I CAN'T "C" THE LABEL

 Diets are something that normally encompass weighing, measuring, lots of calorie counting and obsessing over portions.  Not this one.  You are not allowed to weigh or measure yourself for the thirty days, you never count calories and your portions are suggested.   

Before you start jumping up and down doing the "happy dance" there are some really strict boundaries that go along with this.

NO SUGAR

NO ALCOHOL

NO GRAINS

NO LEGUMES

NO DAIRY

 Your life now turns in to a treasure hunt at the supermarket.  

 If like me you are over 40, you will need your reading glasses.  I would suggest several pairs because along with the eyesight, the memory seems to be an issue after that age too.  

 "Has anyone seen my reading glasses?" has been said more times than"Dinners ready" in my house. 

Off I went during my first week armed with my shopping list and really excited to find all the foods I needed.  I pulled a can of coconut milk off the shelf and stared at the side of it.  I saw a blur of letters.  I could just make out that there was a "c".  I could only do that because I knew that there is a "c" in coconut!  I stood there pulling the can back and forth as if I was playing the trombone as I tried to make out more letters.  I searched my pockets and bag in vain and finally gave up when I noticed people backing away from me.   

If you can find a "compliant" can or package ( and can read it) you can have tuna, bacon or even sausage but, they cannot contain added sugar or soy or all those weird chemicals they put in our food.  

 Good luck trying to find bacon.  You might be better off going on a quest for the Holy Grail.  I have never seen so much sugar.  Why?  Even at the special meat market, there is sugar in the bacon.  

We do not actually eat much bacon at my house because ten people and bacon equal a car payment.  Who can eat one slice? ( also called a "rasher" in England). My little crew could eat a pound each if left to their own devices. Apparently, there was a porcine virus last year and the price skyrocketed to $5-6 a pound.  That was when it became a forbidden food in my house. It is now relegated to a treat saved for birthdays or other special Occasions and even then rationed to a few pieces.  

There is nothing like a diet to make you want certain foods.  If I cannot have a cookie my next best thing would be bacon.  If I can find that bacon I could have it.  If I can eventually locate a compliant bacon source I will then have to play "hide the bacon" when I get home.  This would be the day when 9 other people suddenly want to do the Whole 30 and the day after eating the bacon they will not. 

If I could get it past them and into the fridge, cooking it would undoubtedly alert them to the fact that it is in the house.  Nine people would turn up and stand around me with sad little faces and plea for "just a little bit".  I could try cooking it when they are all asleep but then they would all sleep walk to the kitchen and I would have a zombie bacon apocalypse on my hands.  Even then if I could get through that obstacle I would have to hide my stash.

Now, a trained truffle pig has nothing on my kids when it comes to sniffing out food.  A truffle pig is not someone that has gorged themselves on a box of 160 Lindt truffles.  ( that would be me and yes they do come in boxes of 160).

They are highly trained animals that the French use to sniff out that rare delicacy that is a smelly little fungus. It grows a few inches underground so no one has any idea where they are growing apart from the pig. The handler then has to beat the pig to the truffle. Something like me with my kids and bacon.  The kids could be blindfolded with a peg on their noses and still find food that is hidden.  (part of the big family experience and survival of the fittest or fastest).  So, there would be no point in hiding what I had cooked if I could actually get to that point.  

 Maybe trying to locate some bacon is not such a good idea.  I will stick to sausage. 

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