Cleanse Day 6!!

I'm on day 6 of the cleanse!! YAY!! I have to say, it was a lot easier when I had the flu & didn't want to eat any real food LOL I definitely noticed that it was harder to not eat food that you chew a few days ago. Now I am fantasizing about donuts, oranges, cereal, ANYTHING!! It makes it hard that my kids are eating all of the time. Even if it's fruit, I want it! The cleanse is going fine though, I tried beets for the first time and quinoa. Hard to believe, but I've never had quinoa before. It was delicious. I will probably add it in small amounts to my diet after this.

So the cleanse is a lot of drinks, I'm not sure what I expected when I signed up for the cleanse. It surprised me how little we get to eat & how much we drink! My favorite is a green tea drink that you can add cold or hot water to. The tea with hot water is my favorite evening snack! There are these delicious little chocolate treats, but you only get 1 a day :/ On the deep cleanse days, you get a few more, but that's the only food you chew on those days. I can't believe I made it through this week! Nick took the kids out for pizza & ice cream Friday night. Guess what I had? I brought a shake with me & sipped on that while everyone ate their food. Thankfully their meal kind of grossed me out b/c I knew there was no nutritional value to it. I wasn't too tempted thinking of how I would feel afterwards, if I ate the meal with them.

SO- tomorrow is our last cleanse day & it's a deep cleanse, meaning no food :( I will be hiding out in the house all day. I can imagine that I will be a little cranky LOL BUT on Wednesday I get to go back to eating. YAY!! I start the maintenance schedule of 6 small meals a day. I can't wait, I'm really looking forward to it. This has been an interesting experience. I am glad I tried the cleanse, I know it has helped me get closer to my goal of burning fat & adding muscle. I have lost 2 pounds doing the cleanse & before I even started I lost 2 pounds from the flu, so I am down a total of 13 pounds since January!! So I am where I want to be in fat loss & now I need to focus on building muscle. I read an article today that outlines different body types & what kind of exercises & nutrition you need to build muscle for those body types. Turns out I am an ectomorph, which has a hard time gaining muscle, which means I am supposed to eat a lot of small meals. Perfect!! That's already been my plan :) So I hope to see a difference in my muscles when I am done with the plan, in May.

I cheated

I cheated, I fell off the wagon, I am back on Day 1 of the Whole30 :( I ate some pizza last night. We went out to Piece Pizza yesterday and before we left, I looked at their menu, I saw a salad that looked decent & so we were out the door. Well, things didn't go as planned from there.

There is this huge wait when we got there & we ended up waiting for well over an hour, with 3 little kids. Yikes! Plus, there's really no "waiting" area, so we were amid all of the tables that were being delivered their delicious pizzas. The smell of pizza was everywhere & did I mention that I felt like I was going to faint b/c I was so hungry?! I told Nick a few times that we should just leave, I knew I wouldn't be able to withstand the pizza that we were going to order once we sat down.

FINALLY, we were seated. I DID order my salad, I asked for no cheese, but forgot to ask them to hold the candied walnuts (sugar everywhere I tell ya!), which I DIDN'T eat, Nick snacked on those. But the whole salad was covered in dressing. I could tell it was a sugary dressing too b/c the Whole30 has given me super sugar tasting abilities LOL So I was eating the salad, but I knew I had already eaten all this sugary dressing, so I figured I may as well eat the pizza too since I would have to start over today anyway.

Let me tell you, it was GLORIOUS!! The last time we ate at Piece Pizza, I remember not being too impressed, but this time it was delicious. I tasted everything, the cheese, the crust, the sauce, the pepperoni, it was all soooooo yummy. I have to say, I am happy that I ate it LOL The 2 times I ate pizza in February, when I was off the Whole30 challenge, I wasn't too impressed. It was good, but not like this pizza, which was what dreams are made of ;) To be fair, I do have to say that it sat like a lump in my stomach all night & I did gain 2 pounds in water weight from the carbs or whatever.

This time around, my experience with the Whole30 Challenge has been a lot different than it was in January. It.is.a.STRUGGLE! It has been so mentally hard this time around. I didn't go crazy in February when I was not doing the challenge, I basically ate the same as in January, but I did add in daily chocolate. I had pizza a few times & a couple sandwiches for lunch, but I didn't binge on anything. I was shocked that it has been so hard, BUT I think my body IS craving the sugary/carbs more because it HAS been so long since I've had them. I have been craving pastries like mad, I keep wanting donuts, but I can't even tell you the last time I even ate a donut! I don't eat those things regularly. It is insane.

I am back to Day 1 & I am so sad. This is a timeline that someone wrote up about the different phases while on the Whole30: Whole30 Timeline. I was in that Day 8-15 range where your food cravings rival that of pregnancy. I NEVER had that phase last time, at least that I remember, so if I did, it wasn't that bad. This time was cray cray BUT I was ALMOST to the freaking Tiger Blood stage. Oh, how I want to get to that Tiger Blood stage again LOL It is amazing, I KNOW how good it can feel to eat clean & have all of that energy, SO I will work hard, to get past all the yuckiness...AGAIN....to hopefully have a successful 30 days this time around. My only question is, am I on round 2 still or does this make me on Round 3??

First day Post-Whole30 Challenge & Paleo Pizza!

Today was my first day off of the challenge. This must have been a big deal to me because I have been dreaming about it for the past few nights! Two nights ago, I dreamt that I was making my paleo pizza (my first dinner planned post-Whole30) & then last night I was at a church function & there were only baked goods & potatoes to eat!! I chose some blue potatoes, but then when I was actually eating them, they were more like donuts. I found some strawberries, but they were all half eaten & rotten :( SAD!!

Anyways, enough about dreams, today I kept with my Whole30 routine. I had my sweet potato hash with eggs, had a few figs at church & had a salad at Jason's Deli for lunch. I went to the store & bought what I needed for my Paleo pizza tonight!

Paleo Pizza: This is the recipe I was following http://www.paleolithe.com/2012/04/17/primal-pizza-with-cheesy-cauliflower-crust/. I didn't have any other toppings than sauce & cheese, but that was fine, I was just excited to have pizza again! My two little helpers in the kitchen:

Here is the cheese & herbs that I started with. I added an egg and almond flour to it too:

This is the mixture with cauliflower added & rolled into a "dough"

Looks like a yummy crust, right?! 

C & A watching the pizza "dough" cook in the oven 

Here it is our of the oven, nice & brown! 

Now here is the pizza after I topped it with the sauce & cheese & popped it into the oven until the cheese melted.

So the verdict on the pizza....the reviews did say it was crumbly and mine was too, especially in the middle. The edges were nice & brown & that was the best part of the crust. I will say it did taste really good, the cheese & the garlic & herbs really made it yummy! I could detect a hint of cauliflower. Although I wonder if someone who didn't know it was made with cauliflower would taste it? 

So all in all, it was actually kind of a let down. I had really built up my first bite of pizza in a month in my  mind and then when I had it, it was not as special as I wanted it to be. Plus, I missed having protein & a heaping pile of veggies. I actually would rather have had that! I suppose if you added more toppings to the pizza, you wouldn't necessarily be missing out on those things, but since mine was just a cheese pizza, I did miss protein & veggies. 

For the last month, I've been craving really cheesy things & let me tell you, this was CHEESY!! And I wasn't all that impressed. I honestly didn't miss dairy that much apart from melting cheese as a topping, so to have it on the pizza & not really enjoy it was pretty crazy. 

I guess this just confirms to me that I would rather continue following the Whole30 program than be off of it. My husband even went out & got some brownie mix tonight for him & the kids and I'm not even tempted to eat a brownie. I WOULD be tempted by a square of dark chocolate, but not so much by a brownie. I have been enjoying the changes I've noticed in my body & in my energy and I don't want to compromise those things by going crazy off of the program.