A Month of Paleo

Spaghetti squash with ground turkey meat sauce. This makes me not miss pasta.

I’m back to report on my one month trial of a Paleo diet and can say that it’s been fairly successful. I have lost 8 pounds this month and while it is not the 10 pounds I had aimed for, I am happy with it since I had a few days of very much not Paleo eating throughout the month.

Overall, it is not difficult to stick to Paleo foods on a day to day basis. It is most difficult, like many diets that restrict your choices, in social situations and when eating at restaurants. The latter is the easier of the two since most restaurants will allow you to sub starches for steamed/roasted vegetables. Parties, though? Really hard. If you can eat beforehand, it helps. However, most parties we go to we are there for 5+ hours and as time passes, I get hungry again!

The other thing I did this past month was count my calories every day. Honestly, I have to wonder if my weight loss truly came from calorie counting rather than Paleo eating. I suppose I could try another experiment where I don’t eat Paleo but still count calories for the next month? I’m not sure I want to go to that extreme, though. Weight loss aside, eating a Paleo diet has truly reduced my frequent bouts of stomach pain/bloat/gas from my previous diet consisting heavily of whole grains and beans.

With that said, I’m still not convinced that grains and legumes are truly bad for you, especially when eaten in moderation. I’ve long been a believer in a well rounded diet that doesn’t completely eliminate entire food groups (unless necessary, of course).

So where do I go from here? I’ve decided to continue eating Paleo as regularly as possible, because it really is nice to not experience bad stomach cramps on an almost daily basis. However, I am just not the type of person who won’t have a cupcake on her birthday (the 17th of this month, by the way!) or drink a couple of beers at a summer barbecue. I think it is okay to allow myself those things on occasion. Getting to a healthy weight is really important to me but so is living a fun and happy life. It comes down to one word: balance.

Tags: diet, paleo, weight loss

This entry was posted on June 12, 2011 at 5:10 pm and is filed under Eat, Shrink. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.