First of all, I want to start with a hearty THANK YOU to Tipnut for featuring my meal planning guide on their website. It made me blush a bit to see so many new visitors. Welcome!
Okay, now for the good stuff. Today is Day 11 of our 30 Day Paleo Challenge and I am proud to report that…
(drum roll please)
I have lost FOUR POUNDS!
I’m so happy I could spit. And for the record, my spit would be carb-free, sugar-free, and dairy-free.
After just a few days my cravings relaxed and I have stopped almost stopped dreaming about bread. I did have another food dream last night, but it was after I stayed strong and didn’t partake in a CHOCOLATE BUFFET offered at church.
That, my dear friends, is a whole new level of discipline that I have never achieved before. In all seriousness, I have been a total slave to food for my whole life, and it’s empowering to know that I have the ability to say no. It’s getting so much easier.
Now, I almost broke down and stuffed my face in that chocolate buffet, if not for the swift intervention of a friend who knew about my diet and who talked me off of the cliff out of the buffet line. Thanks Kelly.
So, what have I been eating?
For breakfast: banana and almond butter (the stuff I thought was like, well, butter, but turns out it’s in the peanut butter family); eggs; more eggs; almond flour pancakes; hard-boiled eggs; scrambled eggs; eggs with tomatoes. I’m a little tired of eggs. Oh – but I’ve developed a strange love affair with bacon.
For lunch and dinner: barbecue (no bread), chinese food (no rice), taco salads, or any other type of salad you can think of with olive oil and basalmic for dressing. I ate so much grilled chicken last week that I can’t look at it right now.
Barbecue is my new food passion. I could eat it every day. I practically do. I admit that I do splurge and use barbecue sauce, which has sugar in it. But otherwise I wouldn’t make it, and someone on the internet wrote, “If you do Paleo 95%, you’ll get 95% results. And heck, I’d be over the moon with 95% results, so pass me the barbecue sauce.
Snacks are the easiest part – I eat tons of fruit and nuts. I had to learn to eat grapefruit without added sugar, but it’s amazing how quickly your body adjusts. Oh, and watermelon will cure any sugar craving, as will grapes.
As for drinks, I drink a ton of water, plus coffee in the morning and decaf ice tea if I’m craving something more interesting. That part hasn’t been as tough since I went a year without drinking any carbonated beverages because of all my health problems – recently I had added them back in, but they were so infrequent it wasn’t a huge deal.
The only other hard part is staying strong during work and social events. Like the chocolate buffet at church (it was a fundraiser, that chocolate was for a very good cause). Or yesterday’s chamber luncheon that didn’t have a SINGLE THING I could eat. Not a single piece of lettuce or vegetable that wasn’t smothered in cheese. So I sat there hungry for an hour, and then headed straight to my new favorite barbecue joint and ate 1/3 lb. of brisket and some green beans. It was glorious.
Mr. Right and I are not only losing weight, but we just feel better. I’m sleeping well, my energy is up, and I don’t have that crazy bloated feeling I get after eating a big lunch or dinner. Being full from meat is just different than being full from bread and cheese.
And so, we’ve decided that after our 30 days are up, we’re going to continue with an almost-no-carb/almost-no-sweets diet. We’ll work in a few cheat meals, but honestly now that I’ve detoxed from all the things I was addicted to, I don’t want to dip my toe back in that water again.
Unless that water is really a chocolate fountain.
Happy to help! 🙂 Had fun last night; hope to see you soon!