I’m a big fan of ghee, a clarified butter that’s often used in Indian cooking. I prefer butter, like Kerrygold’s grass-fed imported Irish butter, but the Whole30 program I’m following disallows butter because it contains small amounts of whey, lactose, and casein, which can cause problematic reactions and sometimes help trigger autoimmune disorders in particularly sensitive people. Ghee, though, is butter that’s been cooked and concentrated into oil, with the butter solids removed — and, with them, all the whey, lactose, and casein. So it’s allowed by Whole30.

But it’s not allowed by CrossFit South Arlington! They’re the sponsors of this particular double-length implementation of the Whole30 program, and have decided that there could still be trace amounts of problematic ingredients in ghee. And, given that this self-experiment is meant to be a hardcore elimination of those potential problems, however remote the potential might be, ghee is out.

You might notice, though, that I used ghee in Wednesday’s dinner and Thursday’s breakfast, as well as tonight’s dinner (below) and, because of the leftovers, tomorrow’s breakfast, as well. Although this program is 60 days long, the food-type eliminations occur in phases, and the deadline to eliminate grain, bread, rice, beans, dairy, and alcohol, ends this Sunday. I’ve been avoiding all of those things anyway, apart from the dairy, and ghee is the only form of dairy I’ve eaten since the program started on Wednesday.

Tomorrow, it stops. Breakfast leftovers in the morning will include my last ghee consumption for the duration of these 60 days. Saturday afternoon, I’m picking up coconut oil (I’m out, except for the teaspoon I managed to scrape together yesterday) and hopefully some pastured tallow or lard.

Here are my food photos for day 3:

Friday, Jan. 17

I woke up at 9:25 a.m. (after heading to bed at 2:45 a.m.). Mostly slept OK.

Breakfast: 10:30 a.m. | 2 Tbsp. Nuttzo nut butter, 12 cranberries

Lunch: 1:10 p.m. | 3.75 oz. sardines in olive oil

Snack: 3:50 p.m. | 19 raw almonds

Dinner: 9:00 p.m. | 8 oz. bison, 1 carrot, 1/2 rutabaga, 1/2 sweet onion, 4 cloves garlic, 2 Tbsp. ghee, herbs & spices

I ate half of the contents of the skillet below, saving the other half for breakfast.