30 days of Paleo!

Somebody once said that when they die, they want to have slid in to heaven having used up their body completely so they know they had all the fun they could have. Well that is how I felt when I returned from my Christmas vacation in Colorado. For five days I enjoyed any and every food that crossed my path, from pizza to gourmet dinners; I drank everything from hot apple ciders and hot chocolate to wine and hard liquor. I got minimal exercise from skiing. When I returned on December 27, I was spent.

So the challenge that Westlake Crossfit presented to me came at a perfect time: 30 days of 100% adherence to the Paleo Diet. It technically started January 3, but my plan started on December 28. For 30 days, I am eating meats, vegetables, some fruits, and nuts. No processed sugar (very challenging for me as I love candy), no alcohol, no grains, and no junk food. Strict Paleo adherence would also include no salad dressings (except olive oil/lemon concoctions and pure home made things like that), but my plan will allow small amounts of this.

Some baseline information to start: I usually weigh between 127 and 130 pounds, and my normal diet is pretty healthy. I eat 80% Paleo during the week and then splurge Friday and Saturday. After a weekend of splurging, it is very normal for my weight to be up to 133, but within two days of resuming a normal diet, it settles back down. When I returned from Aspen and weighed on December 28, I was 134. On January 3, I was 128. So I'm a six days in and back to normal.

I decided (though a few days late) to blog about my meals and workouts so I have a record of my month. I get a lot of motivation from reading my Crossfit friends' blogs, so hopefully mine will be helpful to them as well.

I tend to get sick on a fairly regular basis (with two little kids and a husband it all seems to visit our house) so I'm hoping this diet will help me stay stronger so I can fight off these bugs. I'm also hoping to improve my Crossfit workouts. I'm not really looking to lose weight during this month, but I'd love to tighten up (especially my lower body), so I will be curious to see if my body fat % goes down at the end of this.

I took body composition measurements off Leonard's scale today. I don't have the exact figures here, but my body fat percentage was higher than I expected. The average of the two measurements was around 24%.

Here is my log of the last couple days:

Day 6:
9 am: 2 eggs omelette with spinach, bell peppers and onions, 1/2 apple with almond butter
12 pm: spinach salad with grilled chicken, onion, tomatoes. Dipped the fork in the honey mustard dressing for each bite, so I used a very small amount of dressing.
3 pm: handful of almonds
6 pm: grilled chicken, asparagus, 1/4 avocado
9:30 pm: cup of unsweetened apple sauce and 5 almonds

Day 7:
8 am: 5 almonds and two slices of turkey breast
8:30 am: Crossfit workout
12:30 pm: grilled vegetable salad with chicken from California Pizza Kitchen (salad have asparagus, eggplant, zucchini, onions, sundried tomatoes (no corn), dressing on the fork, two glasses of iced tea
6 pm: broiled cod seasoned with olive oil and garlic with baby tomatoes, broccoli, baby carrots, 1/2 avocado
9 pm: orange
Dinner tonight, that's on a salad plate, not a large plate.

So far I've been surprised by my lack of appetite. I'm not hungry at all and it's hard to get the food I make in. I'm usually ravenous and eat large amounts, but I feel very satisfied and in fact have been making an effort to eat a little more.

One week down and I have to say it's been easy because I started out feeling so rotten that I had to treat my body differently just to feel better. Hopefully I'm over my candy-craving hurdle, but I won't be surprised if it rears its head again. My big challenge will come Wednesday during our weekly date night and again Saturday night when we go out.

Stay tuned...