Wahoo!!!!!!!!!! We have finally finished our Whole30 challenge! Today is officially day 30 and we have made it! To be really honest, it felt 
like a very long 30 days and it makes me laugh because in the grand scheme of life, it wasn’t even a blip! 30 days is nothing to most people, but it really did seem like a long time when we were in the thick of it. I still maintain that the hardest part of the Whole30 challenge was the time commitment and the amount of cooking. I enjoy cooking, but it’s very time consuming when you are cooking everything from scratch and that was the hard to fit in when I already have a lot going on with my business and 3 kids. Somehow we made it work though, it’s so true, you make time for what you want to make time for.
The coolest part of this is that I lost 13lbs! I’m really happy with that, and my husband lost close to the same. I still can’t believe I made it 30 days without coffee, bread, cheese, or brownies (that’s about covers all my favorites)! I honestly don’t see adding any of those things back into my daily life any time soon either. I miss coffee, but I’m not sure I’ll go back to it, I’m thinking it may just be a special occasion thing from now on (which, I’ll tell you right now, I want a peppermint mocha for Mother’s Day really bad - hint, hint to the hubby if you are reading). Bread is one thing I really miss – nothing beats a crusty piece of sourdough bread, but , no one else in the family seems to mind not having it anymore. I don’t have any plans to purchase it again anytime soon!
The other cool thing that came out of this was how my youngest son, Rylyn, is eating. If you have read my other posts, you know that he is very stubborn and only liked to eat chicken nuggets, cheetos, cherrios, bread, most fruits, and anything with sugar. He wouldn’t touch a vegetable at all even though his favorite color is green! Now he’s eating just about everything we eat: salad, all veggies, grilled chicken, steak, hamburgers, tacos, and absolutely loves apples dipped in peanut butter! He’s trying so many new things and doing a great job at it! He eats eggs and veggies every morning for breakfast and doesn’t complain too much anymore! I’m super proud of all 3 of my kids and how they are eating! I’m super proud of how they denied special treats at school to avoid sugar and stuck with the program! And they have said they feel much better, and are sleeping better! The above right picture of Rylyn is on day 1 after he refused to eat his eggs for breakfast. The next picture on the left is Rylyn on Day 21 after he just ate a full plate of scrambled eggs, carrot sticks and cherry tomatoes (you can see all the tomatoes shoved in the sides of his cheeks).
If you are considering doing a Whole30 challenge, I highly recommend it – but make sure you give yourself plenty of time to prepare for it! Going forward our family plans to stick to eating Whole foods 80% of the time and enjoy at other times. For us this means I don’t plan to buy sugary cereal, bread, chips, cookies, gummy snacks..etc…all the yummy things I used to buy that I could get really cheap or for free with coupons. It’s really hard for me to deal with the fact that there are not many coupons for whole, healthy foods. I hate the added expense in our grocery budget, but at the same time, I’m so glad to be feeling better and to be looking better and am hoping in the long run this pays off with less doctor bills for all of us. I’m working hard to find ways to cut corners on food, and can’t wait to hit up our local farmer’s market that opens this weekend! I’m looking for any tips or ideas you have might have on how to save money buying healthy foods. Please comment with your thoughts! Hugs to all! If you have any questions for me about how we did this challenge, please ask by commenting! Happy to help!
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