Honestly, going the final stretch to this wasn't much of a stretch for me. The only dairy I had to cut out was the occasional Greek yogurt and cheese. As for grains, the only thing I was taking in daily was a 1/2 cop of organic rolled oats and maybe a slice or two of Ezekiel bread. I would eat sweet potatoes with lunch a couple of times a week, and although sweet potatoes are allowed with Paleo/Primal, we recently discovered that baking sweet potatoes increases it's glycemic index by just about 70 points - making it a high glycemic food when cooked that way. So...maybe I will eat them from time to time, but quinoa, which is actually not a grain, will probably take the place of the sweet potatoes in my eating rotation. By I digress...
Back to how we did it.... Well...like anything else. We tried everything else until we found something that works! I have railed against WW and other "diet" programs. And I understand their value & that people who make healthier choices are being healthier. I no longer have a dog in that fight. BUT (wink) - my experience was that, on WW, I gained weight and was miserable with cravings. When we switched to what can be summed up as a "body building diet" - macronutrient breakdown determined my body fat percentage & tweeked based on improvements in body fat percentage - we started severely limiting carb intake to almost what I described above. And it worked wonders. But it was miserable at first - it was a lot to eat, especially when learning how to time it, and then we couldn't use any of the condiments we loved?!? Honestly, sitting here today, I cannot imagine how I ever ate salad loaded with dressing (I rarely have any dressing at all these days, and if I do, it's usually a small amount of olive or flax oil drizzled on the salad). But immediately my energy level evened out, my cravings for carbs and sugar went away, and my body started changing. Then I found out I was pregnant...and let it all go to the wayside.
Once I had Jenna, I started trying to eat like that again, with no success. So I started making more tweeks...all which work wonders for other people, but don't work for me. I started realizing that I saw more results - not just on the scale, but in how my body looked - on the weeks where I just happened to take in very little carbs (at least carbs by way of oatmeal, breads and sweet potatoes). After reading up on the Paleo philosophy and starting on the Primal Blueprint, I felt called to take the leap.
So here I am, two weeks in. I'm starting to lean out already, which feels good. I still have a long way to go, but making progress feels good. No cravings, no insane hunger pains, energy level is stable. I feel really good! And I seriously don't have a desire for anything other than what I have been eating.
Speaking of eating...people think that eating this way is boring. It's not. And they think it's soooooo time consuming. With a little planning, it's not. This past Sunday, this is what my kitchen looked like...
The left back stove eye was jambalaya (with cauliflower in place of rice), front left stove eye was pulled chicken (like pulled pork - or chicken BBQ), back right stove eye was spaghetti sauce, right front stove eye was ground turkey (to use for spaghetti sauce and some to put to the side to use for salads), to the right is fresh green beans and spaghetti squash. The other picture is of stuffed chicken (with tahini, spinach and tomatoes). Not pictured: roasted cauliflower, turkey burgers (for a Paleo PB&J burger recipe), sliced squash/onions/peppers, broccoli and other assorted fruits and veggies that can be cooked (quickly and fresh) daily or doesn't need to be cooked. From start to finish, it took me 3 1/2 hours to cook everything and have it put up. With JP's help, the kitchen was cleaned up in that time, too. And this fed us all week - and we eat a LOT of food.
Because of JP's schedule, we don't eat a traditional meal every night, but I do eat something from one of these selections once Jenna is put to bed. That is also the time I take 20-30 minutes to cook our breakfast for the next day and portion out our meals for the next day and saute or roast any veggies for those meals (sometime I get this done while Jenna is playing). How long does the average person take to cook dinner every night? To decide what to cook, to get all of the ingredients together (or make a quick run to the store), to defrost meat or frozen veggies, to prep and cook everything and get it ready to serve? From start to finish, I know a lot of people who spend well over an hour a night to do this. When looking at that, I really don't take any more time than anyone else. I just take the bulk of it on Sundays. When I first started this, it seemed so time consuming, but when I put it in this context, I realized it really wasn't a crazy time commitment.
All of this to say that eating like this is possible. It just is.
I have found it's self-reinforcing.
And I actually really like it.
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