our paleo* adventure :: day 1

This month we’ve decided to try a new way of eating, simply as a healthy lifestyle choice and an exercise in willpower!   I thought it might be good to track our progress and our meals here on the blog, so you all can see that we’re not crazy (or at least if we are, then you can discover that right alongside us!)  Here’s the deal: for all of April, we are going to do our best to eat a paleo* diet — and I’m including the * because we’re not doing the diet in the strictest sense.  Basically, we’re not going to eat grains or sugar, and we will eat everything else — meat, veggies, fruit, dairy, eggs, and nuts.  (Stricter paleo diets also cut out dairy, but we like milk too much to give it up!)  Also, we’ll still allow the girls to have some of the “off-limits” foods from time-to-time, but we’ve actually been weaning ourselves off of grains for a few months now (I can’t remember the last time I bought breakfast cereal, and it’s been several weeks since there’s been a loaf of wheat bread in our house…) so it’s hopefully not going to be that huge of an adjustment.  At the end of the month, we’ll try to assess how we feel (hopefully more healthy) and how difficult or easy it was to eat this way.  Then we’ll reintroduce the foods we miss (like ice cream) and keep some others off of our family’s menu (like anything with “bleached enriched flour”… bye-bye Kraft mac & cheese…). So here’s what I ate today:

Breakfast : Activia yogurt with sliced almonds, chopped pecans, and frozen blueberries. Coffee with sugar-free creamer (which is the last one we’ll buy this month… once it’s gone, we’ll move to plain cream or milk).

Lunch : Egg salad, 5 strawberries, 1/2 apple, cottage cheese, water

Snack : Dried apricots

Dinner: Grilled lemon chicken, peas, fruit salad (oranges, pineapple, blueberries, strawberries, kiwi, yogurt), milk