Paleo-Curious

If you've been following this blog at all then you know that my whole approach to health and fitness is based on three principles. 1) It has to be applicable to the average every day real world working family and because of that it then also has to be 2) affordable and 3) It cannot be depriving or overly restrictive.

While the first two principles should be easy enough to understand the third is one I often have people disagree with me about. There are plenty of well known diets and fads out there that tell you to give up something entirely and you'll lose weight or get healthier or whatever their claim happens to be however, these types of approaches are typically recipes for failure because it's just not very realistic that you can go the rest of your life without eating a certain food group, it's not realistic to expect that wherever you go the people with have the ability to cater to your particular diet, it's not realistic to go the rest of your whole life eating meals that arrive in the mail. It is realistic that you can go the rest of your whole life making better choices at each meal and every where you go. This blog has been based on the idea that you can improve your health by making a series of small better choices in your daily life that will get you to better health and fitness. I am living breathing healthy proof that this approach works and keeps working.

Anything you see on this blog is my own experience. I rarely post anything without trying it first. Which makes this particular post a landmark event because I'm posting about something that I haven't tried in full force yet. Something I even dismissed as unrealistically restrictive at one point, but this is what happens when you continue to make small improvements. Those small improvements go from almost unnoticeable choices to a whole new life style.

The common remark I have gotten from people when I've told them I've gotten to where I am by setting a calorie goal and making sure I workout out for at least 20 minutes at least three days a week is that this approach doesn't work. Or my personal favorite:

"If all you are doing is counting calories you're not going to eat any healthier because you can still eat junk food and stay within your calorie goal."

While this is a perfectly true statement those who say this to me tend to think they came up with some major revelations I've never considered of before. As though I eat a double whopper meal each day and tally up the calories and say "Well I've reached my calorie goal, no more eating for me today!"  to which I normally respond, "Well, this is true, but the fact of the matter is I actually do want to be healtheir and I  don't want to walk about feeling hungry all day so I make it a point to look for foods lower in calories so I you can eat more of them. And those foods tend to be the healtheir foods such as fruits, veggies, and lean protiens." (however, I am in the process of amending this approach slighly as I've finally gotten to the point that low calorie/not calorie sweetners are pure evil-more on this later)

I've been doing pretty good with this approach. I've looked up recipes from many different websites and of course my go to recipe book is the Elite Nutrition guide I got with my copy of Insainty, but I feel like the next step is Primal or Paleo oriented because I think the series of small steps I've taken throughout my health and fitness journey have gotten me to a place inwhich I can at least commit to a suedo Paleo lifestyle... at  least at home. That is, I  think I can easily commint to making Paleo/Primal dinners and snacks for my family when I'm at home on the weekends and Breakfasts, Lunches, Dinners, and snacks on the weeknds. I even ordered the Top 100 Fast Paleo ebook to try some recipes out.

I purposely chose the Top 100 Fast Paleo recipes because in order for it to applicable to this blog it had to be applicable to a full time working single mom, so I need easy fast recipes. I have to admit I'm kind of intimidated by some of the ingredients I haven't tried before and the seemingly over abundance of the use of Coconut Flour, but I definitely feel like this is the next step for me. So, I'm going to try some recipes over the next few weeks to see what I can do. If you're looking for more Paleo-oriented recipes check out the Facebook Page: Just Eat Real food. That is the page I've been following for a while now that has inspired this next step and it's also where I was able to order the Top 100 Fast Paleo ebook. I do not know the people who post on that page nor the people who make the Fast Paleo recipes. I do not get any kind of conpensation for writing this blog post nor did they ask me to write a post about it. This is simply just the next step in my health and fitness journey and I thought I'd share it with you.

I'm still learning about the Paleo lifestyle and what the difference is between Paleo and Primal or similar diets so if you have anything to share with me on this topic please comment below!