Veg Whole30 Days 1-3: What I Ate
| Veg Whole30 Days 1-3: What I Ate I’m wrapping up day 3 of my modified vegetarian Whole30. The rest of the Peanut Butter Runner group starts tomorrow, but I knew with my schedule (I go back to work after winter break tomorrow) it would be pretty nutty to try to juggle it all. I’m glad I have a few days under my belt starting back to work. This week is going to be crazy busy for me, and I suspect the theme is going to turn out being, “Just put some pesto on it.” Day 1  Breakfast was 2 scrambled eggs with dill, strawberries, and a banana cranberry muffin (recipe from Paleo for Vegetarians 28 Day Meal Plan). Before you go off on a SWYPO rant, I’ve explained my planned modifications to the Whole30 and I will consider sticking to my version of the plan a success. (I’m going to try not to constantly note my disdain for the tone and attitude of the authors of Whole30, but… even the whole SWYPO approach to describing their rationale annoys me. /end rant).  Lunch was a big ol’ salad. I prepped two salad proteins for the week: tempeh cubes fried in coconut oil with salt and pepper, and balsamic glazed tofu. I also made a paleo ranch dressing from cashews and coconut milk. I suspect there are better recipes out there, but this one was easy and tastes fine. The rest of the salad is romaine with carrots and half an avocado. I couldn’t finish it all.  Dinner involved a spiralizer, woohoo! And… a pesto spill. womp womp. I spiralized 2 zucchini to make zucchini noodles, then mixed the noodles with baby spinach and heated it with some basil pesto (and then spilled some more on there). This is one zucchini worth on my plate. I ate a whole freakin zucchini. Note to self: buy 4 next time so you get more than 2 meals from this. I also had a baked sweet potato and a tub of plain greek yogurt with pineapples on top. For a beverage, I tried kombucha for the first time. It was nasty and tasted like straight up apple cider vinegar. Is that true of all kombuchas, or should I try a different kind? Day 2  Day 2 started out with 2 scrambled eggs, another muffin, and plain greek yogurt with pineapples.  For lunch I had a smaller salad – same ingredients as yesterday, but with the tofu on the side this time – and a baked sweet potato. An hour or so later I was still hungry, so I had a banana with almond butter.  Dinner was the rest of the pesto zucchini, balsamic tofu, green beans, and a sweet potato, with some chai tea on the side. A couple hours later I was still famished! My stomach was growling, so I scrambled up 2 eggs with pesto and had that. I didn’t go to bed full, but I wasn’t starving. I just felt hungry all day. Day 3  Mmmm this one was yummy. Breakfast was 2 scrambled eggs (with pesto hiding inside there!), a paleo muffin, a couple strawberries, and a banana with almond butter. Black chai tea on the side.  Dinner was 2 scrambled eggs with pesto (again!), green beans, plain greek yogurt with pineapples, and a small romaine salad with tempeh cubes and half an avocado, dressed with oil and vinegar. Where’s lunch, you ask? For as hungry as I was yesterday, I just wasn’t hungry today. I had a banana a couple hours after dinner, but it was more for a brain boost than anything. (I had to do some programming – which normally prompts me to go buy 2 chocolate long johns from Dunkin Donuts, but today, prompted banana consumption). How Am I Feeling? These first 3 days haven’t been particularly hard, though it is fairly annoying to be so strictly limited in my food choices (not because of the actual limitations, but because most things require preparation, and I’ve only prepped what I can eat before it goes bad – so I can’t have many options on hand at any given time). I’m sure I will get more creative as I go. Mid-day-2 I was nearly on the, “F- it, I’m going to order a pizza” bandwagon, but I talked myself out of it. I was a bit cranky and headachy (and friggin starving all day). Day 3 (today) I felt pretty great. I felt like my head was clear all day and into the evening. One excellent side effect so far is that I’m sleeping phenomenally well – 100% sleep quality these past 2 nights, according to my sleep app – and that’s in a bed with 4 cats! To give you an idea of how good that is, relatively speaking, my average sleep quality over the past 6 months has been 82%. (I’ve got over 1,000 nights logged since 2013). Granted, I sleep pretty well overall (the US average is 72%), but I do have bouts of insomnia that last a couple weeks at a time. Knock on wood, I haven’t had one in a while. My sleep could also be improved because it’s the tail end of 3 weeks off work and I’ve just finally unwound and de-stressed; we’ll see about that when I go back to work tomorrow. That’s it for Days 1-3! Time to hit the hay and get back into the swing of things. |
