DAY 32!!! I made it!! I made it!

Yes folks, I made it through 30 days of the Paleo diet!!  I didn't die from not being able to eat Doritos or cake or cookies.  I didn't die from not being able to eat "healthy whole grains" which actually slow me down and make me tired and hungry all the time.  I feel better than I ever have, and I'm going to keep this up!

I lost 7 pounds (this is from not cutting out sugar entirely - I still had 1 tsp of honey every day or two, as well as about 100 grams of carbohydrates a day from fruit and vegetables), my attention span is much better, I no longer have that "blah" feeling, I no longer wake up feeling sore and groggy, my moodiness and irritability is totally gone, I have more energy, my cellulite is going away, my sex drive went up, my skin isn't dry anymore, I can go longer without eating without it affecting my mood, ummmm what else?  LOL.  To make a long story short, I love eating this way and I'm going to stick with it.

I hope you all enjoying seeing what 30 days of the Paleo diet was like for me.  I've loved every minute of updating this blog.  However, due to the name of this blog I no longer feel like this is the right blog for me!!  I want to keep this blog up and available for people to read who might be skeptical of the Paleo diet and want to see what it was like for a total junk food addict to try it.  But I am no longer "Reluctantly Primal".   I definitely think I'll miss blogging, but I have a lot of thinking to do as far as the blog name and content.  I'll post and update you all as soon as I decide.  But until then...

STAY PRIMAL!

Days 24-27: Think I'm going to stick with this!

It's been a couple days since I posted last.  Part of this is just due to being busy, but also I think I am starting to make the transition between talking about food nonstop to just adjusting to this as my new way of eating.  I definitely think I'm going to stick with this lifestyle.  This diet has improved pretty much every issue I was concerned about and some that I hadn't even thought about as a problem in years.  On top of that, when I started this diet I was worried about spending too much time in the kitchen.  Now it's true that I make more meals from scratch, but after 27 days of eating this way, I now spend less than 45 minutes a day in the kitchen.  This is because I got my strength back I am on a fat burning metabolism and I now have the ability to go 8-10 hours without eating without it affecting my mood, sometimes longer if I make a point of it.  In other words, I am no longer a slave to the kitchen and planning meals.  Even though I love cooking and that's fun to do sometimes, it is kind of nice to just be able to go about my day without worrying about my next meal.

If you think about it, our species never would have survived very long if we had to reach out for a 100 calorie pack or an equivalent caveman snack every 2 hours!  Oh no!  We were made to be tougher than that!  If you change how you eat and you avoid all these foods that mess with your blood sugar and cause carb crashes, hunger, and cravings, pretty soon your body is perfectly able to do anything you ask from it, and more, all without you grazing all day.

Anyway to make a long story short I am loving this diet!  I'm going to start working on my 30th day post so stay tuned.  I'll write about what these 30 days have taught me, the symptoms that improved on the paleo diet, and how I feel about eating this way and being "different" and being a "health nut".  I'll also give some thought to whether or not I want to keep up with this blog, start a new one, or stop blogging altogether.  I don't really identify so much with the "I love junk food" theme anymore.  I feel like I don't need those foods anymore.

Day 23: Too much energy?

Today I caught myself complaining because my "mind was going a mile a minute after lunch" and I "didn't want to sit still anymore".  Lol.  Ok, first of all, 30 days ago, I used to miss the feeling of my mind being really active.  I always felt like I was in a fog for part of the day.  Second of all, how cool is it to feel like that AFTER you eat?   So the minute I heard myself complaining about it I stopped myself and went back to day dreaming about finding a local farm to buy grass fed beef.  

The other thing I'm noticing is my bad habit of staying up late is even worse now since I have more energy.  Instead of being forced to nap several times a week from my poor sleeping habits I'm now able to stay up without it affecting my day too much (although it does make me hate getting up).  But, to be fair I have no bedtime routine whatsoever. I use my cell phone up until the last minute I fall asleep, which is not recommended in Mark's 30 day challenge.  I also couldn't turn off the computer if I tried.  All those lights mess with our body clocks.

Day 22: LARD! and my new favorite grocery store!

Shopping while hungry at Sunflower Market was like foreplay!

I finally made my way over to Sunflower Market in Colorado Springs for the first time today, and I'm really excited about it!  It's like Whole Foods but cheaper!  I found grass fed beef for cheap, plantains, wild caught clams on the half shell, kale, avocados for 75 cents each, chicken thighs for $1.29/lb, all kinds of stuff.  Plus they even had a "make your own almond butter or peanut butter" station, which was a machine which ground up almonds or peanuts and dispensed the creamy goodness right into your plastic tub.  Yum!  I guess I grew up under a rock because I've never seen something like that before.  I actually considered hanging around near that thing all day making myself more peanut butter one squirt at a time.  I know peanut butter isn't "paleo", but I think it tastes better than almond butter, so when the fantasy played out in my mind, I was thinking of the peanut butter.

These grocery stores are fun, but I'm going to make it my goal in October to try to find a local farmer to sell me grass fed beef in a quantity that my small freezer can handle.  I'm also going to see if I can find a good source for grass fed beef stock bones, bacon, pastured whole chickens, and grass fed fat.  Ok, this might sound kind of gross to 90% of my friends, but cooking in animal fat--grass fed fat, not grain fed--is supposed to be good for you!  Yes, it actually helps you absorb fat soluble vitamins like vitamin E, and yes, it helps keep you full longer, and yes, it's a lot better than the vegetable oils of today which turn rancid and are treated with chemicals over and over again so you don't taste the rancidity.  I might stick to bacon fat for now, but I'm willing to branch out and investigate other forms of lard and render it myself.  Lol.  The more fat I eat the more I'm losing weight and the more energy I have. Hate all you want, the primal foods are working!

Day 20-21: Will people think I'm weird if I stick with this?

Hi guys!  Well I had another good Paleo weekend.  I tried liverwurst for the first time (it's yummy!), and I had such an insanely fat-heavy breakfast on Saturday that I was able to go shopping in Denver for 8 hours without eating or feeling hungry.  I basically stuffed myself with eggs, meat, and even loaded up my coffee with coconut milk and even a healthy dollup of coconut oil (don't gag--it's actually pretty tasteless, although you kind of have to ignore the oil floaties, haha).  I did this because I learned a new Paleo trick in the last week -- if your meal is 60%-70% fat, you can go hours without eating.  I couldn't believe I was able to go without eating for 8 hours afterwards!  I would never have been able to do that a few months ago, I would have been whining for food at the 3 hour point.  So I really got to see the powers of SATURATED FAT as an energy source.  You can run a lot longer on that shiznit than you can carbs!  

Anyway, I'm up writing this post because I really can't sleep.  But there's also something on my mind.  I was just thinking about things, and quite honestly, I wonder if people are going to think I'm weird if I stick with this diet.  I mean really.  I'm excited about the health benefits I'm noticing, but I don't have a geniune life threatening disease to mention during social occasions as an excuse to eat what I want.  I'm not diabetic, I don't have celiac disease, etc.  All I am is somebody who noticed how AMAZING I feel when I eat this way!

I feel kind of bad for whoever takes me on.  My poor boyfriend.  Suddenly I realized I'm going to be "that girl", the one who talks about organic food and crap like that, and would prefer to eat only certain things even if she doesn't always say so.  My God, what if I end up being the girl who takes 2 minutes ordering her food because she wants to know if her steak was grass fed and what oil it will be cooked in.  I'm not that picky yet, but I can just imagine scaring off tons of people that way.  On top of that, I probably will get to the point where I can't eat cake or ice cream without getting sick.  On one hand I feel like I'll just end up looking like a freak.  On the other hand I guess I'm willing to be weird if that's what it comes down to, because no one ever accused me of being normal anyway.

Anyway, that was what was on my mind today.  That and the gigantic pot roast I'm going to eat tomorrow.  I started it marinating in a red wine / garlic / onion mixture in the fridge and I'm going to stick it in the crock pot tomorrow.  No idea how it'll turn out, but I'm excited!

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.

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.

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.