The Paleo Diet: Our 30-Day Update

When we began the diet just over a month ago, I had intended to post a weekly recap of what we ate and how we were doing, etc… Well, life and illness got in the way and I never got past the first week summary – my apologies.  But now I’m here to give you a re-cap of the last three weeks and share some of our favorite meals from the last few weeks.

My favorite part of the Paleo diet has been all of the new recipes I have tried. Before this, we were stuck in a rut of making the same things month after month and this diet has altered the way I cook almost everything. I definitely wouldn’t consider myself an unhealthy eater before, but being very aware of the ingredients in each and everything I put in my mouth has made me more aware of how many things I was eating before that weren’t necessarily beneficial to me.

We decided to give this diet a try to see if would help my husband’s disease: Ulcerative Colitis. I explain more in detail here. Over the last thirty days, I cannot say that he has seen any changes other than in his waistline. My already-slim-husband dropped 12 lbs over the last 30 days, and most of the weight dropped within the first two weeks. I was told that this could be due to inflammation and water-weight so it could have been a good sign that there was some healing going on inside of his body. Other than that, there has not been really any improvement. I have met a lot of great people over the last 30-days, mostly on Instagram, that have seen success from eating clean and time and time again, I am told that it typically takes more like 45-60 days before they noticed any changes. I’m hoping I can keep my husband on board that long.

I, myself, dropped 9 pounds on the diet but my weight-loss was gradual. I lost a couple of pounds a week and I feel great. I’m less bloated, my energy is up,  my skin is clearer and my pores even are smaller and I intend to keep eating this way.

Here are some of the things we ate over the last three weeks:

Spaghetti and Zucchini Noodles with homemade Italian sausage and a tomato sauce. This is one of my favorite meals from the diet.

For the sausage, I used Melissa Joulwan’s Italian sausage spice recipe. Her book, Well Fed has tons of other great recipes as well.  I love this spice recipe and followed it exactly.

We had tons of whipped coconut cream. We ate it on pancakes, waffles, mixed with fruit, by the spoonful… yeah, we love this stuff.

I experimented with Paleo – Pho. I used zucchini noodles as my rice noodles. I had a pho spice packet (paleo friendly) that I made broth with. Added poached eggs, kimchi, fish sauce, scallions and sriracha sauce. I had this for several meals.

We made juice several times. Veggie juice in the afternoon and occasionally a fruit juice in the morning.

Paleo friendly pizza… this was our Valentine’s Day dinner. The pizza crust displayed below was not good. It tasted fine alone, but once we added the pizza toppings, the flavors did not mesh well.

A couple days later we made a cauliflower crust recipe and enjoyed it VERY much.

Paleo waffles, with strawberries we heated on the stove until they made a sauce and coconut whipped cream.

Zucchini Brownies – These were a Super Bowl treat. Of course that is coconut whipped cream on top! YUM! These were great and very moist – more like a cake than a brownie though.

Chicken Bone Broth

Chicken bone broth with poached eggs and homemade kimchi

Eggs with sausage and homemade sauerkraut. We have eaten tons of eggs of the last 30 days. More eggs than I would have ever imagined I’d eat, but hey, I’m not even sick of them yet!

Spaghetti pie. There are lots of versions out there. It was decent, I’d make it again.

Paleo deviled eggs – we added avocado, mustard powder, homemade pickles, paprika and some leftover guacamole. They were good!

Sweet potato fries – The following morning we chopped up the rest with some leftover steak and made a hash. We had fried eggs over the hash. Mmmm that was my favorite breakfast. Sorry, I forgot to take a pic!

Smoothies with homemade yogurt, frozen organic fruit and bee pollen.

We ate many more meals over the 30 days as well, but these were some of my favorites. I made a calendar and attached it to the refrigerator door. I marked down what we ate for each meal so I could remember. I found this helpful, especially for meal planning.

If you have any favorite Paleo meals, please share them with me in the comments section below!