Welcome

Happy Sunday and welcome to Adventures in Paleo-land!

Image from A Sweet Life

This blog is going to be a record of my quest for health. As of Monday, February 20, 2012, I started the paleo diet. One of my good rowing friends from Atlanta has been doing the diet for a couple years now and she's told me about how she feels better eating this way and doesn't think she could go back to her old way of eating. She's doesn't get that mid afternoon crash we associate with big pasta lunches. She doesn't have as many stomachaches and in general she's more energetic and happy. I've ignored all of this and scoffed at the paleo diet saying I would never try it... Well, I've finally succumbed and I'm giving it a try. I plan on doing the diet until May 6th. This date is when I finish my first round of P90X which I started on February 6th (I've lost 5 pounds and ~2" in my waist in the past 3 weeks). This all coincides really well with Lent, for which I was planning on giving up sodas and sweets. Basically, I just added in a few other things.

Some background on me... 

I've been an active person ever since I was a child. I did ballet, tap, jazz, tennis, basketball, and soccer (all at the same time). I had tennis lessons on Monday, tennis matches followed by soccer practice on Tuesday, three hours of ballet, tap, and jazz on Wednesday, soccer practice on Thursday, basketball practice on Friday, soccer game on Saturday, and basketball game on Sunday. Did I mention that I'm an only child? In the past few years I've worked out on my own at the gym, rowed with the Greater Houston Rowing Club, and have run a couple half-marathons.

Despite my activity level, my parents' focus on nutritious meals, and my own self-discipline that limited me to only one piece of candy per day (my Halloween candy always lasted for AGES that way), I've always struggled with weight. My body is naturally a bit more solidly built and muscular than most of my friends, thanks to my Scandinavian-Polish farmer heritage. (My mother actually grew up on a farm in northern Minnesota, so I'm one generation from an honest-to-God farmer.) Back to the point... I've always been a bit on the stocky side with wide shoulders. I'm short, at a whopping 5'3", so unfortunately extra pounds don't have much real estate to distribute over. However, I don't think most people would really label me as overweight though.

To the here and now...

I've been doing paleo for about a week now and so far I really like it. I'm eating freshly made meals and the quality of my meals as a whole has increased significantly. My roommate keeps saying that I'm eating "so classy." In the past week, I've had steak, stuffed chicken breast, and lettuce wraps, just to name a few. I'll post the stuffed chicken breast recipe once I make it again, because it was wonderful. Overall, I feel better and happy. I'm excited about this change, but I'm not sure if that excitement or the exercising is part of what's making me feel more energetic. We'll see how it goes in the coming weeks.

That's it for today. See the recipes below from Saturday.

Breakfast: Omelet with bacon

3 mushrooms, sliced

1/4 cup diced onions

1/4 cup diced red bell pepper

2 eggs, beaten

1 slice bacon

1/4 avocado

Fry the bacon in a pan until it's crispy and brown. Take the bacon off and set it aside. Add the veggies to the pan, using the bacon fat remaining in the pan to cook. Once the onions look translucent, add the eggs and cook on low heat until the eggs firm up. Fold in half and top with avocado and chipotle-adobo sauce. To make the chipotle sauce, take a can of chipotle peppers in adobo sauce and blend. Done! You have chipotle-adobo sauce!

Lunch: Chipotle chicken salad with mashed cauliflower

Mashed cauliflower recipe here:

1 head cauliflower

1/2 cup chicken broth (extra may be needed)

2 cloves garlic, minced

1/4 tsp black pepper (freshly ground if possible)

Put all of the ingredients in a medium pot and bring to a boil. Reduce heat to medium and cover. Cook for 20 minutes. By this time, the cauliflower should be easy to mash with a fork, if not you may need to cook longer. While cooking, check to make sure that all of the broth hasn't boiled off and add more if necessary. Once the cauliflower is at the correct tenderness, drain the broth off and into a bowl; set aside. Blend the cauliflower and garlic. You can add some of the broth to increase the creaminess of the result. I personally saved the broth for use in  making sauteed kale.