Eat Me – The Final Installment

This is the 3rd and final installment of Eat Me. The first was at the beginning of the month to start of the diet, the second installment was about midway through the month to give a brief progress report, and now as the month is coming to  a close and our month long paleo/whole 30 challenge is over, this is my review and final thoughts. I know technically we are only on the 28th day of February, but since its a short month, we are calling this a success.

Before all of this started, we talked about when we would be able to fit this type of diet change into our lives and when we decided that Feb would be the best month we didn’t think about it being the shortest month AND it would also be the month to celebrate the 16th birthday of my son. Those things considered, we know that we are using the term “month” loosely, but even with those things added into the equation, I am so happy with the way this turned out.

This was not something that could be entered in lightly, there was prep work that had to be dealt with.  To get started, on January 31st I made sure I weighed in, we went to the grocery store, and even talked about how far we were going to take this challenge. The first decision we made was that we would NOT give up out tablespoon of creamer in our morning coffee. The other decision we made was that our cooking would be done with olive oil and unsalted real butter. (Both the whole 30 and the paleo websites that we looked at suggested using ghee, but frankly, we wanted to make this as painless as possible, so we stuck with what we knew) Lastly, we decided that salads and fruits would be a huge part of the diet.

I promise I did not glaze over the weighing in thing… a lady never tells her weight but I will tell you the starting number was XX1.0 and when I weighed in this morning, I was looking at  XX5.0 which means I lost 6lbs in the process. Hammy, although I have no idea the starting or ending number, the bottom line for him was the loss of 17 lbs. I will not go into my frustration about how that happens, so I will just say I am happy for him.

Coffee creamer, I know it is dairy, and I know that it is unacceptable but when we agreed to take on this diet change I wanted to remain a semi-pleasant person, so the idea of taking creamer out of my life would not have been good for everyone, so that tablespoon daily was all that was allowed.

Moving onto the even better points… for the entire 28 days, neither Hammy nor I had a shred of heartburn! As I said before this was something that we both had struggled with many nights, but since this change, our nights have been way more peaceful!

I know in the second installment of Eat Me, I gave you a lot of menu items, but there were a couple of other things I wanted to throw in. By accident, I came across the combination of cucumbers and pineapple. Yes, I know it is crazy, but together in a salad they are amazing! Another pleasant surprise was how much I enjoyed lamb steaks on the grill. They are a little tougher than a beef steak but very yummy. I already told you about my new found love of plantains, but after a post on instagram I learned that plantain chips exist and make an amazing snack. Lastly, and probably my best find was Larabars. They come in so many flavors and are gluten free, soy free, dairy free, etc – and very whole 30 and paleo compliant. These will all continue to be staple in my daily meals.

I am really sorry that this has not been an “EDGE OF YOUR SEAT” type of post, but I was trying to be a little more informative in this one. To answer the question that several people have already asked me, YES, I plan to stay fairly true to this diet as I can see a whole new me coming out of it! I don’t have food coma sleepiness, the heavy groggy belly two hours after a meal, and I just really sleep better!

Now, if you will excuse me, like I said, this is the birth month of my son and tonight we are expecting several guests to help celebrate… and how do you celebrate the 16th birthday and the success of a diet challenge?? Well, with a Dairy Queen ice cream cake of course!!!