Day 0: Salmon with lemon and capers; mango & avocado salad; roasted brussel sprouts with bacon!

The hardest part of Whole30 is not the cooking or the food...it's the dessert...and the fact that there is no dessert. Sure there are Paleo cookies, muffins, and cake recipes and products, but those are not approved on Whole30. The reason is because Whole30 is about rebooting your body, retraining your tastebuds, and starting over. And in order to do this, there has to be no sugar! Sure, I could mash a banana and add some almond flour and cinnamon and make a dessert, but the point is to keep foods in their wholest, most natural form to enjoy the benefits of them! This is going to be the hardest part of the program for me, but for obvious reasons - I am addicted to sugar. Whole30 will help me not crave sugar - fruit or white sugar (our body does not know the difference). Fruit has a lot of sugar, so I will also have to cut back on my fruit intake because I want to eliminate sugar from my diet as much as I can. I trained myself to enjoy fruit as a 0 point snack, but now I need to find a way to fight the sugar craving and not reach for an apple or an orange every time I need a fix! I also don't want to snack on nuts because they are fattening and not only made of good fats, but bad ones too. Almond butter will be a great sweet treat, especially with celery or carrots, but I can't create habits while on this program. I don't want to crave a food just because it is a certain hour of the day - I want to eat when I am hungry and listen to my body. My need for dessert after dinner is a habit; I don't really need dessert, but I have trained my body to not be full until it has dessert. This is what Whole30 will fix! And I can't wait. I just worry what the sugar withdrawl will be like! And I am a little scared! And after Whole30, I may slowly reintroduce sugar into my diet so that I can enjoy baking paleo treats and breads and cakes, but for the next 30 days, no sugar allowed!

Tonight's dinner was amazing! It was almost  Whole30 approved, except that I had to use butter in a recipe because I did not plan ahead and buy ghee. But it was delicious and worth making again using Whole30 approved ingredients. Good thing today was only Day 0!

Dinner was a FreshDirect salmon fillet with lemon and capers. It baked in the oven for 20 minutes covered in foil.

I made a mango and avocado salad to serve on the side (the trick to eliminating the craving for sugar is to add sugar to dinner so you get the fix) and roasted brussel sprouts with bacon! Both recipes came from nomnompaleo.com

Both recipes were so easy to make, so delicious and made me even more excited for the program! I doubled the recipe for the mango salsa so that I could have leftovers (I followed the recipe exactly for 4-6 servings, rather than cutting it in half for 2 people). The thing I am finding with Whole30 and paleo in general is the importance of leftovers for another meal! Cooking homemade meals is so important to the success of the lifestyle that we are in the kitchen so much preparing, making and eating that leftovers come in handy for an easier next day! Especially during the work week. I would have doubled the recipe for the brussel sprouts, but I did not have ghee so I did not want to sabotage my program before it even began (I cut the recipe in half to serve 2). I will make this again soon and make a lot more for leftovers!

Mango & Avocado Salsa
Serves 4-6
 
 2 cups mango, diced
1/2 red onion, diced
1 cup avocado, diced
1/4 cup fresh cilantro, minced
2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
black pepper and salt to taste
1/4 tsp red pepper flakes
juice from 1 lime

Combine ingredients and enjoy!

 

  

Roasted Brussel Sprouts with Bacon
Serves 4-6
 
 1.5 pounds brussel sprouts
2-3 tbsp melted ghee
4 slices of bacon, deiced
balsamic vinegar
salt and pepper to taste

1. Preheat oven to 400 and line a baking sheet with foil.

2. Trim the brussel sprouts of the outer layer leaves.

3. Cut brussel sprouts in half.

4. Dice bacon.

5. Toss brussel sprouts with melted ghee.

6. Spread brussel sprouts on baking sheet in a single layer.

7. Add bacon.

8. Bake for 35 minutes. Remove from oven and season with salt and pepper and drizzle with balsamic vinegar. Serve and enjoy.

I am going to use this recipe with broccoli florets as well!

Tomorrow I am waking up to get the slow cooker ready for tomorrow's lunch. While I was prepping, I re-read the instruction and ingredients and saw 'orange juice.' I had previously purchased Tropicana before signing up for Whole30. The ingredients in the juice are: juice and stevia, which means not Whole30 approved. Rather than freak out, I grabbed an orange and juiced it! I plan to double the recipe so that I have leftovers so I needed 1/2 cup of orange juice! I was so excited to have fresh juice and no added sugar. I have the day off tomorrow in order to see Rick and his girlfriend Katie. They should be in NYC by 12pm - 1pm depending on traffic and weather so I am going to turn the slow cooker on at 5:00am (it takes 7 hours on low setting) and go to an 8:30am bar method class. I did not go to class this entire weekend (not since Thursday) so I really need to get back on track, get focused and get my butt to class. April 3 will be 4 years since I first started going to class and I have 7 classes left before I hit 500!

Have a great rest of your weekend everyone!

XO