Whole 30

A lifestyle blogger gives her thoughts on Whole 30 // thehiveblog.com

Over the past month or so, I’ve mentioned in a few different places that Price and I were doing Whole 30. If you’re not familiar with Whole 30, it’s basically a 30 day program to reset your health and get your body working like it should. The founders of the program encourage lots and lots of fresh, high protein, pure, whole foods. The program does require that you cut out things like dairy, grains, alcohol, any type of sweetener, and definitely anything artificial. Whole 30 is designed to “change your relationship with food” and continue well past the 30 day “reset,” as I like to call it, and lead into a more wholesome and healthy lifestyle.

Now that our 30 days are over, I’ll start out by saying this as I sit here and type on day 31: I feel GREAT (minus some random shoulder pain I’ve had recently… I think I slept on it wrong and I’m just not back to normal yet! That has nothing to do with W30!) I haven’t had any food hangovers when I wake up (y’all know what I’m talking about… that “WHY did I eat so much pasta and Halo Top last night?!” kind of feeling…) and my energy is more consistent. I have resisted cookies at showers, chips at Mexican restaurants, and drinks at parties… So I’m feeling pretty confident in my ability to live a happy life without such treats! ha!

On the flip side, I’ll say this: I’m exhausted. Exhausted from cooking every. single. day. Exhausted from running the dishwasher at least once every 24 hours. Exhausted from multiple grocery store runs per week. (This probably could have been cut down to 1 or 2 runs per week if I were a better meal planner, but I’m just not a very good one ;)) Just exhausted.

I did a mini overview of my thoughts on Snapchat several days ago and I mentioned that it would be near impossible to do Whole 30 while holding a full time job if you are the main food prepper. ESPECIALLY if you have young kids. That is my thought anyway. I work part time, then am home with kids/blogging/Lovely Bee-ing the rest of the time and I found it very difficult to have enough stuff cooked for Price and me to have ready for breakfast, lunch, and dinner every single day.

While I’m thinking about it, I definitely feel like I need to go ahead and confess to the fact that we cheated several times. We had a planned cheat meal one week in (it was pizza) and that was a terrible idea. (The program does NOT recommend this, by the way…) We both felt like garbage the next morning. It didn’t really help that we were in the detox/hangover phase anyway, so we were already feeling a bit rough. (That hangover phase is no joke, by the way! Euh!) I probably had 6 cocktails/glasses of wine throughout my 30 days, and I did have chips at Babalu for this and crostini & cheese at Table 100 (post about that coming soon!) during this time. (I told myself it was for work and that it didn’t really count as a cheat! hah!) So long story short, we were not model Whole 30ers.

Ok now that I have that off my chest 😉

A lifestyle blogger gives her thoughts on Whole 30 // thehiveblog.com

Now that I’ve kinda aired my grievances, I do want to share what I loved about Whole 30! I genuinely do feel so much better. It honestly wasn’t that hard for me to give up dairy, sweetener, grains, etc. because I didn’t ever really go overboard on those items to begin with. (Unless I’m at a restaurant with free bread. Then I definitely go overboard on bread/grain!)

I was able to eat a lot of very fulfilling meals. There is so much you CAN eat! A big green smoothie or frittata for breakfast (using the recipe in the Whole 30 book, and varying it up a little each time), a super yummy salad or leftovers from the night before for lunch, whatever I was able to come up with for supper each night, and lots of nuts, fruits, and veggies with Whole 30 ranch dip for snacks. (This Whole 30 ranch is what made this diet possible for Price! He probably ate two salads a day with this stuff because it was really good and healthy and did not leave him feeling deprived!)

I was stoked to find that my beloved Bulletproof Coffee was W30 approved 😉

This Korean Beef Bowl recipe, these little Sweet Potato and Chicken Nuggets, these sloppy joe bowls, and just a big pot roast with carrots and potatoes were big hits for our whole fam during the 30 days. Price loved that bacon without sugar (which they have at Kroger- look for the lower sodium kind! Thanks for that tip, Elish!), potatoes (both white and sweet), and nuts and applesauce were approved items! We baked little potato rounds with olive oil, salt, and pepper pretty often, had applesauce in our lunches that we’d take to work, and always had a supply of bacon bits in the fridge for salad topping purposes. We also enjoyed RxBars when we needed something quick to tide us over. Not all RxBars are Whole 30 approved, but these are! (Thanks for the tip on those, Emily!)

Now that our thirty days are over, we are both feeling great and Price is down a fairly significant amount of weight! I’m so proud of him! I was hoping I’d lose a little more (I lost two pounds total) but I do feel like I just look healthier overall. So that’s good! 😉

A lifestyle blogger gives her thoughts on Whole 30 // thehiveblog.com

Our plan is to continue to do Whole 30 as we can, but incorporate a little bit of the forbidden foods back in. Especially the ones that we don’t feel are all that bad for you, like whole wheat bread, red wine, and beans. I’m looking forward to working on staying healthy from here on out while not feeling so overwhelmed with having to cook allllll the time!

Have any of y’all done Whole 30? If so, what did you think? And do y’all have any questions for me if you are thinking about starting it? I’d be happy to answer anything I can! 🙂

Also, completely off topic… if you follow me on this instagram, you might have seen that I’m trying to memorize more scripture these days! So at the start of every week, I’ll do my best to post the scripture I’ve been working on the past week here! We could all use a little more of God’s word in our lives, right!? 😉

2 Samuel 22:31 :)

Love y’all and appreciate you SO!! Have a fantastic week! XO!

 

7 Comments

  1. ms April 10, 2017 / 7:53 am

    I wanted to try it, but I’m glad to hear your honesty about food prep! Maybe this is just not the season of my life for W30!

    • thelovelybee April 10, 2017 / 9:31 am

      Yes I honestly would not advise you to do it right now especially with Rosie being so teeny!! I’d wait til your kids are just a bit older. It’s definitely hard but I do believe very worth it! Worth trying at some point, for sure!

  2. Katie April 10, 2017 / 11:35 am

    I did it with no cheats for a solid 7 days, and then got sick of the food prep and constant grocery shopping (I am not a good meal planner either). That was when I had only one child, and I was the only one in the fam doing it. You’re a rockstar for sticking it out!

    • thelovelybee April 10, 2017 / 2:19 pm

      I’m not sure about that, but thank you! It was a total challenge. And it def helped to have Price on board! It’ll be a minute before I ever attempt again, that’s for sure! 😉

  3. Nikki April 11, 2017 / 8:56 am

    Several friends have done Whole 30, and the general consensus is really hard to maintain, but love the way they feel afterwards. I have thought about doing it, but it seems like an insane amount of work. Also, Charlie would NEVER do it, but it would be harder to do it with him not doing it too, you know? The whole thing really intimidates me, which is a little silly since I make / cook 90% of our meals anyway!

    Nikki
    thefashionablewife.com

    • thelovelybee April 11, 2017 / 9:55 am

      Yes! It’s a major challenge. But I can’t decide if it’d be harder if I was doing it again by myself or doing it again with Price. I’m a much less picky eater than he is, so in meal prep, I’d only be making something that I would like (easy), vs. something that both of us would like (not as easy). I may attempt it again in like 15 years when we are finished having kids and they’re all grown up enough to fix themselves a snack! 😉

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *