First Month is OVER!!

Hi everyone! Okay, so I know I haven't updated in a while but I was busy! School is getting busier and busier but I'm determined to keep this blog. Also, I haven't been following my "low carbs" goal like I wanted to. I've stayed away from wheat (with the exception of a burger + bun the other night and breaded chicken yesterday and a couple days ago), but I'm starting to feel like I'm letting myself slip. I keep allowing multitudes of carbs into my meals, whether or not I realize how much I actually eat. I've stopped measuring my carbs too. Which is a step in the wrong direction. 

Above is a picture of me from January (left) and from today (right). I was going to post the first picture in January but I wanted to show some difference, so I kept it till now. I can't tell much of a difference between the two (other than the fact the January one is blurry! 😉 ) but it's not really discouraged me. I just think I need to keep watching what I eat and make sure I don't slip up as much. Besides, I'm doing this for the rest of the year (and on) so I've got time. 

So when I started I weighed 174, but I weighed myself this morning and it was 168! So about 6 lbs. lost! The most important thing to me is that I'm feeling better, but the weight-loss is also a plus.

I've also been trying to stand up straighter since I started. I took the picture on the left after seeing how much I slouched in the above picture. My spine looked super curved and that alarmed me. In the picture on the left, I'm standing up straight, whereas on the right, I am standing like I normally do: slouched over. It's amazing how much better I look when standing up straight.
 I've always had trouble with standing/sitting up straight, but I've been working on it over the past month. I've been trying to be mindful about the way I walk and sit, and trying to stretch my shoulders back and head up, too. Hopefully there's a subtle difference. It seems like it's easier to do now, whereas before it hurt when I sat up straight for too long.

So anyway, this is my way of reapplying myself to this diet. I haven't cheated too badly but since it's a new month I'm trying to be good again. I'm sticking to my guns and eating what's good for me, not just what tastes good (just because mashed potatoes taste good doesn't mean they don't have carbs). This isn't to say that primal food doesn't taste good, because it does. But what I eat ain't healthy. 

The blog post I had planned to write back in January was about counting calories vs. counting carbs. My stance is simple. I do track what I eat and keep track of the calories but that's only to get a rough estimate of how much food I'm eating. If I'm eating good Primal, it's kind of hard for me to get enough calories. So I make sure I'm eating enough by keeping track of that. I'm also keeping track of my macronutrients: protein, carbs, and fat. I want to make sure I stay under 100 g of carbs or make sure I eat enough protein (I've found that ~90 g protein a day is good for me). This way I can look back if I need to and see how much I was eating in terms of these macronutrients and I can adjust my current eating. If I feel sick and shaky one day, I might have eaten too much or too little protein. (Weird things happen when I eat too much protein in one sitting!). And I need to go back to when I felt good. 

I wouldn't really advise you to count calories unless you really have to. Most people tend to obsess about staying under their calorie goal. A calorie counting app should be a tool that helps you with moderation, rather than a source of stress. If you find yourself going over your allotted calories for the day, ask yourself why. Is your calorie goal too low? I find that 1200 calories is much too low for me. I'm in the 1500-1800 calorie range. Check your calorie goal and see if it's really right for a person of your age and gender. 

For me, it helps keep myself accountable for what I'm eating. I have to manually enter the amount of food I ate and I know I also have to post that on here. But I think the good thing about Primal is learning for yourself when to stop eating, because you feel satisfied. But I know that for a lot of people, myself included, it's hard to stop eating once you've started. And counting calories/macronutrients can really help. Whatever works, go with it. Don't give it up because someone on the internet told you to.

Anyway, I will talk to y'all soon,
Stay cool and be Excellent to each other!
Sam

Carbs, Carbs, and MORE Carbs

I've been eating a lot of carbs. Not really purposely, but more or less because I'm always hungry after meals (especially dinner) and I thought it'd be better to eat a baked potato with one meal, or spaghetti with GF noodles, or tonight, Stir Fry with rice. It does make me fuller after the meal, but usually, it's too full.

When I ate the baked potato, it made me feel like I'd eaten way too much. To be fair, it was quite a large potato. But also, it made me lose the feeling of a clear mind that being only satiated can bring. It made me feel a little more sluggish and sleepy. Not a whole lot, mind you, but enough that I noticed it. And I hardly wanted to move after eating because I felt so full.

I kind of wanted to talk about carbs today. Yes, I am still eating carbs, but I am trying to keep them to a minimum. I know they make me overeat and I'm really trying to control that response. However, I've had carb-y vegetables and rice the past 3 days with at least one meal. I for one, feel like that's too often for me. I need to get back to the place I was before. When I said I would only have rice/GF pasta/ potatoes once a week, I meant it. It's hard, but in the long run, I think it'll make a world of difference.

Publix Haul! And Sautéed Shrimp

So today I feel like I ate pretty well! I did have a baked potato with dinner, so that was quite a lot of carbs, but other than that, I didn't have any wheat so that's good. I went to the grocery store with my mom today, as me and my brother are at her house this weekend, so we bought everything we needed.

I Cheated... and That's Okay

So yes, I cheated really badly yesterday. I had things to do and I couldn't eat at home, so I tried to choose the best things to eat at my mom's house. But we hadn't gone to the store so she didn't have much. I started out pretty well though, I had about 2 handfuls of grapes and some cashews at my brother's request. (I was going to have Pringles because of the convenience, but he talked me out of it. I'm glad he did.) However, I then had like, WAY too many corn chips (they were gluten free, doesn't mean they're healthy!). And then for dinner I had red beans and rice. I have allowed myself to have rice and beans, but I ate almost an entire pot of it. :/ SO NOT GOOD.

The 80/20 Rule Tastes Good!

If you haven't heard of the 80/20 rule, let me explain. Basically it's the idea that if 80% of the time, you're eating Primal, the other 20% can be for indulgences that aren't strictly Primal. This is the explanation I like, and the one I'm using. I will get to the reason behind talking about this in a minute.

January Weight (and Hamburgers)

I weighed myself this morning and I was 175 lbs. Based on BMI, that puts me into obese territory. Which, okay, BMI isn't a super accurate measurement. However, it surprised me quite a lot when I looked it up. So I'm hoping that I can get to an average weight through this year.

Since it's January 2nd already, I thought I'd type up some of the reasons I'm doing this. Because I think it's important that you know where I'm coming from and what my motivations are, especially when I'm changing my lifestyle.

Happy New Year!

I started out this new year a little slow. Last night I went to a party, and after being in the car all day traveling back from Mississippi, I had eaten a ton of crap. I had decided that dinner would be a big bad meal so I could at least get it out of my system before I started eating better. So we had Burger King. Not really a great choice!

But going to the party, watching the ball drop in NYC meant staying up past midnight and walking home. I didn't get to bed till about 1 in the morning, but it was fun so no complaints here!

Today I woke up around 10:30 a.m., and because I didn't really know what to eat, I just waited until lunch to eat anything. I want to start eating more breakfast, I feel like it helps me fill up. But while I'm enjoying my time off school and waking up later, I'm probably not going to have much time for breakfast.

I had some Lil Smokies sausages (I don't like the beef ones, so we have the pork/chicken/turkey ones) and I made chicken broth with some bouillon powder we have. I really need to try to get the "no salt/less salt" one because I know it had to be a lot of sodium. That and I also want to try different soup recipes. Ones that rely more on whole foods than soup powders.

I was still a little hungry so I had a little bit of canned corn. I know, I know, it's an indigestible starch. But since I knew we were having green beans for dinner, I didn't want to eat them twice in a day. I'm going to try to stay away from that type of stuff. The other downside is that for as little corn as I ate, it still brought my carbs up to 36 g for today, so far.

We went to my Uncle's house for dinner tonight, and he's eating a paleo-type diet too, so I knew it'd be easy for me not to cheat. I baked a cake for my aunt, as it was her birthday today, but I didn't eat any of it.

He cooked pork and beef on the grill, and had salad and green beans with it. I prefer pork so I only ate that, and I ended up eating two big pieces. It must've been around 7-10 oz. I don't like dressing on my salad, so I just had a tiny bit of salad on the side. Looking back, I should've had more! It was probably only half a serving anyway.

I felt satiated after I ate, but once the cake came out, I was hungry again. I held off eating again until we got back home, and only just ate a teaspoon of peanut butter at about 10:30 p.m. I was thinking about making a whole can of green beans for myself, but my brother talked me out of it. Plus I didn't really feel like cooking so late at night.

In total, I had 1120 calories today, with 55 g carbs, 65 g fat, and 79 g protein.

I've been thinking of my new year's resolutions today and yesterday and I have a few goals that I want to achieve this year. One is eating better. I want to do primal for a whole year, rather than just a month at a time. I think the trick to achieving this is to think of it as changing my lifestyle rather than sticking to a strict paleo/primal routine for just a month. This means that if I do cheat (and I probably will) that I won't be thrown totally off. And also it's more of a long term thing. It's not that I can NEVER eat bread again, or make cookies for special occasions, but that I want to stay away from those things as much as possible, and realize that not eating them all the time makes me feel SO much better.

What are y'all's new year's resolutions? Any big plans for this year?