Welcome to my new blog about eating a simply delicious whole food diet — primarily Paleo!
A year and a half ago my husband and I began the Paleo diet, and it has been quite the journey! Eating the Paleo way not only helped us both lose some unwanted pounds and improve our overall health, but it also further changed how I look at nutrition, especially as it pertains to healing in the body.
I’m often asked by friends and family if we are still eating the Paleo diet and the answer is — yes! It’s become a life style, not simply a fad or diet in the sense we all know that word to mean. Some people emphatically tell me how they could never give up certain foods like we have, but once you eliminate foods which cause unwelcome symptoms in your body you never want to go back to eating them! Several have complained it’s too complicated and/or expensive but once I got in a groove meals came together quickly and while our food budget did increase it’s more than worth it to spend our money on staying healthy. And others simply wonder why we don’t just eat normal! Ha! I think we actually eat more ‘normal’ than the typical American diet — at least more healthy!
So why Paleo? Why suddenly go so radical by jumping on the Paleo bandwagon rolling through town? Well, you can read the longer version over here but in short — we decided to give the Paleo diet a try after seeing how it transformed a friend of ours by helping him lose weight while reversing and eliminating some long-time medical issues.
After that encounter with our friend, I spent the next several days and nights researching Paleo. Countless hours were spent learning all I could about what to eat and what not to eat on the Paleo diet, a gazillion recipes were downloaded (ok, not that many, but quite a few!), and my meal plans received a huge makeover.
And once the pantry had been cleaned out, recipes printed off and a grocery list written up — I was off and running with this Paleo thing!
Now I won’t lie and say it was a piece of cake changing to the Paleo diet — of course not, since cake is not on our Paleo diet, well not the typical cake anyway! This new way of eating did take some time to adjust to. The first month was probably the hardest for me personally because I was the one doing the research, finding recipes, grocery shopping and preparing meals — and through it all, unbeknownst to me at the time, I was beginning to detox and thought I had the flu! I was extremely tired, irritable and achy all over. What in the world?! Here I was eating better, eating extremely healthy — and now I was sick?! But more on that later.
Switching to the Paleo diet wasn’t really that drastic of a change from how we’d been eating since most of our meals were based around whole foods before switching over. The major change was in what we eliminated from our diet — grains, legumes and most dairy — and that’s what threw off my groove in the kitchen at first. I had to change my mindset about what meals looked like and this also meant rethinking how to make hubby’s breakfasts and lunches he took during the week with him for work. No more breakfast burritos made with tortillas or sandwich fillings layered between slices of bread. But I persevered and within a couple weeks it started to get easier and now over a year later it’s become second nature!
So what exactly is the Paleo diet you are probably wondering by now! In short, the Paleo diet is a whole food diet designed around what primitive man — or the caveman — would have eaten. Basically it consists of the type of foods our ancestors ate thousands of years ago — whole unprocessed foods — when they had to forage, grow, and hunt and fish for their meals.
Foods found on the Paleo diet consist primarily of: meat, fish and eggs; fresh vegetables and fruits; nuts, seeds and healthy fats and oils such as avocado, coconut and extra virgin olive oil. Okay, so the oils might not have been readily available thousands of years ago but they are healthy fats which every diet should include. Foods typically avoided on the Paleo diet include: grains, legumes, refined sugars and dairy. Remember though, nothing is written in stone — well, unless you are a caveman I suppose — and as you will see, we are flexible in the things we eat and not always 100% Paleo.
I see the Paleo diet as a good jumping off point for anyone wanting to revamp their nutrition and improve their health by switching to a whole food diet. If your nutrition is already primarily based around whole foods then you’re on the right track. If not, then the Paleo way of eating can help get you started on eating foods which nourish your body and help with weight loss, while providing the necessary nutritional components to prevent and heal disease.
Through our journey of eating the Paleo diet, I have been able to clearly identify those foods which cause feelings of poor health in my body including signs of inflammation, sluggishness, bloating and fatigue. My husband has also reaped the benefits when at his last doctor visit there was a dramatic decrease in his blood pressure! Nothing changed overnight, but it has been well worth the time and effort to get to this place in our lives of better health.
My hope through this blog is to inspire, encourage and offer assistance to anyone seeking to improve their health through whole food nutrition and healthy lifestyle choices for themselves and their families. And as it will be a place of recording my ongoing journey into better health through a whole food diet we will be learning together along the way!
I hope as we take this journey together you will see how truly simple and delicious eating a whole food diet can be.
In good health!
Simply Delicious Paleo 