Whole30, Day 31: Dairy Reintroduction

“Wait a minute?” you ask.  “Day 31?  I thought this was a Whole30!”  Well yes, so did I.  But it turns out there’s a reintroduction process involved.  You add each food group that you want to ultimately include in your diet one at a time to see how your body reacts.  Then you don’t have that food group again until you’re done reintroducing everything back in.  So on day one, you introduce the first food group and have some form of it at every meal.   Otherwise, you stay completely compliant.  Then you go back to 100% Whole30 for two days before introducing the next food group.

The thing is, if you want to ultimately add everything back into your diet (as I do!), you have to have a day for dairy, gluten, non-gluten grains, legumes, alcohol, each with two days in between.  Well, you do the math!  That’s 15 more days at minimum.  And as much as I want to reap the benefits of this challenge and truly learn how foods affect me, I committed to a Whole30 not a Whole45.  Maybe if my results were such that I felt there was surely some specific foods to blame for my feeling a certain way I would find this warranted, but that just hasn’t been the case.  So instead, my plan is to take it one day at a time and just do the best I can.

Pre-Workout Snack: 1/2 a cookies and cream Quest Bar.  These arrived on day 2, and I have waited all this time to try them!  The protein is derived from whey, but they also contain Stevia. I found this bar to be offensively sweet, but I’ve always been sensitive to the flavor of Stevia and I’ve never tried this flavor before.

Breakfast: My biggest treat of the day was probably the paleo cinnamon streusel creamer I made to go in my coffee!  Amazing, and super easy!  Just combine  1 cup coconut milk, 1/4 cup date paste, 1/2 tsp almond extract, 1 tsp vanilla and 3/4 tsp cinnamon and add couple of tablespoons to your coffee!

 Then I had half of a very large sweet potato, stuffed with 2% plain Greek yogurt, dried figs and walnuts, drizzled with honey and sprinkled with cinnamon.  The yogurt made my tummy feel very happy.

However, I did start to get hunger pains by 10:30/11:00.  Before Whole30, I often experienced this sort of “faux” hunger which I think is related to blood sugar.  I don’t know if this morning’s tummy rumblings were because of the fake sugar in my bar, the sugar in my breakfast, or the fact that I didn’t have meat and veggies (the yogurt did have 20g protein, and sweet potatoes are generally very filling!), but it’s something I’ll probably play around with.

Lunch: I didn’t feel like figuring out a whole meal around adding dairy, so I just had my Moroccan chicken, sweet potato with almond butter and roasted Brussels sprouts, but added parmesan to my Brussels sprouts.  It was the cheap shaker stuff, and I really didn’t find it appealing at all.

Dinner: For dinner, I made spaghetti squash stuffed with olives, chicken, spinach and feta.  I don’t know if there was something special about the feta, but it tasted better than any feta I’ve had before.  I’m feeling a bit bloated after dinner, but I am quite sure it’s not from the cheese – I’ve noticed large amounts of spaghetti squash tend to have this affect on me!

The best part of today was the freedom from silly rules that really have no tangible affect.  For instance, when I realized I was out of olives it wasn’t a big deal to use the pickled veggie mix in the fridge, even though I wasn’t sure what oil they were pickled in; and I was finally able to use the date paste I’ve been holding onto for an entire month simply because I’d made it using a small amount of raisins that contained sulfites.  I’m pleased to say that so far, despite the lack of rules, I haven’t wanted to splurge all that much.  I got my free monthly truffle from Godiva and it’s still sitting in it’s bag.  My coworkers went out to happy hour to celebrate the end of the Whole30, but I passed.  And Courtney even brought home a can of whipped cream (my weakness!), yet I haven’t touched it.  So far so good.  I’ll just keep taking this one day at a time!

Johanna