I want to reiterate for those of you who’ve read the previous posts, and uh, just iterate I guess for those of you who are reading this post first: I am not trying to lose weight. I’m lifting weights like I have been for the past 5 or 6 months or so, and pretty much just living. The only change I’ve made has been my diet and sleeping patterns.

However, I’m now a mere 3 weeks into the Paleo diet, and I seem to be melting body fat and shedding weight like the Wicked Witch in a Turkish bath (thus the picture).

I'm allergic to monkeys in bellhop outfits you jackass!

Like I have been doing every week since I started this diet, I went in to Gold’s Gym to weigh in yesterday and here is where we stand:

DAY 22 on the Paleo diet: 178.5lbs @ 7.3% body fat (I started this thing at 186.5lbs and 9.6% body fat)

Proof

Not real sure how I feel about losing this much weight. On the one hand, over 60% of the weight lost has been body fat according to my measurements, but I was feeling pretty comfortable at 180-190.

It’s weird. Last summer I worked my ass off for months trying to cut down to 6% body fat because I knew I’d put on a good amount when I tried the GOMAD diet for a month. Well after something like 4 months of cardio intervals, cycling classes (“spin” classes, whatever), and tabata intervals with the weights; and after counting every calorie and measuring my celery stalks and drinking Becks Ultimate Pansy Lite beer, I finally got down to 6%.

Now, here I am eating as much food as I want, never feeling hungry, having tons of energy, doing little to no cardio if I’m being honest, and just sticking with my same old workout routine…. And losing weight faster than I’ve ever lost it in my life.

It’s like the stuff Robb Wolf talked about in The Paleo Solution is actually legit. It’s not that I ever said it wasn’t, but I’m wise enough these days to realize that I’m a little bit of a sucker (if that makes sense). For whatever reason, if I read something in a book, I tend to believe it. That’s why I thought I’d give it a try and see how things actually play out. Sounded too good to be true.

But all the stuff about hormones, how the food we eat affects those hormones, and how our body reacts to our food, stores/releases energy, etc… it’s all looking like it’s true. I’m just hoping I don’t end up at 165lbs, because while I wouldn’t mind being ripped, I’d rather not look like Kate Moss.

Only a week and a half or so left on my Whole 30. As always, I’ll keep you posted.

I’ll keep this short, since there’s really nothing too earth shattering to report here. Yesterday marked  2 weeks on the Paleo diet (eating very strictly as prescribed by the Whole30),  and like a good boy I weighed in to keep track of the progress week over week.

DAY 15 of the Paleo diet: 180.5lbs @ 8.0% body fat (Previous week: 183.5lbs @ 8.9%)

Damn. I think it’s safe to say that on this diet it’s pretty easy to lose weight, especially considering I’m not trying to lose weight. I’m eating tons, and I mean tons of food. It’s glorious.

I’m happy to tell you that most all of my week 1 cravings have gone away. I no longer dream of ordering $100 worth of Pad Thai and covering myself in it on my bed a la the cheerleader from American Beauty. I can drink my coffee black, take it like a man, and am even starting to enjoy it. Not sure if adding sugar would actually be pleasurable at this point. I haven’t looked at a muffin in a while and thought, “damn you…. You’re so hot and unattainable”.

So that’s good news, the cravings do go away.

You know what, let’s go back to that cheerleader from American Beauty real quick, because something about that has always bothered me: What an epic. failure. by the casting crew. Not trying to be cruel, but I find that actress to be quite-…how to put this in a way that won’t offend anyone…. Fugly? Can I get an amen!?

Before you ladies go lambasting me as such a shallow jerk, how would you feel if you breathlessly sat down to see the movie “Titanic 2: Somehow We F’ed This Up Again” and in the stereotypical, amazingly attractive and makes you feel safe with just his smile even though an otter could kick his ass lead male role, in walked…. DJ Qualls.

No offense DJ, but they cast you as the ugly/weird looking dude, and you nail it everytime. I don’t feel bad saying that about you, because I’m pretty sure you could have your pick of the litter considering your fame.

Eh? What’s that ladies? Exactly. You’d miraculously plow through the 7 stages of grief over this unforgivable casting gaff within the short span of the 3 and a half hour long movie, and when the guy finally drowned you wouldn’t be crying like you did when good ol’ Jackie boy slid off into the icy abyss. You’d probably cheer.…. Yeah, that’s right, I saw the movie. HATED it.

Whatever, I’m sure she’ll never read this, and she’s probably so rich she could care less, but I am not a fan of her in “the pretty girl” role. MARK IT DOWN HOLLYWOOD.

Sorry. Tangent. Dammit, I’m sure somebody will yell at me for writing that too. I guess I could delete it…. No, I’m leaving it. Sorry. I put too much effort into that rant, and I find it hilarious after reading through it again.

Looks like we’re done here. I have nothing else.  Short and sweet baby.

Alternate names for the movie:

“Titanic 2: We’re Kind Of Asking for It”

“Titanic 2: Who Chaired The Naming Committee?..Bill! It Was You!? What The @#$* Bill!?”

“Titanic 2: Because All The Seats Were Taken On The Hindenburg Redux”

“We’ve Made A Huge Mistake: The Story of The Titanic 2”

Yeeeaaah. Week 1 is in the books! I’m now on day 8 of my 30 day Paleo quest (as defined in the Whole 30), and I’ll be honest I feel great.

Placebo effect? Maybe. I don’t really care either way, if I feel good I feel good. Plus, numbers don’t lie, so at the end of this whole thing we’ll see where my blood work, and body weight and body fat levels are at to give us an accurate indication of whether this diet really works or not.

So far though, the numbers look good. In the gym, my energy levels are consistent, and my lifts this past week were strong with some small improvements over my previous week (which was my last non-Paleo diet week), so at least the diet isn’t making me weaker. That would be a game breaker for me personally. I was 2 kneecaps away from pulling 405lbs in a deadlift this past Monday, so I feel like the strength is still there.

This morning marking exactly 1 week since my initial weigh in and body fat test, I went back into my local Gold’s Gym to use their scale for consistency’s sake. Stripped down, hopped on, and plugged my numbers into my good ol’ Omron 306c, and here we are:

DAY 8 of the Paleo diet: 183.5lbs @ 8.9% body fat

Booyah. If you do the math on that from Day 1 (186lbs. @ 9.6% body fat), that’s over 1.5lbs of lost body fat in one week.

To be honest, I’m not putting too much credence into these numbers just yet. If I go in next week and I see similar progress again, then I’ll start to get excited. Lose fat while maintaining, or even building strength? Sign me up.

Just a reminder, that losing weight on this diet is not my goal. I don’t really have a goal. I’m just going to do it 100% by the letter, and let the chips fall where they may, and hopefully I’ll be able to deduce whether or not Paleo is in fact good or bad for my health…. But if it makes me look better in the process, I’m not going to complain.

So having gone through my first week of this, here are the takeaways that I’ve come up with so far:

1. Unless you’re a seasoned cook, be very generous with the amount of time you schedule to cook. This bit me a few times.
2. This kind of goes hand in hand with the first one, but never cook a recipe you’ve never tried before right before you’re supposed to be somewhere important (like work). I was cooking a whole chicken, and I thought it’d be done in 45 minutes… It took 2:15, and I had to call my boss and tell him I was going to be late… Very late.
3. Always overestimate the amount of food you’ll need to bring for the day. At least for the first week, since you’ll be gauging how much you actually eat on this diet. As you saw from my day 1 picture, I underestimated my ability to throw down on some good food. Pack a cooler with ice, then pack it full of food. If you don’t eat it all, just throw it in the fridge when you get home and you can eat it the next day for breakfast.
4. Know what you’re going to be eating days in advance. So far I’ve been really good about this one, but that’s probably because I knew going into it that unless I was really diligent about it, I’d shoot myself in the foot pretty quickly. The last thing you want to do on a Monday morning is wake up, open up the fridge, and see half a can of coconut milk and an avocado staring you in the face. If this happened to me, this is when panic would set in, and I’d start to struggle with eating something off limits.
5. Make cooking good food a top priority. Dangit! It’s 7 p.m., bedtime is at 9, and I haven’t cooked any food for tomorrow, but Golden Girls is on TV! What do I do!? I guess I’ll have to DVR that mess.

These are the top ones I’ve incorporated into my strategy, and when I’ve heeded them, everything has gone off without a hitch.

One of my buddies tried doing Paleo the same time I started it, and he’s already gone back to his old eating habits. He complained of headaches, little to no energy, and boring food. While I can’t argue with how he’s feeling (though I have not experienced any of the negative side effects he had, though many people have complained about headaches when first going on Paleo), what I do take exception to is the “boring food” comment he made. Does any of this look boring to you!? (All food from my first week):

The food has been absolutely delicious. A guy who sits near me at work has come over multiple times this past week to ask me what I’m having for lunch, since he can smell the epic win that I cooked up. Be jealous Jimmy, very jealous.

While the food has tasted excellent, I won’t lie that around day 3 or so I started to get some cravings for non-Paleo, and certainly non-Whole 30, approved foods! Let me list them here real quick, because for whatever reason, getting them off my chest will feel good and then I can move on. I’ve craved:

• Chicken Pad Thai
• Macaroni and Cheese
• A damn muffin… any muffin will do, but blueberry would blow. my. mind.
• A Dogfish Head 90-minute IPA
• A Smoking Turkey BLT from Baker’s Crust, or any sandwich for that matter.

Alright, I’m done. I feel like if I keep going I’m going to break out into “These are a Few of My Favorite Things” a la Sound of Music, dancing around like an idiot…. And then I’d have to shoot myself in shame and embarrassment for evening knowing that song and being able to pull it off flawlessly (damn you homeschool!).

All in all, the diet, coupled with going to bed at 9 every night and waking up at 5, has proven to be very successful in making me feel energetic and ready to get after it during the day. I’ve been much more productive with my time this past week than “normal”. That’s just one week though, so we’ll see if this carries through over the rest of the 30 days.

One week down, three and a half to go…. Damn, I need to get cooking. I’m out.

Alright, I may be going overboard with things a little bit, but when I say that I’m dedicating myself to this Paleo thing for 30 days, I mean it. So compiling suggestions from my current holy trinity of Paleo (Robb Wolf, Loren Cordain, and The Whole 30), I’ve made the decision to make some adjustments to my diet and lifestyle.

The first place to start? Well since the whole thing hinges around diet, I’m going to focus first on the kitchen.

If you’re like me (a single dude, and thinks waiting 10 minutes to cook a steak is ridiculous), then your kitchen is probably pretty laughable. Observe:

Something I’ve learned very quickly on my Paleo quest, is that you need to keep your kitchen clean and organized. If not, it only makes the food preparation process that much more stressful than it already is since you already have no idea what you’re doing.

So step 1: clean the kitchen. I didn’t fully do this, and it made my first day on my fancy new diet pretty difficult. Now I do my utmost to clean things as I soon as I use them if possible.

Now here’s where I may have gone a bit overboard, but again, since I’m not a cook I didn’t want to further handicap myself by bringing a knife to a gunfight, so I picked up a whole slew of tools of the cooking trade and now I’m completely locked and loaded to tackle pretty much any meal that I can think of… actually I don’t think of any of these meals really, I just steal them from other peoples blogs and websites. Anyway, here’s what I’ve compiled in my cabinets to help me succeed in my 30 day quest:

• An entire stainless steel pot and pan set
• 3 wood cutting boards
• Stainless steel and glass mixing bowls (You can get a Pyrex set for like 12 bucks)
• Stainless steel and wood cooking utensils (spatulas, spoons, knives, measuring cups, etc)
• Small food processor
• Crock pot (I actually already had this, but I highly recommend it)
• Cast Iron Skillet
• A Garlic Press
• Glass Tupperware (no more of this crap that turns orange everytime you put tomato sauce in there)

BOOYAH... At least now I'll look like can cook.

You’ll notice a theme there with the stainless steel. In Loren Cordain’s Paleo Cookbook, he’s pretty adamant about not only purging your kitchen of bad foods, but also purging it of bad cooking utensils. Apparently aluminum pots, pans, etc, as well as many plastics, will leach unwanted chemicals into your food when you cook with them.

Now I’m one of those people who think, Right, I’m sure 2 aluminum atoms are going to give me Alzheimer’s. But I wanted to do this thing 100% by the book. Plus, as you can see from the pile below of what my cabinets USED to contain, I was working with a pretty ragtag bunch.

Yeah, it was time for an upgrade.

Now getting all this stuff together wasn’t cheap, especially since I was doing it under a time crunch (a few days before my Whole 30 started), so if you’ve got time to get stuff together, I’d shop around online well in advance and look for good deals.

Also, there are some things that you probably don’t really need that bad. If I had to narrow all this down to a few things, it’d be the following:

• Cast iron skillet
  

  Can be used as a bomb shelter in time of need

  
  This thing almost makes a man want to cook. It’s the badass of the kitchen. Dominates the stove, and mocks the other pans for their cute shiny exterior. If somebody broke into my house, it’d be a tough choice between my 10″ Rambo knife and the iron skillet. But hey, I guess that’s why God gave me 2 hands, so I wouldn’t have to ponder stupid hypothetical choices like that.
• Stainless steel stock pot

  Stew, roasts, whatever. Tomorrow morning I’m going to throw a whole chicken and some collard greens in that badboy and throw it in the oven. Pretty sure I can’t screw that one up (I’ve done it before and it was awesome), which means neither can you.

• A good set of knives

  I’ve got a couple decent knives, but I’m already wishing I’d splurged a little more on better ones. I find that I don’t need the set of 39 different knives that everyone tries to sell you. I’ve got 2 knives: 1 for produce, and 1 for meat (with a meat fork to hold it down). Pretty sure you could get by with just 2 as well.

• Crock pot

  This is the most magical appliance that I have ever owned. It makes everyone a friggin’ master chef. All you do is throw in a bunch of veggies and a meat, throw some spices and liquid in there, turn it on, go to work/bed, and when you return the magical crock pot gnomes have made something special for you that melts in your mouth… It’s really that easy.

Obviously you need more than just those 4 things,  and I’m sure there are those that would disagree with me, but in my short stint on Paleo I’m finding these to be the most useful. I know Tom over at wholelifeeating.com makes something like 80% of his meals in a pressure cooker, but I have yet to invest in one so I can’t tell you how easy/hard it is to operate one of those things. I’ve improvised a recipe or two of his with a crock pot or a stock pot, and it’s worked out fine.

Next up? The pantry… Goodbye tortilla chips. Goodbye blueberry muffin mix (damn I miss them already)… Will post soon.

And so it begins… Another crazy diet plan, another 30 days of self experimentation.

Yesterday was day 1 of my Paleo venture, and as promised, I did everything by the book and then some. First thing on the agenda was the…

Measurements

In The Paleo Solution, Robb Wolf suggests getting blood work done to prove to your self/spouse/in-laws that this diet does in fact increase your health and vitality. This was reassuring to me, considering I had already planned on doing blood work before and after my 30 days on the Paleo diet. Affirmation that something you’re doing is actually a smart idea is always nice, since so much of what I say and do turns out to be pretty dumb.

Anyway, what this means is, yesterday morning I went into my doctors office in a fasting state (read – starving and slightly pissed) had a chat with her, and gave an abnormally large amount of blood since we’re going to be running quite a few different tests for my pre and post Paleo blood work.

I’ll keep my doctor anonymous, since I don’t want her to be sue-able for anything, but I was pleasantly surprised to find her actually quite supportive of my upcoming diet change. She seemed almost as excited as I was to get the blood work done and see what the results were before and after … Plus, having had her run many of the same tests for the GOMAD diet, she probably realized that it was completely futile to try and talk me out of it.

Alright, so scientific evidence of the effect the Paleo diet has on my body? Check…. Well, half check. I go back in the day I finish in May.

Many of you say, hey, that’s great, but I don’t care if I’m healthy or FEEL good. I want something that makes me LOOK good, regardless of whether or not it kills me a la spontaneous combustion before the age of 35.

Alright, fine.

Lucky for you, I too want the whole shebang. Feel good, look good, smell good, taste good (….what?). So to measure this, I drove to Gold’s Gym (where they haven’t seen my face for months, mind you) and strolled in with a smile and my handy body fat analyzer, stripped down in the locker room, weighed myself, body-fat-analyzed myself, and we currently stand at….

DAY 1 of the Paleo diet: 186lbs @ 9.6% body fat

I was pretty happy with that. I’m currently lifting to get stronger, not to look pretty (but let’s be honest, if working out made you uglier, you wouldn’t do it and neither would I). I’ve been in the 185-190lb. range for a few months now, and I have no intention to either lose or gain weight on this diet. I just plan on eating food as prescribed, and then see where the chips land.

Add to these semi-scientific measurements some before and after photographs, and you’ve got yourself an airtight argument either for or against the Paleo “solution” when this thing is all said and done!

As you can see, I’m well on my way towards being fully prepared for my role in the upcoming sequel to Powder, titled “Powder 2: Return to Crackerhood”

With all of our scientific, semi-scientific, and completely non-scientific-but-lets-be-real-looking-better-is-what-you-care-about-most, pre-Paleo measurements out of the way, it was on to that which is going to be the most difficult thing for me on this diet…

Cooking the damn food

Granted, it wasn’t all devoted to actually cooking, but I spent a total of 4 and a half friggin’ hours in the kitchen yesterday. Not an exaggeration. I would estimate that at least a good 3 were spent on the actual preparation, cooking, and storage of food. The rest was cleaning and organizing, as I try to get my Paleo kitchen in order.

As you can see, this diet can take a lot of time. Part of me thinks this is more due to my lack of ability in the kitchen though, and not because it should actually take that long to make the food. Plus, if you’re smart about it, you can cook things in bulk that will last you a few days rather than for just one meal.

Alright, cut to the chase. Here’s the full list of what I had yesterday:

• Baby Carrots
• Blackberries
• Raw Mixed Nuts (almonds, walnuts, pecans, brazil nuts, and hazelnuts)
• Grass-fed Tenderloin Steak with Pepper and Smoked Sea Salt
• Sautéed Kale (recipe)
• Mexi-Salad with fresh Guacamole (recipe)
• Americano (from Ellwoods Café, what-what!!)

From this list it may seem that I pigged out all day, but in reality I learned a huge lesson from day 1… Always bring more food to work/school/wherever than you think you’ll eat. I brought everything from the list above with me to work, with the exception of the Mexi-Salad and nuts, and by 11:30 this is what I was left with:

My stomach growling by 1, my willpower was tested already and I was only a few hours into day 1! But I held strong. I. Held. Strong… Yeah, by the time I got home I was famished.

I think reality hit me the hardest when I got my morning coffee. On the left is the coffee from the previous day: Mocha-fra-fra-chino whatever. On the right is the Americano. Don’t let the foam fool you. This is purely espresso and water. I had them pour it into a to-go cup, and off I went…

In the car, I put my camera on a timer, and captured my reaction to my new coffee-black style:

So optimistic and excited about my day and coffee...

t-minus 1 second. Wait for it...

A huge mistake has been made

Well, other than my harsh wakeup with the coffee (I’m sure I’ll get used to it and end up loving it… kind of like beer when I was 18…. Er, 21), ALL the food I ate yesterday was really quite delicious. In fact, the mexi-salad with guacamole was something I would pay money for at a restaurant… and probably a lot of money. It was monolithically, Paleolithically, delicious.

Alright, I need to wrap this up. As I stated in my game plan, I’m hitting the bed every night at 9pm for the duration of my Whole 30 to complement my Paleo diet with a more Paleo lifestyle (meaning get enough sleep for a change).

More to come soon….

Yeah, that’s right, I said holistic. What does that mean? In jive, it means I’m bringing the heat to the streets. In my case, it means I’m going to be approaching this whole Paleo thing from not only a “what can/can’t I eat” standpoint, but take the overall lifestyle change approach that was prescribed in Robb Wolf’s book: The Paleo Solution (AWESOME book by the way).

That’s right, for the next 30 days, starting tomorrow (for real this time), I am going to be living, breathing, sleeping, the Paleo diet AND lifestyle.

You might be thinking, is this jerk going to show up at work naked and un-bathed with a bushel of bloody squirrels?

No…. Well. At least one of those things will absolutely not happen.

I’m sure one could take this whole caveman diet and lifestyle to some very extreme measures, and I’m sure there are people out there who do. I plan on being a modern caveman with adaptations to the modern world. Much like this guy:

Enough shennanigans. What does this really look like for me? This means that for the next 30 days I will….

1. Eat like a caveman

Having just finished Robb Wolf’s The Paleo Solution, I am sold on the diet he describes. Obviously, he could be completely full of it, and I wouldn’t know any better, but I really don’t see what he stands to gain from my consumption of massive amounts of grass-fed beef or my untimely death (if his argument is wrong). If you haven’t read the book, even if you aren’t considering doing the diet, I’d recommend giving it a read just as an eye opener on how your body responds to the food you eat and the hormonal response you get from it.

Anyway, hopefully you’ll read it sometime, but for now all you need to know is the premise: Our lifestyles, and especially the food we eat are all killing us. Wreaking havoc on our hormones, causing rampant inflammation, and contributing to things like diabetes, cancer, and autoimmune diseases to list a few. In order to right our bodies, we need to return to a Paleolithic (thus the term “Paleo diet”, you’re a quick study you) diet and lifestyle (within reason).



Apparently there are different variations, interpretations, and flavors of the Paleo diet, but the one that I’m going to be adhering to is known as The Whole 30. If this is confusing, kind of think of it as the difference between saying, “I’m a Christian” (or Paleo) and saying “I’m a Southern Baptist” (or Whole 30). So if your parents took you to a Southern Baptist church like mine did, you’ll know that they’re Christian, but they’re pretty hardcore about it and don’t tolerate some things that other Christians do.

….I hope that wasn’t confusing.

Look, basically, the Whole 30 is a specific implementation of the Paleo diet principles, but they’re a bit more strict. Before I tell you what you can eat on the Whole 30, let me start with what you can’t:

THOU SHALT NOT EAT:

• Grains
• Dairy
• Legumes
• Sugars/artificial sweetners (other than natural sugars found in fruit, but even that in moderate doses and only from eating fruit)
• Alcohol (in case you thought the sugars thing didn’t apply to this for some drunken reason)
• White Potatoes
• Processed foods

See? That’s not so bad…. I guess. So what can you eat?

THOU SHALL EAT:

• Beef, Poultry, Lamb, Seafood, etc… Basically real, unadulterated MEEEEAAAT, yum
• Vegetables. By the bushel.
• Fruit (but not excessive amounts)
• Nuts (excluding peanuts. Did you know they were technically a legume!? I didn’t)
• Berries

….Some other stuff, but there isn’t much.

For the full guidelines, please check out their site. They’ve got a bunch of other resources on there too, so don’t be shy to click around.

2. Cook like a caveman

So along with Robb Wolf’s book, I also picked up Loren Cordain’s The Paleo Cookbook. Obviously if I am going to implement such a strict diet, I’m going to need some ammo for ideas on what to actually friggin’ cook.

You may ask, Yeah but who’s this Loren guy? That’s a weird name… I think that’s a chick’s name in fact. Well say what you will, but if Robb Wolf is the Jesus Christ of the Paleo diet, then Loren Cordain is Jehovah himself: the master and maker of the original Paleo diet and lifestyle.

Anyway, in reading through his cookbook, he mentions the need to cook with certain things that, personally, I never really gave a second thought to. In my mind, a pan was a pan.

Well apparently aluminum and non-stick pans, as well as many plastic containers, put a bunch of chemicals and other undesirables into your foods that contribute to us being sickly and fat.

True? Hell if I know… But I plan on following this caveman thing to the T, so I’m Paleo-ing my kitchen as well. Stainless steel or cast iron pots and pans, stainless or wood utensils, and tempered glass food containers.

3. Sleep like a caveman

In The Paleo Solution, Robb makes a big ruckus about sleep and its effect on our stress levels and overall health. Evidently, sleeping 6 hours a night will eventually kill me, even though it’ll probably take years to do it.

Regardless of whether or not it’s actually killing me, I do know that I feel like hell most days of my life that aren’t named Saturday or Sunday, and the little bit of I.Q. that I have weakly firing through my brain tells me that this has to be closely related to the miniscule amounts of sleep I’m getting.

After reading the book, I had an epiphany: one should never need a quadruple espresso in order to behave like a normal human being. If you give it more than 2 seconds of thought, you’ll probably realize that that is not how we were made to operate. You need fat and protein. You don’t need caffeine…or at least you shouldn’t (though coffee in moderate amounts is permissible on the diet, thank God. I’ll need some help with the energy levels at the beginning I’m sure).

So I’m dedicating myself during this 30 day diet to not only eat the right foods from the right surfaces with the right utensils, but also to go to bed at 9pm every night and wake every day at 5am…. This will be brutal at first, but if you count that up it equates to 8 hours of precious sleep every night.

I’ll write more on this topic, and many others, in the next few weeks, but let me just say that this whole sleep thing is probably the thing that I’m most excited about in this lifestyle change.

Well there you have it. That’s my plan, plain and simple. Am I excited? Absolutely. Am I going to miss my old diet and lifestyle?….

I'll miss you.... unless I find out you're actually killing me, in which case screw you buddy.

As I write this, I’m staring at my final non-Paleo meal (pictured above), and I think: probably for the first week or so yes, I will miss it…. BUT. If I get just half of the benefits that Robb claims in his book, then I might never go back.

Tomorrow’s day 1. Ground-zero. Time to chow down, head home, and get to bed. Cheers…

I like to give shout outs where they’re due, so if you want to know more about the Paleo diet and/or the Whole 30, please visit the links provided at the bottom.

Whole Nine (The Whole 30 folks)
Robb Wolf’s Website
Loren Cordain’s Website

Recommended Books:
Robb Wolf’s The Paleo Solution – I highly recommend it
Loren Cordain’s The Paleo Cookbook – It’s a good book, with good info, all in one place. However if you’ve got the time, you can probably find all this information around the magical Internet and save a few bucks.