Today I have been eating paleo for 3 months and I thought it was time for an update on how I am doing.
With regards to my weight, I won´t go into much detail. If at all, I had a few more kilos than I would have liked, and I lost those without even really thinking about it. Changing my diet (not the quantity of food consumed), kind of took care of my weight automatically and behind the scenes.
Within 2 months, I can tell you, that I lost my love-handles and my belly has never been flatter. Altogether, I weight 4 kilos less than before, and from now on, I am in weight-maintaining-mode.
Whenever I had a minute or at night, after my son´s bedtime, I squeezed in a few minutes of exercise. Rarely more than 15 minutes. I do quite a bit of walking though. Depending on my schedule, I walk anywhere from 1 hour to 3 hours a day. Whenever possible, I do errands by walking.
I have done pushups, squats, planks and other body-weight exercises when possible and I am feeling how each of these have become easier to do. I can do more pushups, longer planks, more and better squats, and overall have more energy throughout the day.
One big inner change which I feel is important to my personal situation is my blood pressure. My story is a bit different in that my blood pressure was low until I got pregnant and even throughout the first and part of the second trimester. At the end of the second trimester I got sick with preeclampsia and HELLP syndrome (a dangerous condition for the mom and the baby).
The preeclampsia portion makes the mother´s blood pressure skyrocket to stroke-levels (mine went up to 220 within a few hours) and this can only be controlled with bedrest (sometímes) and “healed” with the end of the pregnancy. For me, this story ended with an emergency C-section, a micro-preemie and a blood pressure that came back down on medication, but never again reached pre-pregnancy levels.
Having had blood pressure levels at around 110/70 all through pre-pregnancy life, I never got below 130/85 or so after the preeclampsia. That is until now. I have measured my blood pressure several times since turning paleo, and it has returned slowly but surely to its former numbers. I think I can even feel the difference, but maybe I am just imagining things.
Now, as you can see from the recipes that I posted the last couple of months, I am not 100% paleo. I sometimes eat dairy, I have a feeling that I eat too much dark chocolate, honey and nuts, I also cheat big time every once in a while (with a glass of beer or ice cream for those of you interested).
However, for the most part, I am no longer eating grains, I ditched the sugar and I am feeling wonderfully. There is no going back. Right now, I am still in a phase, where I am trying to collect and cook new recipes (especially baked goodies). Maybe this will be different in a few months.
My family has accepted my change of diet (though every once in a while someone will try to give me reasons as to why I am not doing the right thing). I am not saying anything anymore.
For now, seeing how much better I feel overall, I will continue with my quest of finding new recipes, discovering new foods, and doing as best as I can. I hope, that my experiments will benefit my readers as well.
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