

I was inspired to do Whole30 by my friend JR, who is probably the sole reader of this blog (hi JR!). I had dinner with him and his lady and they were ten or so days into their second time doing it, and while we had a few other friends that did it a month or two ago, they're LA friends, and it feels like LA people are always doing some cleanse or other and so I don't take much notice of it. But these two live in Denver and had such good results the first time--things like "I stopped snoring", which it never even occurred to me could be impacted by diet--that it made me stop and think: I really don't know how food (and drink) affect me.

Aside from a few attempts at Weight Watchers, one of which was successful, I've feel like I've never really made a concerted effort to change how I eat. As I've gotten older, I feel the effects of bad decisions more sharply, but I generally don't know WHICH bad decision(s) I'm paying for. Whole30 promises learning what types of food have an effect on you, and even if I choose not to use that information, that certainly seems like information worth having. While a desire to lose weight is also undeniably a part of this, that hasn't been sufficient motivation in the past for sticking with something, so I'm hoping all these other things in addition--along with accountability to my husband, who's doing this with me, and to this record of it--combine to get me to see this through.

This certainly seems achievable: neither of us has much of a sweet tooth. We don't have any big events coming up in the next month. We're both good cooks and have relatively wide-ranging tastes in cuisine. We live in California in the spring/summer (summer weather is already here, in April), and have access to some phenomenal ingredients as a result, and already built up the habits to buy them: we've been frequenters of farmers markets for years now.

So here goes!


How I felt: Woke up fine in the morning, despite only seven hours of sleep and following a few drinks from the night before. Ate a hurried breakfast at 8:30 and wasn't really hungry again until 12:30, at which point I was craving salade nicoise, but had no ingredients for it except one can of tuna. So I hied myself to the Whole Foods and bought... a large volume of stuff (more on that later), including everything I'd need for my nicoise. Didn't get home from that trip until 2:30, at which point I set about cooking all the ingredients, which took half an hour (not bad, all things considered), and sat down to eat a friggin' DELICIOUS meal at 3. Wasn't hungry again the rest of the day: made dinner around 7 and ate a little before 8, I think? (Sipped on kombucha and had some pumpkin seeds between lunch and dinner, but that can't have added much.) And then was real sleepy around 10:30 or 11, at which point I went to sleep.


Breakfast: two fried eggs, a few raspberries, and some cold brew (was in a hurry to get out the door for a 9:15 am appointment)

Lunch: salade nicoise: one steamed red potato, green beans, a hardboiled egg, a can of tuna, some nicoise olives, and a glorious dressing that really pulled it all together made up of olive oil, champagne vinegar, dashes of dijon mustard and mayo, and freshly chopped shallot, thyme, and tarragon. It was all made fresh and so it was warm, but I think this will be a lovely lunch to bring to work: will add in tomato and some sort of lettuce next time (was too hungry when I made this to bring that in)

Dinner: seared salmon with a dressing of olive oil, lemon juice, a bit of dijon and mayo, and freshly chopped shallot and parsley (will use leftovers on a future salade nicoise: would prefer vinegar to lemon, but whatevs; actually, we have more salmon so it could be we can use it again on that); sauteed zucchini; roasted eggplant. The eggplant is peeled and cubed, tossed in a baking sheet with olive oil, salt, and pepper, and roasted for ~20 minutes at 400 until the side on the sheet carmelizes. It might have been my favorite thing on the plate, to be honest.