Monday, February 21, 2011

My Paleo Experience

As some of you may remember, I decided to give the Paleo way of eating a try back in January. I told myself I'd do it for 30 days and see what I thought of it. Click here for the previous post.

I did well eating Paleo until the last week and then because I was sick I decided to be a big baby and only eat Paleo for breakfast and supper.

Pros:
I felt much better eating Paleo. No bloating, no stomach cramps.
More energy for my workouts and day to day
For the most part I like what my food options are: veggies, nuts, meats, some fruit
I found out I LOVE almond butter, it's just expensive

Cons:
The first few days I craved sugar hardcore. Even though I thought I didn't normally eat that much sugar, it was quite apparent that I really missed it once it was gone.
Not eating dairy or pasta. Living in Italy and not eating pasta was quite frankly, hard. The last few months I've been drinking raw milk and I craved that a lot too.
Eating paleo here was a bit expensive and also I felt like I didn't have access to some of the fats/meats that I would have access to in the States. Kind of a bummer.

On my vacation I didn't eat Paleo at all and I haven't since I got back. I thought once I was done with it, that I'd probably never eat that way again, but the last few days I've been thinking about going back on it. I think for me there will be a few exceptions though. There are those out there that do eat some dairy with their Paleo lifestyle and things that I like, such as kefir and raw milk are on the list of "Acceptable dairy". I've been favoriting Paleo websites the last few days and feel like I have a better array of recipes to choose from then I did before. I'm not saying I won't eat pasta or risotto or a Reeses Peanut Butter cup, but I think those things will be showing up in my eating habits a little less.

I'm not sure I'll ever eat 100% Paleo, but I can see the merits of eating that way and for now I think I'll go back to trying to stick with it.

5 comments:

Elle Sees said...

thanks for sharing your review....so what's the next plans?

Sara said...

I've never been a big dairy person to begin with. Breakfast was and always will be the hardest to do paleo. But when we got rid of bread for breakfast alone, our whole world changed.

And I know a lot of paleo folks that do the raw milk thing. The less processed and nasty things are the better. There are certain cheeses that are acceptable too. The diary isn't a huge deal as long as you don't gorge on it several meals a day. Bread always is a bigger enemy than dairy.

Mom in High Heels said...

Interesting. I read the Paleo book a while back and wanted to give it a try, but being pregnant I CRAVE chocolate milk (and I normally hate milk, except in cereal). Also, pasta and cheeses are my friend. I don't think I could give those up. Maybe pasta (maybe), but not cheese.

The Mrs. in Stilettos said...

Glad to see you tried it as well! You might want to check out Primal Blueprint as well! I have tons of links to webpages for recipes if you want some! Just shoot me an e-mail!

Anonymous said...

I love dairy and I love carbs. I've done South Beach a couple of times, and that was hard enough--even with all the dairy that was allowed! I think healthy eating is just not in the cards for me, ha!