31 Days of Paleo

In celebration of this being the last day of January I've written a little song called "31 Days of Paleo"  which is sung to the tune of "The Twelve Days of Christmas."  Ready?  Okay here we go!

On the first day of Paleo Mark Diffley made for me a pot roast with coconut curry....

.....Just kidding.  Seriously, I give you all permission to give up reading the blog when I write a song about how the cavemen ate.  :P

Looking back these past few weeks I must say that sticking with this diet has definitely been easier than imagined.  I would have struggled more with it if I was on my own to cook all of the time, but fortunately Mark is an awesome cook.  (We'll see how I do when he goes to China for work!!)  As I blogged about a few times my cravings waxed and waned.  They were particularly strong the first couple of days and here the last couple of days.  However, I never caved in to any of them!!  I've been 31 days without soda, sugar (except the natural stuff in fruit), and processed carbohydrates.

I thought it might be particularly difficult to stay strict at work or when we were with lots of people who aren't doing this with us. I had to turn down several things at work - treats for people's birthdays, ice cream, and other snacks - several times.  Mike thought about us when he picked a restaurant for his birthday dinner and Tango Sur turned out to be a great option.  Mark's parents adjusted their meals for us when we visited and only mildly wanted us to cheat.  All in all, this turned out to be very manageable.

By far, the hardest thing is planning.  We had to make time to cook on the weekends and make frequent shopping trips.  Mark also ordered us grass fed beef a couple of times so we always had stuff to thaw out.  To add to that, snacks were much harder to plan for than meals.  I know that I ate too much fruit, but it was the easier go-to snack when I was in a pinch.  I'm going to try to dial back on that in February.  (I say as I stuff my face with a mango strawberry mix from Whole Foods.)

I guess the thing that I hadn't planned for were the reactions we would get from people - both negative and positive.  Overall, publicly talking about our month of paleo connected me to some people that I'd hadn't talked to in a while and the same thing for Mark.  It was interesting to get messages from people that I hadn't spoken to since high school or had lost touch with as our paths didn't cross anymore.  As you can imagine, I enjoyed the comments from people who encouraged us and even the people who just asked questions to be more informed.  What was bothersome were the people who didn't take the time to listen after asking us.  To them we were doing some crazy starvation thing...cleanse...or etc.  We dealt with a little bit of ridicule from others.  That's tough when it comes from people that you care about.

Mark posted earlier that he wasn't sure of the effect that paleo has on him, other than weight loss.  I, on the other hand, feel a thousand times better eating this way.  I feel fuller.  When I eat I don't experience the "food baby."  My skin seems clearer (not perfect, though).  I've been sleeping better and I'm overall less tired during the day.  I think I'll stick with it.

We're going to do our measurements tomorrow morning.  I was looking back at our original post last night and I'm so excited to see what's happened.