So as of tonight I am two full weeks into my strict paleo diet. So far so good on both how I’m feeling, and some other things too. First I’ll get to the results of the scale. I’ve been weighing myself daily for a few months now, long before I started the paleo diet, and long before I started exercising regularly again.

My daily weight and 7 day moving average

In the graph above, the blue wavy line is my daily weight. I weigh myself every single morning as soon as I roll out of bed. The scale is right next to the toilet, so after I empty my bladder, I step on the scale. Even with this consistent method of measuring, you can see that my weight fluctuates greatly. To help reduce the variability of the daily weight, I have added my 7 day average weight, which smooths things out a bit, but you can see that there are fluctuations as much as 7 pounds up and down within 2 days of each other.

The half green background that starts in July is when I started Crossfit. When I first began, I was going twice a week and trying to figure out how to balance Crossfit, work and grad school. Over time I started regularly making 3-4 times a week, and now I go between 4 and 6 times per week. The full green background is when I started Paleo 14 days ago. As you can see, the results so far have been great. I’ve lost about 10-11 pounds so far.

Now, if I had started it on a low point, instead of a high point, maybe I would have been down 4-5 pounds. We’ll never know, because I didn’t think about it, I just went for it. Along with the weight, I’ve also lost 3/4″ in my waist.

Next up I want to cover the challenges, cheats and mistakes I have made so far. I’ve only made one mistake really that I should have caught. One Monday night I had class after work, but I thought it would be a short one, and planned on eating dinner after it. When the class ran until 8 p.m. and the professor wasn’t done, I went to the vending machine on our break. Obviously vending machines aren’t a bastion of paleo food, but they did have beef jerky. I figured that would be my best bet to hold me over until dinner. After eating half of the bag(it was pretty small bag) I realized that the beef jerky had high fructose corn syrup. BUMMER.

This soda has been in the fridge since before I started paleo.

As for cheats, the only thing I have cheated on is my sneaking protein powders post-workout. I ordered a new mix from true protein just before starting this(I modeled it after the Progenex formula), and a few times I have snuck a little powder in when I get home if I think it’s going to be a while until I can make breakfast or dinner is ready. For context, I have probably done this 2 or 3 times over the past 2 weeks. In general, I am letting go from my “addiction” to post-workout shakes, and trusting in the paleo meals for my protein. As you can see in the photo above, I’ve had a soda sitting in the fridge for the entire two weeks so there is plenty of opportunity to give in and cheat, but I am holding strong.

Speaking of supplements, I have really reduced what I had been taking. I rarely take my multivitamin anymore, I definitely never take pre-workout white flood anymore, and I stopped taking the creatine supplement I had because it has maltodextrin in it. I ordered some cheap creatine monohydrate to take in it’s place, but it hasn’t arrived yet. I’ve thought about resuming my casein powder shakes before bed, but so far I haven’t. I’ll probably wait until the 30 days is over so I can evaluate that independently, before deciding if I want to mix that into the program or not.

Then there are the challenges. Before I started paleo I knew the importance of a good breakfast. Even still, one of the hardest things for me was to figure out when to eat it, and what to eat, given that I worked out at 7 a.m., and still needed to get ready for work afterwards. On many days I just didn’t eat breakfast, instead having the post-workout shake, and holding off until lunch. I came to the realization that, barring an important meeting, I can always take a little extra time in the morning to make and eat breakfast, and get to work at a reasonable time. It might be 15 minutes later than before, but I can make up for that 15 minutes, where as I couldn’t make up for the missed meal.

The next challenge is lunch options. I am starting to run thin. My first week I hit the Whole Foods buffet almost every day. The next week I hit Chipotle for a steak bowl with guacamole, but no rice or beans. Luckily Apple has a great cafeteria with tons of options that I can make some great paleo meals out of. But I feel like I have reached the limit on choices, and I think thats due to a lack of creativity on my end. I know there have to be more options out there for paleo lunches.

Now for the things I think I am doing right. Documentation! I am taking a photo of every meal. If you don’t believe me look at my Tumblr. I usually post every meal there with some commentary on the ingredients and other nonsense. Another thing that has helped is finding recipes ahead of time. Since Stacy is home most days, she can prepare everything for dinner with the needed ingredients from the recipes we find online. Speaking of Stacy, that is another big help. When your spouse is also eating paleo, it makes things a lot easier around the house.

I think the last thing to cover is how I feel. Overall I feel really, REALLY good. One of the first things I noticed was I wasn’t waking up with sore knees. Before I would notice my soreness as soon as I walked down the stairs in the morning. That feeling is very much reduced since starting paleo. I guess you can call me a believer on the anti-inflammatory benefits of the diet. Secondly, and this took me a while to realize, was the amount of time I spent hungry was much less. Over the past few years I have been the epitome of the guy who is ready to eat lunch at 11:30 a.m. every day. Starting the day with a solid breakfast, really does keep me full until lunch time, which gives me the flexibility to eat it whenever I want to. The same goes for the afternoons. I’m no longer dying of hunger around 4 p.m. and thinking only about dinner. It’s amazing how much removing sugars from your diet, and replacing them with slower digesting foods can improve your hunger situation.

So I think that’s it. Full speed ahead. Any questions? Let me know in the comments.