Thinking Outside the Box

I had an epiphany after I returned from an extended vacation in which we traveled to Miami and visited our family out there.  We also went on a week-long cruise in the Caribbean, which was an unbelievable trip in itself.   I checked out of reality for two whole weeks, no strict calorie counting, no daily workouts, (I only worked out 3 times in 2 weeks...gasp!!!)  and lots of resting.  The result was alarming, I lost a whole pound upon returning from this vacation of food in abundance, very little exercise and tons of late night dancing.  This is unheard of who goes on a cruise and loses weight?  Please don't hate me at this point, but seriously I was baffled.  I typically gain at least 5 pounds over the holidays, and spend January and February stripping it back off again.  Not this time, the only difference was that I was eating entirely different in the months leading up to this holiday.  I changed my eating to Paleo in October.  I was eating "clean" or so I thought up to this point, but I decided to try this Paleo thing out...so I eliminated grains and dairy and was following the Whole30 program (not 100% perfect, but pretty well).  I saw changes in a matter of a couple weeks in my skin, hair, sleep patterns as well as breaking a plateau I was stuck on for a couple of months.  I haven't looked back, my only regret is that I didn't start sooner.



After about a month of eating this way, I began immersing myself into books, podcasts, blogs, documentaries and anything and everything that pertains to educating myself on paleo nutrition.  I am a nutritionist after all, so the biochemistry aspects (a.k.a. nerdy science stuff) intrigues me and has revealed so much to me.  I will never look at conventional wisdom the same any longer.  I will describe the basis and more sciency stuff pertaining to the paleo "diet" in another post.  By the way I hate this phrase "paleo diet" as I don't consider a diet that has been eaten for thousands to be included in our pre-conceived ideas of what diet stands for.  This is not a fad, in fact the way we eat in today's society would be considered a fad diet as it is essentially a blink of an eye the amount of time we have been eating this way (think post-Agricultural era) in comparison to how our ancestors ate thousands of years prior.  More on this all later, as I think it is all fascinating and worth exploring in depth.

Back to my epiphany.  So I was baffled to have lost a pound and then it occurred to me.  On those two weeks, I was able to kick back and really just relax, no appointments, no rushing around, no grocery-shopping or cooking as my amazing mother in law cooked us wonderful meals every single day, I was just able to enjoy my family. This is what my body needed a break from the chaos, the intense training schedules, the strict calorie tracking and all the other stuff I am always trying to squeeze into my day.  So this year my New Years resolution was no longer "to lose weight" but rather to really laugh more, live in the moment and stop the perfectionism.  Ok so this sounds easy right?  Not to a type A personality, clean freak, workout-a-holic.  It will be a daily challenge for me to not be jumping out of my seat at the sight of dirty dishes on the counter or piled up laundry, or squeezing in an 8 pm workout because there simply wasn't time that day.  There is laundry sitting on my couch right now and its been there for 2 hours, this is huge people!  I still have lifting goals and mile run goals that I want to reach, but I will not be killing myself to achieve them, I will take it slowly and enjoy the ride along the way.  So Happy 2014 everyone and remember to live your life and don't forget to think outside the box.