Planning

So far this whole eating paleo thing has gone pretty well. I'll be recapping after the 30 days are up so you can look out for that. Currently I'm 10 days in, and other than a brief run-in with a deep cup of froyo and a buffalo chicken quesadilla, it's been smooth sailing.

Things I've learned / changes I've noticed:
1. Everything I ever loved in life has grains and/or dairy. You have no idea how good that froyo and buff-chix-ques was. So good. Understatement.
2. After froyo and BCQ was consumed, I felt pretty awful. Intestines all like, say whaaaat? Lesson learned. Sigh.
3. My skin is a bit clearer on this diet. Rosacea be damned!
4. I get more full more quickly, which is pretty cool.
5. Planning is key.

Out of all these, number five has been most noticeable. Straight from the beginning, I noticed that all of my go-to snack items were very much not paleo. Crackers, yogurt, granola bars, oatmeal, diet soda, cereal and milk, etc. There were a number of times where I just stood in the kitchen in front of a full pantry for about 8 minutes straight, unmoving.

And I have nothing to eat. With our powers combined....

 And as such, I've done a lot more planning. Improvising is tough on paleo. I can't just scarf down a stale bagel from the back conference room if I forget my lunch. I can't pop into a gas station for a coffee and a granola bar before work. And when I'm starving and looking for comfort food and options are limited, I tend to opt for froyo and quesadillas, apparently. So, plans were made. I've made a number of trips to the grocery store, planned out more meals than I have in the past, and experimented in the kitchen with things like almond flour, medjool dates, and spaghetti squash. Later this week I'm actually making one of those pizzas with the cauliflower crust that only the crazies on Pinterest whisper about.

My head tells me it looks kinda delicious, but my heart tells me the crust is a lie

Planning my meals has definitely helped. It's not like I'm making a meal plan for every meal for an entire week straight, but at least having some recipes on hand to work with, along with some snacks makes things a lot easier.

With the success of planning meals, I decided to take this planning thing to the next level. I keep saying I'm going to up my game with the workouts. And it keeps not happening. I've been going along each week and sometimes making it to the gym, sometimes making my workouts count, sometimes going on runs. "Sometimes" ain't cutting it.

SO, I've made a plan from now until the end of May for each and every day stating what I'm supposed to be doing. It allows for minimal days off a week - one at most. I've got a variety of things - hill workouts, bootcamp sessions, planks every day, long runs on Sundays, biking, upper body weights and lower body weights every three days, track workouts for speed, etc etc. It's a pretty tight ship I'm running here. Future Me is all like you kidding me? And I'm all like, go read this post and get on board.

Let's do work.