Why I Don't Eat Strict Paleo Anymore

A lot of this blog has been dedicated to Paleo and Whole 30 eating. Like a lot. Like several years of me trying to make worldwide recipes Paleo friendly... and now we're ditching it.

BUT WHY?!

Well, there are a few reasons that are too hard to explain on Instagram so I thought it was time for a blog post.

1) Food In vs. Energy Out

Paleo emphasizes not really needing to count calories. If you're really eating strict paleo, your calorie count will be lower. It is definitely the biggest positive of eating Paleo and why so many people find success with it. Think about it - you're cutting sugar which has a ton of empty calories (things that give energy reserves but don't make you less hungry) and many carbs (which do help the hunger side but also provide a lot of energy that needs to be burned).

What this really sums up to - a non-Paleo diet usually leads to higher energy reserves (aka calories) that will convert to fat if you're not burning them....

Post Whole30 - Literally starving

And I had the opposite problem. As I ramped up our fitness by working out more and training for half marathons,I was really really hungry. Paleo wasn't always giving me as many calories in as I was burning out. That's why I lost so much weight on Whole 30 (like 15 pounds in a month) despite not being very big to begin with. I was burning up all my fat reserves while training for the half marathon and I would come home from a long run and spend the whole day eating. The problem was that all these Whole30 compliant foods were not filling me up so I'd have to snack all day to try to replenish the 1000+ calories I burned on my run.

On any given day, my exercise leads me to burn 300-800 extra calories and the easiest way to get those back was just to let myself eat things we liked like Mac & Cheese or pasta or cookies. We earned it.

So - I started looking at food more like that - what does my body need? Did I burn a lot of calories today that I need to replenish? Am I still eating plenty of protein and vegetables?

This is largely known as Macros which are huge in the workout world. It's keeping track of what out versus how much you exercise and adjusting your diet for optimum fitness. While I'm not super mathematical about it, I do track my workouts and know how many calories I burn a day and take that into consideration when I'm planning our dinners.

After this we got Mac & Cheese and went beer tasting. Because Macros.

2) Ok I Guess I Do Like Bread

One of the reasons I was so ok with Paleo to begin with was that bread and pasta and lot of those things didn't really excite me. They felt like vehicles for sandwich filling or sauce and it felt like I could just translate those to a salad or put sauce on vegetables instead. That worked really well for a while and I really didn't miss the carb-filled vehicles.

But that slowly changed.

Mac and Cheese is BAE

First, I started growing a love for Mac and Cheese. Despite several attempts, it never tasted as good when I tried to make it paleo friendly or with quinoa or something else. There is substitute for ooey gooey cheesey pasta.... so that became part of our 80/20 (eat paleo 80% of the time and 20% of the time cheat).

And then I fell in love with butter. That sounds gross but I discovered grass fed Irish butter Kerrygold and it was so creamy and delicious, I wanted to eat it on everything. While it was great for cooking, especially on steaks or fish... everyone knows good butter needs good bread. I started buying sourdough and making toast occasionally... and then more frequently... and now it's basically my breakfast staple.

The bread might still just be a vehicle for my butter but the combination of sourdough and creamy butter is perfection and I love it.

Also - have you tried Avocado toast? It's like really really good. Also, not Paleo.

3) Sometimes It's Just Easier

Yea, I said you were easy.

Look, I like cooking. However, it's hard to have a job and workout a lot and take classes and read a bunch of books and balance everything. Sometimes you just want something easy. Sometimes that's heating up a frozen enchilada from Trader Joe's or running to the Mexican restaurant on the corner. Eating clean 100% of the time? No one has time for that. I have every kitchen tool to make cooking easier but sometimes there's no substitution for the 5 minutes it takes to run to Del Taco. It's not every day but sometimes you have those days where you need food quickly and can't whip a totally clean meal. Even when I do have time - pasta or tacos are just easy dinners that I know will check off all of our Macro boxes. 

4) We Still Eat REALLY Healthy

Pasta AND veggies because we're healthy like that

I was Paleo for a long time and if anything, I learned a lot about food. I think the biggest take away, and something I plan on sticking to for life, is to know what we're eating.

I'm obsessed with labels. I check what we buy and try to limit excess chemicals or sugars. We avoid "fat free" like the plague and instead stick with items that have a few natural ingredients. I still make most things from scratch. Dan begs me to make paleo ranch because he likes it better than the store bought stuff.

I still have tons of Paleo cookbooks and follow Paleo bloggers. I still make Paleo recipes. Our default dinners are still mostly meat and vegetables. Maybe I'll snack on a piece of toast and maybe we'll have a pasta night once or twice a week but we do it in the cleanest way possible. I buy fresh bread. I make our own pasta sauces that have more vegetables than you'd believe.

Not being strict Paleo does not mean we don't eat clean. Sure - we have our beer and donut dates. Yes, we are obsessed with Mac and Cheese, but those are still the exception. On any given night we have a plate full of broccoli, some meat, and maybe a side of rice.... and then we'll have a cookie because hey, we workout.

We went on a hike so it's ok!!!

January 2017 - Habit Check In #1

Since this year's resolution is more about building habits than setting a goal for year, I'm going to check in monthly on how those habits are going. That gives some more blog content and also keeps me accountable. A habit isn't something you can just rush through at the end of the year and say you did it, it's about showing up every day or week or month and putting your best effort forward.

So let's see how January went!

Family Time

Dan and I have been doing so well on our weekly walks.

Also, family time is more than just having a set activity to do every day. It's about being present. It's about the little moments like joking around with each other while we're home and sneaking hugs and kisses (Harley gets VERY jealous). It's about date nights (in addition to our weekly hikes). Between work and family, I had to spend some time in LA away from Dan and we really just missed each-others presence. I think something about making time for each other outside of the house has really added to that.

There's also a funny thing about habits - the others involved started to get really used to them too. Week 4 I was on the last day of a cold and while I felt better, I wasn't super excited about going for a hike. However, Dan and Harley REALLY wanted to. I probably would have skipped the week but they encouraged me to get out so we picked a really easy hike (more of a walk) and got to enjoy the sunshine which ended up feeling really nice.

Stick to a Regular Fitness Schedule

This has been going so well. As I said in my original post, one week this month I did 10 workouts in a week. Don't worry - I'm well aware that it's not sustainable. The next week it was 6 workouts. The week after was a little less due to travel, rain, and a cold limiting my workout options. The point is that I still made time for it when I could. I obviously couldn't meet my friends at the gym if I was in another city but I got outside for a walk as soon as the rain cleared. I tried to work my travel schedule around not missing all of my gym classes as well. Being sick just really threw a wrench in things but once I got better I was SO antsy to workout again because my standard now is exercise instead of apathy. Habits are about making a new normal for yourself and laying in bed for a few days was not part of my normal.

It was kind of nice to start the year with this lesson - life happens. You can't always follow your strict schedule, especially if it requires you to be in a certain place or the cooperation of the forces. With that said... progress was still made.

I love MapMyRun Challenges. Some months I'm awesome at them, some months I'm terrible. Last year there was a challenge to run 1,000 kilometers in 2016. It went so well they re-did it for 2017 with 1,017 kilometers. The picture on the left is how I did last year. I didn't get to 1,000 last year. Not even close (but to be fair, one of my half marathons didn't track properly so it's off by like 22km). I don't think I'll get to 1,017 this year (its like 11 miles/ 19km a week which is tough with climbing and body pump) either... but I want to do a whole lot better. So far this month (on the right), I've crushed it by already going about 1/4 of the distance I did last year. Sometimes goals or habits aren't about reaching a certain number but just doing a little bit better than you did last time. If I keep up this pace, I should get to around 700 km this year. That's like 450 miles on my feet and a huge step up from last year's number.

Meal Planning

This one is so tough. We had a good week but then I had to go out of town just to come home for a week, spend most of it sick, and leave again. That makes it so hard to buy groceries and plan meals. I worked with that the best I could. The first week that we did our meal planning had another big hiccup - I planned out a week of meals, forgetting that 1) some of the meals had many servings and could last a couple of days 2) it was Restaurant Week and we had some meals planned around that. On the plus side, Dan was left with a lot of leftovers while I was out of town so it wasn't a huge waste.

I also got to use my meal planning skills a bit with my parents. For those who don't know, my mom hasn't been feeling great and therefore hasn't been cooking as much... which really affects how much my dad eats. I decided that while I was here I'd cook him a nice dinner each night. I think before I come back, I might reach into my recipe database to find something I can make in bulk for him and freeze so he has some easy meals on hand.

We did try a couple of new recipes though and that was AWESOME. Not going to lie, Dan would probably be pretty happy with me just making brocolli, quinoa, and some meat every day but I love variety and finding some new, simple recipes is amazing - like trying out this fish poached in tomato sauce that I saw on Instagram a couple of times. It takes about 10-15 minutes and was amazing. It also uses cod which is a cheaper, more sustainable fish than salmon so that was a double win.

Take an Annual Trip with my Husband

This is the only habit on here that really is an annual thing. However, a big trip isn't just something you wake up and go on and there's been progress here. One of my goals for this month was to book our flights. I had a goal price for our tickets and ended up finding a great flight that fit in that budget. That gives us a little more money for excursions while we are in Europe which is awesome!

My goal for next month is to start booking some of those excursions and figuring our what we're going to do in the 8-10 hours we have in each city so we can maximize our time!

Read a Book a Week

I destroyed this goal this month. 4-5 books would have put me on pace for this goal. I read 7.

I'd like to thank the library for processing my holds faster than my book-a-week pace, pushing me to finish books faster. Honorable Mention goes out to book club for forcing me to read one non-library book so I could host a meetup.

The end of January also marked a new beginning - the beginning of Spring classes! Last spring I took a few online classes at the community college. I had to take a break last Summer and Fall for the wedding but I'm excited to pick up another half course this Spring. I'll have to take off the second half of Spring for our trip but Summer and Fall should also be free for me to continue my education. The goal would be to take a class each semester or half semester in perpetuity to always continue building my skills and knowledge base. You might wonder how this fits here but I count the text book as a book I'm reading this year so there.

Also a big thank you to kitty for keeping firmly grounded in  my reading hammock. 

Me Time

This one took a turn for the worse - which also happens. I've obviously been spending a little more time taking care of other people this month and that's ok. Me time isn't supposed to be selfish time. Sometimes we're needed other places and there's it's own satisfaction in knowing you're helping someone else.

I also started an online class the last week of the month. It's only a 8 week class but I'm sure it will cut into my "me time" for the next two months as well, but cutting into "me" fun time in order to make "me" a better person seems like a pretty fair trade off.

Me time was also about me realizing while it sucked and I felt like a jerk, I had to duck out on plans while I was sick so I wasn't stressing my body more. It also meant not scheduling every minute of my life out which left Dan and I with a totally free weekend at the end of the month. It was great to really let myself push out the last of the cold, read another book, and take care of a lot of little house projects that had been put off due to the rain. While I would have loved to add more video game playing to this list, it felt good just to be a little productive too.

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I think I'm going to start creating monthly challenges for myself as well. At first I was thinking following a friend into a Frugal February but I already had some expenses planned for this month that would make it feel like a weak effort so we'll push that one back a bit. Instead I'd like to go with a "Fabulous February" - and make a better attempt to dress nicer and do my makeup and hair (especially with my new short look that requires a bit of styling). I'd love to build up the habit of looking a bit nicer each day.

So that's January. As a whole - If this is how the rest of the year goes, I'm going to have a good one. The nice thing about habits is that they don't happen all at once. They're a thing you grow on and get a little better at every day or week or month. January laid a great groundwork for good habits and I'm excited to see where February takes us.