My First Week Converting to Paleo

I made the decision that I was going to give this Paleo thing (or slightly modified version) a proper shot on Monday and started eating that way seriously on Tuesday onwards which was the 6th December. My meals have not been perfect – I have included brown rice, oats & some dairy without doing the exercise and I have also been snacking on some wasabi peas & nuts which I now know are a no-no because both peas & peanuts are counted as a legume and they have starchy coatings on them! Still, it’s an improvement as it’s better than snacking on chocolate like I did on Monday!

Wednesday I ate a fish pie that I’d cooked some time before and put in the freezer. This had white potato, milk, and some pretty awful white sauce granules so I’d definitely call that one a cheat meal! Though following on from what I was saying in my last post – that’s not a favourite meal of mine so I would not want to compromise my health or fat loss for it so that is one that I would convert to Paleo.

Towards the weekend I got much better and I think Sunday was my first pure paleo day in terms of the protein & carbs but I did have a little cheese!

Results!

I’m going to jump straight to the results before the other stuff. It’s Monday morning today so six days after attempting the switch, and I’ve just done weights and measurements and I must say, I’m pretty astounded:

Weight: -3.8lbs
Waist: -1.5 inches
Hips: -0.75 inches

Now I must add that I have NEVER had these kinds of results before! I have lost significant amounts of weight (around 2 stones) on two separate occasions in my past – once with Slimming World and the second time doing ordinary Calorie counting with a lot of exercise. Both times I lost on average less than 1lb per week and tended to fluctuate a lot.

Now a few things could cause this sudden loss. It could be water weight though that’s kind of unlikely because before switching to Paleo I had been doing Weight Watchers for about 6 weeks so I was already dieting. However last week was also ‘time of the month’ and that can do all sorts of funky things with water retention and bloating!

Still, it’s still put a massive smile on my face and spurred me on!

Tiredness & Headaches

Wednesday, & Thursday I was massively tired and had a bad headache most of the time. However the cause of this could be several things. I had decided to use an alarm to get up earlier from Tuesday onwards and I never usually use one and it was also that time of the month! If you make a sudden switch from a high carb diet to something much lower in carbs and all those artificial toxins then your body can go through a detox which can cause side effects such as tiredness, headaches, flu-like symptoms etc but I honestly doubt that was the case with me because I have still had some carbs every day. Honestly I don’t know whether my diet has changed enough in just those few days to cause that – I suspect I was just tired because I wasn’t sleeping to well and I often get a headache when I’m tired because I spend hours on a computer every day. By the weekend however, that was all gone.

Cravings

None. Seriously! Very odd for me! Usually the moment I do anything funky with my diet I immediately crave chocolate even though I rarely eat it normally. On Monday I was having a bit of an emotional meltdown and I had some chocolate then and left it on my desk. It was that day that I decided to do this diet properly and started Tuesday but I left the chocolate there. I looked at it a few times over the next few days and felt nothing lol! I put it back in the cupboard yesterday. The only reason I didn’t throw it out is beause it was a present from Celia – she’d brought it back from New York for me :-)

I’ve honestly not had any cravings for anything which is truly odd. Not chocolate, not pasta, not sweeties, nothing. I’ve just eaten my food, liked it and that was that! I have been a little hungry and then I have snacked on some stuff I had prepared – some boiled eggs, some nuts (and naughty wasabi peas!) and I also bought some of those Nakd bars which are pure raw fruit & nuts – purely Paleo and also allowed in moderation on Craigs diet. I’ve not written everything down but I am pretty sure that is all I have snacked on so this is looking good so far!

At the weekend Celia was at mine for quite a lot of it and she was eating biscuits (yummy ones) and chocolate orange and I didn’t even twinge. I had decided to have a cheat meal on the Sunday night of burgers with a bread bun because I hadn’t managed to find a substantial enough looking side to go with it instead of the bun. However, it got to Sunday night, I’d had only veg carbs all day and I was feeling good and I just didn’t want that bun. So I ditched it and had the burgers on the lettuce leaves and a side of coleslaw. People who know me and know how I eat will be wondering who I am and what I did with Caroline!

Sleep

I have been sleeping really badly all week – taking a long time to get to sleep and waking up a lot. Now the getting to sleep has been because my brain would not stop. Once I made the decision to do this I made an all out effort to find everything I could on the subject. I am now armed with several ebooks including some great recipe books and a ton of blogs (I’ll put links in a later post) and I have been reading them and investigating recipes every evening all week so I really have this stuff on the brain. This means that I have been going to bed thinking of food and that has kept me awake.

However, I have also been waking up a lot and I’m not sure what the cause of that is. To be fair I am usually a pretty bad sleeper anyway – I am a very light sleeper and I sleep best on my own in complete darkness and complete silence. These conditions are almost impossible to create however so I don’t sleep well most of the time. But saying that I had actually been sleeping better over the last couple of weeks until I started this diet. A couple of days during the week it’s taken me around an hour to get to sleep and I’ve been sleeping in excess of 8 (broken) hours but I’m going to bed early to give myself that sleep because I think I need it. The last couple of nights have been better and Celia has been here and I always sleep worse when she’s here (cos she elbows me in the head when she’s asleep and wakes me up!)

Overall

I have felt as if I have gone through some kind of detox which seems bizarre to me as I am still not following it 100%. With the results I have got from the first week and from talking some more to my neice (who came 3rd out of 120 people in her body transformation contest!) I have decided to go as close to pure paleo as possible and ditch the starchy carbs. So I won’t be including oats, brown rice, legumes etc. At this stage I’m still going to include some dairy – I don’t eat much anyway and I haven’t read up on why that’s supposedly bad plus good quality dairy can be a source of extra protein so that’s staying for now.

My biggest challenge right now is figuring out what on earth to eat alongside the main protein part of each meal. Meat & what? Obviously the answer is vegetables but I only like a select few veggies and so the common broccolli and carrots side does not work for me! I am spending a lot of time pouring through recipe books trying to come up with ideas!

Exercise wise, I never did that workout on Saturday so in the end I did one single workout, and took a very short walk and that’s it. This week, I’ll do more strength training  aiming for two sessions and I’m still not sure on the cardio. I’d rather just stay at home so I’m a bit limited on my options.