Our Whole 30: details and a freebie

Before I dive into Part 2 of my Whole 30 recap (here’s the link to part 1), I wanted to talk about two things: first, my runs lately have been amazing. I’m a pretty slow runner, and lately I’ve been running longer and significantly faster without trying overly hard. It’s feels awesome!

Secondly, since yesterday was our first day post-Whole 30, we decided to have a little chocolate at the end of the day. I picked Peanut M&M’s (from Easter) and Brian had a Nutrageous bar. The first few bites were AMAZING. And then… it started to taste weird! It was so bizarre! I think I’ll be skipping the chocolate tonight.

So much of what’s hard about doing Whole30 is the research and shopping. I wanted a way to organize what we were eating each week, and so I went in search of a simple, free, printable menu planner. I couldn’t find one that suited my needs, so I made one myself! I wanted to share it with you guys in case you might find it useful!

Note: this is the one I’m using for this week- so you’ll notice that not all the foods later in the week are Whole 30 compliant.

Click here to download the PDF!

The research component involved finding recipes that worked for Whole 30 and would be okay for our whole family. Brian and I are living with my parents, so even though they weren’t doing Whole 30, I wanted to make sure that all the cooking that I was doing could be eaten by everyone who was home to have dinner (usually just my parents and my brother.)

For the most part, we would cook some kind of meat, two vegetables, and then everyone else would get a potato. This isn’t that different from the way my family eats most of the time anyway, so this worked pretty well for us- it was just a matter of rotating the right veggies and getting the portions right.

I wanted to share the recipes I found online that we really liked! Pinterest continues to be my favorite starting point for finding recipes.

Meats and Marinades

Chicken marinade (we usually grilled chicken with this recipe)
Jalapeno lime fish (we just fried it up in a pan and ate it with veggies instead of slaw!)
Pork tenderloin using this rub and this grilling method
Marinated london broil (subbed coconut aminos for the Worcestershire sauce, and we like it grilled)
Roast using this rub

Vegetables

Sweet potato fries
Sweet potato wedges
(Mostly for veggies we’d make stuff that didn’t really need a recipe- green beans, carrots, and roasted broccoli, peppers, and onions were our favorites!)

Breakfast

Southwestern Frittata
Sweet potato hash (subbed clarified butter for the butter and left off the cheese)

I also got a lot of inspiration from other posts like this! Here are some of my favorite Whole 30 recaps:

Dear Friend
Lucy O Photo
What I Wore

Have you done Whole 30 or have any go-to Paleo-type recipes? I love finding new ones! I just bought a spiralizer (that’s my affiliate link!) and I’m excited to make zoodles this week!