Keep on truckin’

Posted on February 7, 2013 by That Girl

Almost a year later and adjusting my diet is an ongoing process. I have taken strides using available resources to better understand how and what I’m eating and every week learn something new to ponder. I still have problems eating enough, to say nothing about eating enough vegetables specifically. But I’ve also learned quite a bit. With the help of a recent trainer, I’ve learned different ways to approach my eating deficiencies (problems?) and how to solve those issues without feeling guilt that I’m either not getting enough nutrients or just plain enough food in general. For the most part I’ve found my issue is mind over matter. Or health over stubbornness really. My personal big roadblock is effort in relation to results. My mind can’t see the results even though they’re evident so it resists the efforts I try to make. Or I just plain get lazy and it bites me in the ass. I’ve learned that, for me, hunger comes in the form of tiredness and/or grouchiness. Still I’ve learned and tweaked and learned some more. I’m also getting really tired of salads. :p

I’ve learned things like that Soybeans have become a genetically modified super crop here in the US that rivals corn and it’s many Frankenstein like variations. I’ve been on the fence the whole time about soy mainly because it’s such a large part of an Asian diet. Thankfully there are substitutes like Coconut Aminos that mimic the taste of soy sauce that I enjoy. Sadly, this might also means that edamame is firmly in the do not eat category because of it’s GMO status. On the upside, I’ve learned to enjoy Kombucha, and added many things like Flax seed, Parsnips and Celaric to my diet. I’m still on the fence about Chia Seeds and Spirulina though.

I’ve learned more about the eating habits of people in general that keep me constantly reminded that what I’m doing is a good thing for me despite the naysayers in my life. People who don’t understand or for some strange reason just plain don’t care about my health. It saddens me, but since I can’t do much about it I move on. This all started with Is Sugar Toxic? A news article by Gary Taubes that talked about the negative effects sugar has on our systems and examined the history of our eating problems as a nation. Then it moved to Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead which focused on grossly overweight and sick people, moved to programs like Food, Inc that focused on where food in the United States is coming from and other programs such as The Weight of the Nation that focused on how we as people are dealing with our health. There are still so many other programs that I’d still like to watch and/or read. Things like Why we get Fat: and what to do about it, Forks over Knives, Fathead, The Paleo Solution and others. It’s scary to say the least. What have we done to ourselves for the sake of convenience? For the pure hedonistic pleasure that taste gives us?

Whatever the reason is, I’m choosing healthier options for a healthier me. It’s not an easy course to take though. I have to change my mindset on what “fast food” or “quickie” meals are. I can’t run to McDonalds for a 40? Piece box of Chicken Nuggets (seriously? WTF?) and a milkshake. I can’t stop at Top Pot doughnuts on a Sunday Morning for a box of fresh backed doughnuts and a Latte. Making juice for a party is no longer dumping a bottle of syrup into a cooler of water – it’s flavoring the water with natural fruits and vegetables. They just aren’t the best options out there. I have to remember that grabbing a salad is just as quick. I have to remember that it really doesn’t take that long to cook a meal if my kitchen is clean to begin with. I have to remember that I can prep my breakfast and lunch for work before going to bed. I have to remember that fresh fruit makes a great dessert. Now if I can just remember to do my laundry…

Practical Paleo made it easy

Posted on August 16, 2012 by That Girl

Sometimes it’s easy now to forget what a hard time I had cooking when I first started eating Paleo. It’s not like I was cooking very differently, but I’m one of those things that, when learning, have to follow things as close to the letter of the law that I can. I would cook a meat and then panic about what side dishes to serve. I’d forget the time of day and panic because I had only a few hours of the day left before bedtime and wondered if I’d get dinner on the table soon enough. (Lord help me when I have kids…)

But things got easier. I realized that there is no defining policy to Paleo. That it’s more about eating healthy and eating well than it is about worrying about the minutae of an ingredient list. That really all I was doing was removing a few things from my daily dinner plate (like rice) and replacing them with more veggies. It’s always a giggle to me when I’m headed to the grocer to choose the next meal’s veggies. yes you heard that right. even with my change to Paleo and the juicing I’ve incorporated, I don’t keep as many fresh meal friendly veggies on hand. This is partially because I’m finicky and never learned to make do with what’s on hand, and also because I tend to forget about the “good” veggies in the back of the fridge and they spoil.

That being said, I’d like to share with you my first meal post. Most of you (some?) have been seeing them in my Instagram feed (find me as LianaWS), but I thought I’d share them here in a more detailed manner. This meal happened a few days ago. Almost a week now? We had just received our copy of Practical Paleo and I cannot tell you how excited I was about it. Also, it’s a very heavy tome. The first half is dedicated to talking about Paleo and what it can do for you. I won’t lie, I’m still diving into that portion. But as soon as I ripped open my Amazon box, I headed straight for the recipies. NomNomPaleo did a review of the Bacon-wrapped Smoked Chicken Thighs. Her pictures were delish and it was actually her post that locked my decision to purchase this book. I wrote down the ingredients that I didn’t have and dashed to the store!

It’s a pretty simple recipie once you have everything. More importantly it was another nice recipie that allowed Justin and I to spend some time in the kitchen together. After I put the spice blend together, he prepared the meat and I prepared the side dish (The added benefit of being able to save some chicken skins was a plus). We wrapped that sucker in Bacon and set it in the oven to cook. While it cooked, I took the time to chop up one of my favorite veggies, Baby Bok Choy and stirfry it with some coconut aminos. This was such an easy meal to prepare and I love it. Literally, remove chicken from package, add spice, add more meat, add more spice and cook. We paired this meal with some fresh watermelon juice. A friend of mine had been raving about Watemelon juice recently and I felt it would be a great addition to our meal to have something fresh and different.

I love when we both have the time and energy to do this, it makes the meal itself feel more intimate and the evening more intimate. We’re able to talk about how our days went, our triumphs, frustrations and plans for later in the week without the distractions of Social Media. I’m all for time spent in the Twitters, FB’s and beyond, but it’s nice to disconnect and spend time with the people in front of you. A good meal with family is probably one of the earliest social networks known to people. Time spent connecting and making memories. Modern Social Media has only expanded that to allow us to look back and remember great evenings like this.

Cheetos aren’t Paleo

Posted on July 13, 2012 by That Girl

Most of you are saying “Well DUUUUUH Liana, even I knew that!” I know you are. But the point isn’t the captain obvious observation, but more of how much of a struggle eating right is in this day and age. We are surrounded by quick and easy processed foods that make life seemingly easier. The $0.99 tacos sitting next to a $4.99 salad. The box of hamburger helper that leads you to believe that it will be quicker to use their processed chemically enhanced ingredients than it will to add fresh ingredients to the ground beef you still have to cook on your own. Or McDonalds, and Olive Garden, and for you Endurance Athletes out there, “Carb load” nights before a race.

I started this journey right before Easter as a trial. J had been trying to diet and even though I cooked pretty healthy, he admitted that sometimes it was a struggle when my plate differed from his because my meals weren’t as restrictive. He was eating Paleo/Primal style and I wasn’t. I still brought rice and tortillas and cookies and breads into the house. My biggest objection had always been giving up rice. It’s been an integral part of my whole life and I thought it was difficult to do until I stumbled across Nom Nom Paleo, a site devoted to Paleo eating written by an Asian family. A sign to be sure!!! and off I embarked on my journey.

I won’t say that those first few weeks were easy because they weren’t. I already knew based on my poorly kept food diary that I didn’t eat enough during the day. More specifically, I didn’t get enough protein in each day, even by SAD standards (Standard American Diet). Paleo made these issues even more glaringly obvious by removing breads and many other carbs from my available list of “go to” snack/meal options. No cookies, chips, no quick stops for sushi… Even worse, when I cooked that first two weeks, I panicked after making the main dish because I didn’t know what to serve with it. J would calm me down each time and remind me that it was perfectly ok to prepare to veggie sides. I spent many days and night poring over sites and books devoted to paleo meals to ensure that i was following all the rules. Eventually, it became easier and I realized that I had a ton of paleo friendly recipies in my noggin. I came to realize that there wasn’t a need for Paleo Perfectionism. Imagine my glee when I realized that many dishes I grew up with were paleo friendly! I could make them (some with slight tweaks) and enjoy comfort foods while staying “on plan”! Eat Kalua pork three nights? Don’t mind if I do! Steak twice a week? oh darn! Maybe I should start sharing those recipes with you all…

But between that and ramping my running back up, the past few months have still been hard. The delicate balance of eat enough and don’t eat too much changes when you’re training for endurance events, without adding paleo diets into the mix. I think I’ve been doing ok though. It has been 142 days since I began this journey. That’s 20 weeks I have spent craving spaghetti and Cheetos and chocolate chip cookies and not always winning. As you can see from the screen shot, I tend to yoyo up and down, but still going down more often than it goes up. Of special note is that I realized around the 16th of Feb that my scale was off by 4 Lbs, so I have to add them in manually. What does that mean? That I’ve lost about 10lbs now. Wednesdays weigh-in was 177. Around me, I see friends who struggle against an increasing waistline and other friends who scream in glee about their weight loss using products like Omni drops and Body by Vi and “wraps” promising to help you lose inches from your problem areas and yes even plain old diet/exercise. It’s a DIY struggle for us all as we grow older and realize that we can’t subsist on Cheetos and Mountain Dew. I am encouraged by those people who are paying attention to the journey and cheer me on. By the friends ask how it’s working out and start journeys of improvement and/or self discovery themselves. I may not have lost as quickly as others but that number moves and I’m proud of it? (and I’m proud of you.)

3 weeks in – It takes time

Posted on April 12, 2012 by That Girl

At just past 3 weeks in I lost about 7 lbs. One of the most popular questions I’ve been asked during these past few weeks is about cheat days. Do I have them? Days when I can eat and/or gorge myself on whatever I want so I can make it all the way through to my goal? My answer has been an unwavering no. I have always thought that cheat days were counter productive to the purpose and when I started this mission I decided against them. I don’t plan them into my schedule so I can look forward to Spaghetti night (I miss Spaghetti) or a big bowl of fried rice. (Miss that too). I can’t say that some days haven’t been hard, because there have. Times when I whined via text and IM about how yummy a piece of Bananna bread sounds. Or a few cookies. While this hasn’t been as hard a journey as I thought it would be 20 some days ago, it’s definitely not a simple one. There have been many, many times where I have been tempted. Like when a coworker brought a COSTCO sized Red Velvet cake to a potluck. Or when I went for chinese with my aunts and favorite dishes just didn’t taste the same without rice. But like with my Marathon running, I have discovered that I am more stubbon than this diet is hard.

There’s still lots of things to read and research. Paleo Hacks has seen me to be a constant visitor as has Punchfork via their iPad app. I’m learning to move past the anxiety attacks I was having in the first week or so when I didn’t know what to cook or what sides to make with my hunk of meat. My broiler pan and frying pan has gotten more use in the past few weeks than it has in the year prior. It’s also now easier for me to eat less fruit than when I started. It was suggested to me that using Mark Sisson’s website Mark’s Daily Apple, but I decided the primal format he suggests is too loose for me. Not enough structure and too many opportunities to cheat and fail.

What am I making? Simple sides like Carrots and Cabbage sauteed in Butter with a dash of salt and pepper. Simple, yet so so flavorful. I’ll also sautee just the cabbage and use it as a presentation background for my meat. After adding random veggies to the plate, it finishes out the food trifecta I always try to have. (For some reason I have it stuck in my head that there should be three things on the plate). I’m learning to pre-slice the carrots, peppers and cabbage so all I have to do is toss it into the pan or the salad or where ever I want it. I’m still learning to get off my but and do that. Roasted brussel sprouts are another favorite in my house only to be made more yummy when we discovered a yummy recipie for Brussel Sprout chips. (Again at Nomnompaleo.)

But I won’t lie. There are still many, many days when I feel lazy. Days when I don’t want to cook, much less clean up the mess from the night before. There are also nights when we commit ourselves to events with friends. Part of dieting is not just to hibernate yourself until you’re at the weight you want. It’s learning how to make those same choices in public. Thanks to the internet, it’s possible to plan ahead for ideas of what you might want to eat later. Giving you more time to make your menu decision as it were. Doing so has made eating out fairly simple. Still, there are occasional hiccups. Like going to a baby shower and feeling pressured to eat a cupcake becuase a well intentioned attendee is pushing them on you. Or making a restaurant choice with out actually reviewing what your choices are only to find there are no feasible options other than not eating. And most especially, not carrying around snacks that I know are acceptable to help in those situations.

Researching Paleo

Posted on February 24, 2012 by That Girl

Pea Vine at Sea Garden My first introduction to Paleo was earlier this year from Justin. He told me the basic premise, but a lot of things confused me. Like you can’t eat beans, but haven’t beans been found in fossilized remains? Potatoes are as naturally occurring as Yams, but Yams are ok while potatoes aren’t? He had me read books like Why We Get Fat by Gary Taubes, and recommended I read others like Good Calories, Bad Calories (also by Taubes). So many things sounded contradictory and so I dismissed many of them. With or without me, he was going to embark on this diet and move forward. I said I would support him on it, but frankly to ask me to give up rice? (Which he wasn’t) Kinda crazy talk, doncha think?

I committed to eat healthier though. More fruits and Veggies, less snacks and desserts… All that fun jazz. I even have tried keeping a food diary which taught me a few things I wasn’t aware of. The first and foremost being that I ate too much junk and too many carbs. The next being that I didn’t eat enough even on my inactive days to properly fuel my active days. So I watched what I ate. I made a concious effort to eat protein, less carbs and well… frankly just MORE. My coaches with Team in Training remarked endlessly and with joy at how my body had changed over the course of the last year. And when I look at pictures I could see the change in my body structure. The problem with perception though, is that it does nothing for how you feel and those numbers on the scale. Instead of creeping downwards with all my positive changes, mine were creeping upwards. In fact, at my last Dr appt, I weighed in at 188. Something needed to change.

I can’t say that I made a concious effort to go Paleo or to even go on any type of diet. I’ve sneered at “Diets” as a four-letter word. It was something people ‘tried’ temporarily until they reached a specific weight, or they fit into a dress, pair of pants, bikini… Few people I talked to referred to diet as a lifestyle change that I believe it should be. What really happened is that a friend posted a picture of yumminess from the blog NomNomPaleo via Punchfork. I saw it and wondered to myself why I hadn’t been using Punchfork more often for new recipies to try. I had it on my iPad, what was stopping me? I followed her yummy picture and discovered a Paleo blog with MANY, MANY RECIPIES. huh. Then I followed a link on her page that said What’s Paleo? that lead to her husband’s blog. The first few paragraphs helped convince me to finally give this change a try. (The picture of an asian family who had given up rice didn’t hurt).

The next day (yesterday), I had at least 30 tabs open all onto something paleo related. Fitbomb.com, NomNomPaleo, MultiplyDelicious, Whole9life, PaleoHacks and so many others. I even found a good book to help supplement all the different blogs I’ve begun reading. This book will help me maintain the nutrition levels I’ll need as a runner to ensure I don’t hit the wall when running my next half Marathon. It’s called The Paleo Diet for Athletes by Joe Friel & Loren Cordain. It’s pretty good so far.

One of the big things I found is that there is no one paleo diet. I could use big words, but let’s just sum it up by saying that some people say milk products are bad and others do not. Others say somethings are ok and others not. The best statement I saw said “THERE IS NO ONE DEFINITIVE “PALEO DIET.” Even cavepeople ate different diets.” (Thanks Fitbomb) So now all you Atkins-cavemen, South Beach Cavewomen, and Juicing Kidlets can stop worrying. Variation happens. Inuits ate differently than Polynesians, than Russians, and so on and so forth. The important thing is to not make excuses (Anyone watching Biggest Loser this season?) and stay committed to your goal. This is part of the reason, I made some changes today. A short FB conversation with my cousin who is a trainer on Bainbridge Island as well as with Justin convinced me to cut out those concessions I mentioned in my last post. I’ll be stopping the protein powder from my AM Smoothies as well as the Alcohol and add them back in if I find it really detrimental. (The protein powder I mean, not the alcohol. )

So it’s….. water? for me as well as some fresh-er Paleo friendly juices. We’ll have to see this weekend. I’ll also be making some homemade condiments, because I really do love my ketchup. Also because when I got yesterday’s Omlette, I automatically poured some without realizing I couldn’t have it. Isn’t self control awesome?

A new start

Posted on February 24, 2012 by That Girl

Two days ago, while people around me were deciding what to give up for Lent, I decided to do something different. Rather than just honor the sacrifice made for us, by making a personal temporary sacrifice I chose to start eating Paleo. The first question asked when I say this people is Huh? What’s that? And I have to explain that Paleo is an extreme change in how I eat. The easiest way to explain it is that I’ll be eating like the caveman did, but it’s a little more complicated than that. It’s eating meats, and fish and poultry. It’s eating non-genetically modified foods. No High Fructose Corn Syrup, no hydrogenated oils, no pre-packaged foods, no legumes, and yes…. No rice. Heartbreaking thought for a gal who’s eaten rice my whole life. I’ll also be cutting out quite a bit of sugar which shouldn’t be as hard as avoiding rice. (sigh)

Here’s a great infographic (Because I know my friends loooooooooove Infographics)
More Health and Fitness News & Tips at Greatist.

Now that you read that, you’re probably thinking it’s not so hard right? Think again. My first attempt was Wednesday night. League night in Kent for me and I headed out to the local dive bar. Have you tried to eat Healthy in a bar before? Not always possible. Lots of deep fried breaded stuff, burgers, French fries…. I did my best, but failed QUITE a bit.

So reset to Thursday. Determination makes me want to follow this through. Food wise, yesterday was an interesting lesson in being prepared. As a new convert, I had a bit more planning that should have happened but didn’t. I woke up late and decided I would just buy lunch. Little did I forget that most of the options for breakfast/lunch wouldn’t be the best for my new lifestyle. (yes I said lifestyle. This isn’t a temporary diet to lose weight.) I finally chose a nice Veggie Omlette with No hashbrowns. Delicious and it held me over until after lunch. I grabbed a bag of Beef Jerky as a snack and called it good. A successful day at work despite wishing I had planned better. Dinner was another story though. I had plans to meet some friends for dinner and conversation. That doesn’t happen as often as it should because we’re always so busy. As it was, one gal was sick and another had to fly out of town last minute. The difficult part of this? We had planned to meet at a Sushi restaurant. Oy, the rice. Justin teased me because he wondered how I would handle it. I calmly replied to him that I could always have Sashimi or something else. I just had to choose carefully. Little did I remember that Shoyu isn’t exactly Paleo and What’s Sashimi without it? I ended up choosing a teriyaki Salmon. It comes on a bed of stirfried veggies which is good. But I had no idea what kind of oils (if any) they used to cook it and the amount of sugar in Teriyaki is scary to think about. I went home with a lot to think about and began prepping for today. Veggie chopping, Kitchen cleaning, & prepping my breakfast and lunch. Forty days is a long time and this may end up being a difficult journey that I’ll stop at the end of Lent. On the other hand, it could be an exciting one that leads to weight loss and healthier living. I’ll also caveat this journey by saying that there are some things I’m not giving up. My protein shakes in the morning is one of them. I want to ensure that I’m kick starting my day off correctly and I’m unsure if I’ll be getting enough nutrition in during the day. These may eventually go away, but for now they’ll stay. I’m also not staving off alcohol. I don’t think I drink enough for it to play a huge difference. I realize that I may be hamstringing myself, so these are options that could change in my journey. For now they’ll remain. Stay tuned to find out how I do!

edit: I’m told the new mobile version of my site makes that infograpic really really tiny. Use this link if you’re on a mobile platform for a better version.

No apologies

My Thoughts, Dreams & Opinions. Feel free to debate them.

Category Archives: Paleo