Whole30: Nobody's Perfect

You know, a lot of times we see people going on and on about their perfect diet and their perfect lives with their perfectly photographed food and - well - it's easy to get discouraged and overwhelmed. I know we do. You're probably imagining them living in some perfectly designed Martha Stewart kitchen where every dish turns out flawlessly and they've adhered exactly to every specification of what they're allowed to eat. Just to be clear - that's not us. We're trying our best to really do this Whole30 thing right, but we are not perfect. No one is. So don't get discouraged! Don't give up! We're going to tell you how we've totally screwed up so far this month. Ready? Set? Go!

Potato Chips

I know you're laughing at us right now. Of course you can't have potato chips on Whole30, right!? Well..see just recently white potatoes got added to the "go" list and we grabbed some potato chips cooked in the right oil with just sea salt - no other ingredients. We thought we were good! But then we read the part about no fries or chips. Sigh...

Sweet Potato Chips

These are pretty much our lifesavers. We can munch on these provided they are clean and have the right ingredients, dip them in salsa or guacamole. Awesome snack! But there was one type - the Terra Spiced Sweet Potato Chips - we were eating all the time and then realized they had some evaporated cane sugar in them. Man, they were like the best ones, too. Super lame!

Chilean Lime Avocado Oil Chips

Yeah, we like chips. Don't judge us. It's just - you need something crunchy now and then, you know? Anyway, they're pretty clean but not clean enough. Also, they're white potato chips. But they're dang good.

Honest Fizz Drinks

Thankfully, there are lots of naturally flavored seltzer waters that we can drink. This is not one of them. It looks so nice and honest and natural doesn't it? Turns out naturally sweetened means "stevia sweetened." Marketing got us, dang it! We didn't actually drink these, but we bought a bunch of them and had them in the fridge before we noticed. Hey kids - you want to try a new drink?

Eating Out

We have tried our best not to eat out this month, but we're a busy family and sometimes it happens. It's extremely hard to eat anything Whole30 approved, decent, and somewhere the kids will eat, too. Build your own burrito bowl places like Salsaritas and Chipotle work pretty well as long as you put the right stuff on it. Unless you said "olives" and the guy behind the counter thought you said "cheese" and proceeds to dump cheese all over it. Yeah there were a few strands of cheese left even after he tried to clean it off. And I ate them. I tried to get the side salad at Chick-fil-A and forgot that it had cheese on it, too. I got as much as I could off, but ate some. Also, a side salad without dressing is gross. Finally, we did cheat a little on our youngest's birthday. We went to Red Robin and got bunless hamburgers with sweet potato fries. I know the fries weren't approved, but they were dang good!

Wrapping Up

Eating only whole foods is hard. It requires a lot of prep work, planning and commitment. But in a culture where nearly all the food we eat is mass produced to some extent it's nearly impossible to do this Whole30 thing perfectly. And that's ok. You do your best, keep going if you mess up and don't worry about everyone else. You're not doing it for them anyway, right? Right.

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About the Author

Jonathan Longnecker is the strongly opinionated tattooed and bearded half of Tiny Shiny Home. He loves making music, figuring out nerdy solutions, exploring the outdoors, and living off-grid.

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