Mostly Paleo

Today I made Monster Cookies with the girls. They were delicious. I should know, I ate 4 of them.

It's funny, Brad and I both have our different things that we 'treat' ourselves with. Mine is that random cookie (or 4). We also try to have a meal a week that we 'treat' ourselves with. Saturday night was pizza. I must say, it was so delicious but then 3 hours later I felt sick to my stomach. So now I'm left wondering if those 'treats' are worth it.

Today I thought I would answer the question of what is the difference between Whole30 and Paleo and where exactly do we lie in all of this. If any of my Paleo and Whole30 friends want to add anything to this, please feel free in the comments. I'm always reading more about Paleo and am not an expert.

Whole30 is what we did for the month of February. It's more of a detox. Getting rid of all the sugar, grains, and dairy in your body so that you can see how your body reacts once you introduce them back into your diet. We basically detoxed our body but never did the slowly introducing them back into our diet to see how we react to each thing. I have noticed reactions when eating things I don't normally eat and do think it's gluten I'm reacting to because I don't eat a lot of dairy but I can't really say for sure since there has been gluten and dairy in what I ate. Whole30 is much stricter than Paleo. With Whole30 you completely cut out sweeteners. We were very strict with this for the first 3 weeks. After that I did add in some natural sweeteners like honey and maple syrup. Since they are so expensive it definitely keeps you to having them in moderation.

Paleo is a way of life. This is what we are striving for. Although you still stay away from most of the things that you do not have with the Whole30, you can still have some grains, sweeteners, and some cheeses in moderation. I am still finding my way with some of these things and deciding what we will allow back in our diet.

Rice is one of the things you can have in moderation but our family isn't huge on rice to begin with so it's not a big deal to be without. I was happy to learn that I can sprinkle some Parmesan on my food.

There are a few things that I did give up on. One is sauces. Paleo sauces are costly to make, they don't taste that good and they don't keep very long in the fridge so I end up dumping most of it. Since we don't use condiments, dressings, and sauces that often, I've stopped spinning my wheels on this one and am going to buy them at the store but I will be more diligent about checking the labels.

One of the hardest things about Paleo is having to plan every meal. Although there are plenty of easy meals to make, it's still planning. There aren't those fast, easy convenience meals for those busy days. That's why I decided that corn taco shells would be fine so that we can have tacos again. They are still gluten free. And a small amount of cheese on a taco won't kill us.

So, in the end, Brad and I would probably classify ourselves as about 80% Paleo. We try to stick to it as much as possible because we have seen such a difference in our health but we also want to enjoy some of the things that we have enjoyed for years, within reason and in moderation.

And with the kids, I still don't buy a lot of packaged food for them. They are probably 70% gluten free and I've cut back on a lot of the sugar they eat. I try to bake them something each week to treat them and it is usually gluten free. They love picking out a cookie to make and helping me make it. We've cut out chips and I started making our own trail mixes.

On a different note, I oil pulled for the first time this morning. For those of you who have never heard of this, basically you swish oil around in your mouth for 20 minutes. The bacteria in your mouth sticks to the oil and then you spit it out. I did it for 15 minutes this morning and I used coconut oil. I was amazed at how clean my mouth felt all day. I'm excited to see the results as I continue to do it!