Welcome!!! Sounds like you get hungry when/ after you drink and need a plan to stay on track. Like some nuts or fruit for after drinking. I'd count the alcohol toward your 20% non Paleo. Are you familiar with the 80/20 principle?

What I do when I'm headed somewhere I know there will be a lot of tempting stuff (cookies, pizza, etc) is pack my own paleo treats to help me stay on track. Stick a stash of paleo muffins or cookies in your purse and when you get that craving for a cookie after you've had a few drinks, reach for it instead.

Pizza is tough, but if there is something you know you LOVE that is paleo, plan on bringing/cooking that so you aren't tempted by the pizza! You never know, you might start changing the way your friends look at food!

Looking for friends myself. Just looking today for Paleo forums. Just starting with a Whole 30 and maybe adopting the Paleo lifestyle permanently.

Feel free to add me. I've been dabbling in this for about a year and have recently decided to go 100%, including no drinking. It's going to be hard, but worth it!

I differ in my opinion on the 80/20 aspect. I think that only applies to people who have reached most of their health goals, including weight loss. If one has trouble adhering to the lifestyle I think it is much wiser to adopt a 95/5 approach until any struggles are resolved.

I'm not big on excuses. If you have identified alcohol as something that keeps you from your goals you can either choose to address it or not. I don't believe in willpower either; it's the food. Even if you choose to drink occasionally, if you are sticking to eating healthy foods 95% you will likely be less tempted by junk.

Also, consider a "never cheat with wheat" stance. That has been one of the main factors in my success and ability to stick with the Paleo lifestyle. Even when I off-road a lot (usually on holidays) as long as I avoid wheat I get right back to my healthy lifestyle fairly easily and my good health returns within days.

PS. Pizza is one of the easiest things to deal with - STRIP OFF THE TOPPINGS. I have pizza every time that I go on holidays (only twice per year, but I make meatza at home occasionally). I get it loaded with all my favourite stuff and I enjoy it greatly. The crust has zero flavour and I have no hesitation in tossing it in the garbage where it belongs.

I like your approach to pizza. I'll have to try it sometime with creamy garlic sauce (sadly can't do tomatoes anymore).

I don't have a problem wanting to eat the wrong things with/after a glass of wine, but I did find last summer that an occasional glass of red wine, even if it fit my macros, stalled an otherwise steady weight loss.

"Never cheat with wheat"--- LOVE IT!!!!!! That's a great little motto to chant to myself!!!!

Thank you everyone for your replies and friend requests! I wasn't getting notifications about all of these posts, so I just saw them!

As far as I know, there are no notifications for follow up comments of threads. At least I've never had any.

Question about the 95/5%!!! Let's say you eat 3 meals a day, 7 days a week for a total of 21 meals. 5% of 21 is 1.05, so does that mean you have 1 "cheat" meal?

If you're 80/20, does that mean that 4 meals a week you "cheat"?


Or, how do you quantify that 5%, or that 20% if you're 80/20?


#confused

I hit the wrong key combo after typing a rather lengthy reply, so if this is not quite complete (in haste, now, where I wasn't before), please feel free to ask further.

I don't see 80/20 as a literal concept, but more of a sanity saver. In the past, all-or-nothing thinking would sink my efforts to diet. (Not that this is a diet -- it's a change in lifestyle for me. A permanent change.)

80/20 means that I do my best to stay on the primal/paleo path most of the time, but I don't sweat it when we're invited to someone's house for Sunday dinner. I focus on protein and vegetables when I'm not in control of the kitchen (at someone's house, or eating out), but since Sunday is a feast day for our family, I might just have a glass of wine or even a handful (one handful, mind you, is all I need these days to feel satisfied) of tortilla chips.

Sometimes the ice cream gets a little out of hand, especially when we're having a miserable heat wave. No a/c. I really ought to freeze fruit juice or something, or put lime and/or lemon slices in a jar of water in the fridge. I don't always get around to that.

However, for the most part, ice cream or something sweet (and more and more it's paleo "sweets" -- which might be a peach or other high-sugar fruit, or paleo brownie made with minimal sweetening and flaxseed meal and coconut flour and coconut oil) is something I try to keep for Sunday.

And "feast day" doesn't mean license to pig out on pizza or Kentucky Fried Chicken or cake or brownies or (fill in the blank with what Weight Watchers taught me to call "red-light foods"). It means I eat mostly primal or paleo, and might add a treat that I wouldn't normally choose. Maybe a glass of red wine. Maybe a dish of ice cream with homemade chocolate sauce or raspberry sauce. On a very rare occasion it might mean one slice of pizza, but it has to be very special pizza, not just any pizza, but from a specific pizza place where we very seldom go. And these days I can find it hard to finish that one slice! Maybe "feast day" means I'll go over 100g carbs for the day -- even sticking to all "paleo" foods! (Like an extra serving of sweet potato.) My body doesn't seem to mind going over 100g of carbs, just so long as I don't do it two days in a row, or more than a couple days out of the week.

Anyhow, if you use 80/20 to focus on the ability to "cheat" and to look forward to "cheat days" your mind probably isn't in a very good place. Focus instead on eating and enjoying food that is a blessing to your body, limit the "20" as much as you can manage, but see it as a safety valve to help you avoid all-or-nothing-thinking pitfalls.

p.s. I would see "95/5" as someone who was being even more judicious in adding non-paleo foods to the weekly menu. They might avoid dairy altogether, whereas I have cheese a couple times a week, raw cream in my coffee when I can get it, that sort of thing.

My method is using calories per day. I add up my Non-Paleo calories and take a percentage of my overall calories. So far, I've done 92-100% Paleo.

I have to agree with you akimajuktuq - personally cheat meals/days don't work, I strive to be as close to 100% all the time, it just isn't worth it, all it does it make it harder to get back on track & also prevents the overall goal. I'm so close to my goal (11 lbs to go) don't want to screw up again, in the past was so close & got derailed!