If you're anything like me, you hear the word 'diet' and your heart just drops. It's so hard to keep up with the healthy or 'clean' eating frenzies that take over the planet in their waves, whether it's gluten that is the devil or carbs that will kill... personally I think it's best to take all of that with a pinch of salt and to just find the balance in your diet that is right for you.
Having said that, I have been getting increasingly unhappy with my physical state over the past year. I have been quite sick a few times, which is very unusual for me, I haven't really felt well or healthy and I have definitely gained quite a bit in weight. I can't say I don't know why this is; my boyfriend and I take a HUGE amount of pleasure from eating great food! We love rich flavours, are suckers for anything sugary and this has led to a lot of over-indulgence. I tried a couple of times to cut back; for instance I took on a 'Junk Free May', where I ate no junk food for the month of May, and I also tried to cut out other things from my diet - namely CHIPS, which are my greatest weakness. However because there wasn't really a structure or clear rules to either of these 'diet' attempts, I quickly lost interest and gave up.
I started to do a lot of research on good meal plans and I have learnt a lot about food that I didn't know; which things are really great for you and in what combination they taste the best, and also what really isn't good for your body which I didn't know about. This led me to discover the Paleo diet.
The Paleo diet is also sometimes known as the primal or caveman diet, and essentially it's all about taking us back to our ancestors and eating only the food groups that cavemen had access too. This means a LOT of meat, fish and veg, and NO dairy, grains/legumes and starches. This might seem a little scary at first, but something that I really liked about the Paleo diet is that it's really something that you can make work for you and build into your life. Of course there are poeple who go full on 100% and stick to the stated rules very seriously, but the vast amount of research that I have read has said that this diet works really well in a kind of 80-20% ratio; sticking to the diet for 80% of your time and breaking the rules for the other 20%. Whether you go by this ratio or adjust the balance of it either way, I am really starting to believe that this diet could be the one for me, and could be for you too.
I have now been on the diet for exactly one week, so I thought now would be a good time to write the first post on it and how I am feeling - I really want to document my full experience of the diet, and hope that it could be helpful for anyone reading this who has been in a similar position to me. So far, I feel great! Definitely what has been most fun has been totally changing our cooking repertoire. Because of the limits of the diet we have had to become very creative; for example, we like to eat a lot of curries, but rice is unfortunately not Paleo. So, last night we had a vegetable curry (coconut milk is a great friend of Paleo) atop a bed of pureed and then fried (in coconut oil) butternutsquash and carrot! It was delicious! A couple of other great recipies we have come up with have been a breakfast pumpkin and banana smoothie, and butternutsquash hummous (no chick peas I'm afraid).
You might be thinking that you really couldn't see yourself doing without your favourite cheeses, bread, pizza/pasta etc. and believe me I feared the same. But actually so far I am really not missing anything, which is quite surprising to me, and I have found that there is a Paleo substitute for pretty much everything. A big feature of Paleo is to really cut down the sugar in your diet (some people go all out and even reduce their fruit intake because of this but I kept fruit in my diet) and I really expected to be in the midst of a sugar crash right now. But I actually feel fine. Like I said, I still eat fruit and I also kept wine in my diet too, although much reduced, so I think these have been helping to keep my sugar cravings at bay. I also allow myself a tiny bit of 90% dark chocolate in the evenings which is really nice.
I have noticed that I do get very hungry by mealtimes. My snacks include a handful of mixed nuts (not peanuts), sliced vegetables with our butternutsquash hummous and tea, which is GREAT for tiding you over. Nevertheless, I find I am ravenous by lunchtime and dinnertime! I haven't noticed a new surge of energy YET, but I feel good and I have definitely lost a LOT of the bloating and lethargic feeling which I used to have pretty much all the time.
All in all, so far so good. I think I will report back at the one month mark and then maybe make these posts monthly. If it would be interesting, I though I could also do a post about the pros and cons of the diet, as well as difficulties that I encounter and how I overcome them. To me, the Paleo makes the most sense out of all of the diets that I have read about. Logan and I have both commented numerous times this week that it really doesn't feel like we are on a diet at all, because we are eating such gret food! Here is a diet that is not about counting calories, not about measuring out your food to tiny amounts and being hungry all the time. It's really about taking what is best for our bodies and making it work for you.
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