Back again

In the summer of 2010 I stopped with the Paleo diet: pregnancy and Paleo was not a happy combination for me.

My weight has been relatively stable between 100 en 110 kg in the 7 years after giving birth to my son, but with a break-up and all the emotional stress surrounding it I've been gaining weight again.

Time to get back on that horse then!
For 3 weeks I've been easing back into Paleo. Again I'm being lenient on the dairy, but strict on sugar, wheat, rice and potatoes. I'm eating so much veggies! And meat. I'm more ambivalent about the meat now than I was 9 years ago. I know we (humans) have to cut back big time on our meat intake in order to keep this planet liveable for all. My conscience and I are still in discussion about it and a good solution remains to be found.

I don't think I'll be posting a lot here. But I figured at least a small update would be nice.

almost had a pizza today...

Today more snow covered the land, resulting in huge traffic jams and icy roads. I was away fixing computers in remote locations when I heard about those jams and figured it might be wise to leave half an hour early and go straight home instead of going by the office.
What would normally take me half an hour by car took me 2 hours. The heating in my car is not working properly, so by the time I got home my feet where half frozen and my fingers weren't too hot either. Suffice to say I really did not feel like doing anything anymore when I got home, I just wanted to collapse on the couch and be. My boyfriend and daughter had already been fed by my mother, so they asked me what I had planned for food for myself and I replied, "I don't care. I don't wanna cook. I'll get myself a pizza!"
Next thing I know I was shoo'd off into the bathroom for a hot foot bath while my mother was frying some frozen fish and warming up some canned sweetcorn for me.

I love my mum!

Forgive me for I have sinned!

Since I have started the diet on January second I have eaten the following sinful food:
2 bites of brownie
1 chocolate tablet
200 gram of "Sinas Snippers"
4 pieces of salty liquorice

Actually not that bad for someone who was used to 2-3 bars of chocolate a week ;-) And there where mitigating circumstances for the sinas snippers and the chocolate: I was ill.

All in all it's going pretty well. I never expected weight loss to kick in soon, maybe 1 kilo a month (2 pounds?). However, I've already lost 5 kilo! I went from 113 to 108.

I've got some challenges coming up ahead though. I'm going to the sauna (welness resort) 2 times in Februari, once with my boyfriend and once with my best friend. My boyfriend and I will have a tapas menu for lunch, and I have no clue how that can be kept Paleo. I informed them upfront that I can't have grain or sugar though, and I'll just have to ignore all the E numbers and salt in the food I guess. When I go with my best friend we'll have a lunch buffet, so I can pretty much choose my own food. But then the dessert.... Maybe I'll just indulge myself with yoghurt and honey, if that's available. The fruit is probably canned, so not an option and all else is really not an option :p (icecream, whipped cream, chocolate sauce, tarts, cake, etc)

Next update I will give you a recipe, something I've been making long before I went paleo and which goes well in a paleo diet if you don't mine dairy and supermarket ham.

Over a month of Paleodining done

And I love it!!!!

I enjoy my food more, no longer the same old cereal every day. Instead I have breakfast with bacon, eggs and some mushrooms and/or tomato, or smoked salmon with creamcheese and lettuce or cucumber, or a grilled piece of fish with stir-fried vegetables. And when I'm in a rush I resort to a home-made, all-fruit, smoothie.
For lunch it can be anything, depending on what I have at hands, can I cook? Do I have a microwave? Leftovers are great for lunch, so are soup, salad, quiche (without the pastry exterior) and all things that are breakfastfood for me.
I didn't even like bread to begin with, I ate it because it was supposed to be a good and healthy filling.
Now for dinner is where it gets interesting: what do you do with endive (andijvie) if you can't mash it with potatoes? The same for Sauerkraut. Inventiveness is the key. I found a nice stir-fry dish for the endive and I prepared the sauerkraut with crème fraîche, minced meat and herbs.

"Wait, what? Did you mention creamcheese and crème fraîche? What happened to the no dairy?"
Yup, I did mention that. I'm taking a liberal view on the no-dairy thing. I've cute down a lot on normal milk, but am still using processed milk, like cheeses and yoghurt and crème fraîche. It just makes cooking so much easier and half of the Paleo guidelines do include certain types of dairy.

I have to run now, but I will write more later!

What's this all about, eh?

It all started..... well, there is no point where it all started actually. The past 10 years I've been gaining weight, sometimes slowy, sometimes at a more advanced pace (when I quit smoking for example). The past year I've been trying to adjust my eating pattern, I've switched from white bread to whole weat bread, dropped from 4 slices at lunch to 3, stopped my sugary cereal breakfasts and replaced them by muesli with yohgurt, fruit and a bit of honey.

To my frustration it was all to no avail, my weight didn't drop at all, instead I've gained another 3-4 kilo since the beginning of 2009.

This summer I got talking to a friend who pointed out that proteins are a real filler and the calories they give cannot be stored in your body. But one casual remark by a friend doesn't make you change your eating style overnight. It can get you thinking however.

A month ago I got myself an appointment with a dietitian. She advised me to stop chocolate. Cold Turkey. Which is a sensible remark, since I'm quite addicted and trying to lessen it will probably not work. Besides that she'd like me to switch to a normal diet of bread for breakfast and lunch with low calorie spreads, meats and cheeses, fruit and raw vegetable snacks and a dinner with less meat than I eat now.

That's where I instinctively revolted. Less meat! That doesn't sound efficient when you want to lose weight! So I started browsing and researching and I got from Atkins to South Beach to Paleo Diet. Atkins basically is a free for all on fat and meat and a no-go on glucose, fructose and starch. South Beach is less severe on the carbohydrates, but instead goes for lower fat intake. Paleo diet can be interpreted in different ways. One way is to only eat what a caveman would have eaten and to not look at modern food sciences. Another way is to not eat things a caveman wouldn't have eaten, but also not eating wrong types of fat. Then you can choose to eat seasonal fruits and vegetables only or not. To eat biological or not. Etc. The main thing however is that you don't eat any grains, non-green legumes, starch-rich roots and diary. And ofcourse no modern world drinks and snacks like Dr. Pepper and candybars.

Tuesday I had an appointment with my dietitian again. I talked to her about the Paleo Diet. She's not in favour of it, for several reasons.

1. It leaves out two entire food groups. I'll have to be very carefull that I won't be missing out on essential nutrition.
2. It's rather extreme and requires a lot of work in food preparation. A salad for breakfast simply takes more time to make then cereal.
3. She probably has more reasons, but I'm not aware of them.

But inspite of her reasons agains she will support me with it. Again for several reasons.

1. I will be more motivated with a diet I pick myself.
2. It might work out as a way towards a more balanced diet.
3. leaving out two of the five food groups for a short time won't do much harm.

So I've decided to change my way of eating starting January 2nd. It's not that I'm too chicken to start it before Christmas, but I do need some time in preparing. Read up more, find recipes, etc. I figured I could use December for that. And yeah, it would be nice if I could still have some oliebollen and appelflappen at new year's eve and new year's day.