Primal Blueprint Health Challenge

Bad timing for my connection to stop working properly- now I’m 2 days late for the primal blueprint health challenge! It has been a pleasant half hour reading some of the entries. I’m impressed at the sheer amount of people participating and the variety of challenges & goals people have set themselves.

When I first heard about the challenge, I thought “wow, this is my chance to finally go for it one-hundred-percent!”. Then I got a bit sad.. how many times in the last 3 months had I heard myself say I would be a perfect paleo-girl from now onwards? How many times have I gone through the first 2 horrible sugar withdrawal days, put a lot of good food in my fridge, lost 2 pounds.. Only to slip a little on the 3rd or 4th day, give up completely (for that day) and eat those 2 pounds back in one evening.. 

What made me think it would be different this time?

The important question is, why do I repeat this little story time and again? It’s certainly not because I don’t know what I’m doing. It’s not because I don’t know what to eat. I can’t imagine it’s lack of motivation either.. It’s not even because I can’t resist temptation.

Then I figured, it must be an attitude problem. What if, after that little inevitable slip, I didn’t consider another attempt failed.. what if I just shrugged and went right back to making the right choices? Big stomp on the head there for actually just taking the easy way out by failing myself.

So, my challenge this month is to stop being such a self-defeating little perfectionist. To stop beating myself up over little slips. And most important of all, not to stop again, no matter what. 

That's me while taking some 'before' pictures on august the 1st. All excited :)

We'll safe the embarrassing ones for later.

Butt kicking

Hello everyone, 

Starting today I plan to update this blog regularly again. I didn’t disappear these past months for no reason- but I’m not going to put up a whole public drama story explaining my absence... no explanation could be a good enough excuse for not letting people know I didn’t fall down the grand canyon or something like that anyway. It’s a poor way to treat my readers, and I’m sorry.

Of course I hope anyone reading this will ‘forgive’ me and come ‘round more often to find out where I’m headed with this blog. 

Next post I’ll give an update on my plans for this blog and myself. As a bit of a sneak peak;  I actually wanted to get back to posting sooner- but not wanting to be a hypocrite I thought I should get back to my shiny paleo-plus lifestyle first. Unfortunately, though I’ve been trying and trying, I can’t seem to keep it together longer than 2 or 3 days....

Still, I figured there’s no more reason to keep post-poning because hopefully I can entertain some of you with stories of my (past & future) efforts and perhaps kick my own butt back in shape in the process ;)

ps. That's my best friend in the picture, not me.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Hope you all have a good day, good luck with any paleo-ish ambitions! ;)

We don't do thanksgiving in Holland, and now that I'm here I'm heading to the grand canyon today- so still no turkey for me.. awwwh. Eat some extra for me!

Contrast

Being in the USA is such an overwhelming experience. So many new impressions and different ways to look at things. So many, many thoughts swirling around my head that when I even think about posting here my brain goes topic-hopping like there's no tomorrow.

One of the things I want to tell y'all about is the farmer's market on pier 1 I've been to last week. It was absolutely amazing, best food I've ever tasted! Such a nice atmosphere too... I fell in love straight away- first time I thought that I wouldn't completely hate living here. 

Second time I thought that was while hiking along the coast... so beautyfull! I wish there were mountains and loads of water in holland. Oh a good temperature wouldn't hurt either. 

Are you wondering why I would hate living here? To tell you the truth, the contrast everywhere is completely messing with my head. 

Within 30 seconds I can see both a

 big ass limousine stopping in front of macy's, the biggest temple to consumerism you've ever seen- and a homeless person begging for some change. 

While I haven't seen as many McDonald's as I thought I would, there are literally millions of places they sell the most horrible junk food. And at the same time there is a 24 hour fitness gym every few blocks.. 

The recycling at the hostel I'm staying at is horrible, yet every grocery store hands out paper bags instead of plastic..

The fruit and vegetables at some places is completely inedible due to lack of taste apart from this weird chemical that seems to be in sooo much food. Brr. And then there's the farmer's market with the most delicious things on earth.

You can get everything here for about 20% you would pay back home; shoes, clothing, electronics, GAS! etc. But 'normal' food can be so insanely expensive it's not even funny..

Oh and everyone's going bankrupt due to high gas prices (riiight) but everyone is also spending insane amounts of money on pure convenience... and... starbucks! 

It's all insane. I think I might go crazy. Oh and you know, I saw a lot of people running with little baby's in buggies. Admirable but completely crazy. And what the fuck is up with people running on treadmills in San Francisco? There's hills people, hills! and parks! and the most beautyfull cliff trails ever... 

Ok, stopping rambling now. Hope you're all having a good day ;)

Foraging in San Francisco

While roaming the streets here in San Fran I spotted a high bush full of the most delicious blackberries I'd ever tasted. It took a bit of climbing and I couldn't get them all- but boy was it enjoyable. It reminded me of earlier this summer when I found out about a blackberry bush just two streets from my place. Nobody, including the birds, knew about that bush- it was absolutely loaded. That day I spend about an hour stuffing my face. 

When people try to lose weight they tend to focus on what they should and shouldn't eat, good food- bad food. Even the paleo side of things claims that as long as you stick to the paleo foods that you're guaranteed to lose weight. But it's just not true. That's why a lot of people who try a low-carb lifestyle feel cheated. It doesn't work for them. And why not? Because even with the most perfect food in the world you can still overeat and you can do obsessive or emotional eating.

When I'd eaten all those berries I felt a bit sick, a little sugar shocked I guess.. Why did I eat all of them? Because I thought maybe they wouldn't be there next time I checked. An anticipated future deprivation is often a reason for us silly humans to eat.

Could this have happened if I were truely a 'cave-woman'? I don't think so. In that case I would probably have had plenty of other women and kids to share them with.

Sharing is a powerful thing when you're aiming to control emotional/obsessive eating. You're far less likely to feed crap to the people you love, and you wouldn't deprive them entirely either. You're a lot more motivated to get up and cook instead of drive-through for people you love. When you share all your food with someone you care for then you're likely to treat yourself the same. Yay.

You can also use sharing when you're in a social setting or on vacation and you want to taste some food you've never had before. No reason to deprive yourself when you can just share a little. I had a bit of blueberry muffin today at starbucks with my best friend. It tasted awful but we sure had a lot of fun :)

I've been pretty stuck with her for the last two weeks and it's doing me a lot of good. She keeps me sane and not so obsessive. Even though I'd progressed a lot with beating my damn OCE (obsessive compulsive eating) her presence is finishing the job.

In short: Share, share and share some more to ehh... beat OCE and lose heaps of weight? ;)

Bigger and better?

Everything is bigger- the streets, the cars, the houses, the bins, the amount of homeless people and of course the food. To celebrate that my plain hadn't crashed I got a chocolate milk on the airport (I really really love hot choco). Before ordering I took a look at the cup sizes... turns out the small was about the size of a dutch large. As you can imagine, I didn't manage to finish it- especially because it was far.. fuller and richer than I'm used too. It was really good.

At first I was pleasantly surprised to find bananas and apples in almost every little food shop. Until I tried one. The apples were unnaturally huge and tasted like water.. bummer! Later on I did find an organic honeycrisp and that was probably the most delicious apple I ever had.

It was really shocking to see the kind of things people eat for breakfast here. In holland it's pretty normal to eat bread, but here it's all things I'd consider a snack or dessert. Our hostel has breakfast included, and usually you can make some good choices from stuff like that in europe- but here it was just waffles. Waffles for breakfast! Seriously. 

Left is my tuna salad breakfast and on the right is my friends waffle.

Yet I didn't see as many fat people as I'd expected. Not as many skinny people either. To be perfectly honest, if it wasn't for the horrible, horrible accent I hear all the freaking time I could imagine myself to be among europeans. 

Ok, a couple more obese people, more asians, a lot more black people and not enough Turkish/Moroccan folk.. but still! 

ps. Oh my god- my roommates just opened a bag of chips and it was only half full! I'd read about how the packages keep getting bigger and yet the amount is less and less but it's still absolutely completely shocking!