Just Checking In

I thought I'd check in and tell you how things are going so far, post-Whole30. I'm mostly just continuing to eat Whole30 stuff. I went out to dinner one night, had steak with mushrooms, green beans, and steamed carrots. I know the carrots had added sugar, they were just too sweet not to have, but it was okay. I didn't get overwhelming dessert cravings from it or anything. A few days later, I was at Sprout's doing some grocery shopping, and they had dark chocolate covered cashews in the bulk bin. I got a few, like a really small handful, and ate them in the car on the way home. I got a headache. I don't know if it's just because it's more sugar than I've had in one sitting in a while or if there was something else in them. It wasn't pleasant, but honestly, it probably wasn't enough to make me swear I'll never have anything chocolate ever again, although it'll be a while before I do. It also didn't make me crave more sweets, which is what I was really afraid having any sweets would do.

So, really, nothing terribly exciting. I was planning on doing a dairy re-intro, even bought a tiny little container of ice cream and some half & half to have in coffee, but I'm still having some allergy/sinus stuff, and since one thing people have reported dairy does to them is cause nasal congestion, I thought it would be best to wait until the allergy stuff clears up, so I'll know for sure if that's something it causes in me.

Book Review -- It Starts With Food, by Dallas and Melissa Hartwig

Whether you want to do a Whole30 or not, I recommend reading It Starts Wit Food. While the Whole30 program is based on a Paleo diet (aka Caveman Diet), the Hartwigs don't focus on what our primitive ancestors may or may not have eaten in the past. Instead, as they state on page 25 of their book: "We are far more concerned with health than we are with history."  They don't want to worry about whether a caveman would have eaten something or not, they want to focus on the foods that make us healthy now.

They start with the premise that every bit of food you eat is either making you more healthy, or less healthy, there is no neutral food. And they define what they mean by food that makes you healthy as food that meets four criteria: 

The food we eat should:

1. promote a healthy psychological response,
2. promote a healthy hormonal response,
3. support a healthy gut
4. support immune function and minimize inflammation.

They talk about how pleasant tastes used to tell us that food was something nutritious for us while unpleasant tastes prevented us from eating things that could be poisonous, and how manufacturers take advantage of our natural tendency to want the pleasant tastes to make food that is extremely appealing, to the point that we truly can't help but crave their products. It's not necessarily the extremely appealing tastes that are the problem, though. The problem is that along with those tastes, most manufactured food doesn't ever make us satiated, because it doesn't contain the protein, fat, and other nutrients that signal our brains that we're getting full, so we just keep eating. 

They go into a lot of detail about hormones and inflammation and how food affects both of those, but they balance out all of what they refer to as the "science-y stuff" with plenty of examples that help explain what they're talking about. And they spend chapters on all of the foods they ask you to give up during your Whole30, explaining how they affect you and why they think you'll be better off without them in your diet. Then they spend chapters going over the more healthy foods you should be eating and why they're the best choices for you nutritionally. 

They also spend a lot of time going over their meal template in detail. They don't give you specific amounts of any food that you need to eat, basing their amounts on things like the size of the palm of your hand (for your protein serving) or the size of your thumb (for a healthy fat), and they stress that it will be a learning process -- you'll have to figure out how much you need to eat at each meal to stay satisfied until your next meal, but as long as you follow the general guidelines they give, you'll be fine. They also stress things like sitting at a table to eat your meal, and conversing with anyone you're dining with, as opposed to just sitting there playing with your phone or watching tv. While I don't usually have anyone to eat with, I know that I have been much more mindful of what I'm eating if I sit at the table and just eat, instead of multitasking.

In addition, they talk about changes to Whole30 for special populations, including vegetarians and people who have autoimmune diseases or other possible food sensitivities to foods that are not normally cut out during a Whole30. They have a detailed re-introduction plan to add back in foods that you've spent 30 days without, so that you can see whether they affect you in ways that you didn't realize they did, and then decide whether you want to include them in your diet regularly based on that. They also include some basic recipes and ideas for meal planning.

I realize this got a little long, sorry about that. I guess if I were going to sum it all up, I'd say that if you have an interest in health and nutrition, you should read this book. You could do a Whole30 without reading the book, just based on the information on their website, and be fine, but I think the book went into a lot of detail about why the rules are what they are. While there is some of the why on the website, there's a lot more detail in the book. 

Post Whole30 -- Where do I go from here?

So now that I've finished a Whole30, I've got to figure out what I do next.

First, a summary of this past month:

• I lost 7.3 lbs, going from 298.1 to 290.3, which is great -- about a pound and a half a week, average, which is really good. And I did it without counting calories or limiting the amount of food I could eat, and I did it while eating avocados and beef and sweet potatoes and homemade mayonnaise and all kinds of other really yummy stuff.
• My before and after pictures don't look dramatically different, but I could tell the clothes were slightly looser now than when I put them on before. And really, I tend to have to lose a lot of weight before I really start noticing my clothes fitting differently. Here's the pic for reference:

• It's a lot of work to cook three meals a day, even if I'm only cooking for one person, and even though I cooked extra when I really cooked stuff, so most of the daily cooking was really just reheating. 
• Reading labels on food is scary. They put all kinds of stuff in food to make it look and taste better and make it more shelf-stable. And they add sugar to everything. Everything. And don't get me started on the soy thing, they sneak that into places you'd never think to look for it, too.
• Although it's a lot of work to cook all your meals, it's very satisfying (except when you accidentally burn them, that's not satisfying at all). I like that I knew exactly what was in my food, and most of it tasted better than anything I could've gotten from a box in the store. 
• Most of my meals during the last 30 days, I've eaten at the table, not watching tv, or playing on the computer, or messing with my phone, just sitting, and eating, and paying attention to the food. It was nice. I noticed I was eating slower than I would have, not gulping my food, and I didn't have the experience of suddenly realizing my plate was empty but not actually remembering eating the food -- which has happened before when I was paying attention to other things. 
• Until the last couple of days, when I seem to have gotten some lovely seasonal allergy/sinus stuff that has included a sore throat, and coughing, and sneezing, and a runny nose, I was feeling better than I did prior to starting the Whole30. While I never hit the stage they refer to as "tiger blood" -- a point when people feel really amazingly good, and have lots of energy -- I did feel I had more energy than usual.

Basically, I found the Whole30 to be a positive experience. It wasn't easy, but it wasn't as hard as I thought it would be, and after the first week and a half or so, it really seemed to go quickly. It has definitely changed how I look at food. It's made me want to make an effort to buy good quality food whenever I can, reading labels to make sure I don't get a bunch of unnecessary ingredients. I can honestly say I'm not having a lot of cravings. I was really wanting a really good chai tea latte (something about the spicy/sweet/creamy combo really sounds comforting when I don't feel so hot, and the unsweetened version I made for myself just didn't quite satisfy that craving), so today when I ran to Target to pick up a few things, I stopped at the Starbucks and had a short chocolate chai. It was good, but not great. I don't particularly want another one, but I don't regret having that one. (Also, I never ordered a short anything at Starbucks before -- the little bitty coffee cup is so cute! But could someone tell me why the short chai cost more than the venti unsweet passion tea that I'd been getting while I was on Medifast?)

So, now what? I think for now what I'm going to do is keep eating basically Whole30 stuff at home, but if I go out to eat or eat at someone's house, I'll do the best I can, but not worry if there's, say, sugar in a sauce, or soy in the brand of tea they use. Even when I'm eating in a restaurant, I'm going to (most of the time) opt for salad  over sandwiches and not eat a bunch of bread, because it turns out, meals can be satisfying without bread. Who knew? I know that sweets are a weakness for me, and that once I start eating them, sometimes I have trouble stopping, so it's really best just to not start. That doesn't mean I'll never, ever have dessert again, because I realize that's highly unlikely. The holidays are just around the corner, after all. But I am going to try to be picky about what I have. I don't think store-bought cookies, no matter how yummy they look, would be worth possibly triggering major sugar cravings, but maybe something homemade would be. I may try making some of the Paleo desserts I've seen for things like potlucks, if I think I'll really want something sweet, but would rather avoid the really sugary stuff, but I'm not planning on making them just to keep around the house for me to eat, because I don't need them. 

As far as this blog, I'll keep posting, although probably not every day, that just got really hard to keep up with and I think it could get stressful to try to do that for an extended period of time. There's a Healthy, Happy Shannon Facebook page, you can go Like it if you want to get blog updates in your newsfeed. (Updates also go out on google+, for whatever that's worth, but don't expect me to respond to comments left there, I never check it.) I've also started an Instagram account, that's where my daily food pics will be -- I don't want to go back to logging everything I eat at My Fitness Pal, but I do want some kind of record, something I can look at if I need to troubleshoot why I'm not losing weight, that kind of thing. If a meal is Whole30 compliant, I'll tag it #Whole30. If it's not, it won't be. My plan for the blog is to update 3 or 4 times a week, with how my week is going, any yummy recipes I try, possibly health-related book reviews (I've been meaning to do one for It Starts With Food all month and it just hasn't happened yet), and thoughts on this whole getting healthy thing. 

Sorry that got so long, I'm not really very good at editing things out. When I try, I usually just think of something else I meant to say that I need to add in, so I'll just stop now. So now, one last round of What I Ate Today:

Breakfast -- the last of the cauliflower and roasted veggie soup, with ground chicken with sausage seasoning, and spinach.

Lunch -- Beef stew with butternut squash and roasted carrots, broccoli, and cauliflower.

Snack -- My itty bitty chocolate chai tea. Also, you can see my really dirty stove. Just try to ignore that part, okay?

Supper -- a brand new batch of roasted veggie soup (couple of beets, couple of turnips, carrots, acorn squash, chicken broth, coconut milk), topped with Aidells Chicken & Apple sausage and some sauteed broccoli slaw. 

Day 30!

So I've made it through my Whole30. I feel like I should have something more to say, and I probably will, tomorrow, but right now I have a runny nose and a scratchy throat and I'm just not feeling all that thoughtful, so instead, here's a look at what I ate today:

Breakfast -- leftover soup, with ground beef (I think. I can't remember. Maybe it was the ground chicken I made with sage and garlic powder and salt and pepper. I don't know. There was meat, anyway.)

More leftover soup, with added spinach and -- again, for the life of me, I can't remember. If the breakfast soup had chicken, this one had beef, or it may have been the other way around. Anyway. Also, a cup of chai tea, no sweetener, with coconut milk.

Supper -- beef stew with added broccoli, and an apple with almond butter.

Tomorrow, I'll do a true Whole30 wrap-up type post, with my post-Whole30 weight, and pictures, and a summary of what I liked/didn't like about it and that kind of stuff. Right now, I'm going to sleep.

Day 29

I can't believe it's already day 29. One more day. Not that I'm going to change much immediately. At some point, I'll do some re-introductions of stuff, but I'm not really in much of a hurry. Although today I would've loved bread. Warm, toasted bread, with butter. But I think that's because I woke up with a sore throat, and toast is kind of comfort food. So, yeah, sore throat. I went to an urgent care place after work and it's not strep, probably some allergy stuff, or maybe a virus. On the one hand, good that it's not strep, because strep is not a fun thing to deal with. On the other hand, if it was strep, they could give me antibiotics, and I'd feel better, probably by tomorrow afternoon. Oh, well. 

Anyway, the sore throat should help explain the all-soup day today:

Breakfast -- beef stew that had been cooking in the crockpot overnight -- it was beef, carrots, celery, garlic, onions, and butternut squash. It tasted okay, but not great.

 Lunch -- somehow I forgot to take a picture of lunch, but if I had, it would've looked a lot like the picture of supper, but instead of the roast beef, I used seasoned ground beef I had in the fridge, and I had an apple with almond butter with it.

Supper -- leftover soup from last week that I thawed out and heated up, and added some broccoli slaw, roast beef, and salsa. Oh, and a spoonful of almond butter, separately, not in the soup. Just because it sounded good while the soup was heating up.

Terribly exciting day, food-wise. Hopefully I'll feel better soon, but until I do, I suspect there will be lots of pictures of soup here.

Day 28

I didn't post yesterday. I was tired. I ate three meals, it was all Whole30 food, it wasn't anything exciting. Anyway, today wasn't very exciting either. I'm trying to get stuff cooked for the week, which for some reason doesn't seem to equal getting good stuff to eat today -- I don't seem to be able to get the timing right, so while I wait for the good stuff to cook, I end up eating boring stuff. I should really work on that.

So here's what I ate:

Breakfast -- last week, or the week before, I forget, I made soup. I froze part of it, and pulled some out of the freezer to have today. So, it's cauliflower/roasted veggie soup, topped with seasoned ground beef, some sauteed broccoli slaw, and some coconut flakes.

Lunch -- Spaghetti squash and seasoned ground beef, with a little coconut milk added for creaminess.

Supper -- roasted butternut squash, burnt (oops), scrambled eggs, and a little homemade mayo.

Day 26

I'm a little tired, so this is definitely going to be a short post. I spent all day at a craft class, from 10 am til a little after 6 pm, came home, had supper, then went to visit with my sister and her family who are in town for a couple of days. I really just want to sleep now.

Anyway, here's what I ate today:

Breakfast -- breakfast casserole, breakfast salad with half an apple added to it, topped with coconut milk.

Lunch -- (I needed something easy to pack and take with me to the class I took) Applegate farms roast beef slices with bits of half an avocado, wrapped in lettuce , and half an apple with some breakfast salad with a little almond butter.

Supper -- I was tired, and this was easy -- scrambled eggs and brussel sprouts. 

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Day 25

Not a lot going on today, just the normal working/eating/doing the dishes stuff, so I'll just show you what I ate today:

Breakfast -- breakfast casserole, breakfast salad, half an avocado

Lunch -- chicken, steamed squash, guacamole made with one avocado, two roma tomatoes, salt, pepper, garlic powder, lime juice

Supper -- chicken breast cooked in skilled with coconut oil, broccoli with ghee

.

Day 24

So, 24 days in. The rules say not to step on the scale for a whole month, and I haven't, but you have no idea how much I want to, how much I just really need to see if I've lost weight, or gained weight, or stayed the same. But I won't. Not until the morning of day 31, when I'm officially done with the Whole30. I can remember a time when I didn't care how much I weighed, not because I was skinny -- I never was -- but just because it didn't occur to me to care about that. Not that I didn't care how I looked, not that I didn't think I needed to exercise/eat better/lose weight, but for some reason it never dawned on me to weigh myself regularly. I'd weigh at the doctor's office, and that was probably about it. I'm pretty sure my current overwhelming desire just to step on the scale and see, because who would know, and I've really done my best to stick to the program, and really, just one little peek at the scale wouldn't hurt anything -- I'm pretty sure that's not really a healthy attitude. Not because weighing yourself in and of itself is bad, but because anything that makes you feel that way, that absolute need to do something, the near obsession with it, can't really be good, can it? 

Now, weight is somewhat important. When I go back to the doctor in a few months, the first thing they'll do is have me step on the scale. It's the easiest way to quickly measure whether my health is improving, staying the same, or getting worse -- at least from their point of view. And even though they'll run blood tests, it'll take a week or so to get those results back, it won't be the thing I'm discussing with the doctor right at that moment, in the office. So it is important, because if I walk into the doctor's office, and I've gained weight, it won't matter how much I argue that I feel better or that I'm eating lots of veggies -- they'll see another patient who quit a diet that was working and ended up worse off than they were before. (I'm a worrier, if you hadn't guessed -- I'm very good at worrying about things that haven't happened yet, that might never happen, but just think how bad it'll be if they do happen. It's not just me, right?) Despite feeling better, despite reading countless testimonials from people who have lost weight on their Whole30, I'm still worried -- I think because so much of it goes against what we've always been taught. 

I'm really trying not to worry about the number on the scale, but the truth is I don't really feel like there's been much change in how my clothes fit, so I am a little worried. And I keep trying to remind myself that unlike people who start their first Whole30 coming from a high-carb, typical American diet, I started mine after several months on a low-carb, low-fat, low-calorie diet -- there's going to be a difference in the results, I'm sure.

Anyway, enough of all of that for tonight. Here's what I ate today:

Breakfast -- leftover cold chicken and breakfast salad with half an avocado

Lunch -- three eggs over a mix of butternut squash, carrots, and half an apple with a little coconut milk (sounds weird, but it was actually pretty tasty)

Supper -- spaghetti squash and meat sauce, half an apple with almond butter

Day 23

Boring day. Went to the store for a few things for a recipe, came home, worked. Very blah. Not that that's a bad thing, boring can be good, it's just -- boring.

Today's food:

Breakfast -- breakfast casserole, breakfast salad, avocado

Lunch -- Lunch was a major fail. I was prepping chicken for supper to be breaded in almond meal and baked, and had two pieces that weren't going to fit on the baking sheet, so I decided to cook those two pieces in the skillet on the stove and have them for lunch. Clearly, I burned them. What I discovered after I sat down to eat them is that while I burned the outside, the inside was just kind of warm, and I'm super afraid of salmonella poisoning, so I opted not to eat them (and this is why I should never cook without very detailed instructions). Shame, too, because the bit of the breading I tried before I realized they weren't cooked was really good, even burnt. So I ate the veggies (roasted brussel sprouts and carrots, and heated up some grilled chicken I had in the freezer. 

Supper -- the baked breaded chicken -- much better, and thoroughly cooked but not burned. I used this recipe for instructions, but changed the seasonings -- I used salt, pepper, garlic powder, and an Italian blend spice mix.  It turned out pretty good, crispier than I really expected it to.

After supper -- I was still hungry, so I had an apple with some almond butter.

Day 22

I realized something today -- I actually feel good. I don't have boundless amounts of energy (some people report that as a side effect of a Whole30), but I feel good. Much better than I was feeling a month ago. It's kind of nice. 

Anyway, not a whole lot going on here, so I'll just go straight to the food:

Breakfast -- breakfast casserole and breakfast salad. 

Lunch -- Leftover overcooked tuna (I decided just to get that meal out of the way asap, and move on to better tasting options), with roasted brussel sprouts and carrots, and an apple with almond butter. Also, kombucha -- hibiscus flavored.

Supper -- spaghetti squash and meat sauce. Yummy. Although I really think it could use a little bit of cheese.

So with just eight days left in this Whole30 challenge, I've been thinking about what I'm going to do next. I think I'm going to keep eating mostly like this. I do want to do the controlled reintroductions, just to see if I have bad reactions to any particular foods, especially ones -- like cheese -- that I might want to have from time to time. I will probably add coffee back in, although I think it will be more of a treat than an everyday thing (or possibly an I-have-to-work-til-2-am-and-I-can't-stay-awake-and-it's-only-6-pm kind of thing). I'm still a little nervous about weighing myself and seeing how I've done, I don't really feel like I've lost a noticeable amount. But it's hard to tell, since most of the clothes I wear every day were already starting to be loose from the weight I'd lost over the last few months on Medifast. And yes, I know I just said yesterday that I don't want to be defined by a number on a scale, and I do see the irony of ending today's post talking about being nervous about the number on the scale. What can I say, I'm human, and while I don't want that number to define me, I'm just not at a place where I can ignore completely either.

Day 21, and some Random Thoughts

I've been thinking about some stuff, and I thought I'd write about it here.

I'm part of a Facebook group, largely made up of people doing Medifast, with some others doing other things (including me, now, although I joined it when I was doing MF), but all of us are trying to improve our health, in whatever way seems best to us. Let me start by saying that I believe Medifast is very, very effective for rapid weight loss, and when you've got a lot of weight to lose, it can be a great tool to help you. I'm pretty sure if I hadn't been doing it since June, I wouldn't have lost the 39 lbs I lost using it, and probably wouldn't have lost any weight at all in that time, because I lacked the motivation and energy to do anything else. But I stopped doing it because, although it was working really well, I didn't feel good. This is not typical, many, many people doing Medifast feel great while they're doing it, and many of them who have more than 100 lbs to lose when they start stick to it for a year or more to get all the weight off, and feel great the whole time, at least after the first couple of weeks. But another member of that group posted about not feeling well and being lightheaded and dizzy enough that she fell, and she was asking whether others had gone through this and had any tips. 

Now, everyone is different, and sometimes we have to go through unpleasant stuff to reap the benefits of whatever it is we're trying to do, and there's a big difference between truly not feeling well vs whining because something is difficult, but when someone says they're lightheaded and dizzy and fell in the shower because of it, they're not whining about difficulties, so I was a little surprised when one of the tips was that this person just needed to keep going and get through it, and it would get better. I'm not saying any of this to say that that's the wrong advice -- I'm going to assume that the person offering that advice went through something similar where she didn't feel well, but kept going for the benefit at the end. And sometimes that's the right answer, especially if you know the bad part is only going to last a couple of weeks at most, and the "bad" is feeling a bit yucky, and tired, and run down, but still able to function. But I read exactly the same question, and my thought was, if it's making you feel that bad, there's something wrong, and something needs to change. And this difference in the way two people could respond to the same situation got me thinking:

Why do we think it's okay to put ourselves through crap in the name of health (or being skinny or attractive, for that matter)? 

Why isn't it obvious that if you feel really, really horrible, to the point that you're dizzy and falling down, that something is really wrong? Why do we even feel like we have to ask if this is normal on this particular diet, or if others have gone through it?* And this isn't just one person, I've seen a few other people on the Medifast forums asking similar questions about whether certain symptoms are normal or not, when to me it seems obvious that based on either the severity or the duration, they can't be. Have we gotten so out of touch with what it feels like to feel good, that we think feeling bad may be okay? Or do we believe that it's just something we must endure, a punishment for being fat? And that's just physical symptoms -- have you ever stopped to think about the things we'll do in the name of weight loss? Everything from eating food we really don't like solely because someone, somewhere told us it's good for us, to logging, in detail, everything we eat, to opting for scientifically engineered food-like substances full of ingredients we can't pronounce because they're low-fat or low-carb while avoiding fruits and starchy vegetables because they have carbs. These things don't seem like healthy behaviors to me.

Clearly, I am not a poster child for good health. Despite losing 39 lbs over the last few months, I still outweigh heavyweight boxers, who are all a foot or more taller than I am. I was put on blood pressure medicine a few years ago, at the ripe old age of 35. I've counted calories, and Points, and carbs, and fat grams. I've weighed myself, and when the weight goes up when it should've gone down, I've beaten myself up wondering what I did wrong, what kept the scale from cooperating when clearly I was eating fewer calories than I was using. I've followed (well-intentioned, I'm sure) instructions to cut pictures from magazines to use as a goal or as motivation. (Want to know why that's a bad thing? Go check out Indy Ink's Don't Compare Yourself to Celebrities Pinterest Board.) I've felt guilty for having dessert and for occasionally choosing chicken fried steak and mashed potatoes instead of grilled chicken and steamed veggies. I've eaten rice cakes because they were a low-calorie choice to tide me over until my next meal -- never mind that they taste like styrofoam. And what's really sad is, when I look around the internet on weight loss forums and blogs, it seems that while I've done these things, I've been much less extreme about them than many, many people out there. It's scary the things people will do to lose weight.

So again, I have to ask, why are we doing these things? Does it really have to be this hard to be healthy? I don't have the answers, but I do know that I don't want to spend the rest of my life entering every bite I eat into a calorie counter. I don't want a number on a scale to determine my happiness or self-worth. I want to eat food that tastes good. If occasionally that food that tastes good includes dessert, or something deep fried, I don't want to feel guilty about that. (I may feel a lot of other things, including sick or bloated, but I don't think eating a particular kind of food should make me feel guilty.) And I don't want to feel bad that my body doesn't look like some ideal body that is impossible to achieve, or that I can't run a marathon or do burpees or dead lift some astronomical weight. I just want to be healthy. I want to feel good and have the energy to do the things I want to do. I don't think that's asking too much.

*(For the record, any diet that has you cut your carb consumption a lot, whether it's Medifast or going to the Whole30 from a diet that includes a lot of bread/pasta/sugar, will make you feel kind of yucky for the first couple of weeks, but you shouldn't be extremely weak or dizzy, it's usually being achy and tired and having headaches and wanting to sleep a lot, but being able to function, albeit not at your best. It's known as "carb flu." But it usually lasts only a few days, and shouldn't last more than two weeks. If it's extreme enough that you can't function, or if it lasts longer than two weeks, it's something you may want to talk to a doctor about.)

Anyway, if you're still reading after all of that, thanks for putting up with my ramblings. Here's what I ate today:

Breakfast -- breakfast casserole (this week it's two sweet potatoes, shredded, some turkey sausage from extra I made last week, and some diced prosciutto, with sauteed onions and garlic, with 10 eggs, divided into 6 servings), some raw celery and carrots, and an avocado with lime juice and salt.

Lunch -- some spaghetti squash topped with meat sauce (okay, really, it was some ground beef, browned, and a jar of Monique's Marvelous Marinara Sauce) 

Supper -- tuna steak topped with mayo and lime (and then overcooked, oops. And I've got a second one that I cooked at the same time -- that'll be two overcooked tuna steak meals this week. Yay.), some roasted butternut squash, and salad topped with garlic-dill sauerkraut.

Day 20

I think I'm bored with my food, and tired of cooking. I'm not quitting, I'm just tired of it. It's a lot of work to cook for three meals a day, and then do all the dishes (the dishes! How does one person go through so many dishes? And what do people with families do? How are you not doing dishes all the time?) Anyway, I'm going to the store tomorrow before work, maybe I'll find something exciting to fix for the week. 

Here's today's (boring) food:

Breakfast -- turkey sausage scrambled with two eggs, sauteed zucchini and yellow squash, grapes.

Lunch -- (I swear it looked more appetizing in person than this) The last of the Velvety Butternut Squash, three beef hot dogs sliced and sauteed with a little sauerkraut.

Supper -- Three beef hot dogs, with some sauteed broccoli slaw, raw celery and apple with almond butter.

Day 19

It's been a very boring Saturday. I had to work this morning and didn't make it to the farmer's market, and then after work I took a nap, it was just that kind of day here. And then I spent a lot of time playing with the blog layout, hopefully I didn't make it unreadable for anyone.

Anyway, food:

Breakfast -- leftover soup, topped with sausage, sauteed zucchini, and some garlic-dill sauerkraut.

Lunch -- Applegate Farms roast beef, raw zucchini and yellow squash, homemade mayo for dipping, and garlic-dill sauerkraut.

Supper -- Leftover soup, with two chopped & cooked all beef hot dogs, an apple, almond butter.