Doing Whole 30: Week One

I enjoy cooking. I really do. But boy have I ever done a lot of cooking since Alex and I decided to do the Whole 30 challenge. The basic run down is that you cut out foods that are known to be inflammatory for 30 whole days and then reintroduce them at the end of 30 days to see how they affect you (if at all) and to help you have more insight into how your body reacts to certain foods.

 It also helps you quit nasty habits and retrain yourself to have a healthy relationship with food. For example no longer using food as a reward/stress relief/catch all for your emotions. If you are interested in learning more you can read about it more here.

Alex and I decided to do this challenge for a variety of reasons. Well, if we're being honest I wanted to do it and Alex agreed because I'm the one that feeds him! We realized that despite us telling each other we wanted to eat "healthy" we didn't really have any kind of plan in mind and weren't really following through. We had also realized that we defaulted to pasta A LOT instead of exploring different foods and recipes. This really has forced me to get creative in what we eat! 

Changes we've experience so far...

The Whole 30 requires that you eat 3 meals a day. Not skip breakfast, eat a bag of M&M's and chips for lunch, and then sit down to dinner like we had been doing. Because of this we decided to wake up earlier and eat breakfast together every morning. It's been really great to get a jump start on our day by getting up an hour earlier than before. I also like getting the chance to talk and share a meal before we start our work days. 

While our grocery bill has gone up we are no longer eating out or buying gas station snacks so in total this has been great on our wallets. The occasional (okay, almost everyday) gas station snack really adds up in a week.

We do sooooo many dishes!!

We've both been feeling pretty good the whole time. I had one rough day on day 7 that was not fun. But overall eating whole foods for every meal has been good to us.

What we've been eating....

Definitely the most difficult part of this challenge is being prepared with meals for every turn. It's easy to say no to fast food when you already have delicious meals waiting for you at home. Not so easy when the fridge is empty and you have no idea what to make!

I have been meal planning a week at a time and grocery shopping once a week. We also hit up the farmers market to get a lot of our produce. Because we are going through so many veggies it's crazy!

This is what we ate the first week!

Closing thoughts....

While I don't usually buy into fad diet type things I think their is some merit to this program. We are not killing ourselves over what type of oil our burger was cooked in at the restaurant or if we accidentally ate one of Haven's craisin's that has added sugar. But anything that encourages us to eat more whole foods and home cooked meals can't be all that bad. We don't expect to be magically cured of every aliment ever (as some of the Facebook groups make it appear) but we are happy with forming better healthier habits that will hopefully carry on after the 30 days are over!

Why I really came to Argentina, the food.

I'm only half joking about coming to Argentine for the food. I'm a steak girl and there is no place better to enjoy that in the beef capital of the world. But we actually eat a whole lot more than just beef, though it's pretty common for meals.

Tonight, I had my first meal here that I just didn't like. Which is pretty good considering I've been here for almost 6 weeks (that's crazy to think about). It was eggplant milanese, which is basically breaded eggplant. I've never had eggplant before and turns out I'm not really a fan of it.

I was kinda poking around it on my plate and when my host mom asked if I liked it she instantly knew I was lying. Luckily, she was really understanding about me not liking it and made me some eggs and toast instead. It's so nice that we're comfortable enough that it's not rude for me to say what I like and don't like, because otherwise I would probably be pretty hungry right now!

I've gotten quite a few questions from people about what I eat here. Personally, I think you all have been watching too much Travel Channel because I have yet to encounter any llama brains or livers. In fact, I haven't seen anything here that I wouldn't be able to buy at home really, with the exception of mate but that's a whole other story. So in light of that I thought I would share what some common meals here are. They're basically the same ingredients as ours, just mixed in different ways.

• Milanese: This is a staple in my house and the ultimate safe move in restaurants. You just can't go wrong with milanese. I probably eat this 3 times a week. It's essentially just beef or chicken very thinly sliced and breaded. We eat it with lemon juice or sometimes eggs on top.

• Empanadas: This is probably the most widely eaten food here in Argentina. You can find empanadas pretty much anywhere and they're insanely cheap. Like I'm talking $5AR or $6AR which is less than a $1USD. So clearly us college students eat these constantly. They are typically filled with carne (ground beef), queso (cheese), or jamon y queso (ham and cheese). You can buy them from vendors on the street, a bakery, or virtually an restaurant. 

• Pasta con Crema: We eat a lot of pasta here, the only twist is the sauce. Instead of our typically thick and chunky (sorry Katie) ragu it's a soupy tomato sauce. Usually, you will also pour liquid cream on it also to make a kind of alfredo sauce. It's pretty similar to what we eat in the US, but not quite the same. 

• Panqueques con Dulce de Leche: This is eaten as a desert and it very thin pancakes, basically crepes covered in dulce de leche (Argentina's version of very sweet peanut butter, caramel) and then rolled and sprinkled with sugar. It's pretty fantastic though it is so sugary it will almost literally make your teeth hurt. Almost all desert involves dulce de leche here and I'm not complaining!

• Calabaza: This is just the Spanish word for pumpkin, but they eat it constantly here. Usually baked and mashed. It tastes a lot like sweet potatoes. At first I thought it was kind strange to eat pumpkin but I've grown to really like it. 

Those are just a few of the most common things I've eaten here and definitely not all. In general if you want to know what Argentine food is like, it's never spicy, usually involves massive amounts of cheese and sugar, and is never as greasy as American food. It's also almost always made from scratch or fresh because of the easy accessibility of fresh ingredients and the high price of pre-packaged meals and food items. 

While it definitely seems to me that, in general, there are much fewer obsess people here, it doesn't seem like they are at all concerned about health or weight. Diet soda isn't a thing here. In fact diet or fat-free or reduced fat anything is a pretty rare sight. 

I think the difference is that people eat here. They eat large meals at regularly scheduled times and don't have junk food. Because they always know what time the next meal is it seems to be much better planned for it to be home cooked. Which I think makes a huge difference. It's just interesting to see a culture that isn't obsessed with calorie counting and dieting and exercise. 

Besos, 

Hayley