Paleo Round up!

Apologies for the abrupt end in my daily blogs, life got a little hectic for a week or so, but now i'm back!

 So technically, my last day of Paleo should be tomorrow, but seeing how wonderful it's been to me, I've decided to keep it around :) I can't say that I've been faithful every day, but I have put in a decent effort, and I've gotten decent results in return. I've lost almost 15 lbs. Hoping that by tomorrow that's what the scales will tell me. But if I stick at 13-14lb loss, that's alright with me!

The important part was realizing the benefits, which I do. My stomach issues are no more, my constant feeling of being bloated, gone. My energy much better - Walking the dogs twice a day and usually 30 minutes of wii every evening, that's a major activity boost for myself.

I will keep it up, with the exception of a few items. I would like to add quinoa and some legumes back in my diet, but I won't be going back to having breads in the house all the time, and drinking two to three glasses of milk a day. So easy to pack on extra calories without even realizing it.

I recommend Paleo...that's my conclusion...give it a try  - It can't hurt you and you may just feel better when you're done!

Guests for the weekend, hope they like Paleo!

My parents visit twice a year, on the way down south ( Florida) in the fall, and on the way back in the spring. They were supposed to arrive this afternoon but when you deal with crossing the Cabot straight, you never really know when you're gonna get here. The ferry was delayed until this morning. Hopefully they'll cross today and be here by this evening.

Eating Paleo with my folks around should be relatively easy. My mother follows pretty strict rules in the kitchen as it is. My father's had a couple of by-pass surgeries over the years and mom does her best to keep him from going under the knife again. They avoid refined sugars, and eat low carb.

Knowing all of this, Gary and I decided to have our cheat meal last night and I wanted french fries!!!!! So I ordered a poutine (the Canadian heart attack) and a smoked meat sub, while Gary also indulged in a little poutine and a smoked meat sandwich. I made it half way through my Pountine and finished a 1/4 of my sub before I felt full. To be honest, I was expecting ahorrible stomach last night, and a bad sleep. Au contraire! My stomach never actted up at all and same for my sleep. I will admit that due to the arrival of my folks the only time I stopped yesterday evening was to eat. Other than that, I was cleaning all night. This may have helped with the speedy digesting of these bad foods!

I was secretly hoping that the food would make me feel quite gross. I want a reason to stop eating this crap!!!! I guess I can admit to the fact that bad foods prevent the loss of weight! That should be good enough for me considering how much weight I would like to lose.

Well, back at er' today!

Everybody enjoy your weekend!

Seeing and feeling results!

I haven't been on this Paleo kick for two weeks yet, and I've lost 8 lbs, my energy levels are great, my sleep has improved and my moods are even better! Wow doesn't that sound like some kind of paid advertisement!

My eyes are opening more and more to all negative sides of mostly wheat, sugar and dairy. I'm not about to abolish the chocolate bar from my life, forever. But I will make better choices from here on in. 

After these two weeks have passed, I find it much easier to make it through each day without my old vices. Every evening I would get that craving...for the CARB! I would crave it...the carb desire would take over my whole body. I would head to the kitchen and choose a chocolate bar, a big glass of chocolate milk, or even a huge bowl of ice cream....my achilles heel. A glorious creamy frozen delight with bits of chocolate, caramel, cookie...you name it, if it was bad, it was in there.  These days, when I get that urge to eat around 9pm, while watching a TV show, I go for an apple or maybe some grapes, and never too much of them. Just a little snack to kick that carb craving I'm having. Much better choices!

I've also noticed that my attention to calories consumed had gotten much better. Before, I would do decent during the day, but once I got home and snacked on these bad foods, I would ignore them and never enter them in my food diary. The only person I was cheating was myself. Can't believe it took me this long to realize all these things! But I have and I can only do better form here!

These days I'm keeping my calorie count in check! Thanks to help of my Body Media arm band, I can monitor my calorie consumption verses my calorie intake. It's been a  great help with my weight loss journey!

Cheers to another day, and hopefully a good 2000 calorie deficit!

Conquering Coffee, at least the double double!

I've never wanted a chocolate bar as much as I did last night! So, I settled for an apple, a nice honey crisp apple.

I was good yesterday except for my coffee. I never thought the coffee would be a hard one to give up. Of course, it's not the coffee itself, it's the cream and sugar that I add which make it so wrong.

When I started drinking coffee, it was a triple triple from Tim Horton's...can you imagine???  Over the years I switched it to a double double, still not the best considering there's 230 calories to one drink, three times a day and I've added an extra 600 calories to my daily calorie intake. And I wonder why I can never lose weight!

Over the weekend, when I decide to indulge in a coffee, I asked if the could do a 1 1/2, 11 1/2. Which they could, but to my surprise, I found it too sweet. So yesterday, when I was needing a coffee really bad after being stuck in traffic for 45 minutes, I asked for a single single. I enjoyed it!

In conclusion, if I learn nothing else from Paleo, what I do know is, I can get by on a single single!

And on a side note.... The Pork Shop in New Glasgow, sells great sausages which are all gluten free! The currywurst is a favorite of mine.

It's all about choices

Happy to say that I survived my weekend with only a couple of coffee and one splurge meal, which I regretted. 

Friday night was awesome. We made cauliflower pizza crust and I really enjoyed it. The texture was different, but I didn't' mind. We did cheat just a little by putting about two ounces of feta cheese on the pizza.(You can't have pizza without cheese!)

Chicken,spinach, tomato, red onion, olives, olive oil, and a bit of feta. It was a pretty damn good pizza!

Saturday I shopped all day and managed to resist temptation of the gastronomical delights at the Halifax Seaport Farmer's Market. I reluctantly had a chicken salad for lunch.

Sunday was the bad day :( Gary and I decided to have one cheat meal. So after a little hike with the dogs in Antigonish. We stopped in New Glasgow for some lunch and decided on Pizza Delight.....it tasted good going in but within hours I was back to having a bad stomach, feeling bloated and having not that much energy. 

So, I never gained any weight this weekend, and I am down 6lbs since the start! I see all positive to this change in lifestyle, and even though I don't follow all the rules 100% of the time, I get it, and so does my body. I will keep this up, hopefully til I've got 50lbs gone, we'll see!

Paleo rice? Yes indeed!

Yesterday reminded me of why I'm doing this challenge. Gary and I found a great recipe for paleo curry chicken, using coconut milk. he problem was, what we could have with it. We found mention of paleo rice a few times so I decided to take a look. Glad I did! 

Here's what you do:

Take a cauliflower a cut it down into smaller chunks. Microwave for a few minutes (how long really depends on your microwave.)
Once softened, put the chunks in a food processor and chop until the cauliflower bits take on the size of rice.
In a pan, heat up some olive oil with a bit of garlic, add cauliflower.
I also added, some diced green pepper and green onion.
Since we were making a curry, I also seasoned the cauliflower with a little curry powder and tumeric. 
I also added 1/2 a lime.

We had this with our curry chicken and it was amazing!!!!

Here are two pictures, just the cauliflower rice and then with the curry chicken.

I now there's going to be day s where I feel defeated by this challenge, but I will keep going because I know there's a tonne more recipes that I can find, just as or more delicious than this one!

I'll report on Monday with my success over the weekend (power of positive thoughts...right?)

I've cheated

I know I know....Only a few days in and I've cheated already :(  I was struggling with a headache since I started the Paleo routine and I just couldn't shake it. So yesterday I decided to try drinking a coffee to help with the headache. This was after I tried resolving the situation with Ibuporfen, many times! 

I bought my large double double, never finished it, thankfully considering a large double double from Tim Horton's is about 270 calories, not to mention the amount of sugars and dairy!

That was pretty much it besides the small amount of Worcestershire sauce on my steak last night. I would normally try and make my own in substitution for sauces and condiments, but that sauce sits in a barrel and ferments for 20 years, I don't have the patience for that! It is however, fat free, cholesterol free, and gluten free!

I also started doing a quick workout routine at home, just a little something to help tone up the arms and abs.  I do about 20 lunges, 50 situps, 10-15 push ups, jumping jacks, and a few weights for my arms. 

Here goes Day 4!