The Paleo Diet and Me.

After having gone to Trident Athletics for a few weeks now, Natalie and I buckled down and officially signed up for a membership. It’s a little step in the right direction for us, I think, since we both enjoy going to WODs there and both need to lose a bunch of weight. On Friday, Amanda (the co-owner) talked to us about the Paleolithic (Paleo) diet and has convinced me to give it a try.

The Paleo diet is essentially another type of low-carb diet, if one had to generalize. Good foods are meats, veggies, some fruit (melons and berries) and nuts, and fats (certain oils, eggs, etc.). Bad foods would then be dairy, grains, most fruit (apples, bananas, oranges, etc.) and sugars. It sounded like the Atkins diet only worse since I can’t have dairy, but I don’t have to count calories/carbs/anything and eat until I’m satisfied. I know it’s completely doable, and Amanda does a sort of twist where every 30 meals (roughly every 5 days if you eat 5-6x daily) she gets a cheat meal–she eats whatever she wants for that one planned meal. I’ve done Atkins/low-carb in the past, so I know it works and isn’t hard, and since I’ve ballooned to my current weight, I need something to help jumpstart the weight loss journey pronto.

I didn’t do so well on the 5-6 meals today, but I did do okay for the first day. I had a scramble this morning with onion, green bell pepper, tomato, ham, and a single slice of cheese (I had to!). I had about 1/2 cup of milk to drink with it (which I might have normally drunk 1-2 cups) and that was all. It was more like lunch since I didn’t crawl out of bed until around noon (I had to drive a friend to the airport earlier), so I didn’t eat anything else until dinner which was all Korean BBQ! The great thing about Korean food is that, besides rice, you can eat almost everything and abide by Paleo. Meat is often marinated with something sweet, so you have to be careful with that, but most of the side dishes are made from vegetables with garlic, sesame oil/seeds, red pepper, etc. It’s probably a large part of how I managed to lose 15 lbs in Korea two years ago (and having rice too!).

So, that is the new flavor of the month for now. I hope it’s something I can sustain until the end of the year, or at least until I visit mi novio in December. I don’t know if I can give up on such scrumptious carbs as found in dairy and desserts, but I will try my best for the rest of the year. I’ve got 30 pounds to lose after all.