Whole30: The Final Countdown

Today is the last day before the Whole30 begins! (Read more on this in my original post.) We're "celebrating" our last day of dining freedom with things like cinnamon rolls and caramel macchiatos. Probably a bad idea, but too late now.

We also started the first day of our new gym membership, after purchasing it last night. Nothing like starting the new year off right. It feels so good to be back in the gym again.

Nick and I have been getting ready to start the Whole30 over the past several days. It started on Sunday with making a (very long) shopping list of things we could have and would need for the next week's worth of meals.

Making the list...

Why print off a list when you can hand-write one with a Sharpie pen? (I know, it's unnecessary but I've always liked writing things out.) Anyway, after we assembled our list, we headed over to Hy-vee to buy the goods.

Siphoning off the best snow peas.

Nick is my go-to for all things relating to the grocery store, but especially produce, since he worked in a supermarket for nine years in New Jersey. He obliged by selecting the best fruits and veggies we could find, which also included digging through a tub of snow peas to find a handful of good ones.

A cart full of Whole30-approved items (minus the Jamba Juice, we had that last night).

Shopping for the Whole30 reminded me a lot of when I gave up high fructose corn syrup while living in Denver. It was surprising then how many items contained the sweetener. Shopping for Whole30 items is like that, times 10. You can't have any added sugars whatsoever, so we spent a long time reading labels and checking my list. (Nick was also very helpful for this as he memorized the names of the ingredients we couldn't have.)

In the end, we got a cart full of lovely, healthy food items, which will hopefully last us about a week.

New Year's Eve shopping expedition! ;)

And so here we go. I'm actually really looking forward to whipping this old body into shape and feeling healthy once again. Getting back in the gym reminded me just how long it's been since I really cared about staying in shape, enough to do more than go for a little jog on the riverfront.

Tonight we're going to start putting things together and working on a meal plan for the next week. I'm excited to try some of the recipes, and invent our own. Nick knows a lot about cooking (probably more than me), so I think we'll have no trouble coming up with lots of great meals.

We also weighed ourselves for the last time until the Whole30 is completed (they tell you not to take any measurements during the 30-day period), and we'll take our measurements before. If I'm feeling brave at the end of this, I might tell you all where I started at. If not, I'll just tell you what I lost overall. :)

In closing, here is some encouragement my reason for doing the Whole30, my friend Cami, passed along to some of us today: A kick-off blog post on the Whole30 site. If you're joining us, or still on the fence, check it out! And keep reading because I'll be posting all my updates here on my blog.