Wherein I Admit to Eating Paleo

It's been a decent week in my world.

Work has been manageable, my dogs have been well-behaved, and I've had...well, not VISUAL confirmation, but, say, pants-confirmation, that my cleaned-up diet and new crossfit addiction has been doing some good.

I haven't posted much in the way of meals lately, and I haven't really discussed my diet at all. Part of it is due to my general forgetfulness when it comes to taking pictures, but a great deal of it is due to my reluctance to publicly announce that I'm trying out something new in the nutrition world when I'm not sure I'm actually going to like it - or stick with it. I hate the idea of looking like a bandwagon-jumper, and I definitely hate the idea of having my failure to commit to something plastered all over teh internets.

But things have gone well, so here I am. Publicly admitting that I've been eating paleo.

As with Crossfit, I'm going to direct you to Fitbomb if you're interested in reading up on the what and - more importantly - why of Paleo. He has an excellent, excellent page which does a great job of boiling down the underlying science.

In short, I'm eating a lot of meat and veggies and probably more fruit than I should. I haven't eaten dairy for several weeks, and I've even cut out peanut butter. I do have one or two "cheat meals" each week where I eat whatever - that might mean a few chunks of bread or (god help me) some Oreos at my dad's house for Sunday dinner, or a huitlacoche quesadilla at El Rey on date night with PhillyGuy.

But typically? I buy a rotisserie chicken every weekend, wait for it to cool and then tear that sucker up. (I get far more meat off of it using my hands than a fork and knife - I'm classy like that, what can I say. And probably more historically accurate.) That chicken forms the basis for most of my lunches during the week. Breakfast is fruit (peaches, berries, whatever) and a big dollop of almond butter. I eat a lot of salads made with romaine, shredded chicken, tomatoes and guacamole. And I eat plenty of bacon and eggs on the weekends.

I knew I wouldn't miss grains and beans, but I thought it was going to be tough giving up dairy, for sure. I mean, I went through a costo-size container of Fage by myself every week, and I had acquired a taste for half n half in my coffee over the past year or so. And let's not get started on cheese. But - shockingly - this has been one of the easiest dietary changes I've ever made.

Take tonight's dinner for example.

I made stuffed peppers using ground turkey and beef (about 50/50 - 12 ounces of each), chopped onion, tomato paste, salt, pepper and some herbs (random mix of basil, parsley, marjoram, oregano, rosemary, and thyme).

I thought for sure this would be missing something without a pile of grated Locatelli on it. I even thought about putting some on there and calling it a "cheat meal," since we're skipping family dinner tomorrow night in favor of steaks at home. But I figured - nah, not going to be worth it - and went without. And I didn't miss it...at all.

Here's what I've observed since adapting my diet:

- I am, for sure, losing fat. I don't know how much, because I haven't taken measurements and I don't weigh myself. I know I'm still not at my law school weight or anything like that, but I FEEL different. And my clothes fit better. And I'm definitely seeing more definition in my arms.

- I do NOT miss dairy at all. I really thought I would.

- What I miss the most is hummus. Yeah, I know. I get over it pretty quickly since guacamole is also delicious on a salad (and on chicken and on pretty much everything else in the world), but...yup.

- Berries and almond butter keep me far more satisfied than berries and yogurt.

- I feel really good and almost never get cravings. I also don't feel the need to eat as frequently, which is a miracle in and of itself since I'm a constant snacker. I rarely feel my usual "OMGNEEDTOEAT" at 3pm.

- If you drink a beet juice, you will think you're peeing blood. But you're not. It's because you drank beet juice.

(Okay, that last one doesn't have much to do with paleo. But it's true.)

All in all, I like this enough to publicly commit to it. And I will be really farking embarassed in three months if I've abandoned it.

New Camera!

Santa PhillyGuy brought my Christmas present early this year.

(Hopefully that is the last point-and-shoot picture I ever post on here.)

I've actually had it for a few days now, but unfortunately, Santa didn't realize that the "kit" (body, lens, and basic accessories) didn't include a memory card. I got out of work a little early today, and we took advantage by running out to BestBuy.

I obviously came home and immediately started taking pictures of everything in my house. While I was in the living room, furiously snapping away at my Christmas tree and trying hard to remember everything I learned in that one photography class I took in the summer of 2003, PhillyGuy got started on dinner.

So naturally, I ran into the kitchen and started snapping away in there. And took over the preparation, since I'm a control freak about my veggies.

Brussels sprouts and onions, chopped up all pretty in the pan:

I love how bright green the sprouts get after just a minute or so of cooking.

Everything got a bath in a nice bottle of Founder's stout...

...and braised for about twenty minutes or so.

Meanwhile, PhillyGuy seasoned the pork and got to grilling.

While that went on, I started taking pictures of the dogs. Sophie was like...WHY. WHY, MOM, WHY.

And I goofed around more with the Christmas decorations.

And a bottle of wine.

DINNER LOOKS SO MUCH PRETTIER NOW!

...and sorry for the insanely photo-heavy post. Right now, I'm shooting on full auto mode (manual focus though) while I get back into the swing of things. I can't wait to take four bajillion pictures of everything while I figure things out.

And don't worry - Santa PhillyGirl took perfectly good care of PhillyGuy, too.

What's on your Christmas list this year?

Pumpkin Craze

Today it's chilly out. Like, mid to high 50's. I'm actually kind of geeky-happy about that - you know, change of seasons and all that.

Today it's ALSO rainy out. Not REAL rain, for the most part, but lots of chilly mist. The kind where a hood is great, but an umbrella is sort of useless.

With the mist/rain/chill comes a sort of darkness. Or, well, not really DARK so much as "not in any way shape or form sunny." Even when it's not raining.

(Emily Dickinson wrote a poem about this - "A Certain Slant of Light." When we studied her in tenth grade English, my teacher described it as "You know what it's like when the sky is so gray, it hurts to look at it?" And that's how I always think of it now.)

So, when I'm presented with a bit of a chill, some wannabe-rain mist, and a certain slant of light, one thing sounds totally perfect.

(Okay, I lied. Lots of things sound perfect, like Sleepytime tea and my favorite sweatpants and a fleece blanket and blah blah blah.) But c'mon.

Pumpkin oats, baby.



This was amazing. Half cup of oats, a little less than a cup of vanilla almond milk (PhillyGuy may be developing a case of the lactose intolerants, so we're experimenting with non-dairy), about half a cup of pumpkin, bit of vanilla, bit of sugar-free maple syrup (chemicals FTW!) and a few shakes of pumpkin pie spice.

I mixed it all up in a tupperware and brought it to work cold, where I cooked it in the microwave. No, it's NOT as good as stovetop oats, but it beats the bejeezus out of my go-to at-work breakfasts (yogurt/berries or a bagel). I topped it with about half a pack of craisins that I picked up at the convenience store downstairs.

She may not be the prettiest bowl of oats you've ever seen, but I'm not sorry.

New Obsession

Best. Afternoon. Snack. Ever.



Thank you, Sook-Hee's Produce Market, for introducing me to the brilliance that is squeeze packs of nut butter.

Detox, Party of One

***SEE PSA BELOW -- make sure I add you to my Google Reader!***

This weekend FLEW by. You'd think after spending nine and a half hours in the car on the way back from NC last night, I'd be a total zombie this morning -- but surprisingly, I'm not.

I AM, however, craving things like "veggies" and "fruit" and "sweaty sweaty exercise" with every fiber of my being.

I've been doing reasonably well on this whole "weight loss" thing. Since the end of March, when PhillyGuy and I started cleaning up our diets and getting cozy with Tony Horton, I've lost about 6 or 7 lbs and several inches off of my waist. I'm noticeably stronger. My clothes fit better and I'm getting closer to regaining that enormous portion of my wardrobe that has been unwearable for the past eight or ten months or so.

But then...we do something crazy, like packing the puppies into the car and taking a road trip to Duke to see my sister-in-law graduate with her master's.

All things considered, honestly, this wasn't that bad. We made it to the hotel gym for an arm-burning sessions of P90X biceps & back on Saturday morning, where I noticed that -- go me! -- I've mad significant improvements in my back strength. Since there wasn't an assisted pullup bar, and I still can't do a full unassisted pullup, I substituted lat pulldowns for the pullups in the workout. I was knocking out sets of 8-10 pulldowns at 90lbs, which is a good 15-20lbs more than I'd been lifting before.

And yeah, I ate more carbs than I have in a while. And yeah, I had some dessert on Friday night. And yeah, I had a few bites of an ice cream sandwich on Saturday night. And yeah, I polished off a (thankfully snack-size) bag of Jalepeno Cheddar Chex Mix on the car ride home yesterday.

But in the grand scheme of things, it wasn't that bad. It certainly could have been much, much worse. I definitely have a crappy-food-hangover of sorts today. I woke up CRAVING fruit and yogurt. Unfortunately, since we didn't roll into Philly until about 10:30 last night, we didn't have time to go food shopping, and pickin's were slim. For breakfast this morning, I polished off the last of my Fage 0 with two chopped up kiwis and a handful of very, VERY sad-looking blackberries.

I was also CRAVING exercise. I was a bit slow to get moving this morning, so PhillyGuy and I took the puppies for their morning constitutional about a half hour later than usual. Just in time for me to see several people either leaving the gym or returning from an AM run. Which, naturally, made me curse myself for not waking up at 5:30 to knock out a few miles before work.

Since, you know, it's totally in my nature to do that.

So, now that I've started my morning with fruit and yogurt (and an extra cup of iced coffee -- thank you, sweet baby Jebus, for the invention of Starbucks Via and the convenience of powdered, delicious coffee that lives in my desk drawer), I'm about to spend the rest of the day knocking out work that I would have done on Friday and fantasizing about whether I want to run a few miles before my legs and back workout tonight.

PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT: As I mentioned on Twitter, I set up Google Reader for the first time last week. (Hi, my name is PhillyGirlRuns and I live under a rock. A rock where I don't learn about things like acorn squash and Garmins and Google Reader until EVERYONE ELSE IN THE WORLD has done it.) I'm still remembering to add new blogs every day -- PLEASE leave me a comment so I can make sure I've included yours!