Friday, January 25, 2013

Day 23: The day Sara ate her weight in veggies

I've been feeling a severe lack of healthy veggies lately.

Since starting this diet, I feel like I've had a love/hate relationship with leafy greens. Probably because I'm not really a huge fan of them. Go figure.

I started at the beginning of January by eating a lot of colorful vegetables, which is fine, because the more color your veggies have, the better they are for you (or so I read). But normally, the more brightly colored they are, the higher the calories and/or carbs. Obviously, if I was a Crossfit junkie this would be perfectly fine. Actually, if I even remotely worked out it might be okay. However, I've mostly been sitting on my ass because it's been so damn cold outside. Tough to get a good workout in. But I've been trying.

Dr. Oz has a great 9-minute workout he aired at the beginning of January. I don't know why it took me until today to decide to do it. And you watch and and you're all like "Psh, that looks easy, I can totally so that!" Ummmm, no. Just no. It's hard. Like really hard. Especially for someone like me who not only hates working out, but hasn't in a loooooooong time! So I'm predicting that I'll be sore tomorrow. I need to learn how to love to sweat. It just ain't happening any time soon.

When I woke up this morning, I had leftover chicken curry. Which, honestly, is amazing, but I won't be making again. Or I will be making again, but with modifications. The original recipe called for canned coconut milk, and holy fat-content, batman! I didn't realize exactly how much fat there really is! So perhaps next time I make it I'll use the icky carton coconut milk, which is severely watered down. I'm sure it won't make much of a difference taste-wise.

Then I played around with recipes for the rest of the day. I tried an awesome Bacon and Egg Cup thingy from Health-Bent.com, but I either need smaller eggs, or bigger slices of Canadian Bacon, because it ended up a mess. A delicious mess, but a mess nonetheless.

Then I had a boring spinach salad. Just spinach, vinegar, some spices and garlic. And it was huge. Like you know those bowls you put salads in to bring to barbeques. I had one of those just full of spinach!

And after eating so much meat over the past 23 days, I was meat-ed out. All I wanted for dinner was veggies. Specifically asparagus. Grilled asparagus. Enter the George Foreman grill! Halle-freaking-lujah! I rolled them in olive oil, salt & pepper, and some garlic, grilled up those babies and ate ALL of them. So you know when you go to the supermarket, and you buy a bundle of asparagus... I ate the whole bundle. By myself. I had a wee-little bit of chicken as well. But, damn, that asparagus hit the spot.

I also had a glass of red wine. Well, about a half glass of wine. And thankfully I did. I can officially say that I take after my sister in that my feet get about 10 degrees warmer after about 2 sips of wine. And my feet are always cold, even in the middle of the summer. So this made me happy!

And that's about it. I didn't have any crazy cravings today. In fact, I saw a Pop-Eye's commercial with deep fried chicken (my old fave) and wasn't even remotely interested.

How 'bout that!

Thursday, January 24, 2013

Day 21 & 22: Complete Opposites

So yeah... I kinda binge ate yesterday. It was all paleo foods, but definitely more than I needed. Like, a lot more.

But it stopped around 2PM, after which I wasn't hungry at all. All I had after that was a huge spinach salad, with only spinach and balsamic vinegar. I honestly didn't need to eat anything, but I was lacking veggies. And spinach is awesome, so that's why I ate it!

Today was productive, unlike yesterday. Today, I started out eating light. Only one slice of Canadian bacon and another large spinach salad.

And I made coconut chicken curry! Woot! Honestly, I've never used the crock pot before and I'm pretty confident it's my new favorite thing. Super easy. Although cleaning the damn thing is a hassle afterwards.

The chicken came out really good. I got the recipe from PaleOMG.com. I'm definitely going to be cooking more often.

I know this was a crappy update, but I have to go and continue scrubbing the crock pot clean, lol!

Goodnight, all!

Tuesday, January 22, 2013

Day 20: Thank God for Paleo Blogs!

Honestly, I'm so thankful for all the paleo blogs out there on the interwebs (I'm cool). There's Civilized Caveman Cooking, Elana's Pantry, and Everyday Paleo. But my favorite site so far on my Paleo journey is PaleOMG.

PaleOMG.com is run by a girl named Juli, who is all about CrossFit and is crazy in shape! Her blogs are funny and her recipes are divine! She even has recipes for people who are doing the 21 Day Sugar Detox, which I plan on doing once I'm done with the first 30 days of the Paleo diet. She's amazing!

Anyway, today has been pretty normal aside from the fact that I didn't have any crazy cravings. Hurray! Finally I think I'm over the sugar and bread hump!

Also, I know I said on day 20 I was going to make a paleo version of chocolate pudding, but I opted not to. It wasn't because I was feeling lazy today. No not at all. I just lied. Instead I just ate a square of dark chocolate. 85% cacao chocolate. Pretty bitter, but good. Plus, it was on sale. Score! Paleo purists are against eating chocolate unless it's cacao nibs, or something that tastes like ass, but most say it's okay as long as it's 70% cacao or higher. And organic. Which mine was.

Currently making a paleo version of breaded chicken in the oven. Super easy and yummy! If anyone is interested in the recipe, let me know and I'll post it. There's a ton of different variations out there, but mine's probably the simplest, lol. Just cause I'm pretty simple! :P

Tomorrow I will be making chicken curry! Wish me luck on that one!

Monday, January 21, 2013

Day 19: And cue the cravings

Ok, so the moral of today is to stay busy. When I have lazy days like today, I find it's harder to stay on track.

I had a typical breakfast of eggs and Canadian bacon. Since it's so much protein, I wasn't hungry for at least 4 hours.

Then I started to snack. I have a snacking problem. This is important for you to know. Before I started this new way of eating, I went days without having an actual meal. I just snacked. Bad Sara, bad!

So the things I ate were almost laughable. I cut up some stalks of celery and seasoned it with salt and some spices. Yeah, I'm that cliche... I ate celery. I also ate, like, 10 pine nuts, some banana chips, a couple slices of bacon, and drank lots and lots of water. I feel like I was eating all day, but in reality I just kept walking in and out of the kitchen, lol.

For a super early dinner I had leftover salmon and green beans. So good!

I have to admit though, that it wasn't easy putting down the banana chips. Those things are amazing! I def need to cut back, cause like I said, they're crazy high in sugar! Like crazy!!!

That's it!

Day 18: Best day so far

Success! Day 18 was marvelous and busy!

I ended up having three eggs for breakfast since I was out of bacon and running severely low on any paleo goodies. Also, I've been waking up super early lately, like at 3 or 4AM. So by the time the grocery stores were open I was a starving monster. And I mean a monster. I was about to eat anything. But I somehow resisted.

At around 11, my mom and I headed out to the grocery store, but we were so hungry at that point. Obviously, most restaurants that are open at 11AM are breakfast places, and it's really hard to find a completely paleo meal. And there is no way that I would be able to resist a pile of pancakes next to bacon and sausage! So we stopped at Petco and Target first.

Amazingly, at Target I found unsweetened freeze-dried banana slices. No longer will I be picking up a bag of potato chips and having an inner struggle! They're crunchy and super sweet. They have tons of sugar in them (I'm guessing they freeze-dried them when they were very ripe, as the sugar content in a banana is at it's highest then). So they're a very rare treat, but they crunch just like potato chips! Which is amaze-balls!

After Target, we were both so hungry we decided to get a bite to eat before going to the grocery store. We all know that you should never go food shopping when you're hungry! We ended up going to Outback Steakhouse. Luckily, Outback is an awesome place to get a meal while on this diet, since they have a lot of great meals with not a whole lot of carbs. I ordered some sort of surf and turk dish. A 6 oz sirloin (medium rare, cause I eat like a man) with shrimp and scallops. It came with green beans and a mango salsa, which was amazing. No butter obviously, since I can't eat diary. I ate the entire thing! I felt amazing after eating it because I was so hungry beforehand. I hadn't eaten for about 8 hours before that! No bueno!

Then we went to Costco and Stop & Shop. Got lots of good food!

I actually didn't end up eating dinner. Lunch filled me up so much that I wasn't even remotely hungry by the time dinner rolled around. I ended up going to bed at about 8PM, because that's how fun-filled my life is! lol

Luckily, since cutting out starchy veggies I've lost one more pound. Looks like I'm back on track!

Tootles!

Sunday, January 20, 2013

Day 17: Time to switch it up

So enough of the sweet potatoes. As stated in my last blog, I've been eating too many starchy veggies. So I'm cutting those out completely.

For breakfast I had 1 egg and 3 slices of Canadian bacon. I've gotten to the point that I don't crave bagels or waffles in the morning anymore. But you bet your ass that I want them throughout the rest of the day. And cheese! And cereal.

The sad thing is that when I start to crave certain foods, I think about it as if I've already eaten them. And then I feel full. I can taste the bagel and pretend that I just ate it. And then I don't want it anymore. But damn, the hardest thing is watching TV and seeing all the commercials for food! None of it healthy, obviously. But I know that how I'm eating is healthy and I can ignore the cravings... for a little while.

And I also want to clear up a few things... Nobody has approached me about this, but I feel like it needs to be addressed. The main thing about the paleo diet is eating a lot of lean meats. But that also includes eating meats as natural as possible. This means pasture raised beef, and free-range chickens, etc. I definitely look to make sure I'm eating the meat of animals who have been treated right. If I have to, I'll even order meat online, which I find strange, but a lot of paleo "gurus" do it constantly and encourage it. Whole Foods is about an hour away from me, but when I can go, I'll be sure to stock up on humanely treated animal meat. Only in a money crunch will I buy store brand meat, and even then I have a hard time eating it.

For lunch yesterday, we went out to eat. I ordered a wedge salad with salmon, sprinkled with bacon and olives. I also splurged and got a bloody mary. It's just tomato juice, some spices, and vodka, so it's a pretty paleo friendly drink, although you're really only supposed to drink water. That being said, my salad was delicious. When I got home I googled "Are olives paleo?" And apparently they aren't. Simply because all but one type of olives need to be cured. Also, it's controversial to eat foods that are pickled. So I'm at a loss, since I love olives, probably more than I love chocolate (don't worry, Chocolate! You're still my number 1). I have a lot of thinking to do about this one. What should I do?

After lunch, I had a cup of tea and then crashed on the couch. I didn't have anything else to eat for the rest of the day. I had been awake since 4AM and couldn't even keep my eyes open. I fell asleep watching Titanic. I woke up and that whale movie with John Krasinski was on, lol.

I've been hovering at the same weight for a couple days now, so I'm getting rid of the starchy veggies and eating more lean meat and... non-starchy veggies. Looking up recipes for the crock pot too!

Tah-tah for now!

Saturday, January 19, 2013

Day 15 & 16: Too many carbs

Since starting this diet every morning I wake up craving eggs and meat. Occasionally, I'll have an apple as well, but as you can see I mostly have eggs and Canadian bacon. Well, on days 15 and 16, all I wanted was bread!

Now I know that I've complained before here about wanting carbs and bread and potato chips, but it's been worse than ever lately. I'm thinking that this is the hump that I need to get over.

So to compensate for my cravings, I've been eating a lot. It got me to wondering whether it's better to eat a lot of good food, or a little of bad food; thinking, "well, it won't kill me if I have, like, five potato chips!"

Somehow I resisted the potato chips, but instead have eaten about 4 sweet potatoes in the past couple days. Mostly, I've cooked them as fries, which technically isn't bad since they're baked, but there's a lot of oil and salt involved. While I make it with coconut oil (which is good for you), extra salt isn't really encouraged on this diet. So because of the extra carbs I've been eating, and all the salt, I've been hovering around the same weight. So it's time to get over the bread cravings and just eat like I'm supposed to!

Also, I've been under the weather lately, which is another reason why I've been eating more. Typically, when I'm sick I eat pasta and mashed potatoes; lots of comfort food. Of course, sweet potatoes are really good for you. So at least I have that going for me, lol.

Other than that, it's been business as usual.


Wednesday, January 16, 2013

Day 14: The day of orange veggies!

I slept crazy late today. No good reason for that other than I stayed up super late last night, lol. My sister got her wedding video last night so I kept watching it. I didn't end up falling asleep until the sun was coming up.

So today will be known as the day of orange vegetables, lol. I made sweet potato fries, had a little acorn squash, and carrots. I also had grilled chicken. I know that orange veggies tend to have the most carbs, but I guess I just really needed carbs today.

So I've officially lost over 10 pounds in 14 days! Hoping to lose 20 by the time the end of the 30 days!

Wish me luck!

Tuesday, January 15, 2013

Day 12 & 13: Pancakes at last!!

Finally made the paleo pancakes today; day 13. They were ok, but not great! But hey, I'll take what I can get!

I got the recipe from PaleOMG.com (love the name) and it took a bit of tweaking to get right. The batter was really thick, so I had to thin it out with coconut milk. Then the pancakes weren't quite sweet enough, so I added some coconut palm sugar. They ended up a good consistency, but they still didn't taste quite right. In order to fully cook them, I had to kind of burn them. And in the past I've been a fan of burnt toast and such, but it doesn't really work with pancakes, lol. So I ate about 4 of them and threw the rest away.

Again, what a waste!

I need to just stick to eating clean and "raw" and stop trying to bake! Because it hasn't worked out at all so far, lol.

I'm going to try to eat more fish, since I haven't had virtually any since starting this diet. Salmon, here I come!

Nighty night!

~Sara 

Monday, January 14, 2013

Day 11: Still no pancakes

Yeah. I didn't make it to the store today to get eggs, so no paleo pancakes. I will, for sure, make them tomorrow though!

Anyway, here's a brief rundown of my meals/snacks today.

1 egg for breakfast. I only had 1 egg left. And some carrot juice.

For the rest of the day I snacked on an apple, various veggies, and some kale chips.

I was desperately craving carbs and the mudafuqin potato chips were screaming my name all day. So I made more sweet potato fries. Which definitely helped. But damn, slicing a raw sweet potato is hard work. Definitely a labor of love!

Then for dinner we ordered out again. I got a buffalo chicken salad, with grilled chicken, and olives. And lettuce of course. No dressing.

The best thing about spicy foods is that it makes you drink a ton of water, which fills you up.

Since I ate dinner early, I had a slice of Canadian bacon for a snack. And a few sips of carrot juice!

Honestly, I can't believe how badly I was craving junk food today.

On another note, I'm going to the Mohegan Sun Winefest in a couple weeks! This is a day which I will most definitely be off the diet, but I'm going to stick to it as best I can! I'll also be extending the diet by 2 days because of this, since I have a feeling I'm going to do a lot of damage, lol.

Well, that's it for now!

~Sara

Saturday, January 12, 2013

Day 10: Epic fail

So I didn't sleep last night. Not a wink. I was sick most of the night and I had a job interview this morning, so at one point I just decided to stop kidding myself and got out of bed.

Had a small breakfast of 2 slices of Canadian bacon and an apple.

The interview process took at least 2 hours. Afterwards, I went to Barnes and Noble, ran into an old friend and chatted for an hour, and then made it to the grocery store.

So here's the thing... I found a recipe for paleo pizza crust. I was all like "Hellz yeah, this sounds awesome!" Instead of the pancakes, I opted to try this recipe, which included cauliflower and eggs, mostly.

Good idea in theory, terrible in execution. It was mushy and tasteless. I ended up throwing the whole thing away. Damn paleo diet!

So I attempted to eat almost 2 pieces of the pizza (I put olives and chicken on it) and just threw it all away. What a waste!

So I reheated leftover chicken. While I was eating that, the cat stole half of the chicken breast. WTF? I managed to get it away from her, but I obviously wasn't going to eat it after that. I just pretty much gave up at that point. But paleo pancakes will happen tomorrow morning... damn, just remembered that I'm out of eggs. Well, maybe it'll happen a little later tomorrow.

Anyway, I'm delirious right now due to lack of sleep. Can't wait to watch The Biggest Loser tomorrow night!

Tah-tah for now!

~Sara

Friday, January 11, 2013

Day 9: Lazy day

I'm looking forward to tomorrow like crazy! Tomorrow is day 10, which means PANCAKES!

I had an extremely lazy day today, which means once again, I didn't eat much.

For breakfast I had 2 scrambled eggs with bacon crumbled in them and some carrot juice.

Then I skipped right to dinner. I had grilled chicken breast and some salsa. That's about it. I may have an apple as a snack later.

Not a whole lot to report on today. I have somewhere to be tomorrow morning so I'm hoping to make my paleo pancakes once I get home, since I don't think there will be enough time before I leave the house.

Other than that, nothing else to report. Have a great night!

~Sara

Thursday, January 10, 2013

Day 8: Getting inventive!

So I was looking through my brother in law, Drew's "Game of Thrones" cookbook last night, seeing if there was anything I could make while on this diet, since I love the show and just started reading the books. Truth is, most of the dishes call for bread or ingredients that I just can't use. However, I did come across a recipe for beet pancakes. Now, I like beets, but never thought of frying them up into pancakes. And the book said that it goes good with a poached egg.

I basically took that as a challenge. After reading that, I had no intentions of making the beet pancakes (although I will at some point). I remember watching "Julie & Julia" and seeing Amy Adams having a really hard time poaching an egg. So, thank god for the internet, since I read extensively on how to properly poach an egg. It was about 5AM and I hadn't been to sleep yet. I was like, "well, I guess I had better make breakfast!" So, I'll tell you what I did:

I filled a small saucepan with a couple inches of water and added a dash of vinegar. I'm not sure how the vinegar helps, but I read that it keeps the egg together or something. Now, I read that the temperature of the water is the most important thing. You want it in between hot and simmering. It's a tough place to get to, and an even tougher place to stay in, lol! Crack your egg into a small ramekin or something similar, since it's much easier to slip the egg into the water than crack it. Once the water gets to the correct temp, make a whirlpool in the water. Slip the egg into the middle of the whirlpool. It's going to spin and spread out a little, but don't panic, I promise it will come together. Then cook about 3-4 minutes on each side, you'll have to flip the egg over with a slotted spoon. Then, once it's done, let it drain a bit on a paper towel. VoilĂ ! Poached egg! Obviously, there's a ton of other ways to make it and you can also buy an egg poacher, but this seemed to work okay for me on my very first try! I put it on top of a couple slices of Canadian bacon. Delicious!

So now I'm kind of obsessed! After the high of egg poaching, I slept for a few hours. When I woke up, I cooked more! Yum! The great thing about eggs is that they really fill you up!

For lunch, since I can't eat chips and I love love love salsa, I had a few spoonfuls of salsa just because I miss it, lol!

I actually had a dream while I was sleeping that I was eating pizza and pretended that I didn't know it was pizza, lol. For some reason, I felt super guilty when I woke up, as if I actually had eaten it! So in short, I was craving crappy food. I found a recipe to make baked sweet potato fries. Regular potatoes are not allowed on the diet, but sweet potatoes are! So I peeled and cut a sweet potato into long strips, like fries. I melted some coconut oil, about 1 tablespoon or so, and coated the fries in it. Preheated the oven to 450 and put them on a baking sheet. Halfway through I flipped them. Cook for about 25-30 min. Ta-da! Sweet potato fries! Some slices weren't very crispy and some were burnt. I didn't cut the pieces to be all the same, so I guess it's my fault. But it definitely helped curb my craving for bad food. 

Those fries are the most carbs I've had since I started eating this way!

That's about it for today! I'm going to start incorporating some exercise into this diet pretty soon, since it's been giving me a lot of energy!

Have a great night everyone! <3

~Sara  

Wednesday, January 9, 2013

Day 7: Success!!

So before I started this diet, I woke up every morning feeling extremely bloated. This was likely because of devouring a whole bagel before bed. Or maybe because I would eat a personal sized pizza 3 nights a week for dinner. This was my normal routine! Grains, grains, grains! And dairy, dairy, dairy! I ate grains and dairy in the worst possible way you could eat them; refined and highly processed. You can imagine how terrible I felt every night when I went to bed and how bloated I would feel when my alarm went off in the morning. Despite blood work and a colonoscopy, I was told that I don't have celiac disease or a gluten intolerance at all. So for years, I continued to eat grains despite feeling crappy every time I did.

I woke up today, and despite the glass of wine I had last night, I I felt incredibly... well... NOT bloated. 

Since the whole point is to eat like a caveman, you can't have dairy. Imagine some poor caveman trying to milk a wild buffalo! It just wouldn't work. Of course, we now have wonderful inventions like almond milk (which I can drink VERY sparingly) and coconut milk (which is highly encouraged to drink, but also highly disgusting in my opinion, lol). It seems there are always ways around the norm and they are more healthy and almost as yummy!

I actually skipped breakfast this morning because I woke up late so I went straight for lunch. I had a salad with grilled chicken and bacon. I very sparingly used a "honey vinegarette" dressing. I wasn't sure what was in it, so I used about 1 teaspoon. 

For dinner I grilled up some butternut squash and had more grilled chicken. I'm getting pretty sick of chicken, but it's easy to cook and very lean. I need to look into how to cook other lean meats.

Afterwards I made kale chips. Kale chips are crazy easy to make and can definitely help satisfy a potato chip craving since they come out very crunchy. They have a slightly bitter kale-y aftertaste, but I love them! All you need is:

1 bunch of kale
Cooking oil spray (preferably olive oil, but anything will work)
Sea salt (or any other seasonings you like)

Preheat the oven to 350. On each leaf, cut the kale away from the stalk/stem. Proceed to cut the kale into squares to the best of your ability. Kale is crinkly, so it's hard to cut it into perfect squares. Place the kale squares on a baking sheet and spray them lightly with the cooking oil. Proceed to sprinkle with sea salt. You can also experiment with other seasonings you might like. I have extra spicy Mrs. Dash that I love on my chips. Then place in the oven for 11 minutes. I'm sure the time varies depending on your oven, but my chips cook in 11 minutes exactly. They're easy to burn, so the first run-through I would suggest that you definitely keep on eye on them. The chips should look dry and only slightly browned on the edges. And that's it!

Kale chips! Super easy!

Also, I'm pleased to say that in the 7 days since starting this diet I've lost almost 9 lbs! That's over one pound a day! Craziness! Never knew that eating like a caveman would produce such wonderful results!

Looking forward to some delicious meals tomorrow! Nighty-night!

~Sara

Tuesday, January 8, 2013

Day 6: Can't I just have a normal day?

I woke up at around 2:30AM and couldn't get back to sleep. At around 6AM I decided to stop fighting with myself to get back to sleep and just got up.

I posted yesterday that I was basically out of food, so all I had was leftover pork tenderloin and carrot juice for breakfast. At about 9:30 I left the house to go grocery shopping.

I cannot believe that I found coconut palm sugar at Stop & Shop! Super excited to make some sweet treats with that! But I got a whole lot of veggies and ingredients to make some new dishes, since I'm really sick of the same old salads and breakfasts I've been eating. I'll be sure to post recipes.

So when I got back from the store, we had lost power, and didn't have any electricity. No clue why, but to make a long story short, it didn't get turn on til around 8:30PM.

For the afternoon, I ate an apple and a cold unsatisfying can of salmon. Yeah, a can. When the power still wasn't on by dinnertime we decided to go out to eat.

I have to say, as small as this is, I'm super proud of myself that I didn't partake in the bread eating or eggplant fries, lol. Obviously bread and anything fried is off limits. I even reached for the bread multiple times and had to stop myself and think about what I was doing. I ordered grilled chicken and veggies, no butter. It was okay, but I could have definitely made better chicken myself.  And the veggies were overcooked.

I feel bad because I broke down and ordered a glass of wine. I love wine. And I read that if you were to order any alcoholic beverage while eating paleo, order wine. So I had a glass of wine! So sue me, lol! I probably won't be drinking for the reminder of the 30 days though... maybe...

When we got home from dinner, the power was back on. I had a glass of tea and a lot of water to try and wash away the extremely unsatisfying meal.

So tomorrow starts a new day! I'll be making kale chips, amongst other goodies!

Nighty-night!

~Sara

Monday, January 7, 2013

Day 5: Almost completely out of food!

Today was tough and I didn't eat enough.

I'm almost entirely out of paleo friendly foods and ingredients. It also didn't help that I was feeling under the weather this morning. Luckily, I'm going grocery shopping in the morning, so I'm excited to get more creative in cooking my meals!

One of the hardest things about being on this diet is that in order to get creative you have to buy a lot of new ingredients. And they're not cheap. Coconut flour is hard to find, hard to cook with, and hard to justify since it costs much more than normal flour. The fact is that coconut anything is accepted on the paleo diet. You can use it to make baked goods (to the best of your ability). However, nothing you make will taste the same as when you use regular flour and butter!

And you're able to eat organic almond butter, but not too much, since it's rich in Omega-6 fatty acids which are bad. You want the Omega-3s! Lots of research goes into this diet. And I'm not following it well, considering I have flat-out not been eating enough! But protein fills you up, so sometimes on this diet you need to make yourself eat.

So I had 1 egg for breakfast and a glass of carrot juice. Then as a snack, I about 8 slices of deli roast beef with mustard. And some tea. That's it. No bueno.

Anyway, I'm excited to start posting recipes after tonight since I'll have a ton of yummy ingredients to play around with.

Also, I decided that on day 30 I'm going to make a paleo chocolate cake. Found the recipe online and it looks amazing! All the reviews for it are really positive and everyone seems to love it! So now day 30 will be even sweeter to get to! ;)

Watching The Biggest Loser again tonight! Such an inspiring show!

~Sara

Sunday, January 6, 2013

Day 4: I JUST WANT SOME BREAD!

So today I woke up (really late) and somehow, a bag of mini bagels mysteriously appeared on the counter. I had to look around and see if anyone was testing my will power, because there is nothing in this world I love to eat more than bagels. Honestly, if I were a superhero, my kryptonite would be bread. I can visualize a super villain just chucking french baguettes at my face!

So after seeing the bagels, I opted for a massive breakfast to hopefully subside my craving. I made 3 eggs and a whopping 4 slices of Canadian bacon. I almost didn't finish it all.  I also had some carrot juice.

And as I went about my day around the house, the bagels were calling to me. As well as the Cocoa Krispies cereal (my favorite!) and my sister's Reese's Peanut Butter Cups. For some reason, today was crazy hard to stay away from all this stuff.

So I continued to eat throughout the day to keep myself full and maybe find a little self control. I ate an apple and snacked on some almonds.

For dinner I had a HUGE salad with pork tenderloin, olives, and green beans. No dressing. I was stuffed afterwards! I had a spoonful of honey afterwards as "dessert" and a cup of tea.

I've decided at 10 days I'm going to treat myself to a recipe for paleo pancakes that I found. They're not 100% paleo friendly since they contain baking soda and baking powder. But it's such a small amount that I don't think it will screw with my stomach too much. Then at day 20, I'm going to treat myself to paleo chocolate pudding, which is a recipe I've devised myself, so I have no clue if it will turn out good, haha. So now I have goals and rewards to look towards.

Also, I've lost 5 lbs in the 4 days since starting this new way of eating. Pretty incredible! It's definitely a testament to how terrible I was eating beforehand.

Anyway, time to watch The Biggest Loser season premiere!

~Sara 

Saturday, January 5, 2013

Day 3: Busy day

Hello all! So day 3... what can I say? I was busy today and honestly didn't have time to eat as much as I would have liked.

I had a super healthy breakfast of 4 slices of Canadian bacon and an apple. The best thing about Canadian bacon is that it's basically just slices of ham. It's super lean and easy to just cook in a skillet. It's quick and packed with a ton of protein. And while fruit is something you can eat while on the diet, it's encouraged that you eat more veggies than fruit! But I love apples!

It's honestly hard to be on this diet since I'm broke and there's barely any paleo friendly goodies in the house. So I'm eating what I can!

I ran out the door this afternoon and did a friend's makeup which was so much fun! We spent all day playing with different looks! The time flew by so fast, I didn't even feel hungry.

I stopped at the grocery store and picked up some carrot juice and chugged it! Yummm! There are 3 3/4 servings of veggies in one small carton. I also bought a big carton for the house! Can't wait to drink it in the morning. I'm trying to limit my veggie juice intake for only breakfast.

Other than that, I didn't eat anything else, which again, is bad. Currently, I'm grilling up some butternut squash to scarf down! I found the recipe here: http://www.theclothesmakethegirl.com/2011/03/11/garlic-balsamic-grilled-butternut/

It's garlic-balsamic grilled butternut squash. Just cut up your squash, make the marinade, let it sit for a while, and grill it up! Super easy and I'm excited to see how to turns out!

So I failed with the protein today. I'm getting my veggies in at 10:30 at night. Better late than never. Tomorrow will be better thought out.

Nighty-night all. ~Sara

Friday, January 4, 2013

Day 2: Much easier

Today I woke up more prepared than yesterday! I planned out my meals in advance.

This is key to being successful... Plan every meal in advance. If not the day before, than the week before! And it's important to keep paleo friendly treats on hand, like almonds or carrots. Today I had an apple which curbed my sweet tooth in the afternoon.

So I weighed myself this morning when I woke up, and in the span of about 24 hours on this diet, the scale told me I've lost 3 pounds. I'm going to take this with a grain of salt, based on what I was wearing and water consumption, lol. But I'll be sure to post about weight loss. This diet is primarily to help me feel better and feel less bloated. Weight loss is definitely an added bonus.

I started the day with 3 eggs and 2 slices of Canadian bacon. I know what you're thinking... holy cholesterol! As someone who doesn't have cholesterol issues, having eggs for breakfast isn't a big deal. Typically, the recommended amount is 2 eggs, but hey, I was hungry. Plus, I don't plan on having eggs every morning. And Canadian bacon is great because it's so much leaner than regular bacon. The only bummer about either of these foods is that they get cold really fast after cooking them.

So I scarfed down my breakfast and I was super full, which is exactly what protein is supposed to do.

I wasn't hungry until around 3PM, which is when I ate an apple. I didn't have anything else to eat after that since I wasn't sure what my family and I were planning for dinner and when we would be eating. We decided to order out.

Now this is terribly difficult, especially since I normally get a personal pizza and/or buffalo chicken tenders. I'm a pig! Instead of ordering what I normally got, I got a buffalo grilled chicken salad with no dressing. I was planning on sprinkling some balsamic vinegar on it, but when I opened the box it had a ton of chicken and buffalo sauce on it, which served well as a dressing. Also, olives! I can never get enough olives!

To curb my sugar craving afterwards, I just had a spoonful of honey. Luckily, that was enough. So today I didn't have any crazy cookie cravings, but I feel like I haven't been eating enough veggies so far. So tomorrow I'm definitely going to snack on more vegetables.

I'm also going to get more creative in what I eat, and will also be including recipes. 

Off to day 3! ~ Sara

Thursday, January 3, 2013

Paleo Diet Day 1: Torture

It's here! Just like I said it would be! It's a new year and time for new beginnings... well, almost new beginnings.

See, I've been on the Paleo diet before... actually, about three separate times. The first time I stuck to it for about three weeks. The following two times were sad attempts and lasted for a few days. This was because I am a bread fiend! But this time, I'm going to really try to stick to it!

First off, a bit about the diet itself....

I found all of the information about this way of eating in "The Paleo Solution: The Original Human Diet" by Robb Wolf.


Essentially, Paleo is short for Paleolithic. So basically, eat as the cavemen ate! According to the science in the book, the human body was never designed to digest and process grains or dairy. In the scheme of things, grains have been a part of the human diet for about 10,000 years, which I guess is a short amount of time. As hunters and gatherers, our paleolithic ancestors ate the meat of animals that they killed and the berries and veggies they were able to pick. Since they were mostly nomads, they didn't have time to raise crops or livestock (imagine trying to milk a wild buffalo), moving wherever the animals went.

Also, supposedly the paleolithic people were healthier in that they technically ate organic food and fresh meat. However, I've heard and agree with the arguments that most cavemen didn't live past the age of 20 due to whatever reason, so I'm not sure how true that statement is. Regardless, this can be a healthy diet nowadays.

So, that's a very brief rundown of the diet. So this means, no bread, butter, milk, legumes (that includes beans and peanuts, but most other nuts are okay), and sugar (but honey is okay). Included in that would be anything that's highly processed, like some cooking oils, etc. Also, no fruit juice, since it normally has a ton of added sugar to it, but I love to drink carrot juice while on the diet. I think "Boathouse", or something like that, carries a really natural line of veggie juices and they're all really good with no sugar added.

So, on to Day1...

So today wasn't great. I mean, the tail end of it was, but I failed in the morning and throughout the afternoon.

I almost forgot that I was starting the diet today, and actually woke up and grabbed a cookie. Yup, that's right, a cookie! In my defense, my sister makes the best chocolate chip cookies I've ever tasted. But yeah, that's how far set back I am in nutrition for myself... a cookie for breakfast.

Anyway, after I ate my cookie and realized today was day one, I decided to try to counteract the unhealthy cookie with something healthy. I wasn't really hungry and my pantry and fridge are incredibly low in paleo treats, so I grabbed some roast beef from the deli and snacked on it a bit.

I then left the house and ran errands, but didn't get a chance to eat again until about 7PM. This is pretty much a huge no-no. It's important to eat throughout the day on this diet because, since you're consuming so much protein, you burn off your food really quickly. So I was starving, which was bad since I live with non-paleo eaters. I desperately wanted to grab a quick bowl of cereal or toast an english muffin. Somehow, I managed to resist.

I made some chicken breast with a really good marinade I don't remember the name of, and cooked it on the George Foreman grill. I diced it up and put it on top of a dark green salad with olives. For dressing, I used balsamic vinegar and a dash of extra virgin olive oil. Yummmm! It was really fresh and I felt just the right amount of full when I was finished.

Afterwards, I had a cup of tea with a bit of honey.

At around 8PM my stomach was growling again and craving something sweet. So I took one of the extra pieces of chicken I cooked and drizzled a teeny bit of honey on top of it and ate it. Honestly, for some reason that completely satisfied my craving. Thank god, since the cookies were calling my name again!

Anyway, that's day one! Let's hope day two goes a little smoother! If anyone has any questions about what the diet entails (or doesn't entail) feel free to ask! I'm a river of knowledge on this!

Sweet dreams~ Sara