My first week of whole foods

Last Sunday, a week ago today, I made the decision to implement the whole food diet. Cutting out meat was no big deal since I don't like it anyway. Cutting out dairy was difficult, but cutting out sugar was my biggest obstacle.

Here are some foods that I ate this week (Excuse the poor photographs. Taking pictures of food is harder than I expected!):

One staple that I didn't expect to like so much was a big container of baby spinach leaves. I bought it at costco for about $6. I thought it would probably go bad, but I have used it in some way or another almost every day.

Today I had the spinach for lunch in this salad. It contains chopped up red apples, craisins, and sunflower nuts. I also had a serving of fried up potatoes. The potatoes were left over from a previous baked potato night. I sprayed my pan with Pam, and then just fried them up. I sprinkled a small amount of Season Salt and Garlic Powder. Nate dipped his in ketchup and I ate mine plain.

I used the spinach in a salad with mangos, blackberries, and almonds. No dressing needed!

I also used the spinach to make a smoothy. Surprisingly, you really can't taste it!

This smoothy, which contained strawberries, blackberries, a frozen banana, spinach, and orange juice (Costco sells orange juice without any added sugars and not from concentrate), turned out to be great! Some of the other smoothies I tried were less successful.

Even though I loved the smoothy, which I had as my breakfast, nobody else would drink it. Babies!

My favorite meal was the Mexican dish I made for dinner and then ate for lunch and dinner on another day. I made black beans in my slow cooker (one cup of beans, filled the slow cooker with water and cooked for about 6 hours and then drained the water out).

I made guacamole (two avocados, one tomato, a small amount of onion, lemon juice, and garlic powder, and a dash of salt)

Added salsa (this was store bought, but in the future I'd like to make my own. Then I piled this baby with lettuce, wrapped it up, and had a delicious meal!

The other key to my successful week was stocking my refrigerator with lots of foods I like that I can eat when I'm hungry or when I need a snack. I had oranges, apples, red pears, mangos, strawberries, blackberries, baby carrots, etc.

I found some apple sauce at Macey's with apples as the only ingredient and I switched to almond milk. I also had a large container of nuts for when I need a quick, on-the-road snack.

I also ate whole grain pasta (Brent's Marathon Pasta, to be exact) and lots of whole wheat bread with peanut butter made only from peanuts (no added oils or anything).

I tried some things that were big flops too. Nobody liked my stir fry on brown rice! Luckily, I asked Teresa Liu to teach me how to make it properly and she agreed! I am excited to learn how to make some vegitable dishes that people will like.

This was the Halloween candy in my house this week. Prior to implementing this diet, I would have told myself not to eat the candy, and then failed miserably. Candy is my drug! Surprisingly, I was very satisfied with the food I ate and wasn't tempted, but a few times, to eat this candy. One night early this week, Nate brought home Wendy's fries for dinner and I had to leave the room because the smell was very tempting. However, last night after Grace's dance recital everyone went to Wendy's and I wasn't tempted at all to cheat. I chatted and had a fun night, and then ate my own food once I got home. No big deal!

I'm looking forward to trying some new things this coming week and will report how it goes.