Over the last four days (since Monday) I have cleaned up my diet. Again. I already was eating very healthy but the scale was not budging. And either was the way I felt in my clothes. If anything, I had been slowly gaining weight over the last year.  As I mentioned before in my “About Me” section, I lost 25 lbs. seven years ago. The lowest my weight was is 115lbs, which for me is impossible to maintain and didn’t quite look healthy. So in the years after that I have fluctuated 10 lbs or more. But lately, for about the last year, I have found that no matter how much I restricted my diet and calories the old ways were not working. I have heard a lot of talk about  the “Paleo” diet and eating a diet rich in quality sources of clean foods including; abundant vegetables, meat, dairy from whole organic or unpasteurized raw milk, fruits, seeds and nuts, no added sugars, no grains or legumes, and absolutely no processed foods or fast food. I didn’t like the idea of eliminating a food group like grains at all. Mostly, because it isn’t what I learned in school, but after reading up on the surprising negative affects grains can have on our body, I decided this is something I should give a try.

I thought at first that it was an Atkins style diet, but it definitely is not. From what I remember of the Atkins, it encouraged cheeses and meats without telling the dieter to eat the cleanest sources of these and it also didn’t allow much vegetables or any carbohydrates. So back to the Whole foods/Paleo/Clean whatever you want to call it diet. I stocked up on organic vegetables to make my favorite African peanut stew, yes peanut stew! It’s so good. I also bought fruits to juice and cacao nibs, raw coconut, ground flax-seed, and sugar free almond milk  to make to my morning clean shake. I should add that although I have been limiting sugar, I still added a little honey to my shake and green tea, that I won’t give up and I want to enjoy eating because I love it so much. I also bought Raw Reserve’s SuperFoods Green packets which are full of probiotics and sea algae in powder form. Sounds delicious, I know. I mix it with my juice, plug my nose and drink it up.  In addition, I have been bringing food home from work. I bring wild salmon patties of which I order two of, and I get our Big Salad which has mixed greens, olives, fennel, walnuts, tomato, cucumber, and sometimes I add avocado or tuna. It comes with a sherry vinaigrette dressing.

So without giving up fats or meat and adding a few super foods, I have lost 2 lbs in four days. That is huge for me since most of the time I go weeks thinking I am eating all the right foods and watching calories but the scale does not change one bit. And giving up the grains hasn’t been as hard as I thought it would be. Maybe because I am still getting plenty of fats from clean meats, nuts, and olive oil to satiate me. So it turns out even someone with a dietetics degree can have a lot to learn still. And I love to continue learning and proving old theories wrong. I have not incorporated my exercise regime while I started this way of eating because I wanted to be certain the results were coming from the food and not the workout. I can’t really say if I feel different energy-wise because it is still so early. But it is nice after not even a week on this way of eating that I may finally have found what works for my body. As much as I hate to admit it, my body is not the same as it was seven years ago, I am now approaching 30 (Yikes) so I have to make tweaks to my diet as the years pass.

I will continue to update on my progress and please send me your experiences with what works best for you. I have family coming in town this weekend so I might not eat as well as I would like. I already planned a french toast bake for breakfast and Italian beef dinner while they are here. Luckily we bought most the ingredients from  whole and organic sources. But heck, we have to indulge once in a while!