This week, I am finishing the Whole 30 and will begin reintroducing foods. To speed up the reintroduction process, I plan to add “forbidden” foods to breakfast and lunch, but remain Whole30 compliant for dinner, so I can use the next 36 hours to assess any reactions. Reintroduction coincides with the transition to the Tim Ferriss “Slow Carb” Diet. Figuring out this transition and meal planning was rather complicated and took much longer than normal this week. 

First things first, though: Week 4 Whole30 Review

In week 4, my meals were delicious and filling. On Saturday I ventured out to do a DC Independent Bookstore “crawl” event, hitting up 10 bookstores around the city. It was a lot of fun but I did start to get hangry on my way to the 8th one, so I had a Larabar then dinner when I got home. With only a few minutes to change and head back out, I heated the leftover apricot chicken, ate it quickly and chugged a glass of water. Overall, my calorie intake wasn’t much all day, so I also ate plantain chips when I got home from visiting a friend that evening.

Sunday was finally a good Game of Thrones potluck day for me since we grilled. It was an evening full of meat and veggies, the brussels sprouts and asparagus were especially good. Washed down with a few glasses of water and comments about how we’ll be making margaritas next week 🙂

I really didn’t feel challenged at all this week. Prepping everything Sunday is SO helpful, and the only time I wanted a drink was Saturday when I was exploring new neighborhoods. I’m still feeling a little gross about how much meat I’m eating, but my takeaway is that if you just commit to the 30 days and resign yourself to it, it’s not that bad and kinda flies by!

Whole30 downfall: One thing I did notice through tracking on My Fitness Pal is that there have been no days that I have met the Recommended Daily Allowance for calcium, generally falling around 60-70% of the recommendations. This makes me feel like I should have been taking a calcium supplement, and may need to during the TFSC diet since dairy is also largely avoided.

IMO: Whole 30 should just change their name to Whole 40 and make the reintroduction phase part of the diet, not an option to tack on at the end.

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Tim Ferriss “Slow Carb” Diet:

I’m going to write more about the TFSC diet next week, since I’ve chosen to mash-up the two for easier transition. Many people skip the reintroduction period, but it’s the point of the Whole 30 (not weight loss), and I am interested to see if dairy or gluten trigger anything in my body. Here is a quick overview of the Whole 30 and TFSC diet side to side:

Let’s stick with the basics above to discuss what my coming week looks like:

Transition Week:

Figuring out the transition between Whole30 and TFSC as far as meal planning was rather complicated and took much longer than normal this week. Because Wednesday kicks off “reintroduction” period for Whole30 but I’m starting the TFSC diet, I kind of tailored the latter to make this first week a little easier. Mostly: I will still consume fruit after workouts this week, include sweet potatoes where needed since I can’t dive back in to beans/lentils/legumes at 100% yet, and I am SO EXCITED to have a couple smoothies later in the week.

This week I used a promo code from a friend to try out Butcher Box, which was delivered on Friday and now I have like 15lb of meat in my freezer. Ground beef, steaks, pork chops, chicken, bacon, sausage, and more! The “24 servings” of meat box is $129 (I got a couple extra items for the promo) and is implied to be a monthly subscription, but that’s too much meat for me to eat in one month, so (if I like it) I’ll tailor it to every other month.

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Even with that and my Hungry Harvest box, I still somehow spent $60 at Whole Foods. I had to get some spices, peanut butter (which I’m really excited about), and a rotisserie chicken plus a little more broccoli and sweet potatoes since I go through those so fast. Next week I will be back to budgeting out my grocery trips better. For smoothies, I found single use bone broth protein packets so I can have lactose free smoothies on Thursday and Saturday, but will use my usual whey protein on Friday for dairy reintroduction day. 

Meal prep, compared to meal planning, was really easy this week as I just had to roast some veggies and peel the chicken. I put the brussels sprouts in a Pyrex dish and layered the bacon over them on cooling racks so that the bacon fat would drip over the sprouts as they cooked, then I chopped up the bacon and tossed it with the sprouts.

Lemon Chicken with Asparagus recipe from pinterest:

• Says it makes four but I’m guessing I’ll get three servings
• I will use homemade zucchini noodles instead of fettucine
  • one zucchini per night / serving
• I am omitting all the dairy

I saved a couple evenings for improv cooking and/or dining out, and plan to bring my lunch(es) and some snacks with me to the Crossfit competition I will be competing in on Saturday.

You’re suppose to do two whole days of Whole 30 between each round of reintroducing a food, but I am doing 36 hours instead just to speed up the process. Next week I will reintroduce gluten on Tuesday or Wednesday. This week I will seek answers to my questions about sweet potatoes and fruit, because that will make a big difference for post-workout meals, and will write up a more detailed description of the TFSC diet, who he is and why I was interested in doing this diet.

Next week I will also share my updates on my measurements! Should be an interesting one, as TFSC encourages posting photos of yourself in a swimsuit for accountability…