Grocery Shopping Trip 1

Last night, Mom and I pulled a Code 2319 by cleaning out the cabinets, fridge, freezer, and pantry.  At first it felt odd, weird, and even wrong, but once it was boxed up it felt awesome, like this is definitely what I should be doing.  Now that the cabinets are clear, it’s time to go shopping.

Armed with my Week 1 shopping list (from www.RobbWolf.com), The Paleo Solution book, and wearing my Gypsies shirt for moral support (well, actually it’s one of my favorite shirts now and it seemed to fit the occasion), we embark on the awesome adventure of hunting and gathering our meal ingredients.  Ok, in all actuality, “hunting and gathering”  in this case involves chucking stuff into the grocery basket… but that doesn’t sound nearly as impressive.  Anyway, here we go.

After going to the first store (shopping stop 1), I was pleased that we were able to get a great portion of our veggies and fruits for the week… for under $30!  To illustrate that healthy foods can be affordable (if you make them important to you) here’s a couple of pics of what we got:

Crazy right?!

Then it was home to put the newly gathered foods into their new home and then on to our fitness class.

I love the ladies in the class Mom and I go to, they are so fun and it’s nice to see familiar faces.  We got to chatting with one of the ladies and it turns out that her daughter has gone Paleo! So encouraging and exciting to find out!

After the class (where I found out that I’m in better shape than I thought!), shopping trip 2 was in order, this time meat and a few more produce items were locked stocked and loaded.  Once these were put up, it was time for our 3^rd and final shopping trip of the day, this time looking for things like spices, eggs, nuts, tomato sauce… all of which were hunted and gathered successfully.

I learned to compare prices, see which stores are better for certain things and wrote down some of the comparisons.  It’s so nice to know that I can do this.  Thanks Mom for helping me learn which stores are better for what, prices, etc.

Paleo starts tomorrow!

Food, Inc.

Last night, Tooti, Mom and I watched Food, Inc.  Nothing like bonding over a documentary about the corruption of the American food industry!

Seriously though, it really made me think about how my food is being processed, grown, and where it actually comes from.  It was so gross!  Excellent information and perfectly timed, right before we go Paleo on Thursday, but today I saw a plush pig magnet and it made me think about how conventional animals are “drugged up” and raised in disgusting environments.  I saw a cow writing pen that had buggy eyes and it made me think about the corn-fed cows and how they are covered in each other’s cow pies and how that poop literally ends up in ground beef.  I saw a sign that said, “GROUND BEEF!” and I thought about the partially paralyzed cows being shoved and prodded… by a forklift.

At the grocery store today, I went to look at the chicken… and literally almost gagged.  After seeing how chickens have been raised so that they are so overweight that they can barely walk a few steps because their legs were never meant to support so much weight… it really makes you think.

Needless to say, watching Food, Inc. really had an impact on me.  Some of the things I had heard, others I hadn’t.  The thing that I took away from watching is a thought at the end of the film; each of us has a choice to make when we buy food.  When we buy food, we are supporting a specific part of a massive industry.  What type of growing techniques and animal treatment are we voting for? It makes you think.

Pre-processed food is disgusting.  Please go watch Food, Inc. and really take a minute to think about it.

 

The Gypsies Won!!!!

WOOOOOHOOOOOO!!!!!!

Yeah!!! The Gypsies won Expedition Impossible!!!! Yeah Gypsies!!!!

Apparently the whole Paleo thing works…

And No Limits came in 2^nd, so happy! My 2 favorite teams ended up being the top 2!!!

Yeaaaaaaahhhh!!!!!!!

Millet: The newfound Frenemy

I started having AWFUL stomach cramps again… the kind that I had before going gluten free… I couldn’t figure it out.  Then I read in The Paleo Solution and on RobbWolf.com that the millet in my new kind of gluten free bread could be to blame.  Though Millet does not contain gluten specifically, it contains “a protein similar to gliadin (the main problem in gluten), and is therefore problematic for digestion.”  I stopped the millet and no more problemo.

Stomach cramp mystery: SOLVED.

T-minus: 7 days

Coincidence?

There I was, chilling, reading The Paleo Solution, when all of a sudden I overhear 2 people talking about foods that their bodies aren’t tolerating while on a cleanse.  The first person says… Corn chips, and he or she is having super sugar cravings. *blink, blink, stare at my book* The second person then says that what he or she can’t have is… are you ready for this? Wheat and sugar.  So there I sat, still reading The Paleo Solution, overhearing this conversation about how these 2 different people each have a GRAIN and sugar (hello?) that doesn’t mesh well with them on this cleanse.

The amazing coincidence that I was reading this book, which tells WHY grains aren’t great, overhearing a conversation about people not tolerating grains was crazy.  It definitely let me know  I’m on the right path.

Paleo: The Beginning

I found out about Paleo on The Gypsies’ facebook page.  I saw a couple of people’s comments asking The Gypsies if they had followed Paleo on Expedition Impossible.  This got me curious and I ended up doing a Google search on what Paleo was… at first I thought it was pronounced Pah-lee-oh… lol.  I learned a little bit from the search and then looked at The Gypsies “liked” pages on facebook and found a LOT of Paleo resources that I started to explore.

At the first look into Paleo, I was happy to discover that it is also gluten-free and kept browsing to see what more it entailed. I’d noticed how much grain I was still eating and it made me wonder about it. I kept reading about Paleo and I was discovering that the gluten free grains I was eating weren’t so great.

The more I read about Paleo, the more answers I was getting to questions that my family and I had and it just all seemed to make sense. For example:

No grain: I’d wondered if my gluten-free grains were still having an effect on my overall not feeling good.  My Mom had also asked if people could eat too much rice, like what does an excess of rice do?  Corn molds when it is in storage (which is REALLY… ewwwww!!!) and Mom had commented that she felt better when she didn’t eat corn products… turns out it’s a GRAIN – not Paleo-friendly.

No Dairy:   I don’t feel awesome when I eat dairy.  If I eat ice cream one evening, I wake up with an “Ice Cream Hangover” of sorts – headache, sinus pressure, my eyes and face get puffy, and I feel suuuper sluggish.  So hasta la vista, dairy!

No Legumes: Beans, soy. I had heard that an overload of soy is not good for you, but then I heard that soy is good for you… Oy soy! Again, Mom had wondered if beans were really as good for you as they are presented to be… turns out… they’re NOT!

The bottom line: Eat what your body was designed to eat! Don’t eat cruddy food.

Back to The Gypsies’ page.  A couple of days passed and I was getting more and more curious about Paleo when I saw that The Gypsies had posted an interview they did with Robb Wolf.  I clicked the link and explored Robb’s website (www.robbwolf.com) and got even more curious about what I was reading… so I signed up for the email list and snooped around. It took me a few days to get to listen to the podcast, but the point is that it lead me to download the first chapter of The Paleo Solution (by Robb Wolf), which I then realized that I needed to order, and did within a couple of days.  I am so glad.

My Mom, sister, and I realized that we’d been getting cross-contaminated at Starbucks and I had been pondering the sugar amounts and the soy in my drink of choice (Venti, 7 pump Vanilla, No Foam, No Water, Earl Gray Latte).  So we decided to give it up to see what happens.  I’ve been off of Starbucks for about a week and a half now and I feel way better.  Giving up my latte was my main concern (or uh, discomfort) in going Paleo, but now that I have, it hasn’t been bad.  It’s a step.

After discussing it, we are all going Paleo starting September 1, 2011.  We’ll be starting the 30 day Paleo challenge.  I have the grocery list from www.RobbWolf.com and in the book there’s a 30 day eating plan – complete with menus and recipes.  I like the way that it’s presented, which launched off a crazy idea that I presented to my family, and here it is:

For the 30 days, I will be in charge of cooking every meal. I currently don’t cook much (like I cook eggs on occasion and I cook brownies or cake pops) but I think I can do this.  The way it’s presented looks pretty easy to follow, which is great. I want to know that I can do this.  I want to know that someone who is taking over 20 hours in college (like myself) can also do this for him or herself.  Mom and Tooti quickly agreed that this is a great idea.

Going Paleo, September 1.  Thanks Gypsies!

A bit of background info

I’m 21, a full time student in college, taking 20+ hours studying Graphic Design (yes, I’m an artist).  I have just over a year left in my program, graduating in Fall 2012.

After moving to Tennessee for music college with my sister in 2008/09, we volunteered at a church camp in Alaska (summer ’09) and ended up staying for an internship through part of the fall.  I was in AK for about 4 months total, my sister for 5.  Long story short, I got into my current college, flew back home, started school (literally the day I got back).  Shortly after that, my Dad was diagnosed with cancer.  6 weeks later, he passed away in December 2009.

Fast forward to now.  I’m doing college online and living at home with my Mom, sister, and our 2 dogs. We all follow a gluten-free diet and have for a little over a year, starting when we found out (in 2010) that we are gluten intolerant.  Big change, but you do what you need to, and it’s been a pretty good transition.

So there I was a few days ago, thinking “Wow, sure I’m gluten-free, but I sure have been eating a LOT of grain lately… rice, corn, stuff like that.  Rice bread, etc.”  Then I thought about how tired I was of not feeling GREAT.  I mean, I’m feeling a lot better since we went gluten free, no nasty stomach cramps that make it hurt to even breathe, but I still wasn’t feeling awesome, as good as I know that I should.  I seriously began to wonder if this was more than the “get contaminated, get sick, catch something, recover” cycle that happens on the rare occasion that we do eat out and something gets glutenized.

I thought there must be something more that I could be doing.

I started working out, which helps some, but still, there must be something… Later that day, I pulled up The Gypsies’ website and facebook page, and it is here that our journey begins.

*cue epic music… no, not circus music! More like Star Wars intro music… that’s better*