Whole30 -- DONE!

I think that I've mentioned it before on here, but Brandon and I spent the month of July doing a Whole30. For those of you who don't want to click over and read about it, I'll sum it up as a month of very strict Paleo. It was hard at times, not because I was hungry, but because I wanted to eat junk. However, when all was said and done, Brandon is now walking around 9 lbs lighter and I'm 6 1/2 lbs lighter. Considering we eat a decently clean diet 85% of the time, that's pretty incredible!

So, here are a few things that we learned:

1. There is a definite difference in feeling full and feeling not hungry. I would say that, when we eat Paleo, we fall into the "not hungry" category after eating. When we eat other things (like the creamy mashed yukon gold potatoes I had on Monday evening), we feel "full". I never thought of feeling "full" as a bad thing, but it isn't as nice of a feeling as "not hungry". Does that make sense to anyone but me?

2. I did have one EPIC failure. Let me set the scene: I took the boys (5yo and 18mo) and my nephew (2yo) out to Papa's Pizza to play and eat. Taking three kids out to eat and play by myself was a bit stressful. Especially when the counter that you order at is at the opposite end of the play area. I had planned on getting a salad and got pizza for the kids. When I got up to the sub par salad bar, I realized there was no dressing that would be Whole30 approved. So, I drowned my salad in ranch. And then I ate two pieces of, quite possibly, the worst pizza known to man. And then I ate all three of the cookies I bought for the kids. And then I called Brandon and told him that I failed. He was at work and probably not prepared to deal with his emotional wife, but he was very kind to me. So, there you go. A Whole30 with a little drama added in.

3. We definitely don't need as much sweetener as we think. The only sweetener that we use is honey, so it's not like we go totally crazy or anything, but I'm going to start using less or none at all in certain recipes. Just yesterday we had coconut flour pancakes for breakfast and it called for 1/2 tablespoon of honey and we just omitted it. Since we had berries on top of our pancakes, we weren't completely lacking in sweetness, so it worked.