Paleo Week 4

I am writing this a couple weeks after, but what can ya do? I almost made it the whole 30 days. I was not perfect but I am very happy with the experience non the less. I learned so much! For the final week of the Chris Kresser version of the paleo diet I made a big soup for my staple meal, which I mostly used for lunch.

I am super proud of that soup. Seriously the best I've ever made. I spent 3 hours making the bone broth and then used it as the base of a beef and vegetable stew that took another 3ish hours to make. I added so many vegetables plus the richness of the broth made for something else. I think it really helped with my gut health too, cause after a few days my poo was solid and strong. Some of the ingredients included, farmers market beef, then regular store bought leeks, sweet potatoes, carrots, spinach, onions, red bell pepper, jalapenos, and probably a few other things. I was simply amazed cause I hardly added any salt or seasoning, yet it's flavor was quite satisfying. Much better than pre-made store bought soup that's for sure.

Unfortunately, I didn't take too many pictures of my food that week. The only other is this.

White Bass and Egg Plant

My father has been catching Crappie and White Bass like mad this year and donating most of the fish to my freezer. I will not complain. I say that and now I'm going to acknowledge that the white bass is definitely not as good as the crappie, but I enjoyed it all the same. I have found that baking fish with butter, onions, and garlic is an easy, yummy way to cook fish. You can then add whatever seasonings. I've been using lemon pepper and then squeezing lemon on them afterwards. I know it's not salt water fish, which is probably better for you, but I live in Missouri so coastal food isn't so fresh here. I do wonder what the nutritional value and what sort of toxins these fresh water lake fish have compared to the tuna or cod I buy at the store.

Losing weight was not a main goal of mine but it was a metric to track so I tracked it. As you can see, I lost about 10 lbs and ended up as light or lighter than I graduated high school at more than ten years ago. I'm 5'10'' with a medium frame so weight wasn't really my problem like gut health and emotional health, both of which improved throughout the diet. As to gut health, I was just starting to see results and then I messed up, which I will go into shortly. Emotionally, I felt much better from this diet than I have in years. I cried one time last month because I felt a genuine joy from within that I had not felt in a very long time. It helped me to fully realize through experience that what I put in my body greatly affects my mood and my ability to sleep. Physically, I think I have become much stronger. I rock climb for exercise and was complemented by a friend who said he thought it was the best I'd ever climbed. I thanked him and agreed. I figured it had to do with the food I've been eating.

What has really helped to connect how I feel with what I eat was messing up. Towards the last couple days I celebrated Cinco de Mayo and went out to eat and drink with some friends. The next day I had frozen custard, and boy did the sugar demon arise. I had been doing ok about sugar until I ate the custard. Sugar cravings seem to have a lot in common with nicotine cravings in that, once the quitting streak was broken, I craved it more and more than even before. The following week I've continued to eat frozen custard plus a candy bar or two almost every day. LOL, makes me laugh a bit. For sure not sustainable. This reversed some of the progress I made with gut health, I started getting head aches, and noticed that when I eat too much sugar I start to feel sick. My lymph nodes started to swell and I felt an icky feeling. I also got worried because I've been bitten by a lot of ticks recently so perhaps it's not just the sugar...eeekkk!!! This brings another point about health. It is so hard to pin point a cause of a sickness or bad feeling even when you are trying to be hyper aware. I now feel like I need to get tested for tick borne illness here in a few weeks or something, even though I think I've probably been bitten by over 500 of them throughout life and been fine so far.

In the beginning of the week I had to work an overnight shift which led me to breaking the limited amount of coffee I was drinking in a day. I ended up drinking who knows how many cups. It helped me to become aware that probably the caffeine makes my belly upset and makes my tinnitus worse. It was good to get a confirmation on that and really feel how excess coffee negatively impacts my body. I have since started to drink coffee in the afternoon again, and it's been messing with sleep.

I also learned that once I reached the end of the plan I was doing, it became harder to maintain. I think having an extended one would probably help. That being said I am integrating the things I've learned from the diet into my normal eating habits. I doubt I will stick with the whole Paleo thing in terms of calling it Paleo and instead focus on eating real food. There are many positive things to learn from the Paleo movement, and I do like the idea of looking to ancestral diets for inspiration, however Paleo mostly seems like a marketing term more than anything else. As I have learned, lifestyle change takes patience, time, and determination. I will have to keep at it in order to make eating healthy second nature.

Thank you for joining me on my journey to living a happier healthier life. I wish you luck with yours!