Day 8: Down 3.2 pounds!

One week and I've lost 3 pounds! Pretty good considering I wasn't doing this Paleo Challenge with the express purpose of losing weight. I wanted to get back to healthy eating and feeling better, but I'll take the weight loss too. Though I'm now at that point in my weight loss that has tripped me up over and over again - right on the border between the 130s and 140s. See numerous previous posts where I get to 140 or 141 and then disappear for months. It seems like there's a mental block or something that stops me right at this point. I don't think it's a physical plateau. I've got plenty of fat left to lose, and with my height and build I could comfortably be down in the high 120s, so I don't know what it is. It's something about seeing 139 on the scale that freaks me out. Part of me gets really excited and thinks I can take a load off since I'm in the 130s. Part of me is scared. Of what, I don't really know. Something for me to discover, I guess. I'm hoping I can break through the damn barrier this time and keep gradually and healthily getting to a stable weight my body and I are happy with, and feel better, sleep better, and have energy again. Wish me luck!

Day 7: Kill All the Things

My first Whole 30 pretty closely followed the normal timeline. I was fine, then had major low-carb hangover, then was majorly pissed off, then exhausted, then cravings and dreams, then amazing energy that led me to do another month and a half of Whole 30. This time's been a little different. Immediately on Day 1, I was having major cravings. Not good. Maybe I just wasn't mentally or grocery prepared. I still wasn't sure the day before if I was going to commit to it, but Day 1 rolled around and I made the good choice. I was super, can't-keep-my-eyes-open on Day 3, and Day 5 I strayed. I went to the movies and out to dinner, and while I stuck to gluten-free, I definitely wasn't Paleo. I was back at it yesterday, Day 6, which was fine.

Then today, Day 7, I felt really strong against cravings, but also like I wanted to Kill All the Things. I ran errands with my parents and everything was annoying me. EXCEPT when they got frozen yogurt from Costco. I thought it would be really hard to resist the Costco food court (cheese pizza, anyone?), but I was totally fine. There was a moment when we drove by a McDonald's and I could almost taste a Big Mac (which is weird, because McDonald's is not one of my craving triggers, and I rarely eat there), but didn't really give it a second thought.

A good breakfast probably helped. I made these honey muffins from Civilized Caveman Cooking Creations. Yum! I bought more ingredients and plan to quadruple the recipe tomorrow and refrigerate the leftovers for breakfasts for the week. I know, not Whole 30. I may as well just call this 30 days a Paleo Challenge, because it's definitely not Whole 30. Oh well, I'm happy with it. Snack was roasted pumpkin seeds. Late lunch was a lettuce wrapped sandwich. And dinner was BBQ chicken breasts, sweet potatoes, pineapple, and spinach.

Breakfast!

 

Lunch Wrap

 

Busy crafting!

After dinner I got busy crafting and making mayonnaise using this recipe. I've tried to make it before with other recipes and failed. Multiple times. Or I thought it smelled weird so I threw it out. But not this time. This time, it was perfect. I followed the recipe to a T and came up with this beauty that I get to snack on all week

The perfect homemade mayo

 Ok, time to have a square of dark chocolate and try not to kill anyone before bed.

Oh, and another potentially related side effect of Day 7- brain fog in the form of choosing the wrong word while speaking several times. Electron instead of electrolyte. Utility instead of utensils. Things like that. Weird.

Back at it

Well it's been a few months of ups and downs. The biggest up? I finally got hitched! B and I got married in the Bahamas surrounded by our closest family and friends. It was an absolutely perfect day and week.

The downs aren't nearly so bad as the ups were good, but I've slowly been straying from Paleo (and any sort of good eating) again. I keep trying to remind myself that it's all a process. A journey. There probably is no end point to this journey - it's something that I'll be working on for my entire life. I figure as long as I'm making more good choices than bad, I'm doing alright.

So after wedding prep, moving, a week-long wedding and a week-long honeymoon cruise, all filled with fabulous (non-Paleo) food, it was time to get back on track. As of June 3rd, I'm on a modified Whole 30. Modified to be slightly less strict than a traditional Whole 30. In my past 2, I've found that being so strict tends to bring up some food-related neuroses and disorders from the past, so I'm just trying to be smart about it. Still no grains, no dairy, no legumes. Some pre-packaged food (mostly in the form of a Primal protein shake), Lara bars, mayonnaise. I will probably make a paleo pancake, which is expressly forbidden on a traditional Whole 30. I'll eat out and probably won't check to see if my steak is grilled in soy oil. So sue me. It's still a whole helluva lot better than what I've been doing in the past few months. And it's part of the journey.

Anyway, have to wrap this up because the Day 4 Brain Fog is hitting pretty hard right now.

Days 1-3: feeling pretty good, except some tiredness at the end of day 3. Day 4: so. tired. foggy. etc.

A Few Days at a Time...

More of the same.


Saturday, 01/05/13
Weight: 141.0
Breakfast: Homemade turkey sausage (bleh, needs some tweaking), egg, 1/4 avocado, chai tea
Lunch: Leftover Jalapeno Garlic Chicken, peppermint tea
Dinner: Leftover elk paleo spaghetti, roasted broccoli
Snacks: nothing
Notes: I was feeling super cranky today and basically spent the whole day in my pajamas. I really wanted to go get some Taco Bell, but I sequestered myself in my apartment and ate leftovers. What an exciting life.

Sunday, 01/06/13
Weight: 140.8 (So close to the 130s!!!)
Breakfast: 1 Gross homemade turkey sausage,  2 eggs, chai tea
Lunch: (DON'T KILL ME) Slice of Costco cheese pizza (it was heaven, at the time)(gluten digest and super enzyme taken before lunch), pepsi, 1/4 Costco frozen yogurt
Dinner: Sesame orange salmon, leftover roasted broccoli
Notes: Yeah, not the most Paleo lunch I've ever eaten. I went there planning for it, though, and I'm trying not to feel guilty about it and I want to just move on. I do feel sick though. Joints increase popping, stomach distension/bloating, extreme energy crash ~2 hours after eating. We'll see how my face is tomorrow...
More Notes: Stomach is doing lots of rumbling and talking to me after dinner... it may have to do with lunch, but also seems to do this after I eat salmon.

Monday, 01/07/13
Weight: 141.4 (The pizza undid me)
Breakfast: Gross turkey sausage (they're almost gone), 1ish egg, chai tea
Lunch: (cafeteria, paid for by work) some kind of kebab, tons of broccoli, roast beef, sweetened green tea
Dinner: Salmon Salad
Snack: green tea (needed the caffeine), broccoli, mandarin
Notes: This was a crazy, busy, snowy workday so my food is WAY off. And I'm not sure if it's from the pizza yesterday or what, but I was EXHAUSTED all day. Like having trouble keeping my eyes open. Come to think of it, it could be because I only managed to eat about 1/4 of my breakfast before work got too crazy and the food got cold and I forgot about it. Or the crappy cafeteria lunch.
Exercise: First time back at yoga in over 2 months! It felt good.

Tuesday, 01/08/13
Weight: 141.8
Breakfast:
Lunch:
Dinner:
Snack:
Notes:

Wednesday, 01/09/13
Weight: 141.6
Breakfast:
Lunch:
Dinner:
Snack:
Notes:
Exercise: Yoga

Thursday, 01/10/13
Weight: 142.2
Breakfast: 2 turkey sausages, 2 eggs, black tea, raspberry leaf tea
Lunch: Ranch chicken and sauteed bell peppers, mandarin
Dinner: (Shhh, don't tell the paleo police) Taco Bell (I only ate about half of it and felt sick, so I stopped)
Snack: (Don't tell the Paleo FBI) Movie theatre popcorn and seltzer water/soda mix
Notes: P to the M to the S is so much fuuuuuun.

Paleo Asian Dressing

Omg you guys. This stuff is goooood. It tastes very similar to the Asian dressing at a local restaurant that I love (but that dressing is probably full of sugar and omega 6s.). I'm going to put this dressing on a salad tomorrow. Tonight I'm baking some Orange-Sesame Salmon and making an extra piece for lunch tomorrow. So the salad will be organic spring mix ($3.99 from Costco), salmon filet, 1/2 an avocado, diced, 1 bell pepper, sliced, and this amazing dressing drizzled allll over it.

I didn't measure the ingredients for the dressing, but here's my best guess:

1 teaspoon coconut aminos
1 teaspoon gluten-free dijon mustard
juice of one mandarin orange
1/4 teaspoon toasted sesame oil
1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil
1/2 clove of garlic, minced
a dash or two of crushed red pepper

Put all ingredients in a jar and shake it up. This amount looks good for my large lunch salad, so if you're serving more people, double or triple it. Voila! Paleo Asian dressing!

P.S. Hermione says 'hi'!

Quick Start

Here's my attempt to keep myself accountable during this part of my Paleo journey. 2 weeks of easing back into it, a 30-day Paleo challenge with my gym starting 01/14/13, and hopefully the 21-Day Sugar Detox after that.

Wednesday, 01/02/13
Weight: 145.6
Breakfast: 2 eggs, chai tea
Lunch: (didn't have any food in the house to bring) orange glazed pork chop and steamed veggies from the dining hall
Dinner: Elk Paleo spaghetti
Snacks: Almonds, 2 squares dark chocolate, 2 applesauce squeeze packets, roasted seaweed


Thursday, 01/03/13
Weight: 143.6
Breakfast: 2 turkey sausage patties, 2 eggs, chai tea
Lunch: Tuna made with avocado stuffed in a pepper
Dinner: Elk Paleo spaghetti
Snacks: Almonds, carrots, 1 square of dark chocolate
Sleep: Tired from 4-7, Energy rush right before bed (9pm), Almost 9 hours of sleep but still exhausted in the AM

Friday, 01/04/13
Weight: 142.6
Breakfast: 2 turkey sausage patties, 2 eggs with sauteed onions, 1/4 avocado, green tea
Lunch: Elk Paleo Spaghetti, carrots, applesauce squeeze packet
Dinner: Jalapeno garlic chicken with cauliflower rice
Snacks: Almonds, 2 squares dark chocolate, peppermint tea, snack bag of Classic Lay's Potato Chips (oops!)
Notes: Stomach upset after chips and dinner :(
Sleep: I must not have had enough fat with dinner because I'm dragging pretty bad and it's not even 9pm

Whoa, Almost a Year Away (And a Recipe)

Well I didn't mean to abandon this blog for almost a year, but here we are. My abbreviated Paleo journey:

December 2011to January 2012 - Heard about Paleo for the first time and began researching
March 2012 - Moved across the country and pretty much gave up on trying to implement the Paleo lifestyle
August 16, 2012 - Sick and tired of feeling sick and tired, I started super clean Paleo. Over 2.5 months, I lost about 17 pounds and 2 pants sizes.
November 2012 to December 2012 - Started slipping from Paleo with National Novel Writing Month, Thanksgiving, and Christmas. Gained 4 pounds, started sleeping like crap again, joint pain, constant stomach pain, and my face looked like a pizza.
January 2, 2013 - Once again, sick and tired, I committed to clean Paleo again.

Tonight's meal was jalapeno garlic chicken with cauliflower rice. I saw this somewhere on Chowstalker but can't find it again, plus I changed it up enough so it's my recipe now :). Probably wear gloves or be careful with the jalapenos. My hands are still burning a couple of hours later. I used my new mini-Cuisinart food processor for this, and it sped up the whole process. You certainly don't need one, but it will make it go much faster!

Jalapeno Garlic Chicken

2 tablespoons of coconut oil and/or ghee (I combined them)
1 white or yellow onion, chopped
8 cloves of garlic, minced
2 jalapenos, most of the seeds removed, diced
2 chicken breasts (or whatever cut you have handy), cut into small pieces
Juice of one lime
Salt and pepper to taste

1. Heat the oil in a pan over medium-low heat
2. Add the onions and saute until translucent, about 5-7 minutes. Sprinkle a little salt over them to get them sweating.
3. Salt and pepper the chicken chunks, and add them, along with the jalapenos and garlic, to the pan
4. Squeeze the lime or dump the juice over the pan
5. Cook until chicken is cooked through

Serve over cilantro cauliflower "rice" (I used the recipe from the amazing book Practical Paleo - if you don't have it, go order it right now)

Ok, one more recipe on the books. I hope to keep it up this time!