Paleo Naysayers

A couple of days ago, someone on Facebook posted a link to an article and commented about the paleo diet and how is it based on junk or pseudo science.

I am not interested in what the article has to say and haven't bothered reading it.

I have read a number of books on the topic of paleo. Many do give detail about what our palaeolithic ancestors did and didn't eat and how much healthier they are compared to the those who ate grains and farmed.  But while that information was interesting, it wasn't what made me start eating paleo.










What made me start eating paleo was the information in the books about how grains, including whole wheat, are treated by our body. Or how as society started following low fat diet recommendations their waste sizes started growing.

The books also listed off a number of health benefits that would happen as a result of following this diet, some seemed too unbelievable to be true.  Here is a quick list from Robb Wolf about what he says are the benefits of eating paleo.

That is why I had decided to give the paleo diet a try.

Here is why 6+ months later I am still eating this way.  These are the benefits to my family of eating the paleo diet:

1. Weight loss
2. Not bloated all the time
3. More energy
4. Sleep better
5. Allergies and asthma have all but disappeared 
6. Less headaches

Once you actually give the diet a try and realize that the books were right you really start to question all the things that you were taught about healthy eating growing up.  The Canada food guide recommends 5-7 services of grains a day, but is this really healthy for us?  Aren't those grains just being turned into glucose in our body?  When I was following those recommendations I was getting fatter and felt tired, sluggish and bloated all the time.

To all those critics out there who like to bash this diet or try to discredit it, I strongly recommend that you just TRY IT!  You will be amazed at how much better you feel.

Food at Child Care

The child care centre  has a great food program and we are emailed the menu every month.  We missed May's mail out and I didn't bother asking for a copy, so June was the first time I got to see the full menu of what Rylan would be eating.

Let me just say ... WOW

Here is an example of a couple of days of the menu. 

We have decided to have the little man be on a gluten free diet (not paleo) while at school (I hate calling it day care) so he has a few substitutions like rice cereal instead of whole grain cereal.

I couldn't believe how wonderful the food sounds that he is eating.  The most amazing thing about the menu and the food the little R is being fed at school, is that he eats it! 

R also now eats his food at home too.  When we came home from France, the only thing that R would eat was fruit and yogurt.  Didn't matter what else we put in front of him he wouldn't even try it. 

He came home from his first full day of school and gobbled down the entire meal of almond crusted chicken with roasted potato and green beans.

The school also works on getting him to eat items that he is not so hot on.  The little man spits out his green peas, but every time they are on the menu they make him at least try them.

Pantry Clean Out

When we started eating Paleo back in November I did a quick pantry clean out. This is something I had never done before whenever I had started a new diet or way of eating before.

Of course I felt guilty getting rid of food that I had paid money for. This lead me to holding onto a lot of things that were not on plan.

So 6+ months later I finished the job. I found two things interesting. The first was the amount of stuff that I had kept that I shouldn't have. The second was that we didn't eat any of it.

Lots of pasta, flour, crackers and just junk were causing clutter in my pantry. This kept me from being able to see or find any of the good things that I was suppose to be eating.

There are still a few things that I left in the pantry that I probably should have thrown out. The peanut butter is one item.  But I don't eat peanut butter, so I see that as J's item. However with no English muffins to put the peanut butter on, I imagine six months from now I will be throwing that out too.

I feel like this clean out was another step towards getting my body clean but also my life clean.  I hate clutter and now I have one less thing cluttering my life.  Now I just need to find a good way to organize my spices to make life even easier.

The clean out ended with two big bags being dropped off at a food bank box!

Birthday Boy

Let summer begin as we have just completed our first long weekend of the year.  Victoria Day weekend, also affectionately called May 24, is upon us and what many consider the official start of summer.   Thankfully the weather peeps graced us with amazing weather the whole weekend.

Last year we celebrated the May 24 weekend for a whole different reason, when our little guy was born.  This year it was an awesome weekend to celebrate his first birthday!

This being such a special occasion I wanted to make sure that we celebrated it properly.  No I didn't hire a clown or have a petting zoo, or invite 100 kids to the event.  But I did get balloons and decorations and a cake and invited all the close family members who we thought would want to join in the celebration.

 Here are my steps to planning a birthday bash ...

Step 1: Invitations

We of course started with the invitations.  A quick Google search quickly made me realize that just an ordinary birthday invite would not be good enough for my little man.I needed something that was going to show off my cute little boy.   This brought me to Costco's photo centre website.  While they didn't have any great birthday invite cards, I was able to transform one of their templates to suit my needs.

They turned out amazing and were actually ready in only a couple of hours.  Cost for the 25 flat cards was $11.99 and well worth it.

We quickly sent out the invitations and then waited to hear from people.  And waited ... and waited ... and waited.  Hello people you are suppose to call and tell people if you are attending or not. (sorry rant over)









Step 2: It's All About the Food

Simple and easy is the name of the game when it comes to food at a birthday party (or well any party really).  Even though it is going to be a beautiful May afternoon I have decided that my slow cooker will take the lead for this event instead of my BBQ.

Now the recipe needs to be just as simple and of course uber yummy.  I also want to make something that was paleo, but not something that would make people notice that they are eating paleo.

This lead me to a fantastic recipe I had tried out back in January of Crockpot TexMex Carnitas from Life as a Plate blog.  You can get the recipe here.

In the past (aka pre-working mama days)  I would have made all the guacamole and salsa to go with this item, but now I don't have time for that.  Thankfully there is once again Costco to help me with this.






Step 3: Decorations

Decorating for a party has never really been a big deal for me.  Usually I clean the house and use the food and the decorations.  Somehow I don't think this will work for a baby birthday party.  Again after a search on Google I found that the best places to buy party decorations are at party stores.

There are two main ones in my area, Party City and Amazing Party Store.  After many many hours of looking at the online inventory, Amazing Party Store was the winner of the where will I shop contest.  It really helps that this store is only a 3 minute drive from my house as well.

It is amazing how quickly the cost for decorations adds up.  Plus you can't have a first birthday party without having lots of helium balloons.  Those have to be pre-ordered to make sure that they can do them on the big day.  Also I learned through research that not all helium balloon suppliers are equal.  Some balloons last for days others may only last for hours.





Step 4: Relax and Enjoy the Party

I think this one is pretty self explanatory.  Spend all day running around if you must but when the first guest arrive that is when everything is done (finished or not) and you relax and enjoy the party.  Hopefully you get lucky and the guest of honour is in a good mood.