Sunday, April 3, 2011

Day 43 - No Brainer Way of Life

We are having such great success eating Paleo.  It is so strange to get up every morning and feel better each and every day.  I keep waiting for the shoe to fall, as they say...but it hasn't.  This way of life is just getting easier and easier.  I think too many people try to over-think it.  That's where the problems start to creep in.  I think one of the reasons we are having such great success is that we are NOT over-thinking it.  We are keeping it simple.  It is just a no-brainer way of life.

The food rules for us are simple...no grains, no dairy, no legumes, no sugar, nothing processed....that's it.

Do we mess up now and then?  Sure we do...we're human.  But, we still keep on keeping on and learn and go forward.

For instance, dear hubby and I went out for a nice dinner out Friday evening.  Our wonderful church hosts a "First Friday Kid's Klub" the first Friday of each month...which is a super opportunity for children to have a fun time doing activities with their friends in a safe environment...and give parents an inexpensive night out without having to pay for a babysitter.  Hubby and I decided to go to Pappadeaux...a wonderful seafood restaurant here in our hometown.  Ordering was a breeze...we didn't analyze every ingredient on every menu item...we just used common sense.  For our pre-dinner, sit around for an hour while waiting for your table in the bar drink...we both had a light beer...totally paleo, as long as we don't over-indulge...which we didn't.  After being shown to our table, hubby ordered a cold shrimp cocktail for an appetizer for us to share.  Again, avoided the sauce which I am sure was loaded with ketchup composed of high fructose corn syrup, didn't touch the crackers, and enjoyed the shrimp.  We told our waitress to not even leave the French bread loaf on our table.  For our entree, we split an 11 oz. tilapia filet covered with lobster and crab and it was served with spaghetti squash and green beans (instead of rice).  Now the fish did have a beurre blanc sauce (which is a white wine butter sauce for those of you who aren't into sauces)...which is definitely not paleo since it is made with butter.  We chose to indulge in this anyway...making sure to not scoop our fish into it, but just scraping off what we could and eating the fish anyway.  So, the questions are:  Did we have a wonderful dinner out?  Yes!  Did we make pretty good choices for a Paleo diet?  Yes.  Did we have an absolutely perfect Paleo meal?  No.  Could we have chosen better?  Yes...in hindsight, we probably should have ordered the sauce on the side or had the fish served without any sauce at all.  BUT....and here is the key for me...it was still a good effort at sticking to Paleo and it did not feel like this huge cheat...so I did not have this huge guilt thing going on the next day...and I had absolutely no feelings of self-degradation that I had "blown the whole thing" or that I should just "quit and give up".

This is such an antithesis to the way I normally approach food and dieting.  Normally, the minute I might not make an absolutely perfect decision...I decide that I have messed it all up and might as well give up and just go back to eating the way I normally eat.  Not so this time.  Like I said, I think there are decisions we might have made better, but all-in-all, I would count our night out as a success...not as a failure.

I guess the key is...I am not thinking of Paleo anymore as a diet.  I am just approaching it as "the way we eat" in our family.  We went to Costco today.  Not even tempted to buy some of the things that used to be in our basket 6 months ago...things like bread, rolls, cheese, hot dogs, corn dogs, frozen pizzas, frozen ravioli, or chips.  And some of things in my cart today were things I have never even purchased at Costco before - raw pecan halves, raisins, economy-sized Mrs. Dash, and beef jerky.  And for any of you who have ever been to Costco on a Sunday morning after the churches get out...you can practically have a complete meal just from the samples that are being offered at the end of each and every aisle.  Again...today?...not even tempted to taste.

Hubby and I have been at it almost two months and I just don't even have a desire to go back to our old lifestyle of heavy grain-based carbs and dairy.  It is just so easy to eat this way, sleep this way, move this way, and live this way...and I am dropping weight without even trying.  I am keeping my vow to not weigh until the 20th of the month...but I am sort of curious.  People at work and church are noticing that I am losing weight and starting to comment on it...it's nice to feel like someone is noticing and more importantly, that it is making that much of a difference that they CAN notice.

At a party yesterday, another man told hubby about a way to eat Paleo that combines periods of fasting with periods of indulging and then scheduled workouts, etc, etc,...to get even better and faster results.  My answer to that is NO....I don't want to complicate this.  I don't want to make it difficult.  It is so easy right now and so rewarding.  Why mess up a good thing...right?

Feeling good in my cave world!  Cave Mom!

2 comments:

  1. I'm with you on not wanting to complicate things, life is tough enough!
    Yay!! You made good restaurant choices, even when we try to get it smack on, there is always some additive, or chemical, or hidden something that we should not be ingesting.
    I have not cut dairy out of my diet, I have a shot of cream in my decaf coffee once a day, and I use grass fed butter to cook my eggs...the weight loss has definately slowed down so i may have to drop the dairy :(

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  2. A lot of paleo/primal eaters use butter so, even what you had wasn't bad at all :D

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