I can force myself to eat vegetables for 30 straight days...I can do anything for 30 days!

Anyone who knows me, knows that I am a meat and potato girl. My deathbed meal would be Cook's Illustrated Beef Burgundy and a bottle of red zin! I always "hold the veggies". I have worked in a restaurant for 17 years (in the office, not the kitchen which is why it is a successful restaurant!) When the restaurant got a new POS system I made sure that a "hold veggies" button was created just for me!

I am now 39 years old. It is the end of the 30s for me. I will be 40 next year. I am healthier now than I was in my 20s, when I never even gave a single thought to what I ate. I was blessed with a decent metabolism that keep me thin during those early 20s, but with each passing year it has slowed down and at 35 I was the heaviest I had ever been. Everything I have read about your metabolism slowing down is true for me and it is only getting worse! I am also very short, so an extra 5lbs on me shows in all the wrong places. So, at 35 I started really thinking about what I was eating and started to exercise more. Limiting pasta and breads and trail running really helped me start to trim down. Then I found Pilates! No, it is nothing like yoga! I hate yoga...if I am going to do anything psychical for an hour a day, I better be burning some calories, and the yoga I tried didn't cut it.

After two years of Pilates, I know that I have built muscle but it is just not visible to the naked eye. I love Pilates and have found it is an exercise that works for me. I have never been a huge fan of working out. I had to drag myself out the door to run, once on the trail I was happy, but it was always a chore.  I know that I should be running in conjunction with Pilates, but if I have time to workout, I am going to choose Pilates over running every time! My goal is to go workout 5 times a week and after two years I am still enjoying going to Pilates and really look forward to it. I feel fit and strong but still don't look the way I want to.

This brings me to this Whole30 challenge. I have a friend who works out all the time and was getting fit, but the true efforts of his workouts didn't completely show until he did the Whole30 and changed his eating habits after the 30 days. So he is my inspiration.

Another thing my friends know about me is that I don't cook. I am fortunate that I married a man who loves to cook. So I could not do this challenge without him. Steve has the hardest part of this challenge, meal planning and cooking.

So the challenge begins. Tonight I will enjoy a glass of wine (or two...or three). Maybe after the wine I will have the courage to take my before pictures....which I may or may not post, that might be putting myself out there too far!