As of right now, I have reorganized my van, garage, laundry room, homeschool/playroom room, front closet, linen closet, pantry, and bathroom. I didn't have time for this but I have A.D.D. The furniture in my grandmother's house stayed in the same spots for my entire life, I rearrange every six weeks, at least. But look how cute the homeschool/playroom room looks! The boys felt like it was more "preteen", which is very important since the big one is 10 this year!
So, that's my excuse for the delay! Also, just a heads up, I didn't take pictures if the meal was a repeat. Seriously, we love taco salad, and you probably don't want to see the same taco salad ten times.
And before I post all the yummy food pictures, I wanted to say, this is a crazy amount of kitchen work: cooking, food prepping, and oh my goodness the cleaning. So, one about day 3, I switched to paper plates. I know that is terribly lazy but something had to give! :) And hey, I bought the recycled compostable ones and we use cloth napkins. Don't judge me!
Day 8
Breakfast: I made green eggs and ham. The boys LOVED it. They were ecstatic. They didn't even care when I told them there was as much spinach in the eggs as eggs. I threw a few avocados on mine and it was great.Lunch: This was our first water park picnic. Whole30 is not the most picnic friendly plan but I think we did okay. (There is a close up picture of our packed lunch below.)
Dinner: I had planned on making shish kabobs. When I told the boys they were super excited because they thought I meant fruit kabobs, so we made fruit kabobs. Plus we tried cauliflower rice for the first time. (Not really my favorite vegetable.)
Kid Grub:
Breakfast: Green Eggs and Ham! Plus watermelon and blueberries.
Lunch: For our water park lunch we had roll ups, boiled eggs, raw veggies, grapes, and homemade trail mix. The trail mix has sunflower seeds, cashews, pecans, chopped dates, raisins, and pistachios. It was pretty good and it was fairly easy to get the boys to shove a small handful in their face.
Dinner: Shish kabobs, fruit kabobs, and cauliflower rice, which Ezra loved and even asked for the leftovers to be saved specifically for him.
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| The boys had a lot of fun playing horse shoes while the shish kabobs cooked. |
Day 9
Breakfast: Frittata, tomato, avocado, and little smokies. This little sausages were great. They were Applegate Organic Smokey Pork Franks. Everyone loved them and the boys thought they were a special treat because I never buy the conventional ones.
Lunch: Chef salad with grilled chicken and all kinds of good stuff.
Dinner: Italian Chicken and salad. This was a pre-Whole30 favorite, I just added the sweet potatoes and it was ready to go! Brandon even eat all his green beans. That my friends is a victory!
Kid Grub - Day 9
Breakfast: The same as me, and I made the boys try avocado. They decided it didn't have much taste.
Lunch: Salad two ways. One kid ate a regular salad and one kid ate all the salad parts, just separated.
Dinner: The Italian chicken was pretty well received because it wasn't an abnormal food. The little one hasn't like any of the salad dressings I have made yet but this night he finally decided he could eat the Italian dressing.
Day 10
Breakfast: Frittata (which isn't new) but the homemade breakfast sausage was! It was pretty good if I do say so myself.
Lunch: Tuna Salad and ants on a log. (Because what adult woman doesn't love preschool snacks!)
Dinner: Swordfish, roasted artichoke, asparagus, and yukon potatoes.
The boys ate the same things we did, but they don't eat tuna so I made them roll-ups for lunch. They also had tilapia instead of swordfish for dinner.
Day 11
Breakfast: Green Eggs and Ham with pears.
Lunch: Baked Sweet Potato topped with chili, avocado, tomato, and red onion. It was fabulous.
Dinner: Taco Salad, always a winner.
Day 12
This was another water park day! I love swimming, and I am not buying waterpark food prices so we always pack our lunch. It is harder with Whole30 but not impossible.
Breakfast: Frittata, sausage, and apples.
Lunch: Meatballs, homemade trail mix, clementines, olives, and fresh veggies.
Dinner: Pot Roast with potatoes, carrots, sweet potatoes, and parsnips. It is great!
The boys ate the same things. Here is the kid version of their meals:
Day 13
Breakfast: Grilled chicken, spinach, avocado, and tomato. It was a great breakfast because everything was basically already done. Who says you have to eat eggs for breakfast!
Lunch: Taco Salad
Dinner: Grilled Chicken, fresh veggies, and canteloupe. I guess I didn't take a picture because it wasn't new or special.
The boys ate the same thing for lunch and dinner, but had the leftover green eggs and ham for breakfast with raw carrots.
Day 14
Lunch: Turkey burgers, topped with a fried egg and sugar free bacon. I enjoyed mine on a bed of spinach with several yellow tomatoes!
Dinner: LEFTOVERS! My new favorite meal. I claimed a piece of tilapia, topped it with some pico de gallo, and added steamed carrots and avocados.
My Miniature Foodies
Breakfast: Boiled eggs, fresh veggies, and a larabar.
Lunch: Turkey burger with fried egg and bacon. Carrots on the side and fresh blueberries.
Dinner: Yellow watermelon, olives, carrots, and a hot dog. They loved this, and so did Brandon. They were Whole30 approved and so I didn't feel terrible about giving them to the boys, and because they haven't had regular hot dogs in so long they thought they were eating junk food!
Day 15
Breakfast: New mini frittatas with spinach, sweet potatoes, and bacon. They have been my favorite so far. We also had apples and cashew butter, which I liked much better than the sun butter.
Lunch: Roll ups, with the romaine on the outside instead in of on the inside, because my lunch meat kept falling apart. :)
Dinner: Pork ribs with steamed veggies and chopped avocado.
What the boys ate:
Breakfast: Mini frittatas, apples, blueberries, watermelon, and cashew butter.
Lunch: Roll ups, carrots, apples, and champagne grapes.
Dinner: Ribs, sweet potato and potato hash, raw carrots, and clementines. The boys LOVED the ribs!
Day 16
Breakfast: Green Eggs and ham with carrots and apples. This time I added spinach AND zucchini. The boys didn't even notice! Go go sneaky mom!
Lunch: Taco salad. It never gets old. :)
Dinner: Italian chicken.
There's no pictures for day 16 because there was nothing new. We are finally getting into a routine and I don't feel like I am struggling as much as I was the first week. One of the things that has really helped me is to make all the breakfasts ahead of time. We are not a big breakfast family, and honestly, I am just not that good at the traditional breakfast of eggs, bacon, hash browns, etc... I feel like I always burn at least one thing when I make it. But I made enough mini frittatas, green eggs, and boiled eggs to get through the week. I made it all ahead of time and froze what we wouldn't eat in the first few days.
In addition to really understand how I need to prep for the week I felt like week two went a lot smoother with the kids. There has been a lot less grumbling and asking about junk food, especially from the oldest. We have had a lot of good talks about nutrition, about how God expects us to treat and take care of our body, and what the food we eat does to our body. We have always worked off the ideas that some foods are everyday foods: meat, fruit, vegetables, (usually dairy was included in this category but hasn't been lately.) Then there are sometimes foods. Usually these are things like bacon, juice, cheese, frozen yogurt. We can eat them often but not daily. Then there are special occasion foods. These are things like cupcakes and potato chips and root beer. I am not going to tell my children they can NEVER have these things but we really had to assess what a special occasion was. I was in the habit of treating lots of ordinary activities like special occasions.
I mean, my birthday party is a special occasion, but a birthday party is not necessarily a special event. We probably get invited to 30 or 40 birthday parties a year, I can't expect to eat a cupcake at every birthday I go to and be healthy. It is the same thing for my children. Cupcakes aren't bad, but no one needs one a week. I think the boys are understanding this, and understanding where I have failed to teach them healthy habits and now we are learning them.
Brandon is still lamenting the loss of certain foods, beans and bread mostly. Brandon's relationship with food isn't usually as noticeable as mine because he is a lot more active than I am on a daily basis, both at work and play, and so his poor food choices haven't reflected the same in his body. But to see him processing why he wants to eat certain foods, what his motivations are and why he makes the choices he does. He was pretty supportive the first week but he has balked at some of the rules and restrictions the second week. He is still doing great at trying new vegetables and staying on plan. I'm proud of him. His boss even offered him chocolate chip cookies and he had to turn them down. He is doing good.
I personally have noticed that I have a lot more energy. I am not exhausted in the evenings before bedtime and I feel like I am waking up quicker and feel more refreshed in the mornings. Also, I have often used sleeping pills to help myself stay asleep and I haven't had to take one of those in over a week. And while I know that losing weight is not the main goal of the Whole30 program, and it isn't even my main objective, but it is one of my goals.The boys keep using the "D" word (diet) and I keep reminding them that this isn't a diet, that we are eating healthy, and that we are just resetting our body and giving it a chance to heal from some of the damage we have done. I have lost some weight this summer, and it is killing me to not to step on the scale and see if I am losing weight. I have some serious body image issues, and whether or not I think I look better, or am losing weight, often has more to do with my emotions than my body. At the end of this process if I don't lose any weight, but my health is improved, I know that it will have been worth it.
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