Day Four...

It's Wednesday, and it's working...

First off, this picture has nothing whatsoever to do with what i'm writing - it's just a cute one of my two littlest boys and i had to share :)...

SO - T has me on the paleo diet and i've lost three pounds in 4 days but i was so irritable yesterday and today i just about passed out several times, and then my breath was so bad... i used the ketostix and i'm in ketosis - which wasn't a goal, but T seems to think it's a good thing...

and a good time for a workout!

Apparently my body is eating up my fat stores (T assures me i'm only eating my fat, nothing else - like bones or the minimal muscle i have holding my skeleton together)... so time to pour it on!

So - tonight's workout was

TABATAS!

I'm seriously really in love with the mix we use when we do tabatas - the songs always equal endorphins and relief (respectively) in their 10 and 20 second long snips...

And it felt so good to stop!

Oh =- and the self discipline thing? Here it is - this paleo diet means NO grains, no flour, no sugar, no peas, sweet potatoes, lentils, beans, rice, bread, cookies etc...

Today i took the littles out to KFC for lunch before starting on a long list of errands (after school!) - and i sat down and looked at my options - i could have diet pop - AND chicken - if i took the skin off. I love KFC chicken skin! LOVE IT! When Oprah confessed her love for chicken skin sandwiches i TOTALLY got it! And here's the truth - i skinned my chicken pieces and gave the skin to my skinny little children who can easily burn off the calories...

I have CHANGED.....

There are probably some deep spiritual truths here - i'd like to believe that self denial is finally becoming part of who i am... but it was probably just the fog from being on the weird diet in the first place. Anyway, i'm feeling no pain, no desires, no hunger, and that's got to be good news!

So - other meals today -

breakfast was two eggs (and i made perfect fluffy pancakes for the children and didn't eat even one, even without syrup... i am getting to be such a good girl!) - also tea with no milk or sweetener

lunch - KFC chicken - 2 pieces without the skin, and diet coke

dinner - chicken wings, raw carrots and celery sticks and a diet coke...

too much diet coke, probably... but a girl's gotta have a few vices...

Day Three...

I was doing some reading at www.thepaleodiet.com tonight, in his FAQ section...

So confusing!

I've read a lot of things that sounded just as convincing - i.e. that canola is bad for you (i know it's almost all genetically modified, and i have a caution about using it just because of that) - that coconut oil is a miracle oil (Cordain doesn't agree) - and i just wonder about all the anti-grain stuff - as a little girl visiting my grandparent's place on the Prairies, i remember grabbing a handful of grain from an empty train car, and grinding it into gum with my teeth... Surely children have done that forever?

Anyway, it's hard to follow this diet because i don't agree with its primary assertion which is that the world is a zillion billion years old and evolution will teach us all :) - the timeline on my kitchen wall this year starts at the year 4004BC :)... but so far i am being good...

What i ate today:

breakfast - two eggs, with a little salsa on the side, tea with milk and stevia

lunch - a little leftover roast beef, some grapes, some hazelnuts

dinner - delicious fatty shoulder blade steak, roasted carrots and leeks and garlic (yummy!) and a diet coke...

snack - an apple, half a turkey sausage, some hazelnuts and aNOTHER diet coke! I want to break the habit, but.....

Third Day - Monday

Yesterday was Monday - not my favourite day, but especially when T is getting us on a new food kick - i don't feel particularly gifted in nutritional analysis, and i've still got meals to get for seven littles all day long...

But i did a great job!

Breakfast

two eggs with a slice of ham, in an omelette, with tea (stevia and a little milk, which i know is verboten, but tea is always too hot for me, and by the time it cools down, i've got to be clearing the table for homeschool and getting on to the next chore...)

Lunch

half a turkey sausage, some grapes, some hazelnuts

Dinner

I made chicken thighs and T steamed some broccoli and boiled some brussels sprouts - the only bad thing about eating this way seems to be that there are no leftovers...

Snack

at bedtime - a diet coke :) and some pepitas and almonds, some grapes, and a few oysters (thanks, T!)

No workout, since i'm having trouble with iliotibial band stuff? T knows a stretch, and when he gets home he'll help me get rid of it and hopefully we can go for a run. I've got to wear a tuque now when we run - the air is lovely and crisp, but when we run, it's too cold for my little ears!

I do have a specific goal in mind - i'd like to lose seventeen pounds - and as of the morning of day Four, i've lost two :) So i'm happy!

We are celebrating Thanksgiving this weekend, though - it comes earlier in Canada, and then we are celebrating a week early since my sister and i are both travelling to our middle sister's vicinity for the Walk to Remember at the Alberta Legislature - if you've ever lost a little one - this is something worth marking on your calendar. There is such comfort in being around people who know how tender your heart is. Like the Bible says:

2 Corinthians 1:4

Who comforteth us in all our tribulation, that we may be able to comfort them which are in any trouble, by the comfort wherewith we ourselves are comforted of God.

I would like to give back next year by organizing a Walk in my own town, but this year again i will travel 3 hours and walk in the silence and autumn leaves, remembering the little one who would have made our family so happy, and who does fill me with joy still, knowing that she was a gift, even if only given for a little while...

Anyway, i'm in charge of bringing a ton of cookies and caesar salad :) and i am thinking we'll bring some paleo options with us, too - we don't mind celebrating, but there are plenty of yummy things to eat that do fit the paleo way of eating and it's hard to set a habit in just ten days...

We'll see. It's not a huge stressor :) -

Day Two...

I'm fighting something off - headachy and feeling weak... But i felt like this before we started, so i'm not blaming the paleo diet... it's just making me glad i have a husband who can and will cook! Hooray for the weekend!

So this is what we did today - meal by meal :) - we'll see how far we can push this...

Breakfast:

omelette with leek, and a little ham. No cheese - so it didn't hold all the ingredients in, but mmmmm it was delicious anyway!

and tea - brown rice gen mai... i'm not sure if it's paleo :) but i'm assuming it is - and i sweetened it with stevia - again, not sure of it's paleo-ness, but it's an herb...

Lunch:

Beef curry - left over roast beef with ground almonds, indian spices, olive oil, garlic. The little ones had Mr. Noodles :) but that's all we ate and it was delicious...

Dinner:

Beef heart - we'd never bought it before, or prepared it before, but to our surprise, all the children ate it up and asked for more. T just sauteed it in olive oil with seasoning salt. For sides, he had canned corn for the littles (not paleo) - and a big bowl of delicious cherry tomatos, plus beets he had sauteed with a little garlic salt and left in the warm oven to rest, and carrots he had boiled, and then left to absorb some butter in a pot...

I'm feeling really nice eating this way - but i am a little worried about this week - cooking for eight or nine three times a day, AND keeping it all paleo? Not sure how it will work out... I do miss the little amount of white bread i was "allowed" on the Zone (as "unfavourable carbs") - and i miss dairy... Especially cheese and sour cream! But T says we will have one cheat day a week, and i'll just have to make it a dilly :) - Perogies with sour cream and bacon and Hagen-Dasz for dinner? We'll see!

Meanwhile, i'm off to prep school work for the week and make a menu for tomorrow. I usually like to have weekly menu, but i think just going one day at a time until we get the hang of this way of eating will be less overwhelming...

T has a coworker with celiac disease - and he has to eat this way all the time - it makes me realize how simple food can be, and at the same time, what a huge amount of "convenience" food is eliminated this way, as well... What we are eating is healthy, but it does take time to prepare, more so than our "quick meal" days where T picks up frozen pizza :) or i bake three loaves of bread for lunch (french boules) and give it to the children along with fruit and cheese and a lot of butter...

Quick paleo lunches? Maybe i will stick to paleo for me and eat eggs for lunch, too... We'll see...

First day...

After T brought me the article on Paleo eating,

http://www.earth360.com/diet_paleodiet_balzer.html

we did a quick search of the house for the book we knew we owned, but realized we must have taken it down to the book swap.

We'll have to go see if we can swap for it back. But meanwhile, we decided to head out and fill up the fridge for the week, with healthy paleo food.

We have been getting used to shopping for the Zone, and even before that, we weren't big fans of packaged foods or store bought baked goods (we both like to bake - this might be hard!), but shopping for a Paleo diet was even more restrictive. We do acknowledge that because of our children's rapid growth, they will likely not follow a strict Paleo diet. Milk has been a big, snack/protein, especially for our oldest son who is now 5'8" and 140lbs and we will likely make sure he has access to as much dairy as he needs. They do tend to be big carboholics (especially when mama makes french bread) - and we will still feed them food and lots of it, but our thoughts this week is to make sure we have what we need to go paleo and just see how it works.

We loaded our cart up with fresh veggies and fruits and i thought maybe we should try a few new things, or even things that we haven't eaten a lot before, so in addition to grapes, apples, carrots, garlic, etc, we also put in a big fat rutabaga, and beets with long greens.

Then through the bulk foods aisle, and had to forgo all the trail mix (all of them had either peanuts or cashew), but got almonds and hazelnuts (we have a lot of walnuts already from our food coop).

Then to the meat section, where pork is on for a dollar a pound. Even here we were adventurous, buying a lot of pork (easy crockpot meals for the school week), but also beef liver and beef heart.

We did buy a little more butter, but no milk, and we forgot to get more eggs so we're down to about three dozen (we usually buy six dozen a week for our family of nine people). Frozen berries were the last thing in our cart and then we headed home.

Our first paleo meal:

crockpot roast beef - seasoned with red wine (BAD) onions, paprika, pepper, salt

boiled rutabaga

beet greens - sauteed in olive oil and garlic

We didn't announce anything to the children, just set out the meal and it wasn't that different from a regular meal, except that there were no yorkshire puddings or gravy (but there was the jus from the roast, which was delicious poured over the meat). Turned out, no one even mentioned the lack of yorkshires, and the children ate up all the rutabagas, asking for seconds and thirds, and they even gobbled down the beet greens! I should have known they would like rutabaga, as they used to love to eat kohlrabi, raw, fresh from our neighbour Erna's garden... But it was a nice start to a new way of eating.

We're used to having snacks in the Zone, and i wasn't sure how that would work - but i did have homemade halvah balls (cookies! made from sesame seeds, a little olive oil and a little honey) - and we had fruit and nuts, so we actually had a very satisfactory (albeit protein poor) bedtime snack...

Tomorrow will be our first full day of paleo! The article we read suggested changing one meal a day to paleo, beginning with breakfast, but we'll take it meal by meal i think...

A new blog, a new way of eating...

This blog is a new one for me. I'm used to blogging about silly stuff my children do, about homeschooling, about having babies. These are the things i'm an expert at :).

Food and nutrition - not so much.

But i'm married to a man who has made fitness and nutrition a hobby for our family, and who makes it fun, and i decided to take the time to document our latest odyssey - going Paleo.

To introduce us, we are a traditional family - a dad, a mom, high school sweethearts, married for 15 years. And we've got a family - a nice BIG family. On our first anniversary, i was 8 months pregnant, and we've had a baby every other year since. So now we've got, as of this writing, an almost 14 year old boy, 11 yo girl, 9 yo boy, 7 yo boy, 5 yo girl, 3 yo boy, and 1 yo baby girl (actually, she's 18 months now).

We are Christians (but not Mormons or Catholics, which are the two things people ask us all the time) who believe that children are a blessing and we love our big family.

We are pretty active and take our children out to hike in the Rocky mountains, where we live, almost every weekend. We love cross country skiing, the children love biking and swimming, and my husband has set up a home gym in our basement with all the equipment we'll need for a long time, and helps the children (and mama) set fitness goals.

After having my sixth child, i had gained 3 lbs with every baby, and although 18 lbs is not a tremendous amount of weight, it was too much for me and my smaller frame, at 5'2. I asked my husband to help me lose the weight, and this he did with a vengeance. We went on the Zone together, and started working out using www.crossfit.com - T could do all the exercises, having previously played college football, rugby, wrestling, hockey, and basically being ultra fit and athletic. I, on the other hand, have never been very coordinated, athletic or interested. He adjusted the exercises to my ability level, and started me running for the first time in my life.

And all the weight came off. I was thrilled!

Then we found we were pregnant again, and we were going to be so healthy for that pregnancy, but we ended up losing that little one. And getting pregnant again right away. So all told, i was pregnant for a whole year, and a little paranoid of "being healthy" (the babies conceived on Mcdonalds and homemade cinnamon buns had been fine!)...

So here we are, with an 18 month old, a house full of energy, and a plan to go a little harder and get back in shape, again. I'm not as heavy as i was after #6, but i'm ready to lose a little weight, and we're eager to see if we can get good/better results eating Paleo than we did Zone!