Collard-wrapped Tilapia with Car­rot Fen­nel Salad

I’ve spent the last few months in a funk. I’ve had so much on my mind and things were really look­ing dis­mal. Truth be told, it wasn’t life per se that was get­ting me down but rather the deci­sions that I needed to make that I wanted to avoid. Luck­ily, I was able to snap out of this funk and actu­ally start mak­ing pos­i­tive changes that I know I can stick with.

The first step was to get a grip on how my fam­ily eats. This includes what we pur­chase in the gro­cery store and so much more. Before I can even begin to worry about exer­cis­ing, I need to worry about food because if the food that I am eat­ing is hin­der­ing my abil­ity to move, then I will never see the results that I want.

To help fig­ure out what eat­ing the crap food that I ate did to my body (other than adding way too many pounds to it), I began read­ing books and blogs on clean eat­ing, thy­roid con­di­tions, vit­a­min defi­cien­cies, and so much more. I started lis­ten­ing to my body and not­ing how I felt after I ate cer­tain things. I learned that I had come to think of the stom­ach pains, the con­sti­pa­tion, and the never-feeling-hungry as nor­mal. I gave into to crav­ings despite the fact that my body was feel­ing bro­ken. Between the weight, asthma, my thy­roid– I knew I had to take action.

Nine Boxes to Start the Change

I read about the Paleo Diet  after being given info from an online acquain­tances and knew instantly that this was the lifestyle that my fam­ily needed. My daugh­ter and I suf­fer greatly when we eat wheat and diary. I also noticed that while we LOVE veg­gies, we were lack­ing in the vari­ety of veg­eta­bles that we ate. My Italian-American hus­band is a pasta addict and my love of carbs as gone right to my gut. And did I men­tion the preser­v­a­tives, salt, hor­mones, and chem­i­cals in the foods we enjoyed– even in those we thought were healthy? Yeah, we had to make a change.

So two weeks ago,  I did some­thing that I never thought I would do: I threw every­thing out. I went through my fridge and cab­i­nets and replaced all the crap with things that could only be hunted, killed, or plucked from nature.

And in came the nine boxes of organic, fresh, whole foods that would usher us into a new day. I spent 10–11 hours prep­ping all of the food: blanch­ing some veg­gies and dic­ing oth­ers, por­tion­ing out meat, and learn­ing to store fresh herbs prop­erly. My daugh­ter helped too. She washed veg­gies and some were intro­duced to her already veg­gie lov­ing pallet.

Except for a few minor things, we are liv­ing la vida Paleo!

When all was said and done, my fridge went from prac­ti­cally empty to sacked to the brim with Mother Nature’s best gifts! I was so excited about the upcom­ing week! Armed with my revised and reworked 2-week Every­day Paleo menu, there would be no stop­ping us!

The last two weeks have been very excit­ing food wise. I have learned to step out­side of my box and eat things in a way that I have never really eaten them before. For exam­ple, I don’t like eggs with a runny yolk, but the Every­day Paleo “Huevos Rancheros” recipe looked and smelled so good that I wasn’t afraid to ven­ture into the runny-yolk realm.

Beef Stir-Broiled and Cau­li­flower Fried Rice

By the end of the first week, I was ready to start cook­ing my meals with­out the help of the recipes in the book. Tonight, we had Stir-Roasted Steak and Veg­gies with Cau­li­flower Fried Rice. It was SO FREAKIN’ GOOD!

That’s the thing, this is not a diet. It’s a lifestyle. We are eat­ing more veg­gies, leaner cuts of hormone/anti-biotic/free-range/grass-fed meats. We have  decided to say “good­bye” to all oats, wheat, diary, gluten prod­ucts. We decided to instead replace all that with food that will fuel us and make us healthier.

So far so good!

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