Anyone Wanna Do A 7-Day Paleo Challenge With Me?

[BlackBerryJuice 349]

Hey team, I was thinking of doing a short Paleo experiment for a week. For those unfamiliar with Paleo, it's a certain type of eating that's believed to mimic the way our ancestors ate before the advent of agriculture. In its strictest form, it's the raw food diet; the mainstream form is basically lean meats/fish + eggs + veggies + fruit + nuts and no grains of any sort, no legumes, and no dairy; and the least restrictive form allows dairy (albeit organic only) but still eschews legumes and grains. Of course, you are not allowed any sugar or artificial sweeteners, and no processed foods. But there's no limits on fat intake, no calorie counting, and no Portion Control (not that it's an issue for sleevers!).

I was thinking of trying this for a week just to see how sustainable it would be and to see how it'd make me feel. There are all kinds of claims as to improvement in your sleep, digestion, energy levels, loss of cravings, disappearance of afternoon crashes, depression, etc etc, and I basically just want to test that.

Anyone with me? I'm thinking of doing the modified version with dairy - just because I'd like to continue with my whey Protein Shakes. I'll be using almond milk instead of milk in my shakes, though, but I'll let myself have an organic Greek yogurt or two here and there if I feel like it.

I would like to start on Monday, just to make things easier and give myself the weekend to prep some meals, and hopefully find a few people to do this with me for support and exchanging experiences!

[BlackBerryJuice 349]

Anyone? Anyone?!

[rodswife 155]

I'll do it. I pretty much do it now with the exception of cheese. All I eat is Proteins and veggies and an occasional bite of fresh fruit. I won't eat my meat raw though. Lol it has to be cooked.

[rodswife 155]

I can also say that by doing this, I feel tired at night but I'm hungry every 2 hours it seems. I can only eat an ounce at a time

[BlackBerryJuice 349]

Yeah, I could see how it'd be tough if you are early out, I personally wouldn't do it if I weren't able to eat a couple of ounces of food at once.

And yeah, I wouldn't eat my meat raw, either! I eat carpaccio and steak tartare, and I eat raw oysters and, of course, sashimi, but I just don't feel comfortable buying meat even at the farmers' market to eat raw. E. coli is serious business, and so is cholera!

Plus I think raw red meat would be tough on the sleeve.

[rodswife 155]

I'm still down for trying it out and omg, LOVE raw oysters. Lol. I eat 6 small meals a day so I'm cool. Just in my 3 week stall at the moment and trying to break it

[BlackBerryJuice 349]

I'm not gonna lie, planning this several days ahead of time was NOT a good idea....mostly because in the meantime, anticipating the deprivation of days to come, I've consumed every single drop of sugar and bread in the house!

[Kat Crowder 34]

That's not the pre-Paleo kitchen purge you're supposed to do!

Seriously, though, I think Paleo is a great way of eating, and if I did a good job of sticking to it presurgery, I wouldn't be getting sleeved in a month or so. My 6 month presurgical diet was Paleo, and I felt great for the first month, lost about 10 pounds, then the holidays came and I failed to follow it more often than not. Once I'm post surgery and back to real foods, I intend to follow it in a modified fashion.

[sleeve 4 me 910]

Best wishes to you

[BlackBerryJuice 349]

Holy crap, that's a lot of food! I'm on call tomorrow, so I'll be at the hospital for 26 hours. Hoping that I can get some sleep, but I had to pack enough food to last 26 hours on my feet, and omg, it's a LOT of volume!

Things I'll be eating from 5:30 am tomorrow to 7:30 am on Tues:

smoothie with 1 cup coconut milk and 1 cup blueberries

2 eggs

1 clamshell of strawberries

1 clamshell of blackberries

6 small cucumbers

8 small heirloom tomatoes

1 apple

1 oz hazelnut butter (NOM! Never tried it before, it's SO good!)

2 eye of round steaks

1 pear

1/2 container of plain Greek yogurt

and then unlimited coffee with cream and tea

Believe it or not, that ridiculous amount of food is under 1800 calories. I also packed a can of tuna in case I have a major snack attack, but I hope all of the above stuff will be enough!

Heavy on fruit, but I'm not a huge vegetable person, so I'm taking it easy on myself in at least ONE department.

Dear Lord, give me strength, lol.

[Jswilbur 42]

This sounds interesting! Are you using a specific book or website as a guideline?

[BlackBerryJuice 349]

This sounds interesting! Are you using a specific book or website as a guideline?

I'm reading Mark Sisson's "21-day primal blueprint" and just browsing various sites online. Strictly speaking, it appears that there's "paleo" and then there's "primal" - because some people just HAVE to have a name for what they eat - and the difference is that "primal" allows some high-fat dairy, whereas "paleo" is dairy-free. I've known about paleo for a while, it's a popular way of eating among people who do Crossfit (which I do). My gym actually did a paleo challenge back in the fall for a month, but I said "HELL NO" as soon as I heard the "no dairy" bit.

I enjoy dairy, so I'm going for "primal," since it allows lattes and cream in my coffee, haha. We'll see how it goes - I would like to attempt going dairy-free for a while in the end, because I'm trying to clear up my skin a bit and I know dairy tends to worsen your skin. But I'll see if going grain/legume-free will be enough on its own.

[Globetrotter 1,340]

This is pretty much how I eat already, my only dairy sources are butter and greek yogurt, if I stay away from cheese, flour-based products and too much red meat my skin improves dramatically. Then, if I eat so much as one big bite of cheese, within an hour I have the start of a gnarly painful pimple =(.

I'll do it! I can't cut out the greek yogurt as it is too important for my Protein but I will cut out the butter, switch spinach for my useless romaine hearts, and add in more veggies. fruit has too much sugar so I won't up my intake and I will cut out my SF popscicles and sweetener in my tea. I suspect a whole lotta chicken in my immediate future!! =)

[Jswilbur 42]

Thank you for the info! I would lean towards primal, too, I think, because I like my Greek yogurt and occasionally real cream in my hot tea. I am going to look this up more! Probably too late to join you now, but will in the future!

[BlackBerryJuice 349]

So, I'm on Day 2! One thing that pleasantly surprised me after totalling up all my food from yesterday was how much Fiber I had....that was actually one thing I was worried about with cutting out all grains and legumes. I only had like 1400 calories, yet 37 grams of fiber! And the vegetables I had aren't exactly considered high-fiber - tomatoes and cukes. So there you go, so much for "you need to eat lots of Beans and whole grains to get enough fiber."

Started Day 2 with a latte, an egg, and a cucumber. Got a chicken roasting in the oven with some onions, carrots, and beets. Nom!