I’m less than 24 hours away from the start of Whole30 Challenge! My brother (somewhat by force since his options are to eat what I cook or starve. Love you, Kev!), my friend Johan (freely and willingly) and I are all getting in on it.
In a nutshell, Whole30 is based on the Paleo lifestyle diet. That means you’re allowed to eat natural foods only, such as meat, fruit, veggies, nuts and seeds. Sorry – no grains, no legumes, no sugar and no dairy are allowed. According to the designers of Whole30 (Whole9), it is a short-term nutritional reset, designed to help you put an end to unhealthy cravings and habits, restore a healthy metabolism, heal your digestive tract, and balance your immune system. You can get all the details here:
I initially came across the Challenge on Pinterest in early January. What sold me were the pictures the blogger posted. Her before picture looked a whole lot like my current (now) body and her after 30 days body looked pretty amazing. Her after six-months body was totally amaze-balls!
I adapted the meal plan to suit what’s available to us, here in Trinidad. We don’t live in a tropical paradise to only eat imported foods. I will be utilising our delicious tropical fruits, tomatoes, pumpkins, sweet potatoes, plantains, yams; I’m also going to try my hand at tomato chokha!
This is what the week 1 meal plan looks like:

My Week 1 Meal Plan
Snacks
I bought some kale to ATTEMPT to make kale chips for snacking purposes. Fruits – oranges and portugals are abundant right now – and celery sticks, plums would suffice as snacks.
Everyone likes fun food on a Friday so I would probably do geera wings on Friday evening or maybe baked sweet potato “fries”.
I’m working towards drinking two litres per day – that’s 8 glasses. One when I wake up, one with breakfast, two before lunch, one with lunch, one for working out, one with dinner and one before bed.
Combined with the meal plan, my brother and I would be doing the new Shaun T. workout, Focus T25, while my friend would be doing Insanity (because he’s insane like that). T25 is based on the principle that with the right type of workout – you only need 25 minutes per day to get in shape. We’ll see how that goes!
To prepare for Whole30, I must confess that I enjoyed a week of farewell meals. I made sure to eat doubles, lasagne, pasta frutti di mare, sushi, Chinese, fro-yo, ice-cream and gained almost 3lbs! I’m pretty sure this strategy is ill-advised but alas, it was deliciously satisfying.
The challenge requires you to resist weighing in for 30 days – but I think I’ll cheat and weigh-in once per week. I’ll weigh in before bed and I’m also going to have to take body measurements because sometimes the inches you lose aren’t reflected on the scale.
So please wish us luck; let’s see how this goes!