Whole30 Days 6 & 7

Trying to get caught up here guys! I’m grouping Days 6 & 7 together because I was in class all day long and they were pretty similar. According to the Whole30 timeline, these are the days when you’re supposed to be exhausted and you just want a nap. Luckily, that wasn’t the case for me. I probably would have died if it had been.

A little background: I’m getting my MBA at the University of Florida (go Gators), and I’m in a two-year professional program. We meet once a month on the weekend, and we’re in class from 8:30-7:00 Saturday and 7:30-5:00 Sunday. It is truly exhausting. Last weekend on Saturday I had Accounting from 8:30-12:00, lunch from 12-1, Professional Writing from 1-3, and Economics from 3:15-7:00, then on Sunday we had Econ from 7:30-12:00, lunch from 12-1, and Accounting from 1-5. Y’all there is no way to describe it other than truly draining. However, UF takes good care of us, and they provide breakfast and snacks, and they give us money to spend on lunch. Normally this is fantastic, but this weekend it was not good for me.

Breakfast usually consists of eggs, bacon, sausage, grits, fruit, yogurt, pastries, muffins, waffles, etc. It is an amazing spread, but I could literally only eat fruit. The meal is catered so I have no way of knowing what’s in the eggs or bacon and sausage, so to be on the safe side I packed the last two servings of my egg bake and had that for breakfast Saturday and Sunday.

For lunch on Saturday we went to a salad place right across the street from campus called Designer Greens. God bless the boy making my salad because he was so helpful and ran to the back to check ingredients for me and didn’t seem annoyed at all. I got a salad with romaine, grilled chicken, hard boiled eggs, avocado, cucumber, and tomatoes, and no dressing. The chicken there is cooked in canola and olive oil, so it was Whole30 approved, but their balsamic vinegar had added sugar. It was a great salad and I was super pleased with the decision for lunch. Lunch on Sunday was at Chipotle. I got the Whole30 approved meal of carnitas, lettuce, pico, hot salsa, and guac, and y’all I was not a fan. I’ve never had the carnitas at Chipotle, but it was so watery, and before they had put anything else in my bowl there was a layer of water on the bottom, so my meal turned into a goopy mess and it was just not good. I’ll probably be avoiding Chipotle for the rest of my Whole30.

My cohort always goes out to eat on Saturday nights, and this week they picked a barbecue place in downtown Gainesville. I was so exhausted from a stressful week that I decided not to go and to instead try to have an early night and get some sleep. Part of my decision had to do with Whole30 (not much you can eat at a bbq place), but it really paid off because I felt so well rested on Sunday. I went back to my Airbnb and had a baked potato with ghee, green beans, and chicken for dinner with a little bit of Frank’s hot sauce. I got some homework done (look at me starting homework that’s not due until May), and got the best sleep I’d had all week. I may have missed some QT with my cohort, but it was so so worth it.

I stayed on plan all weekend, but I definitely didn’t follow some of the Whole30 recommendations. I ate a TON of fruit. Like, way more than Whole30 recommends. UF puts snacks in our classrooms, but the snacks are always chips, granola bars, protein bars, brownies, cookies, candy bars, and fruit. When you’re in class for 18 hours in one weekend you literally start eating just to stay awake. I’m sure that Melissa Hartwig would  be very upset with me over this, but I was snacking to stay focused. #SorryMelissa. The money that UF gives us can be used in this little store in our building, and the ONLY thing in there that was compliant was Naked Juice, which I’m also sure Melissa is not about, but I bought one and savored it.

This weekend was the only weekend I’ll have class on my Whole30, and I anticipated it being the hardest time to stick to Whole30, but I made it, and I’m feeling good about finishing out!

 

Whole30 Day 4

I’m so behind!! I don’t know why this is surprising to me…I am horrible at blogging.

Anyways, Day 4 was HORRIBLE. I had the sugar hangover that I’d been missing on Days 2 and 3 and I wanted to Kill All the Things. I didn’t sleep well Wednesday night, then Thursday morning a thunderstorm woke me up and I had a killer headache. I was super late to work and was unbelievably crabby. It seemed like people were going out of their way to piss me off. My headache felt just like a hangover which was super frustrating since I had been to happy hour the night before and not had a single drink. My coworkers were avoiding me by the end of the day, but I made it through. Thursday night my head was hurting so badly that I started to get nauseous, and I wanted to eat things off plan just because I thought the sugar might help my headache.

Meals:

B: Leftover Mahi Mahi, 2 poached eggs, roasted potatoes

L:  Citrus Chicken with roasted zucchini and 1/2 grapefruit

D: Salad with tomatoes, hard boiled egg, chicken, and avocado, 1 golden delicious apple

Whole30 Day 3

Day 3. 1/10 of the way through this program. That is depressing. I’m actually writing this post on Day 4 which has been significantly worse than the other days, so some of that negativity will probably seep into Day 3’s post.

Day 3 was better than Day 2, which was pretty sweet because Day 2 wasn’t that bad! No headache in the morning on Day 3, but still had the overall fatigue in the morning, and I was way too tired to workout when I woke up. I had a doctors appointment where I talked to my doctor about Whole30 and my exercise routine and she said I was the picture of good health. Yay me!

Work was unbelievably busy today. I went to the doctor over my lunch break and had a ton of meetings so I didn’t have time to eat lunch until 3:00, and here’s the amazing part: I wasn’t starving. Pre Whole30 I was hungry by 10:30. Since starting Whole30 my breakfasts have kept me full until at least 12:00 if not later, which is huge for me.

Eating at 3:00 actually really worked out for me today because I had my first “Whole30 test.” One of my friends is moving away, and she had a happy hour going away party at a East End Market in Winter Park (it was a great atmosphere and I can’t wait to go back post-Whole30). Wine Down Wednesdays have all you can drink sangria for $15, and somehow, amazingly, I stuck to Whole30. No sangria, no appetizers, just 2 baby carrots that came with someone’s hummus. This was a huge win for me and I felt so accomplished when I left!

The rest of my night went downhill as my MBA team realized we had forgotten to complete a homework assignment that was due at midnight, I got home to make dinner and all of my veggies had gone bad, and then I didn’t like the dinner that I did have. Very disappointing. The good news is that I stuck to Whole30, and I’m sure it will get better soon!

B: Egg bake with avocado and 1/2 grapefruit

L: Stuffed baked potato (turkey, broccoli, roasted red peppers, ghee)

D: Citrus Chicken (from: http://newleafwellness.biz/2017/03/21/the-ultimate-whole30-slow-cooker-freezer-meal-plan/#_a5y_p=6235792), roasted zucchini, apple

Whole30 Day 2

Day 2 down – only 28 to go!

Today actually went much better than I was anticipating. I woke up feeling unbelievably tired, which I’m sure was in part due to the lack of sugar but mostly because I stayed up late to watch the Men’s College Basketball National Championship (go Heels!). I had a slight headache, and I couldn’t get myself up to go on a run, but I ate my egg bake with half of an avocado and got myself to work on time. On the Whole30, you’re supposed to eat 3 meals that fill you up enough to avoid snacking throughout the day, and you can add in a pre and post workout snack if you’re exercising. This is very different than what I usually do (eat all day long), so I had my grapefruit about 30 minutes-1 hour after breakfast because I was so nervous that I wouldn’t make it until lunch time.

This morning was pretty rough. I was exhausted when I woke up, I had a headache, I was sore from yesterday’s BBG legs, and a little monthly visitor came to town. Luckily I started feeling much better after lunch. I had a stuffed baked potato which was excellent and really filled me up. I didn’t experience any cravings this afternoon, and I even made it to one of our “team toasts” at work, where we have sparkling apple juice and cake, without caving. I took some water with me and said no to cake!

When I got home I had much more energy than I was expecting so I completed BBG Pre-training week 3 arms which was KILLER. Circuit one was a breeze and I got through it two full times in the first 7 minutes, and then I barely completed circuit 2 once in 7 minutes. On my second round of circuit 2 I got a charley horse while doing lay down push-ups. I think that I was contracting my back and leg muscles much more than I realized. At that point I said enough on the workout because I only had 1:30 minutes left, and my calf was on fire.

Since I didn’t really like my dinner last night I whipped up some fish tacos with what I had laying around, so they were mahi-mahi, tomatoes, the leftover pineapple salsa, avocado served in a romaine lettuce leaves. It was so so yummy, and I’ll definitely be making it again. After such an amazing dinner I am ready to ROCK this challenge. I didn’t have any sugar cravings pretty much all day, which is huge for me. I definitely stayed busy at work and once I got home, and I think that helped a lot.

As anyone else doing Whole30 this April? Has anyone completed it in the past?

Books, Books, and More Books

I finished 3 books this week, which will make it look like I’ve been slacking on posting when truly I just finished 3 books in 3 days. Not sure that I’ve done that since I was in 1st grade. I started reading Voyager, the third book in the Outlander series, and The Good Nurse around the same time. I’ll start with Voyager first.

I absolutely loved Voyager. The first two books in the series were great, but there was a lot of political back story that made the novels slow in some places and difficult for me to get through. Voyager wasn’t like this at all. I was pleasantly surprised to find that there was very little political drama, which made the whole thing much more enjoyable for me. Anyways, spoilers ahead.

The beginning of the book jumps around a lot-from Jamie’s life in Scotland without Claire, then to Claire’s life in the 1900s without Jamie. Most of Claire’s story takes place 20 years after she left Scotland, with her daughter, Bree, fully grown, but there are some flashbacks to the time right after she returned to the 20th century. It was strange to read their stories separately, since for the first two books they’re almost always together. Claire then enlists the help of Reverend Wakefield’s nephew(? not totally sure about the relationship) to discover what happened to Jamie at Culloden. Claire realizes that Jamie didn’t die after all and if their times are moving in synchrony that he is still alive, so she returns through the standing stones to find him. This part of the story shocked me-Claire finds Jamie immediately with no issues whatsoever. Go figure. So naturally they get roped into all kinds of adventures and there’s lots of drama, they end up on a ship to the West Indies and there’s clearly more drama. Geillis Duncan makes a dramatic return which I wasn’t expecting at all. When it was all said and done I actually enjoyed this book more than either of the others, and I’m very excited to read the fourth book!

Next up: The Good Nurse.
I heard about this book from someone in a reading facebook group that I’m in, and it sounded pretty interesting. It’s a true story about Charles Cullen, a nurse from New Jersey that was dubbed “The Angel of Death” after killing at least 45 people. Some people speculate that he killed up to 400 people, but most of the deaths can’t be linked to him because of a lack of documentation/inability to autopsy bodies after 20-30 years. The story was interesting, but I didn’t love the book. It was written in a strange way that I don’t even know how to classify. It was part novel-esque, part straight factual non fiction, and it was just very hard to get through for me, but I finished it and that was that.

Reading 2015

Reading 

My goal last year was to read 52 books, one per week. I didn’t even come close to completing that goal. I read 31 books, which Is still good since my true goal was to read more since I enjoy it so much. Some of my favorites  from 2015 include Outlander, Pride and Prejudice, Yes Please, Still Alice, Crazy Rich Asians,  and 11/22/63.  I’ve decided that this year I will again try to read 52 books and hope that I’m more successful this go-round. It’s January 22 which means I should have completed 3 books to be on track, and I’m happy to say that I have done that!  So far this year I’ve read Dear Daughter, In a Dark Dark Wood, and The Rosie Project.

Dear Daughter was from a list of books recommended to people that liked Gone Girl, which I absolutely loved. It was good, but I didn’t think it was as well-written or captivating as Gone Girl. In a Dark Dark Wood  was a Skimm read (more on the Skimm later) and I loved it. It is also similar to Gone Girl with the complex characters and twists and turns that you never see coming. It’s dark, but I couldn’t put it down and I finished in a weekend I believe. The Rosie Project was a Christmas gift from a friend and I LOVED it. It was so different from what I usually read (very much a romcom) and it was so refreshing after two darker books. It’s a story about a man that has Asperger’s but doesn’t know it, and his quest to find love. It was such a fun read and I highly recommend it to anyone looking for something fun, quirky, and uplifting.

I’m currently reading Voyager, which is the third book in the Outlander series. I took a long break from these books because while they are so wonderful and I’m incredibly attached to the characters, they are LONG books, so I needed a break. I’m about 300 pages into Voyager, and I am so glad I’ve picked them back up. I’ll post more on that once I’ve finished it!

Oops.

Well I clearly did a horrible job maintaining my blog, so some updates from 2015. I cooked a lot, moved to a new apartment, got a full-time job at Disney World, crafted  little, read some great books, watched my sister graduate from high school and start college, saw 3 of my closest friends get engaged, went to Disneyland for the first time, made some really great friends, and overall had an amazing year. I’m hoping I can do a better job of keeping up with this in the coming year. I’m going to make separate posts with some categories so that I can try to tag them better and one day when this blog is overflowing with posts (yeah, right) it will be easier to navigate!

The Beginning.

I am starting this blog for myself. To track things that I do like new dishes I cook, crafts I make, books I read, and my futile effort to get in shape. My resolution for 2015 is to find myself. Discover what I want to do, where I want to be, and who I am. Encompassed in this goal are some smaller resolutions: read 52 books, cook at least one dish a week (really cook, not just macaroni and cheese), try to get in shape, excel at my job, and craft more. Here I will document this year and my experiences.

“Around here, however, we don’t look backwards for very long. We keep moving forward, opening new doors, and doing new things, because we’re curious and curiosity keeps leading us down new paths.” -Walt Disney