Eating a whole foods diet, whether it is paleo, vegan or anything in between, can be a laborious process in terms of the volumes of vegetables that you are eating.  I love vegetables, so that doesn’t bother me much.  I actually enjoy the challenge in the same way I enjoy distance running.  Since most people don’t enjoy either of those two things, you can see why many paleo people turn into the “bacon and steak with a side of broccoli” paleo-vores and vegans can fall into the processed food trap.  Not only do you want to get a lot of vegetables you want a diversity of vegetables.  If all you are eating is pound after pound of broccoli you aren’t doing as well as you may think, but still much better than most people.  Salads are a great way to get size and variety of vegetables in your diet.

As I said at the end of Day 13, I was going to seriously buckle down and get back to some good whole foods clean eating.  That is exactly what I did and I threw in some exercise (finally!) to boot.

The end of the second week is now coming quickly.  It’s becoming a bit tiresome to explain schedule problems for poor eating, but it is what I grapple with.  I just need to shift some stuff around to fix, but I didn’t.  While it wasn’t a totally horrible eating day, it wasn’t the best either.  It may have been technically compliant, but not really.

Most of the friends and coworkers I talk to about my diet experiment don’t exactly understand what I’m trying to do, but they are supportive.  Because the word “diet” has taken on the perception of something you do to lose weight quickly, it can be a bit jarring to hear I’m going to “diet” for 1.5 years.  People also like to shake their head at my self-induced dietary restrictions, but always in jest.  Thankfully due to a meeting I had downtown I had the opportunity to dine with some friends that are on the Paleo bandwagon and have been for quite some time.

I seem to be dropping in meal frequency, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing.  Just a factor of schedule and timing, today I found myself without any snacks or breakfast.  It was therefore just two big meals for me today.  I really struggled between lunch and dinner, but I didn’t overeat in the end anyway.

With another hectic day I once again ended up skipping breakfast and jumping right to lunch.  I had a hangout planned around pizza that everyone was thankfully accommodating on.  Overall it was a very calorie light day, but one that ended still Paleo pure.

I knew the work day was going to be a string of meetings and goals to achieve that wouldn’t leave me much time to go out and grab any snacks.  I also knew that I would be very easily tempted by the non-Paleo stuff in the office.  I therefore packed ahead, quite heavily, to stave off any temptation.

What is the best way to make up for yesterdays minor indiscretion?  How about a ton of non-paleo cooking and not indulging in a single taste or morsel?

Today was going to be back to a good amount of driving, followed up by some nice time going out to dinner and hanging with friends.  With no intention of ditching the Paleo diet, at worst maybe bending it a little, I ended up succumbing to a little non-Paleo indulgence after all.

I remember when O’Douls beer was introduced.  I wasn’t old enough to drink yet but I thought the idea was really cool.  It’s not that I never had a sip of beer as a kid, but the idea of being able to drink a full beer and legally sounded great.  I didn’t actually try one for real until I was an adult however.  I had been drinking for a few years and saw it on the menu at a restaurant, so I figured I would give it a go.  I can’t say I was disappointed because I had low expectations.  The problem is that it didn’t even live up to that.  It was therefore a mix of enthusiasm and excitement when I ran across a champagne at my local grocery story (in my state they can’t sell alcohol) called Fre.  Again going in with low expectations I decided to give it a try.  The results were surprisingly good.