Paleo help!

Hi,

myself and my partner are following low carb / carb free diets.

We've been using a ketogenic basis rather than a paleo basis, but that was only because I wanted to force my body to start burning fat quicker, so i deliberately keep my carbs under 50g a day

You will feel a bit floopy headed in the first couple of days/weeks but it goes away once your body switches over to burning your fat stores rather than searching your muscles for sugar.

I found that gradual elimination makes it harder to give up the carbs, so we opted for more of a cold turkey approach. And 10 weeks in i'm almost 3 stone lighter, so it definitely works.

Although i will confess that I've taken to using low carb protein shakes for breakfast and lunch, and snack on ham/chicken/turkey/biltong. One big difference was to cut out almost all dairy. I eat alot of hard cheeses which are carb free, and occaisonally i'll have a greek yoghurt. But i've completely cut out milk. Even the fat free skimmed stuffed is packed with lactose, so instead i've swapped to almond milk. I buy Bue Diamond unsweetened almond milk in tesco for £1 a litre and tastes more like single cream than milk.

Make friends with cauliflower and broccolli they will become a good staple for you! Also knock yourself out on spinach, kale, rocket and mushrooms, they are quite heavy on fibre and you can deduct this from your carb totals each day, as you don't digest it, but it will do wonders for your digestion And don't forget eggs!!!! You can have omlettes or scramble them on the side of meal, but i like to hard boil a box at the weekend and use them as snacks at work or when i'm out hiking with my partner and dog. If you like cheese, cheese sticks tend to be low carb or carb free completely and make handy snacks, or can just be helpful when trying to control prtion sizes.

I have a recipe for a cauliflower pizza base which i swear is amazing!!!!! It really genuinely does look, smell and taste like pizza!

I found www.carbgenie.com to be really helpful if you don't know what's in something.

Try googling "ketogenic diet recipes" you'll find LOADS of info!

Also I have a referral link for the web site I get my protein powders from if you'd like to try them.

My day usually looks like this:

Breakfast - whey protein powder + 200ml almond milk + black coffee

Snack - 25g packet of biltong / cheese stick / boiled egg

Lunch - whey protein powder + 200ml almond milk + black coffee

snack - 100-150g of ham/turkey/tuna/chicken anything lean and carb free!

Dinner - 2 x chicken breasts + raw spinach salad with 1 tomato, 1/2 onion and some home made dressing using mustard, vinegar and splenda

It really is easy and you can stuff yourself silly with the greens and meat

I went paleo/primal 5 weeks ago and track on here - my diary is open if you want a look!

I didn't feel bad at all - in fact I was so engerised straight away. I think maybe because I cut caffeine out two weeks before my body was like I dealt with that crap I can deal with this!

Today I had fruit and greek yogurt for breakie with nuts

lunch was a moussaka

tea is ham egg and sweet potato chips.

I LOVE paleo and the other day I had a cheat of fish and chips and my god - I felt baaaaaaad!"!!

good luck xx

One of the keys I've found to paleo is always being prepared. When you're just starting out it is expensive and sometimes frustrating to set your kitchen up for a Paleo diet but once you get the basics (almond/coconut flour, coconut oil, nuts in bulk, etc) it is easier to manage.
I got into the habit of always carrying a variety of food on me because there's nothing worse than being hungry and nothing available is something you will eat.
To make eating Paleo more affordable, I found recipes for making lots of things I enjoyed (larabars, packaging my own trail mix, protein balls, etc). Pinterest is a great tool for recipes, as is Mark's Daily Apple.
I felt very tired the first 3-4 days, but I attribute that mostly to being hungry. I was still figuring out what I could and should eat and since a lot of my go-to snacks were now cut out, I didn't know what to do. After that it was smooth sailing and it feels amazing.
I lost about 4 pounds strait away but didn't notice much weightloss beyond that from diet alone, but it is a good move for a lot of people.