Day 19: Is there really a point in putting a 30 day limit on this?

Well it's Day 19!  Time to get on my blog and whine and complain about how I'm suffering from not eating cake and Doritos and white bread.  Time to describe how depressed I'm feeling and how much I hate dieting.  Do I sound convincing yet?  Because I just realized 90% of this blog is dedicated to describing how much I LOVE eating this way, and listing all the incredible improvements I've noticed on the Paleo diet.  I mean, really, is there any point in calling it a "30 day challenge" any more?   Sure, I've had my bad days, but all of those bad days were caused by either A., me cheating and creating more sugar cravings for myself, or B., me not understanding that I was in control of my day and choosing what I wanted to eat could be as boring (or as exciting) as I wanted it to be.

Here's a running list of the benefits I've noticed:

1.  Longer attention span, better memory
2.  Easier to focus
3.  Rapid thought process
4.  No afternoon sluggishness
5.  No cravings (except when I cheat and have something with wheat or sugar - then I have cravings for 2-3 days - yuck)
6.  Effortlessly slimming down
7.  No bloating, no gas
8.  No retaining water
9.  Dark circles under eyes going away
10.  Cellulite going away
11.  No feelings of depression
12.  Less irritability - I'm more happy go lucky and less tempermental - stress and dealing with people's moods doesn't faze me anymore
13.  No mood swings
14.  More energy, no more chronic fatigue, no more listlessness after work trying to decide between napping or going through a drive through to get my next meal, no more groaning when I have to leave the house for an errand after a full day's work (I really used to hate that)
15.  No more dry skin
16.  Decreased appetite - I don't have to torture myself trying to come up with a sensible 2 or 3pm snack when right down the hall there's a snack bar filled with candy and chips.  Sometimes I bring in food to work and don't even eat it.  I can skip a meal without it bothering me now--whereas before I would get testy or distracted if I didn't eat.
17.  Foods seem like they taste better now.  In fact, they taste so good I frequently can't resist eating random things while I'm cooking that weren't that exciting to me before.  For instance, I'll just start chowing down on hamburger meat or mushrooms or raw broccoli. It's weird.
18.  This verges on TMI so stop reading if you're a non-TMI type person... increased sex drive!!
19.  I am starting to see my abs again
20.  My allergies are going away
21.  Got over a cold extremely fast vs. it turning into a 3 week long ordeal.  I didn't even need antibiotics to get over it.

And so I curled up with my jar of coconut oil, leftover bacon grease, beef tallow, bacon, avocado, and various cuts of meat, and we all lived happily ever after.  The end.

Day 18: Fat bomb smoothies!! Yay!

Well it's day 18 already.  I had leftover short rib from yesterday, and I also made a conscious effort to make a smoothie with almost every available non-meat source of healthy fat I could find--coconut milk, avocado, and almond butter (I say non-meat because meat doesn't seem like it would lend well to blending). It wasn't the best tasting shake I've ever had, but I gobbled it up.  When I get to a weight I like, I'll be more generous with my fruit servings in my smoothies since they make them taste amazing, but now I'm keeping a carb limit.

When I got home I made egg, sausage, and jalapeno "muffins" for breakfast tomorrow (baked in muffin tins - my coworker's idea-awesome!), chili, and Thai coconut chicken soup (tom kha gai).  It was a pretty busy evening and in fact I should probably go clean my kitchen.  :-(   I'm still a little baffled that I felt compelled to make 3 meals.  I get so excited about food now.  Even using up leftover meat to make stews and soups (which is what I did in both cases) is exciting on some level.

And you know I thought all this cooking would wear me out, but now I'm starting to think it's exciting.  It's sort of like a ritual and I enjoy it.  In fact, whenever I whip up a fast meal, I find myself thinking "Is that it?" and it feels almost like a letdown, like the experience has been cheapened.  There's a definite anticipation factor that goes into cooking.  Watching the fat sizzle and glisten on the grill, watching the vegetables brighten in color as they cook. It's fun.  

I love this diet right now.  It's like my entire being is just "waking up" again.  My appetite, my energy, my attention span, my sex drive... haha ok that was probably TMI but you get the hint.  Every single part of how I feel has improved.  I am getting to the point where I think this 30 day challenge is dumb.  It's not a challenge, it's just my first 30 days of Paleo!  I don't think of it as a diet challenge anymore.  I just think of it as foods I prefer to eat.  I guess after awhile, when you're eating really good foods you start to prefer it.   

Anyway, I just realized that it's been over a week since I've passed out on the couch like a slug after dinner.  Sad that I used to do that I know, but I would just get so worn out from lack of sleep.  Now I'm still short on sleep but I go nonstop all day!  I'm going to try to get to bed earlier though.  Really.

Day 17: MEAT!!! Paleo Korean short rib!

I can't lie. The most exciting part of my day today was the MEAT.  I made Korean short rib (galbi) with Korean spinach (sigeumchi namul) on the side.  I marinated the short ribs in the fridge for a day in a mixture of garlic, fresh ginger, kiwi, sesame oil, and gluten free soy sauce!!  Check it out!  I've always loved Korean food and I've made this dish before, but this time it made me want to slap my MOMMA it was so good.  I think it was because I altered two things I usually did wrong in previous attempts:  First, I let it marinade for a full day, and secondly, I let it cook for longer on low heat vs. quickly on high heat.  Unlike a steak which tastes awesome seared, the short ribs have lots of fat and tendons running through it that are pretty tough to chew.  If you cook it low and slow, all that melts down into buttery goodness and it is oh-so-tender and it falls right off the bone.  It tasted out of this world and I almost ate the whole pound, but I had to hold back because I want to have some for lunch tomorrow.  

To get an idea how to make this dish, check out the recipes I use as a guide here (for the galbi, omitting the sugar) and here (spinach).

YUM!  Korean galbi (BBQ beef short rib)
and sigeumchi namul (spinach)

I will try to put that recipe up on the site soon!   

In other news, today I started a new carb/fat/protein ratio because I think I've been eating too many carbs for weight loss.  I readjusted my intake to be about 15% carbs, 55% fats (the HEALTHY kind like coconut milk, avocado, and animal fat from grass fed animals--not canola oil!), and about 30% from protein.  Before today I was eating 30/30/30.  I hope it works a little faster than the 3 pounds in 2 weeks I noticed the first part of this challenge.  

I also got to order off the "health/gluten free" menu at Olive Garden today, and I had a 12oz steak which tasted great!  It was wickedly expensive though.  But eating it in total satisfaction while everyone else was eating pasta and was nearly comatose after lunch was entertaining enough to be worth the money.  

So if you'll excuse me, another helping of galbi is waiting for me...

Day 16: Feeling better again

Well the effects of the cake I ate on Saturday and the subsequent cravings, general despair, and hand wringing have disappeared.  Hooray!  Now I’m back to eating real food and my appetite leveled off (after feeling like I could eat my arm off for 2 days straight).  Now I know:  if you eat cake (or probably anything else with lots of sugar or grains), your appetite will increase and you'll get tons of cravings for bad foods for two days.  In fact, my appetite is still kind of high, but now for good foods, so I think my metabolism is going up as well as a totally unrelated event.  (Right now I should note that I'm eating fried eggs, organic chicken sausage, and sweet potato hash browns, AND I'm thinking about the Paleo almond pancakes in the freezer... and I have an appetite for all of this even though I already had salmon!  But, a higher metabolism is a good thing, and shows the diet is kick starting my energy).

The other exciting part of my day (and here is where I reveal that I have a totally boring life) is when I got some femur beef bones in the grocery store!!  Check it out!

Yummy.  Bones.  Never had it, but it's being served in
5 star restaurants so I bet it's good.

They're all ready for me to roast and make beef stock.  Once I make beef stock I can add it to dishes for extra nutrition and flavor.  You can read all about the thrills of bone marrow and why it's healthy in this enticing article on Mark's Daily Apple.

Day 15: Paleo MELTDOWN...

You guys might remember that this weekend the temptation was too much for me and I had a slice of birthday cake.  Well, ever since then, I've been thinking about CAKE, BREAD, PIZZA, MUFFINS, or anything made with flour.  In fact, I think I might be close to having a Paleo meltdown.  In other words, I feel like saying screw this and going back to eating whatever I want.  All of my cravings came back but they are even worse than before!  I also noticed myself feeling dreary and sluggish at work again.  I'm also retaining a lot of water.

Basically, eating that small amount put me back in this obsession with carbs mindset.  I can't stop thinking about them, and my appetite has increased like crazy.  I'm trying to tell myself that this is just a confused signal going to my brain because of the yo-yo effect it had on my blood sugar.  But confused signal or not, I wish it would go away!

Tonight I had a huge dinner with bacon and eggs, pot roast, and salmon.  I hope the satiety I felt after meals for the first two weeks comes back tomorrow.  That really kept me going...

Day 12-14: Temptation! (and a book I'm reading)

I roasted two free range chickens for my family Friday night.
They loved it, and didn't even know they were eating diet food!

I spent this weekend at my mom's house for her birthday doing what I love best--cooking for a crowd!  But it was also a weekend filled with temptation.  All in all I'd say everything was going good about this weekend diet wise until Saturday. The story begins with me coming off the plane with high motivation, ready for primal foods, using my moms kitchen to boil eggs and roast chicken and cut up avocados; it ends with me succombing to birthday cake, ice cream, and tortilla chips Saturday night. I have no regrets--its just food, after all!  But how did this happen?

I'm pretty sure a couple of different factors were at play here. One, I wasn't eating nearly enough. I was nearly ravenous after trying to last all day Friday with airplane snacks like boiled eggs and bacon. Two, although I bought a lot of food for my stay, I didn't buy enough to keep it interesting, and I was too busy to eat huge meals. So by the time I saw that cake, my body was telling me to EAT.  Next, although cake and other treats are easy to avoid at work, it's a lot harder when you're surrounded by family and you're making memories.  Lastly, it wasn't just crappy grocery store cake. It was CAKE, with buttercream icing, and it was good.

One more thing I noticed: after I had one taste of cake, I had some cravings return the next day. It seems like one yo-yo jolt of insulin with the subsequent drop in blood sugar is enough to mess me up for a day or two. All I could think about in the airport was eating ice cream again. I also noticed I woke up feeling groggy and sore again like I used to--I wasn't miserable, and I felt fine after coffee, but I noticed a difference between how I felt waking up after eating junk vs. how I feel waking up after eating primal. The cravings were the main thing that bothered me though. So it might take me a day or two to get back to feeling like I was.

I was proud of myself in the airport on the trip home though -- I saw a place selling cakes and muffins right next to my terminal.  I sat there for about 30 minutes trying to not think about it.  I knew I was just craving it because I wanted my next fix of insulin.  Finally I just said to hell with it and went up to get one, but while I was in line I saw they had Greek salad on the buffet.  In that instant I started craving Greek salad instead, so that's what I bought.  Lol.  That was close!  

Anyway, that was my adventure for the weekend!  Here's what I was reading on the plane!  

This book will make your fat cry.

On the plane I couldn't stop reading Good Calories, Bad Calories: Fats, Carbs, and the Controversial Science of Diet and Health by Gary Taubes.  This book is extremely complex and it was hard for me to follow a lot of it.  But basically this guy looked at every single heart disease and obesity study done since the 20's and compared them all and investigated the reason(s) why we are told such nonsense as to avoid egg yolks and enjoy things "in moderation" but never seem to lose weight longer than temporarily before we gain it back.  The first half of the book was all about heart disease and how politics have influenced what we are told and not told about recent studies and their effect on heart disease.  The most scary part from that section?  Studies have shown that avoiding dietary cholesterol is a pointless pursuit that might lower your risk of avoiding heart disease by only 1%, but no scientist ever told us that, because their attitude (and the attitude of our government) was better safe than sorry. In other words, this is why pointless products like fat free Pam are on the market today being presented as healthy (yuck!).  People need to eat good, healthy, nourishing fat! 

After about 5 chapters into this extremely technical book, I could tell I was in for it, but it was worth it when I got to the obesity section. This section went into how calorie restricting diets were totally abysmally ineffective  for long weight loss in every study, and how carbohydrate restricting diets and diets mimicking what early humans ate were MUCH more effective.  It really explained that carbohydrate consumption--not fat consumption--is behind our elevated levels of insulin, and that insulin is the hormone in the body most responsible for creating conditions favorable for fat storage and elevated appetite.  Insulin levels in obese patients are much higher than lean individuals,  even when they're eating an almost identical amount of daily calories.  Some of us just create more insulin, and thus store a greater percentage of our calories as fat--even to the point of not getting enough nutrients in our other organs, causing symptoms like fatigue and lowered daily activity.  It also totally dispelled the notion that getting fat is as simple as eating too much.  It really challenged everything I thought I knew about how we gain weight.   For instance, the pervasive logic in losing weight is "I eat too much, I need to exercise more".  Well, yes that might be true, but if your body is creating all these hormones that make you hungrier and more likelier to store fat even if you're eating reasonably well, then it's not always your fault.  You can exercise more and eat less, but the original problem with the hormonal response is still there.  How do you fix it?  Avoid foods that cause you produce insulin. Carbohydrates, sugar, fructose, high fructose corn syrup, all of the above.  Basically, don't believe anything you've been told about whole grains being "healthy".  If that was the case, how come human kind survived so long without eating them?  Every nutrient your body needs is in greater quantities calorie for calorie in meat, fish, nuts, vegetables, and fruit. 

Anyway, I guess I learned this weekend how pervasive those foods are and how they mess up your hormonal response to eating.  I mean just from that little bit I had, I completely had my symptoms of never ending hunger and cravings return.  It's nice to not have those symptoms, so I'll definitely keep eating this way as much as possible, even if I haven't really "graduated" to being totally primal yet.  It might have been too much to take on only 11 days into the diet.  

Day 11: Foraging, raaarrr

Today I took on the Modern Forage mini challenge on Mark's site, which means I had to practice foraging and find a Paleo friendly meal away from my kitchen, lol.  So I went out to eat at a Korean restaurant and ordered kimchi instead of rice!

My lunch, avoiding what I wasn't supposed to eat

It was really good, but one thing I noticed--I was hungry again after eating within an HOUR!  I wanted to run home and eat more food but I was stuck at my desk feeling starving... like I used to be all the time before I went on this diet.  It's really surprising how much more filling eating Paleo is.  I should probably just bring a can of coconut milk with me wherever I go and chug it at random intervals.  Would people look at me funny?  I like my cavewoman foods!

Anyway, tomorrow morning before the sun comes up I'm going to the airport!  Yup, I have someone special to visit this weekend.  So not only will I have a good time, I also get to try to eat Paleo on the road.  I've got some bacon, chicken sausage, bananas, and an orange all ready to go.

It's so weird how I used to look forward to flying because I could load up on whatever sugary pastries, fast food, and overpriced coffee I could find.  But now all I'm starting to remember from eating that way is that I was feeling hungry all the time and tired and never satisfied.  Anyway, I'm sure I'll eat these foods again one day but right now I'm thinking it'll be a lot more rare than it used to be.  Don't get me wrong, I'm all for enjoying life, but it's nice to make the choice, "Do I want to feel at my best today or do I want to treat myself?" and not just shovel things in my face randomly.

Day 10: Longer attention span!

After 10 days on the Paleo diet I have noticed another epic improvement worth sharing: I have a longer attention span at work now, and it's easier to concentrate!  It's true!  Are you familiar with the feeling you get when you have a zillion different windows open on your computer and you can't remember what you were just working on because you just got interrupted?   I used to know that feeling all too well, believe me.  I would always forget what I was doing, and if I was lucky enough to remember it, I had to make a point to motivate myself to get back to work on it.  But today I was going back and forth to a lot of different things and I was getting interrupted a lot but it was so much easier to concentrate and go from task to task.  It was probably the single biggest improvement in that area I've experienced in a very long time.

I also noticed my typical bad mood in the morning wore off faster, and I wasn't getting perturbed at situations like I normally would.  I just found it easier to laugh things off.

I also notice the dark circles under my eyes are going away a little bit.  Pretty much everyone has those, so hey!  I'll take it!

At this point, I'm just wondering what's going to happen next.  This is ridiculous.  So far eating this way is just genuinely making me feel better and it's improving areas that I thought were just part of my personality.  It's kind of like peeling back layers of an onion.

The other important thing that happened today was SPONTANEOUS CLEANING.  Something I almost never do if I can help it, and if I do try to clean, it seems like it takes forever (I guess I get distracted easily). But tonight I cleaned my entire downstairs in only 45 minutes.

Random fitness article with actual good advice

Haha, I thought this was funny (but I'm easily entertained).  Every single tip in this article is entirely Paleo, the intervals, the point to NOT overdo cardio (it'll just exhaust you and make you hungrier), eating meat and vegetables, etc.  I wonder if the author is trying to make a point without scaring people off with yet another diet label.

"Skinny fat vs. Feminine Physique" (Image from www.fortiusfitness.com)

The article can be found here, How to transform your skinny fat body into a slim, fit and feminine physique in 3 month. Thanks Fortius Fitness!

News: 1/2 of US Adults will be Obese by 2030?

I stumbled on this article today in the Washington Post: Half of U.S. adults will be obese by 2030, report says. I don't know what I'm more shocked by, the fact that we might be headed in that direction, or the fact that this report advocates making "healthful foods cheaper and less-healthful foods more expensive largely through tax strategies".  Ugh.  I just hope that if our government ever implemented a tax strategy like that, they would at least have the sense to NOT put beef and eggs in the "unhealthy" category for once.  Grrr.

Day 9: Lost another pound!

Ok, I'm starting to feel like these moment-to-moment updates are pretty boring, even to my own mother.  Updating one's blog constantly without fresh material is sort of like periodically checking to see that you still have a belly button.  -Yup, it's still there!  Let me do a blog post about it!  haha. However, I do want to make a complete day by day account of what it was like to do 30 days of Paleo, and I can't skip a day whether it bores everyone or not!  So, let's do this.

Weight Loss - Oh yeah!

Today's my 9th day on the Paleo diet, and the weight (even though I didn't have much to lose, hehe) is still flying off left and right.  I looked at the scale again today and I lost another pound. Seriously? This is crazy!  Like I was saying, I am eating less calories than before, and I'm less hungry. At this rate I'll be back down to a 15% body fat in no time.  I don't even remember what it felt like to be that tiny.  This is the best diet EVER if I'm losing weight and I don't even feel hungry!  I feel stuffed!  But, I still have challenges, which leads me to my next point.  How do you not get bored on a diet that limits the foods you eat?

Combating Boredom on the Paleo Diet / Primal Lifestyle

As some of you might remember, on Day 7 I was complaining about getting bored.  That initial thought turned into a thought in the back of mind that I just couldn't scratch, and it's been nagging at me every day since.  Everyday, I thought, you know what, maybe I need to be on an 80/20 diet with gluten and sugar and everything.  Maybe I need to have a cheat day.  Maybe I'm just a person who needs more variety.  I just couldn't silence the inner nagging doubt starting to creep in.  Anyway, I think I may have thought of a way to keep that boredom at bay -- but first, let me explain how I had this epiphany.

You see, today I was telling somebody who is decidedly anti-diet and anti-health anything about the Paleo diet.  As I was talking, I realized that every meal I've made has been totally delicious.  It made me realize something.  It's not the food that's boring! It's the routine.  It's the cooking all my meals at home and never coloring outside the lines or being spontaneous that is getting boring.  How can you not get bored cooking at home day after day after day?  I'm a person who likes to go out to eat sometimes.  I also have extremely varied tastes in food that aren't always being met in 1 week's worth of grocery shopping (after all, I don't want to buy the whole store).  Some days I want Mexican, some days I want sushi, some days I want Indian food, some days I want Korean.  I just never know what it's going to be.

So I did some more thinking.  Eating out is great, but realistically, how often did I used to eat out?  Pre-Paleo days, I only ate out once or twice a week.  I didn't have this amazingly varied and exciting diet every single day.  Half of the time I'd just come home and have a bowl of cereal or something.  Twice a week seemed to be the magic amount which kept me from getting bored.  So I shouldn't have these huge expectations for the foods I'm eating just because I'm eating Paleo (and believe me, the foods are so tasty, it's hard NOT to have big expectations).  So instead of whining about being "bored", I decided I'm going to mix things up sometimes.   Two nights I week, I'm going to make it a point to either go out to eat for whatever I'm in the mood for (still avoiding bad food), or I'll go to the grocery store after work with the specific notion of cooking something spontaneous, or buying something tasty like kimchi.  Something that wasn't on the grocery list.  Two nights a week, NO LEFTOVERS ALLOWED!  

In fact, for extra spontaneity, I'm not even going to say what nights are going to be spontaneous.  I'm going to spontaneously decide when to be spontaneous.  And then I'm going to spontaneously update my blog about it too.

Reaction to dairy?

I think I might have had some kind of reaction to the small amount of cheese and greek yogurt I had yesterday.  I can't help but think, ugh, really?!  Just when I was starting to get the tiniest inkling of getting bored with this diet, here we go, food sensitivities are popping up.  Well, I say "popping up", but it's probably been there all this time and I just didn't know it.

I guess this just goes to show, on the Paleo diet it's a process finding all these foods that you've been eating for years but may have been impacting your symptoms without you realizing it.

At this point, when things are getting a tad boring, when I am noticing strange reactions from foods I didn't notice before, some of you might ask "Why do the Paleo diet?".  Well, I think a lot of people who try it (including me) just get curious and they want to see if they can feel better.  It's not NORMAL to catch a cold every month or have a persistent cough that never goes away.  It's not NORMAL to have allergies or fatigue or any of these other common ailments.  If you read enough about food, eventually you start to see how what you eat is related to almost everything.  The irony is that eating healthy shows you EVERY reaction, good and bad, and it's not just one big muddled blur of feeling mediocre anymore.  In other words, you'll feel great most of the time (unlike your peers who are crashing every afternoon), but eat a food that most people eat like chips or soda or cake, and your tummy will punish you for it.

I guess making the decision to eat healthier is kind of like selling your soul to the devil, haha.  He can make you rich and happy, but you'll owe him for the rest of your life, and he won't let you forget it either!

I guess I'm just starting to have a real genuine debate with myself.  I want to find a happy balance between militantly avoiding certain foods, and having more energy to enjoy my life.  We'll see what happens when the 30 days are up and how I stand on that issue.

Faster healing colds, longer attention span, and soft skin on the Paleo diet

Tonight I thought I'd do a post about some tangible health benefits I've seen on the Paleo diet.  Just after a week of eating this way, I've noticed three.  First off, I have more energy and a longer attention span at work (provided I'm not googling Paleo recipes, haha).  Second, the cold I caught a couple days ago is almost completely gone, which is a miracle for me because colds usually last at least 2 weeks for me if not more.  I was having bad sinus pain and a sore throat and everything, but now I feel fine!   And last but not least, my skin isn't dry anymore!  I have always had skin problems, especially when the weather got cold, but now that problem is pretty much nonexistent.

It must be all the healthy fats I'm eating.  I've also been adding homemade chicken stock/bone broth to whatever sauce I'm making for my meat entrees.  I even put it in my chili.  Supposedly that stuff has lots of minerals in it that we just don't get in our everyday food anymore.  It also could probably double in use as a good car wax or hair gel, since I've discovered the gelatin in it will dry and harden to an indelible waxy coating on your kitchen counter top and floors if you you accidentally spill some.

Anyway, these changes are pretty cool, so I can't wait to see what will happen in the next 3 weeks!

Day 8: Chili and Sweet Potato Fries

Well, day 8 is almost done.  Here's all the tasty food I had today:

Breakfast:  Coffee!  The 30 Day challenge email on Mark's Daily Apple said we were doing Intermittent Fasting (IF) for the next meal or two, so I played along.

Lunch:  Bacon with two over easy eggs and stir fried artichokes and tomatoes on the side.  I also had a kiwi/spinach/coconut milk smoothie because I didn't feel like making a huge salad.  Even though this lunch was good, I really need to rethink having eggs for lunch!  It reminds me too much of the Atkins diet.

Dinner:  My variation of Paleo chili and sweet potato fries fried in coconut oil.  Both were pretty good.

I'll probably fit in another snack before the night is over.  I still am having trouble eating as much as I used to. I guess that's good?  Lol.  I keep cooking a lot of food thinking I'm going to eat it but I just get full so much faster so it just sits in my fridge.  D'oh!   But anyway, I keep thinking about those darn Paleo Pancakes I made last night!  They were sooo good.  I probably need to avoid having too many of those.

Pancakes: Like little buttery pieces of heaven!

Since I had a good first week on the Paleo diet I decided to treat myself to some Paleo pancakes from a recipe at Paleo Effect that I've been eyeing.  My boyfriend calls them "cavewoman pancakes".  Their recipe is located here.  My review?  They were AMAZING!  I wouldn't hesitate to serve these to my daughter or my boyfriend or anyone else I might want to impress.  They have this nutty flavor which goes great with raw honey and butter.  I would imagine they'd go great with any kind of fruit topping as well.  

I would take a picture, but honestly I don't see me having the willpower to not eat them long enough to focus the camera.  Besides, I should be polite and not rub it in anyone's face that I'm eating something so delicious when they're not.  All these pictures of food I've been taking on this blog have been pretty offensive to non-Paleo eaters and I need to be conscious of that.  But let me just say, they turned out just like the picture on Paleo Effect's site, and they look pretty delicious there!  

Day 7: Lost 3 pounds!! But getting bored

I've lost 3 pounds in one week!  I've been tracking my meals at www.myfitnesspal.com when I can remember, and most days I am averaging about 100 grams of carbs a day, but I could probably up my protein to 90 grams (I'm averaging about 60 grams a day now).   I'm just so full after an average meal with 4-6oz of protein that more protein seems impossible to consume.  Even if you wanted to overeat on this diet, it would be hard.

Other than that, I'm starting to feel bored, even though trying out new recipes constantly is helping to keep it interesting.  I already want to roast another lemon sage chicken, for instance!  But I've never eaten healthy meals 100% of the time, so it's hard to stop myself from thinking about bad foods.  In the span of one afternoon my thoughts have turned from Doritos, to pancakes, to toast, to gyros, to hummus, to corn flakes and milk.  It seems like on days where I'm not trying new Paleo meals, these cravings come back.

I also found some frozen grass fed organic beef in the grocery store.  I was really surprised to see it, since I hardly ever see anything organic there.  Anyway, I bought it and when I got home I saw that it cost $8 a pound!  What the hell!  I can get that for cheaper elsewhere, so I'm pretty annoyed I bought it.  That is pretty expensive for something frozen.  Oh well.

Time saving ideas...

I think I've found some ways to save time preparing Paleo meals!  If anyone else has any suggestions, let me know!

1.  On Sunday, roast a whole chicken, pork shoulder, beef eye of round roast, brisket, or whatever other type of meat you feel like eating that week, with plain seasonings of your choice (salt, pepper, garlic, etc).  After gorging yourself Sunday night on the spoils, cut up the meat, freeze half of it, and leave the rest in a large container in the fridge.  (Don't forget to save the bones in the freezer for making stocks!)

2.  Throughout the week, take meat out and add it to salads, soups, chilis, or dress it up with new condiments and sauces.  The plain chicken you made on Sunday can be made to taste Italian with a little oregano, olive oil, and balsamic vinegar; Asian with a little ginger, more garlic, rice wine vinegar, or gluten free soy sauce; Mexican with some cumin, chili power, lime, cilantro, and jalapenos;  or BBQ, with some home made sugar free BBQ sauce.

3.  Cut up vegetables and fruit you know you're going to use through the week and put them in the fridge.  Dice up onions, chop up broccoli, strawberries, etc.  Avoid cutting things up if you know they will spoil, like avocados or sweet potatoes.  Avoid going crazy and cutting up more than you will eat.

4.  Microwave your veggies in plastic baggies with a little salt and pepper and fat of your choice (olive oil, free range butter, coconut oil, etc), or just eat them raw.  This makes packing lunch for work easier if you don't have to cook it before hand, and besides leftover cooked food doesn't always look appetizing.  Another time saver:  if you're brave, you can take a REALISTIC serving of vegetables and just blend it and make a vegetable drink out of it.  Do not try this option unless you are a fan of V-8, and be careful to not make a bigger smoothie than you can drink.  

5.  Learn to love foods that are easily prepared, like shrimp, canned salmon, smoked salmon, tuna, hard boiled eggs, etc.  Shrimp can be defrosted in about 5 minutes under cold running water and cooks just as fast.  Canned fish is a great cheap way to buy wild caught fish that will give you more omega-3's.  Canned fish can be mixed up with most anything to make a fast meal.

6.  Boil about 6 eggs on Sunday, these are great to have on hand for snacks, salads, or breakfast.  If you don't like hard boiled eggs, you might enjoy them more if you make deviled eggs out of them, or cut them up and put them in salads.  If you're still not a big fan of eggs, then continue to eat eggs in other ways.

7.  Cut up some vegetables and fruit and fresh herbs and freeze them.  Fortunately the vegetables can just be reheated and cooked no problem.  The herbs will be good in soups, cooked veggies, or maybe as aromatics when roasting meat (don't expect them to be as fresh and pretty in a salad as when they were when they were fresh).  Fruits on the other hand most likely won't look pretty after they are defrosted, so frozen fruits are probably only good for blending with some coconut milk to make a nice paleo "ice cream".  Still, a serving of fruit is a serving of fruit.

Day 6: Contemplating what tasty meal I can eat next

I still have that cold I caught yesterday, but I'd say things are going well overall.  I feel full for longer and I'm not a slave to finding snacks every couple of hours.  I also have been eating some pretty amazingly tasty food and I can't complain.  I am roasting a lemon sage chicken right now, and last night I was demolishing some smoked salmon like it was going out of style.  If you can't tell already, I'm a big fan of jalapeno and cilantro, so all I did was mix some chopped smoked salmon with jalapenos, cilantro, and avocado, and seasoned it with garlic, ginger, and salt and pepper.  Yum!

Anyway I hope I can get over this cold in a few days and then start implementing some of the "primal" workouts listed on Mark's Daily Apple.  Basically it all boils down to this:  cavemen didn't need fancy gym machines to get fit.  All they did was walk long distances, sprint for dear life occasionally, and lift heavy things.  You can read about those ideas here.  I'm going to take it a step further and instead of sprinting, I'll do some High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT) like the workouts over at www.bodyrock.tv.   All of those workouts are very short and extremely challenging, but I'm looking forward to seeing if there's a difference in my progress.

Yay! The organic food bus is here!

One of the criticisms of sustainable organic agriculture is that it's expensive and only readily available for people who can afford it, even though obesity is a problem that's everywhere. The Standard American Diet (SAD) is filled with fast food and foods that don't nourish anyone. In this article over here at Take Part, the Arcadia Center for Sustainable Food and Agriculture took matters into their own hands. They loaded up a bus with healthy produce and took it to the masses in the Washington D.C. area!

The Arcadia Center for Sustainable Food and Agriculture's Bus.
Image courtesy KB13/Creative Commons.

You can read all about it in this article over at www.takepart.com: The Food Movement Travels by Bus. Enjoy!

Honestly, I'm a little blinded by their awesomeness right now, but the only thing that could make this picture MORE awesome is if they painted the bus all colorful like an ice cream truck.  It would be hard to miss that bad boy rollin' in.  People who love to cook would get just as excited seeing a bus roll in with organic produce and meat as they would an ice cream truck.  

Day 5 - Moody & got a cold

Everything's going alright today, except I woke up with a sore throat.  I guess I caught the cold going around.  But anyway, looks like the Paleo chicken stock I was planning to make after I roast a chicken will be here with perfect timing!  I will probably drink it all weekend long and sleep.  I hate colds!

As far as the rest of my 30 day Paleo challenge is concerned, seems like I'm a little bit moody and irritable today (a side effect no one really notices but me).  But from what I hear that's pretty normal, and it'll go away soon.  But it's weird because I'll have an awesome day like yesterday, and then I'll have a day like today when I just want some peace and quiet.  I used to eat comfort foods on a day like this.  In fact, some spicy soup would really hit the spot right now.  Like maybe some chili or some thai soup!  Just give me some soup and let the weekend start already, ok?!    

Anyway, it looks like a lot of Paleo foods increase serotonin levels, so I'll have to keep this list in mind. 

Day 4 - stuffed and feeling great!

Well yesterday kind of sucked because I had my first craving, but today I've felt pretty satisfied with everything I've been eating and I haven't been craving anything.  My spirits are totally back on track and I feel good.  I also have noticed that my appetite is not as out of control as it used to be.  After a meal I'm not hungry for at least 4 hours.  I've actually been struggling just to eat my minimum calories required, because I don't feel hungry!

Here's what I ate today:

Breakfast:  coffee with almond milk, 1 hard boiled egg, 1 scrambled egg and 2 pieces of bacon (I was munching on random things as you can see)


Lunch: Beef curry with carrots, onions, and parsnips over a bed of steamed broccoli and cauliflower (it ended up being kind of like beef broccoli and it was great!  and even though I normally put potatoes in curry, the parsnips were nice!)

Dinner: Sweet and Spicy Seared Tuna with Cilantro, something I whipped up tonight to mimic one of my favorite sushi dishes which features ponzu sauce, seared tuna, jalapeno, and cilantro.  It's always great to make a dish that has a real good sauce, but let me just point out that this recipe has TWO sauces:  a buttery hot sauce, and a sweet honey lime sauce!!  I saw no reason to limit myself to just one sauce, and it was great.  Every bite of this tuna was like a little surprise in my mouth!  Sometimes you'd get a spicy bite, and sometimes you'd get a sweet one!

Snacks: Fruit smoothie made with strawberries and coconut milk, and (at various times) almonds and pecans

So, all in today today was a pretty good day. Also, I'm getting a lot of ideas about how to make this diet more convenient and inexpensive, and I have a new post in the works, so stay tuned!

Recipe: Sweet and Spicy Seared Tuna with Cilantro

If you like sushi, you'll love this recipe.  Tuna goes great with sweet and spicy flavors.  This recipe features two sauces to complement the tuna:  a buttery hot sauce, and a sweet lime sauce.  I normally would use some jalapeno on something like this, but I didn't have any today!  (sad face!)

Sweet and Spicy Seared Tuna with Cilantro

Sweet and Spicy Seared Tuna with Cilantro

Ingredients:

1 6 oz sushi grade tuna steak, approximately 1 inch thick
1-2 tablespoons butter
1 tsp sesame seeds
1 tsp ground ginger
1 tsp garlic powder
1 tsp cayenne pepper
2-3 tablespoons chipped cilantro
salt and pepper to taste

For hot sauce:
1 tablespoon butter or ghee
1 tsp hot sauce (such as Tabasco or asian chili paste, you can go find a hot sauce that is as hot or as mild as you like however)

For sweet sauce:
1 tablespoon raw honey
1/2 tablespoon lime juice, approx

For garnish/side:
1 cup of spinach and arugula, combined

Directions:  Coat a fully thawed tuna steak with the salt, pepper, garlic powder, ground ginger, sesame seeds, and cayenne pepper.  In a small skillet, warm 1 tablespoon of butter on medium heat.  When skillet is hot, cook the tuna for 3-4 minutes on each side until you get a nice golden color on each side.  Remove from heat and let it rest.  (At this point, a typical 1 inch thick tuna steak will still be pink in the middle - if you like that, let it be, but if not, place tuna in a 350 degree oven for approx 10 minutes until it is cooked through).

To make the hot sauce, first place 1 tablespoon of butter into a glass bowl or cup with 1 tsp of hot sauce.  Warm in microwave for 30 sec intervals until it is melted, and then mix them both together.  To make the sweet sauce, put 1 tablespoon raw honey with approximately 1/2 tablespoon of lime juice. Microwave this mixture for about 20 seconds until the honey is just warm enough to mix easily.

After the sauces are done, make a bed of spinach and arugula and salt/pepper to taste (this step is optional).  Slice tuna in thin strips and arrange over the plate.  Then take the sauce hot sauce and sweet sauce and drizzle as desired.  Chop up the cilantro and toss over the top.

Enjoy!!

Day 3, and the cravings have begun...

When I made this blog, I swore that I would be completely, 100% honest with how my 30 day challenge was going.  I also swore that I wouldn’t even bother trying to impress anyone by keeping a good attitude (some people are so artificially positive that you just want to smack some reality into them!).  But my point is, I wanted anyone who found my blog to be able to read about a real-life, totally honest, 30 day experience on the Paleo diet, from start to finish.  No frills, no dancing around how hard it was, and no selling of products!   Now that I’ve explained myself and I have set forward what is motivating this post, let me just say that some cravings started to appear today, and today was the first day where I actually started to hate the idea of eating low-carb for 30 days!   Ugh!!  This diet is starting to remind me of the Atkins diet and I’m not very happy about it anymore!   I have been on the Atkins diet before and when I came off of it I just ended up having even more of an eating/craving problem for a couple months.  

But anyway, back to my story!  At about 10am, my usual weekly craving for sushi hit.  It was hard to ignore.  I love sushi.  It makes being stuck in our humdrum cubicles at work a little more tolerable.  As every office worker knows, there's nothing like a quick carb fix to get your mood back on track and get back to work.  I kept thinking about those spicy tuna rolls for sale in the grocery store that had avocado nestled in the middle.  Then I thought about the spicy sauce and the wasabi.  But unfortunately, I didn't think sushi was an option since it's loaded with rice (100 grams of carbs for 2 rolls).  I know some Paleo eaters eat rice, and I know some eat sushi, but it was the point of the thing.  I had already told myself 30 days of no grains.  that was the deal.  I can't go back on it just because I had a little craving.

As time went on I noticed I was feeling moodier and easily annoyed.  I wanted some damn sushi!!  I think I must have just wanted some CARBS!!!  Sushi has carbs (the kind with rice anyway), as do pancakes, bagels, candy, ice cream, popcorn, and BREAD!  Not having these foods anymore felt like a bunch of my friends weren't invited to the party!  I sure missed them!  Even if they were the type friends that dragged me down, made me feel tired, and enticed me to gain weight.  What a wonderful friendship, lol.  

But anyway, finally around 1pm it eased up, but I still was debating with myself whether there's any benefit in going totally strict with this.  I knew I wouldn't like a strict diet!  I want to go back to 80/20 eating, or have one day a week when I can eat junk food.  I guess I'll give it a little longer to see if doing this without any occasional non-Paleo foods is worth it or not.  I won't know unless I actually try.

But damn, on day 31, I want some pancakes!  

Ways to make 99% cacao dark chocolate taste less like diesel fuel

Since sugar free dark chocolate is one of the foods allowed on Paleo, of course that's one of the first things I bought.  I knew going into this that there were certain things I just would not compromise on, and chocolate was one of them.  But let me just warn you: 99% cacao is no joke.  It has no sweetness whatsoever.  Seriously, I'm surprised that it isn't made with diesel fuel, because that's what it tastes like.  I felt tough as nails for eating it, but it needed a little somethin' somethin'! (as we say in the south)

Here are some of ingredients you can use to make it taste better and still be paleo-approved.  Raw honey, almonds, fruit, and coconut milk!  And yes, I took a picture, because pictures make me hungry:

Ingredients that go well with dark chocolate

Here's some ideas for what to do:

- Melt it and mix it with pieces of very sweet, ripe fruit that have been simmered in a pan (the heat extracts the sweetness).  Then, let it cool enough to where you can form it into balls, and reharden it in the freezer

- Melt it and combine it with a little raw honey and nuts (by "little" I don't mean half the jar of honey, remember it doesn't do you any good to go without table sugar if you're pigging out on honey)

- Melt it and combine it with coconut milk and a touch of raw honey  (if you add enough coconut milk, you will eventually get a syrup-like consistency.  This is what you want if you want to be able to pour the chocolate into molds)

In this picture, I had melted half a dark chocolate bar with about 1/4 of a cup of coconut milk and 1 tablespoon of raw honey.  When I poured it on the sheet I added the fruit, nuts, and shredded coconut.

A Paleo chocolate bar

Anyway, I'm sure there's more discoveries to be made in the realm of Paleo candy making, but that's about the extent of my expertise (I specialize in eating candy only).  I still have to experiment some with mint and peppermint extract, because I bet that would be good too.  But you get the idea. 5 grams of natural sugar added to 1/2 a chocolate bar can go a long way for taste, that's for sure.

Day 2 and my energy is already up

Ok, I'm probably jinxing myself... but so far I'm excited because I have more energy and this isn't as hard as I thought it was going to be.  I don't have cravings or any withdrawal headaches.  (Disclaimer: I cut out sugar and a lot of bad foods to about the 80% point before I started this, but still that's pretty good).  It just feels like I'm eating real food.  Instead of feeling yucky and/or just more hungry after eating, I feel full and good.  And what's even weirder is I added up my calories out of curiosity, and even though I'm eating less calories than I normally do, I have more energy and I am less hungry.  My carbohydrate intake went down, and my fat intake went up.  Protein stayed about the same.  The meals are so filling, and some of them are just stupidly easy to make.  For instance, all I had for dinner was a small frozen fruit smoothie blended with full-fat canned coconut milk.  I was stuffed after drinking that and I didn't eat anything else for hours.  And I had so much energy that I spent a couple hours cooking meals for later.  

So, for all ye who are curious, here's what I ate today:

Breakfast: Coffee with almond milk, 1 peach, and 2 boiled eggs

Lunch: The infamous yet alluring Spinach Arugula Salad with Honey Mustard Dressing

Snack #1: 4 ounces of homemade roast beef with "sukju namul" (a korean bean sprout dish with garlic and sesame oil which I love)

Snack #2:  Frozen fruit smoothie with 1/2 can full fat coconut milk (ended up being about 8 ounces total)

Late Dinner: 6 ounce serving of meatloaf

So that's about it for today, and I honestly don't feel like eating anything else.  I'm sure the cravings will come eventually.  But I'm looking forward to keeping this up!  My goal for next week is cooking more meals in advance so I have more time to spend on my hobbies (painting, doing more challenging workouts, etc) again.  My eventual goal is to go back to school again and complete my master's degree, something I have been wanting to do but have been kind of held back on due to a lack of energy at the end of the day.

If anyone wants to join me, head on over to Mark's Daily Apple and check out his 30 day challenge! 

Recipe: Spinach/Arugula Salad with Honey Mustard Dressing

Bacon is like the fairy dust of the cooking world:  anything with bacon sprinkled on it just tastes magical!  Am I wrong?  Here's an easy take on your typical bacon and spinach salad.  The honey mustand dressing can be sweet or spicy depending on how much honey you add.  If you haven't tried a salad with a sweet tasting dressing, I highly recommend it.  Spinach works well with all kinds of dressings.  I know this because I'm a nerd and watch a lot of Food Network.

My gorgeous and sexy spinach arugula salad with
honey mustard dressing, which would probably NOT
win a round of Iron Chef, but was amazing anyway!

Spinach Arugula Salad with Honey Mustard Dressing

Ingredients

2 cups spinach/arugula combined
1 hard boiled egg, peeled and sliced or chopped
1 small tomato
1/8 of an onion, chopped
3-4 slices of bacon, crumbled
Salt
Pepper

For dressing:

3-4 tablespoons olive oil
2-3 tablespoons sugar free dijon mustard (eyeball it until you get the taste you want)
1 tablespoon bacon grease
1-2 tablespoons warmed raw honey (experiment until you get the taste you like)

Directions:  Combine salad ingredients and lightly salt and pepper the whole thing before adding dressing. For dressing, combine olive oil, dijon mustard, bacon grease, and raw honey, whisking with a fork and adding ingredients until you get the taste you like.  I ended up adding 1 tablespoon.

You could probably also add cayenne pepper to the dressing with good results.

Enjoy!

Day 1 down!

So my first day wasn't really that exciting.  I expected a lot of mental angst and hand wringing, but I guess all that will come later.  For breakfast I had my coffee as usual (with coconut milk instead of half and half this time), and 2 boiled eggs.  For lunch I had the exquisite delicacy known as plain ol' roast beef and broccoli (with ranch on the side), and for dinner I had coconut curry shrimp on a bed of spinach and arugula (it was actually really tasty!).  For a snack I had some yogurt mixed with raw honey and fruit and some almonds. I probably didn't eat enough today, but I was so wiped out from the cumulative effects of days upon days of lack of sleep that I slept from 5pm to 8pm! So that cut into my hunting and foraging time.

I'll try to eat more tomorrow and take pictures to make it all look as appetizing as possible so all of you are incredibly jealous (hey, I gotta go out in style!).  Also, if any hand wringing occurs, or if I find myself crying and/or talking to myself in front of an ice cream sandwich in the store, then I'll document the whole experience for your amusement.

Tomorrow when I get home from work I'm going to try to make stuffed cabbage!  The recipe calls for cabbage leaves smothered in tomato sauce, wrapped up in tight little bundles that hold a nice 4oz serving of ground beef with rice, onions, and other seasonings.   I'm going to try to use some bland vegetables like cauliflower in place of the rice.

WOW, this is going to involve a lot of cooking

I came back from shopping today and have been trying to prepare some foods for tomorrow.  All I can say is I guess I've forgotten about how much cooking and time is involved when you're going to be pickier about what you eat!  I love to cook, but I doing it for 30 days straight might get old unless I make food in big batches.  I'm definitely a big fan of recipes that can be frozen and reheated but still taste amazing (like chili!).  But anyway, I bet this diet would be good for someone who either had help in the kitchen or was alternating cooking duties with a significant other.  :-)

Here's what I made tonight:

• Sugar free greek yogurt flavored with raspberries, raw honey, and coconut milk.  Some versions of the Paleo diet call for no diary whatsever (apparently it's a food a lot of people are allergic to), but I'm pretty sure I'll do fine with a serving of yogurt here and there.  And as for raw honey... WOW!!!  It knocked my socks off!! I can't believe I've never tried it before.  It's thick and it has the consistency of peanut butter, but it's one of the most delicious things I've ever eaten.  It tastes worlds better than regular honey.  
• Roast beef (I just finished slicing it as thin as I could and putting it in the fridge).  I guess I'll eat that with salads or roll it up with some horseradish and eat it for snacks.  I actually hate cooking meat in advance because it gets all dried out in the fridge, but I had to cook that in advance since the cooking time was ridiculously long.  So I hope it's still good in a few days.  Note to self:  cook soups in advance, not meat, unless it's something that freezes well like meatloaf.
• Boiled eggs (I LOVE boiled eggs - don't ask me why.  I usually have one for breakfast)
• I also cut up and prepped half of the vegetables I bought and put them in the freezer.  I get so tired of buying things but never being able to eat it all before it goes bad.  I like my vegetables cooked anyway, so I thought I'd try doing it this way.

The other recipes on the radar for this week are:

• Meatloaf with chopped mushroom instead of breadcrumbs, and homemade sugar free ketchup 
• Stuffed cabbage, omitting the rice (I had stuffed cabbage once and it was great, but I've never tried to make it before)
• Roast chicken
• Tom Kha Gai (my favorite Thai soup!)
• Various vegetable side dishes
• Coconut Vanilla Ice Cream
• Fruit

That reminds me, I also need to make homemade chicken stock and beef stock and freeze it in 1 cup sized portions.  That will give a lot of flavor to these recipes instead of just using something out of a can.  But other than that, I have since learned that the broth made from simmering bones is extremely nutritious!!  You get all kinds of minerals from the bones, and it's a great thing to have when you're sick.  It's also great for cellulite.  Who knew?  The things the internet has taught me!  Ha ha.  To make it, all you have to do to make it is collect bones from leftovers in the freezer, and then simmer the bones in a pot of water (about 24 hours for chicken, 48 hours for beef).  You add salt, herbs, and vegetables at the end, and after it's cooked long enough, then you just strain it and keep the liquid.  

Anyway, I hope all this cooking doesn't get old...but things sure taste better when you make it fresh.  

Starting tomorrow!

Well, I "go primal" tomorrow, and already I'm kind of looking forward to it, because I made myself sick trying to fit in every last taste of junk food I could.  I've been eating junk all weekend because being on a strict diet makes me nervous.  I've been about 80% gluten free for almost 2 months now, and now whenever I eat pizza or bread my stomach hurts a little.  The worst was the headaches though.  I've had a migraine on and off all weekend.  I don't think I'm used to eating bread at every meal anymore.  This is something bizarre that a lot of people who go gluten free notice.  Once you stop eating gluten, you notice more symptoms when you do eat it.  Everyone is different, but that seems to happen a lot.  I guess once you experience feeling better, it's easier to notice bad symptoms.  It sucked having a migraine this weekend, but it's easy to forget that I used to get headaches all the time.

I would recommend checking out Mark Sisson's "The Definitive Guide to Grains" if you want to read more about gluten.

A 12 Year Old Getting Lipo?

One of my favorite food documentaries that convinced me to at least try to eat healthier before I knock it is one called Killer at Large.  It really shows you that obesity is on the rise.  There's even a sad story about a 12 year who is obese and getting lipo.  Can you believe it?  But, instead of judging her, let's use it as a starting point to think about how we can help.  Obviously something is wrong with the way we're eating if children with higher metabolisms are feeling the effects.  Here's the trailer.  Check it out!  

The Paleo Diet: So Easy a Caveman Can Do it?

What's the Paleo Diet?  I'm getting asked this question a lot.  The simplest explanation is that the Paleo way of eating tries to mimic "how cavemen ate" or something to that effect, but it goes without saying that that isn't exactly completely possible, since I've traded in my spear and fur clothing for a laptop and a latte.  Basically, after reading about it for awhile, I think that the main idea behind it is to eat naturally.  Eat foods that have been around for a long time and that we know are good for us--like meat, vegetables, fruits, nuts, coconut, cacao (in the tasty form of dark chocolate), and healthy fats.  Don't eat anything found in a box that's loaded with chemicals.  Common sense dictates that anything that has a super long shelf life probably isn't going to be easily digestable for you and make you feel good.  These new processed foods were never around 100 years ago.  Also, avoid grains.

WHAT?!  No grains?!  Grains are healthy right?!  I see pictures of grains on Kellogg boxes and in Kashi commercials.  We've been told they are healthy our whole lives.  What kind of wack job would say that grains aren't healthy?  Well, a lot of people are saying that in fact, and people a lot smarter than me.  Humans have only been eating grains for a tiny part of our history, and there's a lot of studies coming out recently which suggest that people may still may have a hard time tolerating grains.  If you're sensitive to grains you may have a whole bunch of different symptoms.  Fatigue, worsened allergies, sinus pain, gas, bloating, arthritis, unexplainable migraines, difficulty concentrating, mental "fog" on awakening, and on and on.  The biggest offender?  Gluten, a protein found in wheat.  You may have noticed the "gluten free" craze.  This is because more and more people are starting to realize that it's not normal to feel slightly ill and/or tired all the time, and a lot of their symptoms may be contributed to wheat.  But even if you don't have all these unexplained ailments we've all seemed to have accepted as "normal", you still might notice that you're hungry all the time.  You still might have noticed that bread and cake and bagels and all your other favorite foods aren't very filling.  This is because eating foods that contain grains--especially the genetically modified grains of today that have a higher gluten content--causes an insulin response in your body that shoots your insulin levels up briefly to diabetes range.  Now maybe you're one of those lucky people that doesn't notice these problems.  But, there's still a good reason to eat less grains than you do now.  Vegetables and fruit have more nutrients per calorie than grains do.  We do need to eat carbohydrates.  Carbohydrates are good.  But, vegetables are more nutritious, and they don't make your blood sugar all crazy, and they won't have the possibility of giving you all these wackadoodle symptoms.  Maybe one day I'll be able to explain the science behind this more thoroughly. But all I can say now is that any food that causes your blood sugar to sway that much is just going to increase your appetite and make you feel tired, not to mention give you a lot of extra glucose floating around your veins to get stored as fat and all that other fun stuff.

But behind the scientific reasons of eating this way, there's just a whole lot of common sense.  It's getting harder and harder to stay thin and healthy these days.  Obesity, diabetes, and cancer are all on the rise.  And what do we see people eating nowadays?  Fast food, chain restaurants, sugar, soda.  Obviously our life of convenience is catching up with us, and unless we step back and try to make some improvements sometimes, we are never going to feel at our best.  

Of course, I SAY that, but I love junk food too.  It seems like I have to eat it at least every couple days or I miss it.  So me starting this diet on Monday is a little daunting.  I can come up with a whole list of things I'll miss.  Tortilla chips, ice cream, Reeses cups, cake, pizza, and bread.  I love these foods so much, I honestly think I will HAVE to find a way to incorporate them into my diet again, or I'll go crazy.  But those are all foods that make me feel tired.  I would love to have a lot of energy and leave all that behind me.  I hope I can do it.

To sum up, eating Paleo is about being a true "predator". It's not about "grazing" all day on foods that don't sustain you or give you very much energy and that make you want to lay on the couch and vegetate.  It's not about whining that you need another cookie to feel right about the bad day you had (which is what I usually do!).  It's about eating foods that help you perform at your best and that are naturally good for humans and that are naturally tasty.  I guess after reading about it for a couple weeks, I've already kind of bought into this whole "primal" fantasy surrounding it.  I would love to have increased energy.  I would love to be able to accomplish anything I set out to do, with improved mental clarity and energy.  I would love to be able to play with my daughter all day long and still not be tired.  And like everyone else, my personal life has its bumps in the road, so I'll be glad to take whatever boost I can get.

Anyway, one of the best websites I've seen explaining the reasoning behind the Paleo Diet can be found here over at Nerd Fitness: http://nerdfitness.com/blog/2010/10/04/the-beginners-guide-to-the-paleo-diet/ .  He can probably explain it better than I can.  Plus, he has a cool picture of Lego cavemen.

ME trying Paleo?!

As I mentioned in my previous post, I still have what I would consider a "need" for junk food, a craving, a love even, even though these foods completely zap my energy. Hell, I even have a picture of me eating an ice cream cookie sandwich on my Facebook page!  But even though I love junk food, I still don't have a big weight problem.  My friends say that I don't "need" to go on a diet.  So why is someone like me trying the Paleo diet?   Well, quite honestly, I want to see if it can help me get the wheels turning in other areas of my life.  I'm a person who's always starting grandiose projects or dreaming up ideas but I hardly ever see them through to completion.  I love to paint and draw, but I have half finished paintings all over my house.  I even have a website to display my art that I haven't updated in ages.  I also have trouble keeping my house as clean as I would like.  To top it all off, I have lived in Colorado Springs for a year around the natural beauty of the Rocky Mountains, but I have yet to try hiking!   All of these problems are because I struggle with fatigue.  Everyday after work I'm so tired that I don't feel like doing anything.  If I could find a way to have more energy and enjoy things more, then it would be worth it to me.  So I'm going shopping for Paleo foods tomorrow and we'll see how it goes!

30 Days of No Sugar and No Grains... HELP!

So I've kind of been interested in food lately.  Where it comes from, how it affects our health, and how people were "meant" to eat (if such a diet exists).  A good Friday night for me lately has been watching documentaries like Food Inc. or Fat Sick and Nearly Dead, or surfing interesting blogs of known Paleo diet health nuts, like Mark's Daily Apple. The truth is, I've been reading about the Paleo diet for awhile.  I've even been talking about the benefits of grass-fed beef and the symptoms of gluten sensitivity to my friends (seriously? who does that?).  My mouth waters when I think about coconut flakes and dark chocolate and fruit and other Paleo-friendly desserts.  I am already pretty excited about the idea of eating better.  The truth is though, even though I'm excited about it, I haven't been able to give up the idea of eating bad food SOMETIMES.  I like to eat bad foods at least once a day, if not more.  If I have a bad day, who's going to the snack bar to buy a Klondike bar?  Or who's grabbing a donut just to make sitting in her cubicle a little more exciting?  THIS GIRL.  The problem with this set up is, my blood sugar is always crashing and/or I feel a little sick afterwards, and I struggle with fatigue.  I am also famous for coming up with fabulous ideas for new projects or hobbies and workouts I want to do, but then never following through.  I know there's room for improvement.  You can't eat 1-2 healthy meals a day and expect magic to happen.  I want to see what happens when I eat healthy 100% of the time.  I can survive 30 days without junk food...I think. So when I saw the 30 day Primal Blueprint challenge on Mark's website, I knew I had to do it.  I start September 12.  So here we go!  30 days of Paleo!