Paleo Changes You: Your Eyes Adjust to Light Changes More Quickly

     Sometimes it's hard to recognize that something has changed. I had not observed that I had changed until one day at work. Our store got hit by a tornado, and our pharmacy was moved out to the front of the store in a trailer. It was the middle of summer, and it was bright and hot. I had just gotten back from lunch, walked into the trailer and went straight to work. A minute later, a woman came inside and started talking about how bright it was outside and the fact that she couldn't see because her eyes had not yet adjusted.

     It was at that moment that I realized I had no real adjustment period. So I had to share. Ray and I went for a walk, and as we got closer to home, I brought his attention to how bright it was outside, and he remarked that it was going to be a while before he'd be able to see once he got inside, and I told him to make a note of it. As we walked inside, he gasped at the fact that he could see.

     I've also found that when the lights go out, I can see in the dark a lot faster, and when I go into bright light, I'm not blinded anymore as well. It's like having a kind of superpower.

Paleo Changes You: Junk Food Has Little to No Appeal

     I have a confession. I was a junk food junky. If you read my short story here, you already know that about me. I could put away some candy. My mom likes to tell the story about when I was little, and I would ask for a cookie. She was give me permission, and I would always say, "Can I have 'twofum'?" It's cute. I was cute, but it really shows my mentality when it came to junk. I needed more. "Twofum" cookies were the highlight of my day.

    And don't get me started on my fishing trips with my dad. I was not what you would call a fisherperson. The whole baiting hooks and taking fish off of said hook was nasty to me, but I loved being on the lake just before the sun rose, being with my dad while he participated in something he loved, watching other people fish, and eating junk food all day long. And we would be on the boat all day long, so I would get massive amounts of junk food: sodas, a couple of waters to keep hydrated, Gatorade, chocolate milk to go with my cinnamon bun breakfast, cakes, candies, and crackers. And I would obsess about them all day long. I would ration them. And I would sort them from my least favorite to my most favorite (this can be done even when you like it all; you just have to have a system).

     I learned my lesson with sodas. I learned it the hard way. I was 15, and I had a pretty serious soda habit. I remember coming home every day, and seeing the cola in the kitchen. At first, it had no real influence on me. I bypassed it, preferring sweet tea instead. If I got soda back then, it was usually one of the yellow or clear ones. Then one day, I couldn't take just walking by it. I had to try it with my favorite snack. I made myself four peanut butter crackers with a cup of cola. Man, the combination was a taste sensation! This would be my new after school snack. After a couple of weeks, it wasn't enough. So I would make eight crackers and have two cups of cola. After a month, I was calling my mom every day or two to tell her to bring home a new 2 liter bottle. And then the inevitable happened. I got a bladder infection to end all bladder infections. My urine was the color of cola. I had to take Macrobid, something for the pain, and another medication that I soon found I had a horrible allergic reaction to. Thus ended my cola habit. I quit cold turkey.

     Then I got married, and I had less restrictions to my access of junk food. Ray and I lived in town instead of in the country where I'd grown up, so the junk food was within five minutes of me. I didn't have a curfew, so if I wanted to go out at midnight and pick up some cookies and peanut butter or cheese to go on my cookies, I could just hop in the truck and go. Ray and I would often get a pack of cookies that were similar in taste to Girl Scout Tagalongs®. In fact, we did this on our wedding night after learning the his cousins had eaten all of the chocolate covered strawberries a friend of ours had made for us to take on our honeymoon. Together we could eat the entire package in one sitting.

     And speaking of Ray's addictions: he's the kind of guy who after watching Super Size Me, didn't go "That's disgusting!" He looked at me and said, "Let's go to Wendy's. I really want a hamburger and fries after that."

     After years of trying different diet lifestyles (the difference between a fad diet and a diet lifestyle is that a fad diet is meant to take weight off quickly, but is not sustainable; while a lifestyle diet is something you do every day, a way of life, sustainable), Ray and I stumbled upon Paleo. Let me tell you, the detox period was hard. No sugar! No bread! No dairy! I didn't know if I could do it. I was an addict in a very real sense, especially when it came to sugar. Ray was an addict, too, but more for bread and especially dairy. The first three days were the worst. We experienced flu-like symptoms. We were grouchy, but we kept on going. We would get out and walk, and to keep from thinking about what we were giving up, we spent our walks talking about how good we would feel and the kind of things we could eat like vegetables drizzled with ghee or whole eggs (not just the whites) or sweet potato salad with homemade mayonnaise. And we made it through, and then we fell in love. The vibrancy of the food, the taste, the healing that we experienced has been so amazing.

     And junk food? Well, have you ever noticed that (with the exception of brightly artificially colored candy) junk food is BROWN? Now I have nothing against the color brown, but everything you put in you mouth should not be brown, not when there is a whole rainbow of food out there to experience: beets, cranberries, apples, pumpkin, carrots, butternut squash, sweet potatoes, peppers, spaghetti squash, bananas, plantains, broccoli, collards, kale, spinach, cucumber, zucchini, cabbage, blueberries, eggplant, cauliflower, turnips, and parsnips, just to name a few. (List provided by my two sons.)

Paleo Changes You: High Fructose Corn Syrup Smells Bad and Tastes Worse

     I remember my first encounter with high fructose corn syrup. I was taking a shopping trip with my mom, and we stopped to get a snack. I loved chocolate milk, so I grabbed a small snack-sized carton and some crackers. I opened the carton and drank, and then I wondered what was wrong with the milk. I read the ingredients to find that it had been made with HFCS. Within a few minutes of drinking the milk, I started feeling sick, and my head started hurting.

     Soon, high fructose corn syrup started popping up everywhere. There was no escaping it in the land of junk food. I began to grow accustomed to the ill feelings and headaches. I even, eventually, got used to the strange taste.

     Then I switched to Paleo. We switched in January of 2014, and by Halloween, everyone was ready for a break. The kids wanted candy. I wanted candy, so we broke down, and I allowed the kids to save a couple of pieces of candy before tossing the rest. I grabbed a little something myself and immediately regretted it. I've since found that I'm mildly allergic to corn products of all kinds. What happened? Well, it tasted terrible, my tongue became a sore in my head, my skin broke out, I got an instant headache, and my stomach cramped up.

     I'm not saying that I'm immune to cravings. I still want candy every once in a while, but every time I give in, and the candy contains HFCS, I regret it immediately.

Paleo Changes You: Dairy Smells Bad

     I grew up on skim milk. I drank it every morning in my cereal and every night before bed. And if I had some cookies, there was a glass of milk. There were only a few time (when the milk was really fresh) that I would say it tasted great, but I enjoyed it.

     Then Ray and I decided to cut dairy out of our diets. I can't begin to explain the excruciating process that I went through. There were times I thought I might die from the stomach cramps. I felt like I was going through what I've heard addicts go through as they get off drugs. There were times that I felt like the only thing that would help me was to drink some milk. I would lie on the floor, curled up, and cramping.

     Then things changed. I started to feel better. I started to realize that not only was I addicted to dairy, but it also didn't agree with me. When I had dairy, I got bloated and gassy. After dairy, it just didn't happen anymore.

     Then last Halloween, we took the kids trick-or-treating on the square, and Alex had to go to the bathroom. One of the stores open that had a bathroom was an ice cream shop, so we went in, and the smell was disgusting. The entire place smelled like milk gone bad. Yuck! Ray said something about it, and I told him that dairy had been smelling bad to me for a while, but the ice cream shop was worse because of the concentration of dairy.

     These days, I prefer coconut milk. It's rich, creamy, makes a great ice cream, and it doesn't smell bad or make me feel terrible.

Paleo Changes You: Grains Smell Bad

     I used to love to bake bread. I would start my yeast, mix and knead my dough, let it rise, punch it down, let it rest, shape it, bake it, and eat it. I was a bread geek. My favorite loaf in the whole world was an Ethiopian honey dabo. I would make it and take it to gathering where we would eat it with butter and honey, and people would fight over who could take the leftovers home.

     What I'm not telling you is that while I loved the smell of bread and the taste of bread, the pseudo-food would grow in my mouth causing me to drink massive amounts of liquid just to get through a sandwich, but I ignored the feeling. I ignored the gagging.

     Last winter, we were trying to get more people to get flu shots at our pharmacy, so we were promised a reward if we would ask people to get their shot. The "reward" was pizza. The pizza was brought in, and it smelled pretty bad, but I figured it was just the type of pizza.

     Then last spring, I walked into a restaurant that bakes fresh bread daily, and I was horrified. The entire restaurant reeked! I had never smelled anything quite like it. I looked to my family, and they looked just as appalled as I did.  I looked around at the people eating, wondering if they could smell the same thing. Then someone behind me said, "That bread smells delicious." It was then that I realized that I was smelling fresh, baked bread, and that I was no longer enamored of its smell.

     Now that I've been Paleo for over a year, and bread doesn't even smell good anymore, it's so easy to continue to eat this way, and I'll never go back.

October: A Wrap Up of the Month (with lots of pictures)

 

     October is always a crazy month around here. It starts with my birthday and ends with Victor's birthday and Halloween.  This year, I turned 38, and Victor turned 9.

     My birthday was truly awesome because I have such a wonderful family. Lydia made me a fall/Halloween candle mat; I got several Disney Infinity 3.0 figures; Ray gave me a wax warmer with a spider on it; and the boys made me cards and Lego sets. Ray made me egg salad and banana pancakes for breakfast. We spent most of the day outside because it was so beautiful. We walked along our back country roads and in our woods. The fall in Alabama is like a second spring. There are beautiful flowers everywhere and bees buzzing around. The only real difference is the colors. For my special birthday dinner, I had an Elvis burger with baked sweet potato and cookie dough fudge for dessert. Then we had my birthday with my parents, who fixed me shrimp with salad, sweet potato chips, and steamed veggies. Then we had my birthday with Ray's parents. Since we were already doing the 21 day sugar detox by this time, we had to order pretty carefully at our favorite restaurant, but we got a steak burger and steamed veggies with butter, and it all worked out well.

     After my birthday, we had a Marvel Movie Marathon, which you can read about here.

     Then it was time for our local museum's Pioneer Days, which I hope to put a post out on A Geek Girl's Guide as well.

     Then I decided that it was past time to clean out the closets, so with the help of my children and the hope of finding the controllers to my old Nintendo, we tackled the playroom closet. We didn't find the controllers, but we did find several pictures, a few missing books, some smaller jeans that Ray can almost wear now that he's lost weight, and we managed to condense a closet-full of crap into three boxes of stuff we just can't get rid of.

     With the end of the month drawing every closer, it was time to get our costumes done in time for Halloween and plan Victor's ninth birthday. The boys wanted to dress as Mario and Luigi, and we found their costumes. Ray, Lydia, and I wanted to go as character from Adventure Time, and we wanted to make our costumes. They turned out really nice, and while we were out and about on Halloween, we got asked a few times to have our pictures taken with various people. It felt like being a celebrity. It was such a blast!

     We had a cookout for Victor's birthday dinner the day before his birthday because we had a full day planned the day of. He wanted hamburgers, hotdogs, sweet potato chips, and cookie dough fudge, but I also made some marshmallows. He got a few Lego sets, a stuffed elephant for his collection, some papercraft toys, and some Minecraft figures. Then on his birthday, we went to a local arts and crafts fair, then ate lunch at Earth Fare, where we made ourselves some great big salads, then we headed over to Toys 'R' Us to look around before going trick or treating. Then we finished off the day with a pizza movie night and watched Hocus Pocus.

     All-in-all, it was an awesome and exhausting month. I hope to get more writing done in the next few months, but we'll see. I hope your October was awesome as well.

Paleo Changes You: Sweets Taste Sweeter

     If you are what you eat, then when I was little, I was made of sugar. I ate something sweet every day. When I was a toddler I would ask for a cookie, and when my mom said yes, I would say, "Can I have 'twofum'?"

     Just recently I wrote a story on another blog about going with my dad when he would get his haircut and then going to the nearby store to stock up on candy. If you read it, you're probably wondering how I could eat that much candy, but that amount of junk food would last me a month or two. I would hide it and only eat a piece or two at the time, but I would eat some every day.

     Don't get me wrong, I could have eaten it all, and occasionally, I would binge on candy, believing the consequences to be well within the range of acceptable in view of the reward of eating all of my favorite things and then drinking a large glass of milk because I'd be so thirsty and craving protein to counterbalance to sugar surging through my system.

     I got my sugary addiction from my dad. He and I would eat dessert with our meal. We both felt that we couldn't eat a meal without something sweet to help the rest of the food go down.

     Then over two and a half years ago, I was fed up with feeling bad and looking worse all the time, and I decided to do a sugar detox right after Christmas. Believe me when I tell you that it was a tough decision to make. I was terrified that I wouldn't be able to do it. I was terrified that I would gag on my food, but I knew I had to do it.

     In my search to find tasty recipes with only natural carbs, I stumbled upon some Paleo cookbooks that were free on Kindle, and had some delicious-looking recipes. I made it through that detox, and I've never looked back.

     The weird thing is, when I started the detox, it said something to the effect of eating dates if your sugar cravings got out of control because they are naturally sweet, so I bought a bag of dried dates and tasted one. It had NO flavor at all! I tried a couple more, just to make sure I hadn't gotten a bad one, but I kept getting the same results. I was so disappointed. Then two weeks into the detox, I was craving chocolate like the world would end if I didn't get it, so I popped a date in my mouth, and it exploded with sweet, delightful flavor. My craving was satisfied, and I could move on.

     After that, I started to realize just how sweet other foods were naturally. Broccoli, lightly roasted, danced with a light sweetness in my mouth. Herbal teas tasted amazing, even without honey. If I needed a little extra flavor, I could add coconut aminos, avocado or mayonnaise (instead of ketchup, honey mustard or maple syrup) and be satisfied.

     Once you're used to that way of eating, going back to regular, processed or even natural sugars can throw you for a loop. You start to realize just how sugar makes you feel. (For me, it makes my feet and back hurt, can give me a headache, and just generally makes it harder to make it through the day.) And then there's the taste. Going back to sugar of any type will make you realize just how much of a tolerance you had built up for the sweet stuff. In fact, the other night we tried out a recipe for cookie dough fudge to see if it was suitable for a birthday treat. It was delicious, but no one could eat more than a piece because it was so sweet, it verged on cloying.

     This is the very reason that I and my family see Paleo as a way of life. Once you get over the initial detox period, you wake up to a realization that you don't feel deprived. You realize that on top of feeling like you have superpowers, you just don't need as much sugar in your life. You can now pass when someone you work with brings in two bags of candy and a bucket and says, "Happy fall. I got this for us to share." Just saying.