We did it, Meat Support Staff! Thanks for helping me through this period of protein and strife. Saturday was the last official day of Meat Month, although it already feels longer ago than that, possibly because I have eaten an entire box of cookies since then. The last proper Whole 30 meal I threw together was
bison burgers, followed by a day of coasting on the various scraps of meat still lurking in the refrigerator.
A couple of days out, I'm honestly still not sure how I feel about the experiment as a whole. There were a lot of positives. I did lose eight pounds, which means I slightly overshot my Bon-Appetit-related six pounds (and will be liberally applying cheese and gin until I recover that extra bit). So I guess the lesson there is that two months of ridiculousness can be rectified by one month of different ridiculousness. It's possible that my sleep improved, although only three or four of those 30 nights were uninterrupted, which makes it hard to gauge. My late-afternoon energy crashes pretty much disappeared. I didn't have a single backache, which has been an issue lately.
Not everything was great, though. Not only did my skin not clear up, it actually deteriorated sort of comically. At the beginning of the month it was spotty. By the end it was
angry. Or possibly
cursed. Like if I just learn a very important lesson about inner beauty, the spell will be lifted and this wretched pox will disappear. According to the troubleshooting forum, I probably needed to extend it to a Whole 45 or
Whole 60 (hilarious). There was also a suggestion concerning an allergy to nuts and/or eggs, but after I read that everything got sort of dark and fuzzy and I had to go lie down for a while. Of course
Holly, who is good at this, is approaching a similar problem by eating organ meats and giving up coffee. I am going to put chemicals on it and start eating oatmeal again. Diff'rent strokes!
I also had quite a few seriously unpleasant moods. I think eating too much meat makes me
kinda mad at stuff. And I'm hardly a social butterfly, but even my few engagements were a hassle to navigate with so many restrictions. Eating out was more or less out of the question because I was never confident that I wasn't getting any restricted ingredients, which means I cooked 88 out of 90 meals. That was a loooooooot of work.
My primary objection, though, is that I do not see this being a sustainable way of eating for us. (This is a pretty serious and boring paragraph, as it is a topic I've spent a lot of time thinking about for the past month. Feel free to skip to what I had for breakfast Sunday morning because it is
outstanding.) I can't help but think that when this diet is followed correctly (which is to say, only buying responsibly-sourced meats), it is a diet for rich people. There are
guidelines to help with budgeting your Whole 30, but the recommendation to buy lower quality meat when you can't afford the humane, organic, grass-fed kind completely negates the "
morally and ethically defensible" stance of the conscientious omnivore. I feel like I should point out that groceries are
already my
Startling Expense--we very rarely eat out, so I generally feel free to buy whatever random ingredient I need for a recipe, or whatever fancy cheese catches my eye, and I tend to go for the good stuff. So for me to say that I can't justify the amount of money spent at the grocery store in the course of this project is significant. If you do eat out quite a bit or if you, say, only cook recipes from a popular gourmet food magazine, this probably wouldn't be an issue for you.
Whew, anyway, enough of that! Cave people must have been so serious all the time! Let us now look to the glorious, bread-filled future--I think I see cheese there!
Sunday morning we beelined for Kerbey Lane and their divine selection of unhealthy foodstuffs, where I was faced with some monumental decision making. I'd been having a crazy craving for granola, but that's a bit boring...I sure missed peanut butter, too...and cheese, I mean, shouldn't cheese be my top priority? How on earth am I going to WHOA WHAT IS THAT ON THE SEASONAL MENU SOME MAD GENIUS PUT GRANOLA QUESADILLAS ON THERE JUST FOR MEEEEEEE.
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| I'm pretty sure this absurd combination of tortilla, cheese, peanut butter, banana, and granola was created on a dare and also that I am the only person who will ever order it. |
For lunch I had nachos! And beer! I think if I could say that every single day I would eliminate my terrible serious cave person moods.
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| Can't pout, chewing. |
I followed one of the suggestions on my
white port post and whipped up some port tonics, remembering too late that I really do not like tonic.
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| They were pretty good other than my strongly disliking the main ingredient. |
I kind of lazied it up with my fig pairing.
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| And, more importantly, chocolated it up. |
Fortunately, I also followed another tipster's recommendation and snagged some St. Andre cheese.
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| Confirmed: I do still like cheese. |
Oblivious to my dietary bacchanalia, Anna was busy having a whirlwind weekend of her own. She got to ride on a train!
Wheeee!
She also had a cheese plate!
And pancakes!
Ivy's just happy with a handful of Cheerios and a little light housework.
Seriously, if you ever need your dishes inspected or some cords chewed, give us a call.
