Day 9...

The organizer of the challenge I'm in said that week two would be the toughest week. The competition and new way of eating isn't "shiny and new," to use her words, any longer and thus making the right choices and sticking to workouts will be tougher than in week one. Now, I realize we're only 2 days in to week two, but I feel the opposite. I'm far more prepared for week two, I've already got dinner mapped out for the whole week, and the desire to move more and keep up with workouts is even greater this week (last week I had to convince myself each day). Here's hoping the sentiments last...

Breakfast - Back to my usual - frittata, half an avocado, black coffee and half a grapefruit. We have to try and limit our fruits in weeks 3 & 4 so I'm going to live it up while I can. 

Lunch - Kitchen Sink Salad the sequel! Only today, I topped my salad with leftover salmon from the night before, rather than smoked salmon. I'm telling you, loading up a bowl of greens with cucumbers, dates, pomegranate seeds, avocado, hard boiled egg and roasted sweet potatoes does not feel like "diet" food at all and I swear I'm not even missing the cheese. I know I won't avoid cheese forever after the 30 days, but I can see myself reserving a handful of feta, goat or blue cheese crumbles for special occasions. 

Dinner - Spaghetti (squash) and meatballs - This was a Whole30 victory for sure! Our spaghetti and meatball recipe, given to us by a dear friend, is my favorite comfort food. Its usually what I request after being on business travel for awhile, for birthdays or Mother's day, etc. So we thought we'd see how it would taste when we made it compliant. The meatballs typically call for Parmesan cheese and bread crumbs - instead we simply omitted the cheese and made some "bread" crumbs by cooking up a little coconut flower in some coconut oil. It added a great sweetness to the meatballs and thus to the sauce as well (which normally calls for brown sugar.) I served it all on top of some al dente spaghetti squash -which by the way, I was able to twirl on my fork. Comfort food, great taste, and no sugar or pasta required! 

Workout - In addition to getting in a 40 minute walk with my dog first thing in the morning I knocked out a 50-40-30-20-10 at lunch time. This time for the 1 minute cardio intervals I did jumping jacks, jump rope, butt kicks, and another round of jump rope. I definitely noticed an improvement in my ability to knock out the set of 30 push ups - supposed that seems only fair as I've been doing push ups on practically a daily basis since this thing started. 

21 more to go...