at signing up for stuff

Sometimes I'm last, but not this time! Donald and I are already signed up for this years Lurong Living Paleo Challenge! I am so excited to start the challenge this year.

Yeah right, I'm excited. Are you kidding me? 8 Weeks of no bread, no quinoa, no butter, no pizza and no beer. I mean it's right in the middle of the most glorious time of year, Football Season! 

Fall is meant for tailgates and bonfires, beer and bourbon, flannel and cute boots. Not special WODs and restricted eating. We did the challenge last year and came in last. Shocker, I know.

But even though we came in last (because we "cheated" ... a lot) something crazy happened... we still lost weight, lost inches and after all the sugar withdrawals, we felt better.

The first week was a nightmare. Every day Donald came home and went immediately to the cupboard to look for a snack and would start whining that there was nothing he could eat. Poor baby. I struggled daily with meal planning and grocery shopping. I scoured the Internet all day looking for recipes that Hank (our then 9 year old) would actually consider eating and gritted my teeth as I payed upwards of $3.00 for a 1/2 gallon of coconut milk.

Slowly we were adding less and less coconut sugar to our coffee and realizing that 1 dozen eggs only lasts 2-3 days. We discovered the joys of brussel sprouts and bacon thanks to Michelle Tam over at nomnompaleo.com (If you aren't following her, you need to be!)

If that doesn't look good to you something is wrong with you.

After a couple of weeks being "good" we decided to be really "bad". We went out for ice cream. A mistake I shall never make again. I always knew that ice cream sorta made me feel bad after, I just assumed it was all the sugar. Sometimes I would go into a sort of panic - sweating and feeling faint after ice cream. This particular time was way worse, probably because I had not had any sort of dairy for weeks, those two scoops were like a full on assault team invading my body.



The National Digestive Diseases Information Clearinghouse (NDDIC) list the symptoms of lactose intolerance as:

• abdominal bloating, a feeling of fullness or swelling of the abdomen
• abdominal pain
• diarrhea
• gas
• nausea

To say I had these symptoms is an understatement. Even the dog knew something was up..

Poor Bella - Thanks Catherine. After that I started thinking back to all the times I had felt so horrible and realized it really was the lactose. After mashed potatoes filled with cream and butter, after creamy pasta dishes, after milkshakes - I'd try to appease my angry stomach by munching on Lactaids like they were candy. I think I seriously thought it was all a normal part of life.



If I had never done the Lurong Living Paleo Challenge I probably would have never put 2 and 2 together. I was literally making myself sick because of something I thought was healthy for me. Well, honestly, with all the ads showing girls like this

I thought choking down some Lactaid so I could drink a few extra ounces of milk a day couldn't hurt in getting me to look like that...I may have eventually gotten there through regular bouts of diarrhea, but I think my new approach is much healthier. 

A year later, we've changed a lot about our diets. Somethings will be easy to give up during the challenge like milk, and others won't, like butter. Now that our diets are "cleaned up" I'm curious to see which food items I was thinking were "cleaned up" but I'll realize aren't once I start logging all of our food. Knowing what we know now, I wonder if this year will be easier or just as hard? As I sit here drinking a beer, I wonder if I'll struggle with giving it up again or if we'll just cheat like last time? Time will tell...

Good luck everyone! Stay tuned, I'll be posting our meal plan for the first week of the challenge Sunday!