21/30

I've made it 3 weeks! Only 9 days to go!

...that's what I keep repeating to myself 'cause y'all, it's getting tough.  I feel like I've pretty much been eating the same meal in different forms every day.  Whole 30 as a vegetarian is NOT an easy task.  I also haven't had that much time to prep my food (which, as I said before, is what makes Whole 30 do-able).  Therefore, I've been having some mix of eggs, red pepper, onion, kale, avocado, and sweet potato pretty much every day.  

However, I do have 2 new recipes I tried out to share! On Friday, I finally had the chance to make a trip to the grocery store and got the ingredients to make this Coconut Lime Cauliflower "Rice"! (found on pinterest here:  http://meatified.com/lime-coconut-cauliflower-rice/) It is SO good! In short, you "rice up" some cauliflower in the blender then sauté it with coconut milk and lime juice until all of the liquid has been soaked up! I think I put a little too much lime juice, but it's still delicious.  I had some just plain friday night as a snack, then made my dinner out of it on Saturday! I sautéed up some kale, red bell pepper, onion, black beans, and sweet potato, then mixed all of that with the "rice" and some avocado! 

Aaand the second recipe is super simple: For breakfast on Sunday, I blended my coffee with some of the leftover coconut milk and it came out like a latte! A nice alternative to the plain black coffee I've had every morning so far!

So, I'm definitely struggling, but I'm determined to make it! I'm more than 2/3 of the way done and have just a little over a week left.  I just need to find some time to prep my food and some new recipes to try out!  I know I definitely haven't had enough variety in my diet in the last week, so I'm going to try to mix it up some this week! 

~9 days. 9 days. 9 days~

{Almost} Halfway There!!

As of today, I have finished 12 days of Whole 30! So almost 2 weeks in and still going [pretty] strong... 18 days to go!

{Spinach salad with tomatoes, avocado, red bell pepper, and a homemade strawberry vinegrette! The dressing was so easy! I just diced up some strawberries and threw them in the magic bullet with a little balsamic vinegar. Gave it a quick blend and, voilà!}

Let's start from last week - that was easy! I've found that Whole 30 is very do-able when you plan ahead, have the proper food at your house, and are actually eating at your house. I did all of this M-F of week 1, so I stayed very true to Whole 30 and didn't have too much of a problem. 

{Breakfast: Sautéed sweet potatoes and red bell pepper with a fried egg, 

an orange, blueberries, and black coffee!}

HOWEVER, Friday night, I went to the Ed Sheeran concert and that's when things started to get difficult. We went out to eat beforehand at a Mexican restaurant and I still did pretty good.  I got a bowl with black beans, sautéed veggies, corn, and avocados. They brought it out with chicken first, so I had to send it back and when the new one came out, it was cold and didn't keep me super full for very long.  Pretty disappointing... :/

{Pictures from the Ed Sheeran concert!!}

After the concert, we went to Waffle House.  THAT. WAS. TORTURE. All I wanted was a chocolate chip waffle and diced and covered hash browns! But I was good and just got 2 eggs scrambled with diced tomatoes in them.  I almost took just a bite of Allison's waffle ("what's this ONE bite really going to do to me?"), but stopped myself (tiny win!!). The eating out is hard, because technically I don't really know how things are being prepared. They probably have butter and olive oil (not allowed), but there's really only so much I can do. So I'm following rules when I make my own food and just doing the best I can with the things I have no control over. 

{Another picture from the concert!}

I spent the weekend in Athens with the family I used to nanny for (my Athens family).  It was the 16-year old daughter, Allison, and her friend I took to the concert Friday, and then the younger daughter, Abrielle's 8th birthday was on Saturday!  So, again, I did the best I could with the circumstances (not being at home in complete control of the preparation of my food).

{At Abrielle's party!}

{The adorable cake at her popcorn-themed party!}

Overall, I'm pretty proud of how well I did being gone the whole weekend, eating out and cooking in someone else's kitchen!

Then, we had 2 tests this week on monday and tuesday.  Since I was in Athens all weekend, I wasn't event close to prepared.  To be honest, those 2 days were a blur.  I slept 2 hours Monday night. I don't even know what I ate those 2 days.  I know I stayed within Whole 30 limits, but I pretty much just snacked all day.

I got back on track Tuesday night! I made a delicious sweet potato quiche dish that I had for dinner that night then for breakfast the rest of the week! It was so good! I found it on pinterest here: http://bydawnnicole.com/2014/07/crispy-kale-sausage-quiche-with-sweet-potato-crust-paleo-whole30-compliant.html
I changed a few things (subbed red pepper for the sausage and made a smaller one, so didn't use as many eggs) and it was delicious!!

{First you make a 'crust' out of just shaved sweet potato and coconut oil!)

{Add the kale, red peppers, and eggs and bake!}

{I ate it with avocado and salsa!}

Well, this update has gone on long enough, so I'll leave you here.  Tomorrow night is Meredith's wedding!!! I can't wait to have a UGA Noteworthy reunion (and have my cheat night!!)!  I am only letting myself break at the reception, so I'll eat right all day tomorrow before the wedding then will get right back on Whole 30 Sunday morning!  Now that those crazy tests are over, I'll try to update more often! Promise!!

{At the last Noteworthy wedding! Love these girls!!}

Day 3!

I'm at the end of day 3 and so far it's going great! For breakfast, I've had pretty much the same thing I had Day 1, Mexi-eggs. Lunch and dinner, I've done some mix of veggies, quinoa, and tempeh! 

Made a new dish today that I'm obsessed with! I love cereal. Not so much for breakfast but sometimes I'll just have a bowl of cereal for dinner or have a bowl as a night snack. Obviously all cereal is out on Whole 30 because of the grains and sugar, but tonight I made a close alternative!

It's blueberries, raspberries, strawberries, bananas, flax seeds, walnuts, unsweetened coconut, and almond milk. It. Is. So. Good!

Then for dinner, I made another veggie/quinoa creation!

I mean, look how pretty red peppers are! They look like little flowers! :)

Well, just a quick update for tonight. Back to studying the muscles of the posterior thigh...

~Make someone smile today! :)

Whole 30 Day 1!

I finished the juice cleanse! Success! The third day, I woke up late, went to bed early, and was busy all day, so I ended up only really drinking the breakfast and dinner juice.  Overall, I never really felt too hungry, the juices kept you full up until time for the next one.  Not something I necessarily plan on doing again, but it definitely worked for my purpose! I was SO excited to eat real food this morning.  I had a pretty common breakfast for me, but I usually have cheese and I didn't even miss it, I was just glad to be chewing my breakfast! So yay for the juice cleanse! 

Yesterday I went ahead and made a meal plan for the week, did a grocery run, and then made a few things to have for the week! The first thing I made was some fresh salsa! IT IS SO GOOD! If you've never made your own, do a quick pinterest search because there are a ton of easy recipes out there! I also made about 10 boiled eggs to bring as snacks throughout the week (I can't stand the yolks in boiled eggs so I usually bring two with me since I only eat the outside!)

So on to Day 1 of Whole 30!

Breakfast: 1 whole egg + 1 egg white scrambled with 1/2 an avocado and some of my fresh homemade salsa! And black coffee!!!! (I missed coffee so much on the juice cleanse... you can drink coffee on whole 30, just with no sweetener or cream, but that's how I usually drink mine so it's not really a change for me!)

Lunch: Not the prettiest picture, I will admit... but that doesn't mean it didn't taste amazing! So a few years ago, I was introduced to eating a sweet potato with savory stuffings... I had grown up eating them with butter, brown sugar and cinnamon, so it seemed like such an odd concept to me. But it's so delicious and makes for a super simple meal. I cooked the sweet potato in the microwave for 5 min (make sure and poke holes in it beforehand with a fork to let out the steam) then I just sautéed a handful of kale, a clove of garlic diced up, and a little portion of tempeh in coconut oil.  Once the sweet potato was done, I just stuffed it with the sauté mixture, 1/2 an avocado, and some more of that salsa.

This was my first experiment with the tempeh... I've never tried it before but it's pretty much like tofu, just with a much less silky/smooth texture... I wasn't a fan of the texture, but I had put so little in and had cut it into such small pieces that it wasn't really that noticeable!

Snack: On mondays, we have 2 classes back to back from 12:30-5:00 which is ROUGH.  So I brought 2 snacks to have on breaks today.  First, I mixed some unsweetened coconut flakes with almond butter and had it on a banana.  About 2 hours later, I had my 2 boiled egg whites!

Dinner: For dinner I made red peppers stuffed with quinoa, black beans, tomatoes, corn, chiles, cilantro, and garlic. I topped it off with (no surprise here...) SALSA! (You will notice I love mexican food and will be having salsa and avocados pretty much daily!) I had the stuffed peppers with some blueberries and another cup of coffee (it's going to be a late study night... :/)

I would call my first day of Whole 30 a success! I'm hoping that since I have planed out my meals and have done some of the meal prep ahead of time, I won't find it too challenging to find healthy snacks and meals to eat throughout the day!

Well, I'm off to study for the rest of the night. The joys of being a PT student! :)

~Make someone smile today! :)

Juice Cleanse Day #1!

Okay, I decided to do a juice cleanse leading up to my Whole 30 journey... The idea is that once I've only had juice for 3 days, I will just want food... no matter what it is.  So rather than feeling limited because I can't have dairy, gluten, and sugar, I'll just be excited that I can eat something that I can actually chew! :)

After looking at all of the pre-made juice cleanses I found that are mailed to you, I thought, "I can do this for SO MUCH cheaper than that!" (*hint* the answer is no...) I found one on Pinterest called the Dr. Oz 3 Day Detox Cleanse Diet (http://kitkat1141.hubpages.com/hub/Dr-Oz-3-Day-Detox-Cleanse-Diet) that looked promising.  So I set a start date, made a shopping list, and headed to Kroger.  

 Once I got home (after spending much more than I had anticipated), I went ahead and cut all the fruits and veggies, measured them out, and separated them out into baggies by meal.  This way all I had to do each day was pour in the baggie and add the liquid ingredients!

Now, on to the actual cleanse day!

7:00 ~ Woke up and had my cup of green tea

8:00 ~ Blended up my breakfast juice (I must say, this one's my favorite) 

10-12:00 ~ Class

12:00 ~ Lunch juice (this thing is GIANT and has an odd consistency from the celery and cucumber... definitely my least favorite, but still do-able)

1-4:00 ~ Class

4:30 ~ Snack juice (they say you can repeat any of the juice recipes as a snack, so I got the ingredients to repeat the dinner drink as my snack each day)

7:00 ~ Dinner juice (doesn't look very appetizing, but it was actually pretty good!)

As far as how I feel: After breakfast, I had a lot more energy than normal (usually NOT a morning person).  Throughout the rest of the day, I felt full between juices.  The hardest was after dinner.  I went to a movie at one of those dinner-movie theaters with my mom and aunt.  They both got food and it smelled SO good! And sitting here now, at 10:30, my eyes keep shifting toward my kitchen where I know there's a hunk of Brie cheese and half of a loaf of italian bread.  That sounds delicious right now.  BUT I'm staying strong! I'm going to get a large glass of water to hold me over until I go to bed. And I should probably go ahead and trash that cheese and bread so it doesn't tempt me... :/

So, we will see how this juice cleanse goes... then I get to start on Whole 30!

Oh, I also did my 'Before' weigh in today... not quite up to sharing my weight online, but I plan on sharing how much I (hopefully) lose after this month! (Part of Whole 30 is that you don't weigh throughout the entire process, so my scale is hidden in the back of my closet for now!)

~Make someone smile today! :)

First Post!

Hello! I created this blog a few months back but have never made a post... but I've decided to take on the Whole 30 challenge with a friend starting Sept 8 and wanted to have somewhere to archive all of the recipes I use! So here I am, finally writing a post on this blog.  For some more information on Whole 30, click here --> http://www.whole30.com Being vegetarian makes this challenge a little more difficult, so I've decided to make some exceptions (3 1/2 to be exact)

1. Quinoa - it's a little bit harder to fill up on meatless protein, so I decided to make an exception for this gluten free pseudo grain that's full of protein. 
2. Black beans - speaking of protein, I NEED MY BLACK BEANS! My main sources of protein are eggs, tofu, and black beans.  I'm allowed to have eggs on Whole 30 and even though I can't have tofu (made of soy), I can have tempeh which is pretty similar.  However, there is no alternative for my black beans, so I've decided to keep them part of my diet.
3. MERE'S WEDDING!!! One of my best friends is getting married during the time I'll be on Whole 30.  I've had so much fun hearing all about her plans for the wedding (including the FOOD) and I just can't miss out on that goodness (and, let's be honest... I'm gonna drink at her wedding...) So, while I will do my best to still eat healthy, I am not going to stick to the Whole 30 diet at her wedding... #sorrynotsorry 
1/2. Smoothies - On 'The Official "Can I Have..." Guide to the Whole30' (http://whole30.com/2013/06/the-official-can-i-have-guide-to-the-whole30/), it says, "we'd rather you didn't." Mostly because of the high sugar content from the fruit and the fact that drinking your breakfast doesn't send the message to your brain that you are full as fast as chewing your food. But I love my smoothies and they're an easy thing to make to-go for an early morning of Anatomy. So they stay.

So, there is my (very wordy) description of my new diet.  I have a few days left to eat like normal, then I'll start a juice cleanse 3 days before I start Whole 30 (the idea is that once I've had nothing to eat for 3 days, I'll enjoy ANYTHING... even if it's just kale, almonds, and black coffee)

Anyone reading this who's done Whole 30 before may think that, with all of these exceptions, it's not actually Whole 30 (since it's pretty strict).  But I really don't care.  I'm doing this to get healthy and to do that, I need to be able to stick to it.  I'm not going to stick to it if I can't eat things that fill me up, so I'm doing it my way... the 'Haley Whole 30.'

Now that I've started on this blog, hopefully I'll keep up with it! I'll write another post later this week explaining a little more about me... other than just what I eat!

~Make someone smile today! :)