Hilariously, it seems there is a spectrum to eating a Paleo diet -- some letting you have some dairy, and the most strict/pure/clean Whole30 program. I took to several blogs regarding opinions on what foods make up a Paleo diet. At first, it was easier to think about the No's when shopping, so no dairy, no corn/rice/grains/wheat/gluten, no potatoes, no legumes, no processed food, no fake sugars, and no vegetable or corn oil. I recruited a friend to partake in the challenge with me, picked a day to start, and in we charged the day after Labor Day. I had a really hard time recognizing all of the things I could NOT eat for awhile, and I ended up hanging this cheat sheet nearby at all times:
You will note that I allowed myself wine - so clearly I was not on the super strict side of the spectrum, although I did still avoid dairy. The ones that surprised me most were vegetable and corn oils, and legumes. Oh and rice, again the food of my people.
The fantastic thing was that I started teleworking full time around the same time as I began this challenge - which meant I was able to make fresh meals for myself, to keep myself motivated.
The poor timing of this challenge was three-fold:
- It was the end of a rough Fiscal Year for me. The month of September was incredibly busy, work-wise, and I was back in classes, so I felt overwhelmed with things to do... and then piled on this diet that was difficult to explain to friends and restaurants and required me to think beyond the box sometimes. In the end, and a fit of stress, this led me to cut the challenge short at 27 days, because I was just done thinking about it.
- In the third week of the challenge, I went to Connecticut with NinjaManFriend to participate in a charity bike ride. Along the way, we stopped in New York and stayed with his grandfather, whom I was meeting for the first time. This included two dinners with NinjaManFriend's Italian grandfather, and some extended Italian family. I took this as 36 hours off Paleo. Since eating Paleo was just something I was trying out, without a deep emotional conviction tied to it, I couldn't find it within myself to want to explain some diet I was just doing for fun to these family members I was meeting for the first time. It was my goal not to be "that girlfriend" who gets brought home.
- Right after the weekend of the charity bike ride, one of my cousins returned from a trip abroad and we had a family reunion luncheon. Almost all of the cousins and aunts and uncles on my mom's side came, and it was a 20-person banquet for 13 people at a Chinese restaurant. This was not made to be Paleo-friendly. My choices were to eat the food and take a 3-hour Paleo break, or not eat at all and explain myself to my family while they probably judged me. I chose the former.
All in all, this means I did 25 days as a Paleo eater.
Here is what I took away from it.
- While it was easier at first, especially for shopping for groceries, to think about what foods were off-limits, it was better to think about what I could eat and what I was eating. Vegetables, fruits, good meat (I learned how great local butchers are!) - true enough, everything felt whole and fresh and wonderful.
- I learned of the amazing flavor-sponge quality of the yam or sweet potato.
I had made this curry and was at a complete loss for what to throw it on top of. It was already full of vegetables and meat, and all I know of curry is that I love to mix the sauce with rice and just let it soak up all that curry goodness. Then a friend suggested the sweet potato. This was a game-changer. It was incredible. It really took on the flavor of my curry and absorbed it much like rice would. It was this curry-filled pillow of deliciousness at the end of several exciting mouthfuls of curry vegetables and meat. - Healthy fats are wonderful.
- I already knew how much I love avocadoes. But they can be sliced onto most savory dishes and just add this creamy quality that feels like a treat every time.
- Coconuts are amazing. I don't think I was always a lover of coconut. I think, as a child, Mounds were like a mouthful of dry shredded coconut, and I was never able to get passed that.
Until now.
I adore cooking things in coconut oil. The fragrance. The taste. The benefits.
Coconut water, upon my second try, feels refreshing and like it sets all my systems in motion.
Shredded/Flaked coconut. Toast and use on spicy dishes. Don't bother toasting and sprinkle onto lemon treats. Win. Win.
Coconut flour. I only really used it to make these coconut-lemon bars, but I was obsessed with them (they combined coconut and lemon curd) and I loved them with some nice berries (end of the summer and all). They were somehow both airy and dense - is that even possible? Go with it. - Paleo honestly stopped me from overeating.
I wasn't sure I could believe it when I started. One of the blogs I'd read had explained that the reason people lose weight eating Paleo, which consists of meat and fats, is that they just end up eating less. And it was definitely true for me. There were only so many eggs or so much bacon I could shovel before I was just done in any given meal. In fact, when I broke my Challenge, I did so with gelato and deep dish pizza. But really I ate half of a small cup of gelato and threw the rest away because I just did not want any more. And then I had two small slices of the pizza and asked NinjaManFriend to take it home because I was done with it. It makes me think there's some truth to the idea that processed foods and starches make you hungry. - Eating Paleo and other perhaps-more-traditional healthy/lighter eating ideologies were not friends.
One weekend, I went out to an Island with some girlfriends, including NinjaMuse, and we had a girls' weekend, just hanging out, gossiping, solving life's problems, reading, water sports, golf, movies, drinking wine, and cooking together. We wanted to grill out one night, and they purchased black bean burgers. I love a good black bean burger. As far as I am concerned, it always beats out other regular veggie burgers, and it's a delicious "lighter" burger. Black beans... legumes... not Paleo-friendly. So that night I ate a salad. What was funny was when we realized that just regular ground beef, for regular burgers, which was not as traditionally eating-light-friendly, was something I would easily have been able to eat off the grill. It was an interesting realization. - In the end, I broke my Challenge for emotional reasons. I was overwhelmed and was just having one of those days and I just wanted to stop. However, my body was SO happy when I was eating Paleo. So. Happy.
As usual with my eating challenges, I attempted to eat out while still eating Paleo. I didn't venture into tastings, and obviously didn't bother dealing with it when it came to a traditional Italian dinner or a large overly-indulgent Chinese banquet luncheon. But there were two restaurants I went to while eating Paleo and it was not terrible. Honestly, I took an ignorant stance when it came to certain things (for instance, I did not bother to ask if something was cooked in vegetable or corn oil). But ultimately, it was not too hard to find at least one thing on the menu I could eat, if even just with a quick side substitution here or there.
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| 801 9th St. NW |
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| 414 H St. NE |
Both restaurants - Cuba Libre and Boundary Road (I have a very special place in my heart for Boundary Road, a neighborhood haunt that I go to... often) - were fantastic. At each restaurant, I ordered steak options, with sides of some kind of vegetable (at Cuba Libre, I had some yucca with my steak, and I just decided on spot that it was a tuber; at Boundary Road there was kale and cauliflower). And how great that my Paleo-diet allowed for wine! Magnifique.
Next: November Challenge: Weight-Loss Motivated Shopping Freeze with Goal Deadline of Black Friday, via Fresh Cooking and Routine Update
