Beginning a Paleo Challenge!

So, you may be thinking: you run a Paleo-based blog yet you're taking the Paleo Challenge? Haven't you been Paleo all along? What's the deal, Jamie?

Yes, I'm doing a Paleo Challenge. For those of you who aren't aware of this, the Paleo Challenge is simply eating and living 100% Paleo for 30 days (and I started yesterday, technically). John Durant's Hunter-Gatherer.com has a great overview of the process. The idea is to get all the sugars and more importantly the desire for sugars out of your system and set up a basis for ascertaining what your body is accepting of from a dietary standpoint.

As I say in my About page, I've been Paleo for about three years now. But that hasn't been a 100% Paleo deal, and at times it's been pretty bad. My main weakness is anything with chocolate in it - ice cream, candy, etc. I've been MOSTLY Paleo, but as Robb Wolf says, that means you're not Paleo.

I did a Paleo Challenge for three weeks or so when I first started this way back when, and I still feel a change when I do eat sugars and grains now (my heart rate goes up and I get jumpy). The last two colds I've gotten have followed a bit of a carb bender, too. And of course, you may already have read my post about doing a movie bender (popcorn, pop, candy) and the absolute horrific effects it had on me.

So when one of my friends at the Paleo Living Columbus meetup group suggested a Paleo Challenge, I heartily accepted. Time to clean myself up and get back into the 100% Paleo thing for a few weeks. And of course, I'm going to report to you how it's feeling - both physically and mentally.

I'd be interested in anyone wanting to share their experiences with a Paleo Challenge and how it's helped/hurt them over the entire 30 days. Share with us!

Comments

Caffeine and Cortisol - a 30-Day Experiment

No Caffeine for Me! Today, I began upon a 30-day experiment to reduce my cortisol levels by removing coffee from my diet. The goal is to see how it might be affecting my cognitive function and my belly fat. Cortisol is a hormone that is related to stress . At a very basic level, cortisol is created as a response to stressors in our environment. Back when we were still chucking spears at deer and chasing down antelope, cortisol was helping to preserve our lives by giving us quick energy by signalling to our livers that it was time to engage in a process known as gluconeogenesis. This process is basically the breakdown of amino acids, the building blocks of protein, into glucose - one of the two monosaccharides (the healthy one) that our bodies use for fuel. Picture this - you're walking across the street, enjoying the day, when suddenly some inattentive driver tries to turn and doesn't see you. Your heart rate speeds up, and you get a little burst of speed to quickly sprint o

More on Journaling: So many tools...

Journaling was long a habit that I wanted to pick up but just never did. And it was never because I didn't believe in its worth, it was that I just never built the habit or found the proper method that worked best for me. I'd start it for a while, be enthusiastic about it, and then lose the habit when something else came up and interrupted me. That's all changed for me now, as I look forward each morning and night to journaling in my newest tool I've found. But that search has clued me in to a ton of great journaling tools that might help you as you're looking for that great push to get you into the journaling habit! The Five-Minute-Journal: This is obviously the one I've adopted . It's simple, it's quick, and it does the trick. I won't expand into stuff I've already talked about with this in the two posts I've done on this fantastic tool. But let's talk about some of the other aspects of the Five-Minute Journal.

Low-carb/Gluten-free helps with ADHD in study

The ADHD Research Centre in Eindhoven, the Netherlands has some interesting things to say about the treatment of children with ADHD: Diet can do it. Medscape, a website affiliated with WebMD , reports on a study by the Centre where groups of children with ADHD symptoms and behaviors were tested on their reaction to an elimination diet. The study included 100 children with ADHD, all of whom were checked for allergic reactions to foods before the study began. Half were placed into a control group, half into a test group where their diet was limited to "mainly rice, meat vegetables, pears, and water, complemented with potatoes, fruits, and wheat." And all the children were monitored by their parents for behavior changes. Now here's the interesting part: after 2 weeks, 41 of the children in the test group were showing no changes, so the diet was limited even more to rice, meat, vegetables, pears, and water. Notice what was left out: gluten and fructose via the wheat and

Jamie Fellrath | Practical Mindfulness

Search This Blog