The 30 Day Paleo Challenge has come to a close-Yay!! First off, a huge congrats to everyone who took on the challenge, you should be proud of yourselves for making this lifestyle change!
I will admit that for myself, this Paleo challenge was not the easiest thing to do, however I have noticed changes within my health/body over the course of the month. Here’s a few lessons I learned while on this journey:
- Do your best to be prepared. Truly, preparation is key (with anything in life right?) so you don’t find yourself in panicky moments wondering what the heck you can eat! Yes, preparation can be time consuming, but it can also save you from either eating things you don’t want to or crying like a 4 year old that there’s nothing you can eat.
- Expand your foods. I found in order to not eat the same thing all the time and get bored with certain foods, I had to expand my selection of foods I eat. Example: I used to despise cauliflower. It even looked icky to me. I had heard and read about loads of people eating paleo making ‘cauliflower rice’ so I decided I’d give it a shot. One of the best moves I’d made. Turns out I love it! (at least made this way!) So, jump outside your food comfort zone and give new foods/recipes a try, you just may surprised yourself!
- You’re more addicted to sugar than you think! I knew on some level, that I had a sugar problem, but I always thought I could cut it out of my diet without too much of a problem. WRONG! For time’s sake, let’s just say that 12 days into the challenge my body was still going through sugar detox (in some kind of gross and uncomfortable ways). However, once on the other side of the detox, I noticed some great changes! No more afternoon energy plummets, no more achy joints, and sorry guys-way less pms symptoms!
- Healthier eating helps other healthier habits. During this month I also started running again since I have an upcoming trail race. Typically when I begin running after some time (okay, maybe a long time)off, I feel like my legs are a thousands, all jiggly and out of shape. This time, I didn’t have that jiggly feeling in my legs nor did they feel like they weighed a thousands pounds. This made it easier to want to go running more, and also made it easier to run a little longer each time too. I found over the month that even if the pounds didn’t drop on the scale, there were definite healthy benefits going on within my body.
Those are just few things/lessons I learned myself over the course of this challenge. I’ll also admit that I didn’t stick 100% to Paleo, however even cheats I had weren’t as bad as I previously had eaten. I, for one, am planning to continue with this way of eating overall. Yes, I may falter here and there, however if 85-90% of the time I eat this way, than I now know how well my body will continue to function and feel overall.
I hope everyone who participated in this Challenge with us enjoyed it and also learned some things about their health. Thanks for joining us!
In Health,
Dr. Jen