carefree highway

This is it. First day jumping into a new diet lifestyle that I just discovered yesterday. I went from a Consumerist article linking to an article on career building tips linking to how to further your education in an internet-enabled world linking to NerdFitness’ PaleoDiet 101. The more I read about it, the more sense it made. Evolutionary nutrition – eating what we as a species had eaten for the 140,000 years leading up to the agricultural revolution. It just makes sense.

Everything I’ve read says to jump in whole-hog for 30 days. Be super strict. Don’t waver. Just give it 30 days to see if it works for you. If it doesn’t work, what have you lost? 30 days without cake or pasta. Big deal. But if it does work, what have you gained? Your life, energized. Pretty good tradeoff, I’d say.

So I’m going all in. To the best of my ability, I’m going to follow a Paleolithic diet – meat, eggs, veggies, nuts, fruit. It’s very similar to when I was on the South Beach diet – and I felt amazing while I was on that diet. No intestinal problems. No heart burn. Gradual weight-loss. More energy. So I know something like this can work, and will work, if I can stick to it when I stick with it.

What really has prompted me to start this today and not next week, or next month, or when I need to get groceries again, or when all the pasta is gone from my pantry, but right now this very minute - and what better day to make a change in your life than Friday the 13th? :3 - was another site I got linked to from that education article – ImpossibleHQ. I read the Impossible manifesto. I was inspired, but I wasn’t sure what my Impossible thing would be. Then I looked more and more into NerdFitness and various other PaleoDiet sites like Mark’s Daily Apple and it hit me. My Impossible thing would be to change my diet – forever. No turning back. No “oh, I’ll just have a bagel this morning because I have to be at work at 6:00am and I don’t have time to make an omelet.”

There are still some points I’m confused on. Can I eat dairy? Is hummus paleo? Can I ever have chocolate again? I have an email out to a chiropractic practice in Lancaster that says it has its patients switch to a Paleo diet. I’m dubious about all the holistic chiropractic claims, but if there’s someone there I can talk to about food and nutrition in a Paleo way, I think it’ll really help. I also looked to see if there were any Paleo-centric meet-ups around Lancaster, but it looks like the closest one is in Harrisburg (and they don’t have any meetups planned anytime soon…) I think it would really help if I could find a group of people who follow this diet as well, just for support and questions. Maybe if this works for me, I’ll start one :D

So this morning I had a 3 egg omelet with cheddar cheese and spinach. It nearly made me late for work, but it tasted so good. I love omelets. I used to eat them all the time when I was on the South Beach diet – I’m amazed how they fill me up and don’t lead to hunger pangs later on in the day. I’m not sure what I’m going to do for lunch yet, but we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.

As for dinner, I’m going to head down to Central Market (the longest continuously running farmer’s market in the nation) after work to check out the types of organic, grass-fed meats they have for sale. The market is less than 4 blocks from my apartment and 5 blocks from my workplace, so I have no excuse not to get my meats there. It’ll probably be more expensive, but the way I look at it, I’m not going to be spending money on a bunch of other crappy stuff (like all the late-night snacks I used to get at work) so in the end it should be a wash, cost-wise. And really, if this diet can help me lose weight, gain energy and avoid the health problems like diabetes and heart disease that have plagued my family, it’s worth an extra 25-50 bucks a week.

I know I’m going to encounter some resistance. I work at a medical facility. I’m going to have coworkers and doctors and friends and concerned family members telling me that it’s dangerous to cut out all grains, or saying that I’ll not be able to do it, or saying that I’m going to mess up my body. I know it’s coming. But that’s why this is my Impossible challenge. I’m doing the Impossible. I’m changing my life for the better.