Gettin My Paleo On, and Feelin Fine

Okay so we are now roughly four weeks into eating Paleo Style.  For those of you unfamiliar with this diet it involves cutting out dairy, sugar, and wheat/pasta/grains.  There is a lot of cooking from scratch and a LOT of meat, veggies, and fresh fruits.  It is a little intimidating at first especially for a picky eater and admitted carb addict such as myself. And it is time consuming because you are constantly preparing food so that you don’t starve (okay perhaps that is a bit dramatic, but you know what I mean).  

So I couldn’t be true to my blog unless I shared some fun stories about how this has all been going. 

During the first week I lost four pounds, my stomach aches, and my terrible acne.  The weight loss was mostly from starvation; no seriously.  I don’t claim that to be healthy, it just is what it is.  I pretty much would eat a half a chicken breast or a hamburger once in a while and carbs were pretty much a staple in my life. Now I was forced to eat meat at every meal and there was no garlic bread! Aaaaahhhhh!

I suffered through beef stew, shrimp tacos, and grilled tilapia with lemon.  I made sweet potato fries that flopped and attempted to figure out exactly what a parsnip was.  And through the entire process I realized just how much I didn’t know what I was eating before this.  I began to truly appreciate all of our hard work and kitchen messes as we took control of our food.  And I learned how to find an avocado that is just right, because trying to chew an un-ripe avocado was almost as disgusting as the rubbery shrimp from the shrimp tacos.

I have sliced, diced, peeled, poached, boiled, broiled, and baked.  I have sought ingredients that I didn’t know existed and have found the staff at my local Trader Joe’s to be quite helpful.  I have tried at least one new food item a day for the past three weeks.  And I have realized just how addicted to certain foods that I was.  When something like a dominoes pizza is gone forever and you feel a sincere loss, that is when you know that you have a problem.  No seriously I set up a memorial to pizza in my garage with candles and everything…and please don’t tell my husband, he might put me into the old folks home next door. 

So here is to paleo survival, to realizing that this new lifestyle is going to be here for the long haul, and to the fact that ultimate nachos are acceptable with certain ingredients. Here here!

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