You know, it’s been a little too quiet around here lately, and I’m thinking that I need some people to start yelling at me. So you know what we’re going to do! DO YOU?! No, I’m not going to admit that I put Diet Coke in Marlo’s sippy cup. But close!
We’re going to talk about my diet! Because no one has an opinion about food! Certainly no one who reads this website. Especially those who would never admit to reading this website but refresh it every hour and then judge me publicly without ever mentioning me by name. So sneaky!
Yeah. I drastically changed my diet almost three months ago. Why haven’t I mentioned it earlier? Because I know better! If I had said then that I was going to cut gluten, sugar and dairy out of my diet you guys would have told me that I was going to die! And I always believe everything I read.
Actually, it wasn’t just gluten and sugar and dairy. I don’t eat corn or beans anymore. Or rice. It’s what they call the Paleo diet, one that is based on what humans ate prior to the Agricultural Revolution. So I eat a lot of fruits, vegetables, nuts, lean meat, and seafood. Sometimes I eat small children, but only if they’ve been grass fed.
Why? (Actually, you’re thinking WHAT THE HELL.)
Well, I’ve told you guys that I’ve been maintaining a pretty vigorous work-out regimen for about eighteen months. And in that amount of time I’ve put on fifteen pounds, most of it muscle. I know a lot of exercise routines out there are formulated so that you’re supposed to shrink, but that’s not why I wanted to get in shape. No, I wanted to be able to crush things. Things like blocks of concrete. To save money on contractors!
I wanted some muscle definition, and I was getting there, sort of. I knew the muscle was there, it just wasn’t appearing on my body like I had hoped. And when you work out as much as I do, your appetite sort of follows suit and there were days when I could have walked out into a field of wheat and plowed the entire thing with my mouth.
Hungry. All the time. No matter how many times I ate during the day I was still hungry. And bloated. And tired. It was like pregnancy without getting to blame a tenant in my uterus.
So I did some research, and then some more research, and when I read about the Paleo diet a lot of it made sense. And I thought I’d give it a whirl for, oh, a good seven days. Because there was no way I was going to make it more than that without cheese. You can take all the cookies you want JUST LEAVE ME MY HAVARTI.
So I did it for seven days, and then another, and then another. And then I didn’t even notice that I wasn’t eating cheese anymore. In fact, it wasn’t until I went dancing with Cami and her friends for my birthday that I finally broke down at two o’clock in the morning, drove to the greasiest Mexican fast-food joint in town, and ordered a tostada “with as much cheese as you’re legally allowed to put on that thing.”
That was the best damn tostada a person has ever eaten.
I’m basically eating Paleo about 90 percent of the time. In that other 10 percent is a daily cup of coffee I cannot give up (splash of skim milk), red wine, and the meal I eat when going out with friends. Because I do not want to be That Person whose dietary restrictions infringe on the good time of everyone else in the group. Y’all want to get some pasta? HERE IS MY TEN PERCENT.
The results? Unreal. I’ve lost seven pounds, and I’m starting to see my muscles taking shape. I can already see an incredible amount of definition in my legs and shoulders. I’m never bloated. I have an enormous amount of energy. And, the best part? I’m never hungry. That doesn’t mean I don’t eat anything. I eat A LOT. But I’m never panicking because I’m so hungry that I might eat my own arm.
It’s been a huge game-changer for me, and it hasn’t been difficult. I know that sounds crazy, but I don’t miss bread or pasta or chips. I don’t even think about cookies or cake or candy bars. Am I forcing anyone else in the home into this crazy-ass diet that you’re totally going to debunk in the comments? Totally! In fact, I stand at the dinner table with a whip and tell Leta that if she doesn’t eat that slab of tuna on her plate I’m going to make her sleep with it.