Day 2: Rockstars do exist

Breakfast:  8am 3 small egg cupcakes.  Each one is like a bite.  Held me over for awhile.  10:45am 1 piece of egg frittata, leftover from yesterday.  I'm thinking tomorrow before work I will make a smoothie to eat at work.

Lunch:  Leftover Caldo De Pallo around 12:30pm.  This meal is awesome.

Dinner:  Five Spice stir fry.  This was prepped last night, so easy to throw in large skillet.  Need to get a wok.  Beef, shrimp, mushrooms, purple cabbage, broccoli, red bell pepper, onion, ginger with Asian 5 spice concoction and fish oil.

Snacks:  5 almonds after lunch, handful of trailmix here and there.  3:15pm made a smoothie.  1/4 cup ice, 5 blackberries, 6 oz. vanilla coconut milk and 1 spoonful of almond butter.  A couple pieces of celery with light almond butter.  So tired of freaking water, so I bought a Zen green Tea at Starbucks.  I HATE tea, but I am going to learn to drink it, going through caffeine withdrawl and I miss diet coke.

Random thughts:  So I had a nagging headache on day 1.  Not bad, just annoying.  It was in forehead around my eyebrows and then in my lower neck in back of my head yesterday afternoon.  The wife had the same headache in the afternoon.  Today I have a small headache in my forehead this morning.  I know it's not caffeine withdraw, I am on my 3rd cup of coffee this morning.  Maybe it is all the processed foods my body is losing?  I guess I should read the book more so I understand this better.  But it is more fun to speculate.

So I mentioned in my "About me" I have two kids.  An 11 year old daughter and 8 year old son.  They are both good eaters overall, they both like sushi, love seafood and any beef.  My son is picky about alot of stuff though.  He did not eat much yesterday on day 1.  He was eating his leftover waffles that remain for breakfast, only ate the fish from the fish taco for lunch, snacked on a brownie, ate half a jar of pickles (didn't put the lid back on either in the fridge door) and pretty much just ate some salad and picked the chicken out of the stew for dinner.  He doesn't eat breakfast, so that isn't a big deal.  The wife packed them "paleo" lunches.  When he gets home from school today we shall see how it goes.  I figure he is going to be a challenge for a few days.

My daughter though is a rockstar though.  Not sure if she is trying to impress us, or really likes it. She did ok with the tacos yesterday, loved the chicken stew and ate 3 egg cupcakes for breakfast.

Hopefully neither kid loses any weight.  They are beanpoles as it is, and I would hate to see the doctor  get on us about some "pseudo diet" as I am sure they will refer to it as.  Doctors are idiots at times and close minded, they have to stick to what they learn in school.  The same can be said of any profession being idiots, they are just doing there job as trained.  But everything we have read is that once you are on this for awhile, one of the good side affects will be getting sick less.  I am skeptic also, but so far it is good.  My BM change is impressive on its own. Our kids get sick alot, so cross your fingers there. We have had the duct work cleaned in the past and other crap and nothing helps.  Part of it is just being kids.  Also, my son gets headaches alot and is on medication for it.  Hopefully going caveman will help him also.

So last week we had like our "last meal" like 4 times.  One night it was mexican, and we explained to the kids what the diet was all about.  It was funny, my kids said that they learned in school that dairy and grains are important parts of the meal groups.  So we told them to not argue with their teachers, and we are going to just supplement our dairy with other stuff, like coconut milk and lots of different vegetables and fruit.

Day 1: Fresh is so yummy!

So I survived Day 1.  Around 2am I decided I should have a last beer, or two.  So I had 2 Rogue Dead Guys and I plan on having no beer for 30 days.

Breakfast: The wife made an awesome Veggie Frittata.  It was unbelievable.  Can't wait for leftovers of it on Monday morning. Had coffee, good thing I already drink it black, so I didn't miss the cream like my wife did this morning.  Had 2 helpings.  Need to learn to cut back, but was starving.  I know this will be a challenge, but I hope as I rid my body of the shitty foods in my system in a  few days, my apetite will change as well.

Lunch:  I made fish tacos.  The recipe called for Tilapia, but they didn't have any at Kroger, so we got Ocean Perch instead.  I cooked lunch while the wife and daughter were soccer training.  Total prep and cook time, 40 minutes or so.  I am slow.  I sauteed 1 red bell pepper, chopped onion and garlic in olive oil and then added the ocean perch fillets.  Put them in romaine lettuce and added fresh avocado to top them off.  Flipped the fillets after 2 minutes.  Total cook time of fish was 4 minutes.  Results below.  Had 3 tacos, should have stopped at 2.  I was starving again.  I am sure it is mental, starting a new diet and thinking I am starving.

 

Dinner:  Caldo De Pallo and salad with homemade dressing.  No cheese or croutons was a big change for the kids.  Fancy words for boiling whole chicken, picking it off bone, and then making a killer stew.  The spices in it were to die for.  Not sure which book my wife got it out of, but it was awesome. I did good here, had only one helping of stew.  Had 2 bowls of salad, figured the salad was better to fill me up.

Snacks:  Had quite a few small snacks today.  Munched on walnuts, almonds, orange, trail mix, 1 olive, blueberries.

Thoughts:  Every meal was awesome.  I am not sure if it was everything being fresh from Kroger and Whole Foods, or mental, but it was great food today.  The prep time to cook without prepared food is alot more.  This afternoon I sat there and cleaned shrimp, and cut lots of vegetables for stirfry for Monday night.  The wife made egg cupcakes for breakfast all week for everyone.  We will just spend alot of time on Sunday afternoons preparing for the week.  But it is all worth it.

Oh yeah, eating healthy is expensive.  We knew it was, and this is not a shock to anyone.  Between Whole Foods and Kroger, we spent way too much money this weekend grocery shopping.  We have to figure out what meats really need to be organic or not.  But a lot of it was not regular staples, like coconut oil, fish oil (both cooking and supplement). 

One last thing.  Bowel movements.  If you read my first post, you read more about my BM's then you care to know, but it got the point across.  Today, I had one this morning before breakfast like a normal person.  And I have not had one since then.  NONE.  This is a huge deal.  I ate alot of food today, but it was all fresh, and I had no stomach cramps, sudden urge to run to bathroom, etc.  This made my night.  I was telling my lovely bride how awesome of a feeling this was!  Great first day on Paleo diet.

Cleaning out the Pantry

As part of the Paleo change, my wife and I cleaned out the pantry, lazy susan and fridge.  We left a few Cheez-Its and leftover Little Debbie brownies for the kids so they have a snack to transition, but other than that, all processed food is gone.  We will see how it goes with the kids, but they seem interested in the healthy lifestyle.

 Above is the pantry before we cleaned it out.  Lots of processed foods, which we knew were not great with the preservatives, but they are easy to cook.

Since this picture was taken, the only thing left is Cheez-Its and Little Debbie brownies.  Mrs. Butterworth has been retired or she will be soon before she can be used.

Paleo: It's not a diet, it's a lifestyle

Not sure where to begin or what to say.  This is my first blog.  I've read plenty through the years but never had anything to write about, besides silly stuff no one cares about.  The same could be said about this jibberish, oh well.  I registered this blog last weekend and have been trying to figure out where to start, so I am just jumping in.  Warning:  I talk about poop. Not graphic, just the frequency.  Not too bad, but don't say I didn't warn ya!

So why Paleo?  Because I am an impulse buyer, can't lie.  Wish I could say otherwise, but it is the truth.  Also, I am fat and need to lose weight.  I saw a blog posting on Running Naked on Sharp Pointy Stuff where Krista was talking about being on a Paleo diet for 9 days at the time.  I heard of Paleo diet recently somewhere, not sure where, but I figured I would look it up on the wonderful internet.  So one of the first things I read was this diet was dairy and gluten free.  OMG!  That got my attention right away.  I am lactose intolerant, and have horrible bowel issues.  So then I checked out the link to Robb Wolf's book that Krista had and started reading reviews.  I was skeptical, some of the reviews were written before the book was out.  But then I started reading a couple blogs and was intrigued.  I sent an email to my wife with a link to Robb's book and figured she would think it was just another crazy stupid email my husband sends me daily.  20 minutes later I get an email back that she is very interested in it and ready to order that book and this recipe book.

At this point, I am ready to try this diet.  I am finding cool recipes on the internet and good tips on how to eat, etc.  But then I start to dig deeper and really absorb what this is about.  It's not a diet, diet's fail.  I know, I tried one last year.  I forget what I did, maybe tried to track points with Weight Watchers or something like that.  I lasted 3 days if that.  The Paleo diet is a lifestyle change.  I'm not going to sell it, figure it out on your own if you are interested.  But for me, it is about no more dairy, grain, most beans.  No more pasta, even though I love it, it makes me feel blah. 

Most importantly, no more processed foods.  The more I read, the more I realized this is a big commitment.  No more sugars, artificial or otherwise unless from fruit.  I started drinking diet pop a couple years ago.  No more Lo Carb Monster Energy, on and on.  This is a BIG FRICKING commitment.  But I am getting excited.  Why?

Because of my digestive tract.  I promise this will be the only time I talk about bowel movements, at least the frequency.  As long as I can remember as a young adult in college, I have horrid bowel movements.  I self-diagnosed myself as lactose intolerant.  I go to the bathroom for #2 3 times before I leave in the morning for work, I feel like I have no control of my movements.  When they come, I need to pull over to the closest restroom.  After every meal, whether it was Chipotle, Bob Evans, McDonalds and so forth, I am in the bathroom within 20 minutes doing #2.  It's so bad, I HATE going out to dinner.  Or if we go somewhere, I make sure it is someplace that is close to the house.  If we are more than 5 minutes from the house, I stress about where we are going, and we don't leave after the meal until I go do my business.  Sometimes twice.  My wife knows I stress over it.  But I don't think she ever knew until she reads this that I sometimes drive certain ways, including backroads, to make sure I drive by gas stations I know I can run into quickly.  It sucks. 

So any diet that helps with this, I am ready to try Arms Wide Open.  My wife has finished Robb's book, I just started it, but I have read enough to know I will lose weight from eating and feeling healthy.  But I am in this for the long haul as a lifestyle.  We are doing the 30 day challenge Robb has in his book.  I am aiming for 100% Paleo for 30 days.  Then maybe I will cheat on occasion and have a Lo-carb monster, or a couple slices of pizza.  But who knows.

So I am going to document the next 30 days on here, and hopefully longer.  Thanks for reading, and leave a comment.  Knowing I have people reading this blog, or following it, will help me stay motivated.