Navigating restaurants can be tricky during a program with such specific requirements for things to avoid, so my strategy so far for this double-length Whole30 has been simply to cook everything myself — aside from a single meal with much of the food prepared by fellow participants this past Saturday.
If I’m doing all the buying, prepping, and cooking, I know almost exactly what’s gone into everything I eat. I still have to trust labels to some extent, but at least groceries are labeled! Restaurant menus usually come with the barest of descriptions, not always listing all of the primary types of food one can expect to find on a plate, let alone the constituent ingredients — sauces, oils, seasonings — or their still more specific nutrient composition. Most people don’t care that much, and there’s no chance I’d want the government to regulate the provision of such information, but this is all information I’d like to know. The fact that I usually can’t get it means that I just don’t patronize restaurants that much anymore.
Tonight was my first trip to a restaurant (for a bar trivia competition) during the program so far. It was easy enough to ask them to leave the apple cider glaze off my pork chop, and to ditch the mashed potatoes in favor of a second helping of veggies — but still, this stuff is all cooked with oil that I’d rather avoid. Whole30 has a guide for questionable ingredients, and there lists sunflower/safflower oils as far from ideal for cooking but OK for an occasional restaurant meal. I’ll stick to the tropical oils at home, and it’ll be at least another couple of weeks before I face that kind of choice again.
Here are my food photos for day 21:
Tuesday, Feb. 4
I woke up at 9:25 a.m. (after heading to bed at 2:55 a.m.).
Breakfast: 9:50 a.m. | 8 oz. ground beef, 1/6 bunch broccoli, 1 1/2 stalks celery, 1/2 yellow squash, 1/2 sweet onion, 4 cloves garlic, 2 Tbsp. coconut oil, herbs & spices
Leftovers from last night’s dinner.
Lunch: 3:40 p.m. | 7.5 oz. salmon, 2 oz. kale chips, 5,000 IU Vitamin D capsule, Calcium/Magnesium/Zinc caplet
Dinner: 8:35 p.m. | 1 pork chop, green beans, carrots, safflower oil, spices
