I hope everyone had a nice weekend (or still enjoying it, if you are lucky enough to have today off in honor of Martin Luther King Day). My husband had the day off, and it was nice to have the extra day of him not working, especially since we had all of his family over yesterday for a “post holiday” dinner. Today was all about getting our house back in order!
It was a nice day and we had SO much yummy food, it was almost too much! On the menu was a sirloin beef roast (my husband cooked it perfectly!), roasted butternut squash with apples and walnuts, eggplant and fennel Mediterranean casserole (that my husband’s cousin made), homemade buttermilk biscuits and my pear and apple salad. For dessert, my mother-in-law went all out and made three delicious desserts: dark chocolate mousse cake, persimmon pudding and lemon cheesecake. Another one of my husband’s cousin also made a dark chocolate cake and to polish everything off, my husband made his famous homemade whipped cream. Since there were so many tempting goodies yesterday (which I’m sorry to admit that I didn’t take a single picture of!), my husband and I knew we needed to allow ourselves to try everything and not stick with our Paleo way of eating, thus the reason why we are extending our challenge by a couple of days.
Even with a small taste of everything, we were all stuffed last night! In addition, I had a stomachache, which I don’t think was due to eating too much. I think my body was not used to eating so many refined carbs and sugar. I actually had a hard time going to sleep last night because I felt so uncomfortable. This hadn’t really happened in the past (prior to starting our challenge), or at least something I never noticed before.
Speaking of our challenge, friends and family members have asked us how my husband and I are “coping’ with it, now that we have been on it for two weeks. Things have been going well. Since we eat “clean” normally, it hasn’t been too hard for us. Prior to starting the challenge, our meals consisted of lean protein and veggies, with the occasional occurrence of whole grains, such as whole wheat pasta, brown rice, quinoa, whole wheat couscous, barley, etc, so our meals haven’t been hard for us. The difficult thing for us has not been eating dairy. We love making lattes every morning and my husband LOVES cheese. His favorite lunch was a chunk of sharp Tillamook cheddar, some turkey and lettuce mixed into a wrap. He also makes cheese, so it has been very hard to give up. I especially love feta and goat cheese, in fact, sprinkling it on our roasted or sauteed veggie dishes. Not having it has been an adjustment, because I miss the richness that the cheese adds to our meals. My husband also LOVES beer, so he has been craving it ever since we started our challenge. He likes wine, but on some nights, after a long day of work, he just wants to have a beer. It doesn’t help that he also brews his own beer, too!
Overall, my husband and I feel good, pretty much the same as before we started. My husband has lost a few pounds, though he acknowledges that he’s not snacking, anymore, and no beer means his calories have been reduced. I haven’t noticed any differences on the scale. My energy level has been a little higher the past week, especially considering we haven’t been going to bed at a decent hour. I probably feel more satisfied after meals and fuller longer in between them, since I’m adding more healthy fats (coconut oil and avocado) into my eating. On the contrary, my husband swears he is more hungry, now that he is eating Paleo! I’m also having fun creating new recipes and finding new ways to cook/bake with coconut oil, coconut flour and almond flour (speaking of…check out a couple of new creations that we made over the weekend: Paleo Bread and Paleo French Toast with Caramelized Bananas!). We also made made more Paleo Chocolate Chip Protein Cookies with my little “baking assistant,” as well as chicken burgers wrapped in lettuce with oven-baked sweet potato fries on Friday. On Saturday night, we made coconut flour tortillas again, but as our “bread” with Chicken Scallopini on Saturday night.
Our recent Paleo eats!
We have another two weeks, ending our challenge on February 9th (just in time to finish it before my husband’s birthday, which he is SUPER-excited for!). I’m curious to see if we notice any more differences in how we feel, our workout performance and energy levels (which I’m hoping continue to increase, especially if we finally start going to bed on time!). I think the one piece of the Paleo way of eating that we will stick with is eating more healthy fats: coconut oil (I love the flavor and richness that it adds!) and avocado. We used to eat them before, but not nearly enough. I’ll continue to keep you posted on anymore “Paleo-experiences”, but at least for now, we are still going strong.
I hope you had a good Monday!
It’s so funny when I read your update about how you guys are doing it is so similar to our experiences so far! My hubby said he was starving when he was doing it and gave up. I don’t necessarily feel more hungry but I’m trying to force myself to eat more protein. I don’t really feel much different either since the only big difference is the lack of goat cheese and greek yogurt, which I miss so bad! I when it’s over I’ll add back in dairy but might stick to gluten-free… we’ll see!
That is too funny! My husband really wants to give up the challenge, but I’m hoping he will just hang in there for a couple more weeks! I’m with you on the dairy, too. I miss my feta and goat cheese, as well as milk in my coffee. I’m definitely adding dairy and most likely legumes back, once we done with the challenge. Like you, I’m thinking of continuing with no grains, but we’ll see…
I think I’d agree that if I had to go paleo, dairy might be a tough part for me. And I don’t actually eat a lot of it, but to then realize that I couldn’t/shouldn’t have it at all would be annoying.
Yes, annoying is the perfect word! I’m doing fine living without dairy, but it is annoying when I can’t add milk to my latte or a sprinkle of feta cheese to my salads! I just miss the flavor and creaminess dairy provides.
I am trying to get back to my more healthy diet!
Think small, baby steps, to getting yourself back on track. You can do it!
Popped in from SITS! Good luck with paleo diet! I had to add in whole grains after losing too much vitamin B and having problems of the female variety!
Thanks for stopping by! My husband is literally counting down the days until the challenge is over, it’s too funny!
I found the 1st Paleo challenge I did last year to be hard, but there was a reward at the end so I stayed kind of strict and tried to rack up as many points as possible, the second one I did wasn’t very structured and I failed. I’m an everything in moderation kind of eater, though with a vegetarian husband we tend to eat a lot of grains. I loved the way Paleo made me feel, I didn’t love having to travel and also try to maintain the diet. I really like reading your experience with it!
It is certainly hard to maintain eating 100% Paleo when traveling or even during family functions! There are definitely aspects that I love about eating full Paleo, but at this point, I just don’t see enough benefits to eating this way all the time.
I was going to ask how you cope with eating a particular way when you are visiting with people. I know for us if it’s at our house we can cook how we normally would, but when we are invited over for a meal I feel rude telling people that we can’t eat (or don’t want to eat) certain things so that we can maintain eating cleanly. This has been the biggest challenge for me. I don’t want to be rude but at the same time I want to not “cheat” too much if possible. Do you have any suggestions?
This is a good question. I experience the same thing. Some things that I do is always eat what I can. i.e. loading up on the veggies, protein and fruit and politely decline other things that are not a part of the way I eat. If there are questions as to why I am not eating a certain food, I compliment them on how good everything looks, but I follow up with saying that I’m trying to stick to a certain way of eating for my health, so I’m going to have to pass on having x items (foods that are not a part of your way of eating). It is still hard and I’m sure some people get annoyed, but it is your life and your health, so you shouldn’t feel pressured to give-in and indulge in something you don’t want to. I hope that helps!