"I eat “real” food – fresh, natural food like meat, vegetables and fruit. I choose foods that are nutrient dense, with lots of naturally-occurring vitamins and minerals, over foods that have more calories but less nutrition. And food quality is important – I’m careful about where my meat comes from, and buy produce locally and organically as often as possible.
It’s not a low calorie “diet” – I eat as much as I need to maintain strength, energy and a healthy weight. In fact, my diet is probably much higher in fat than you’d imagine. Fat isn’t the enemy – it’s a great energy source when it comes from high quality foods like avocado, coconut and nuts. And I’m not trying to do a “low carb” thing, but since I’m eating vegetables and fruits instead of bread, cereal and pasta, it just happens to work out that way.
Eating like this is good for maintaining a healthy metabolism, and reducing inflammation within the body. It’s been doing great things for my energy levels, body composition and performance in the gym. It also helps to minimize my risk for a whole host of lifestyle diseases and conditions, like diabetes, heart attack and stroke."
I've eaten Paleo for a month before as an experiment to see if I had any sensitivity to common gut irritants such as beans/legumes, grains, dairy, and sugar. I realized that in the future I will be recommending elimination diets to patients and I don't want to recommend something I couldn't/wouldn't do myself. After a month I slowly introduced the foods back into my diet to see if I had any reaction to them. It turns out I actually didn't react to any one food group but I just didn't feel as good as I had when I was only eating whole, nutrient dense foods. So when I came back from visiting my family over a three week summer break I wanted to hit the nutritional reset button and get back to my body's happy place.
We also decided that since we had some extra time on our hands we would start meal planning with the hopes that when school starts we would be seasoned pro's and be able to cut down cost and food waste. We started off just making a list of meals we already eat and several that we wanted to learn how to make. These mostly consisted of dinner dishes which we planned to make enough of that we could have left overs for lunch the next day. We also had about three or four breakfast options that we could rotate through depending on our schedules. Amazingly enough we found that even though we were buying high quality meats and organic vegetables our grocery bills were cut by about 30-40%. Admittedly we both spend the largest majority of our budget (besides rent) on food, but it's not a priority I'm willing to compromise on.
The meals have been absolutely amazing and I think we have both become far better cooks. We have experimented with recipes I never would have attempted before like The Domestic Man's Rogan Josh and aloo gobi.
There have also been shockingly easy recipes like this smoked pork, which was made by adding liquid smoke and salt to a pork shoulder and letting it cook in a crock pot for 14 hours. Also from The Domestic Man. The grilled veggies and pineapple are my own recipe thank you very much!
I also took advantage of some local blueberries from the farmers market to make blueberry pancakes with coconut flour. Recipe courtesy of Leigh from Crossfit Rebels. Mornings before class are not my strong suit so I forgot to take pictures... hell i'm proud I actually got up to make pancakes multiple times instead of the usual eggs and veggies. I can just tell you they were delicious and a great justification for me buying an entire half flat of blueberries.
Most excitingly I conquered my life long fear of making poached eggs when I made Domestic Man's (ok I admit it I may have a foodie crush on the man) eggs benedict with smoked salmon and grilled bell peppers.
I have to say our month of restriction has been absolutely wonderful. We've gotten to enjoy local summer goodies, spent time in the kitchen and at the grill learning what not to do, saved enough money on groceries so that we can indulge in a couple bottles of wine, and spent many nights on the porch enjoying nature and each other's company.
