- Faithful Fitness: God, Weight Loss, and Exercise
- Garlic Sweet Potato Mash
- Why My eBook Hasn’t Been Popular
- One Weird Thing that Helps Me Enjoy Exercise More
- How Does Guilt Fit into Weirdly Faithful Fitness?
- Are there Good Foods and Bad Foods?
- The Freedom of Constraint
- Call Me Weird, But…I LOVE the Paleo Lifestyle!
- Do This When You Feel Ridiculously Underqualified
- Laughter is the best…Fitness?
- Motivations for The Coming Week
- Ask the Experts for Fitness Advice: YOU!
- I Am a Person Who
- How my Son’s Life-Threatening Condition Gave Me Freedom
- Do You Need Exercise Accountability?
- How Losing the Guilt Breaks the Cycle
- My Family Hates Exercise
- Grace for the Now
- How Workouts Can Lead to Fat Gain
- Your Expert Advice: Fitness
- Don’t Forget de’ FEET!
- Four Steps to Tell Your Support Peeps What You Need
- A Day in the Life of Maintaining a 100 lb Weight Loss
- Three Girls and a Dog
- The Red Zone: How to Enjoy the Holidays and Stay Fit
- How to Avoid Burn Out and Find Fitness Success
Since embarking on the Paleo lifestyle a year and a half ago, I have gotten some pretty weird looks and comments; more specifically, MY family is the one calling me weird and claiming they did “not raise me to eat like this”.
Yes, I will admit that I am that quote on quote “hippy” as my husband likes to call me because I have an essential oil or food item for whatever illness is ailing you. For those of you new to the Paleo, it isn’t just about what you eat; it’s an entire lifestyle that encompasses using the most natural products possible to put in and on your body.
When I first started researching the diet, I figured it was just about food and how it would help eliminate the inflammation in my body. About a month or so after switching my food diet to strictly Paleo, I noticed that my shampoo was making my head itch, my makeup did not feel good on my skin and that over the counter aspirin really hurt my stomach — which got me to thinking, if I was so concerned with what I was putting in my body in regards to food, I should also be looking at the beauty and health products I was using on my body. After lots of googling on what certain ingredients were in my beauty and health products, I realized gluten, soy, corn and dyes were in ALL of them! BAH, that made me livid! Here I was thinking I was doing so well with eliminating these products from my life when they were secretly lurking around via my shampoo, soap, makeup, etc. These were the exact ingredients that I had a sensitivity to and were causing all of the inflammation in my body. Needless to say, it all went into the garbage and off I went to the health foods store for some new items with way less ingredients.
I now have a full appreciation and understanding that Paleo is not just a fad diet. It truly is a lifestyle change and one that isn’t just focused on foods but how you live your entire life. I want to show you what a typical day for Paleo lifestyle is for our family-right down to the products we use. I will tell you, once I made the switch to gluten, soy, corn-free beauty and health care products is when I fully felt my best and was finally able to overcome my health issues. SO, as weird as this may be, it works for me and my family.
I am the healthiest and happiest I have ever been; my weight has stayed the same, my energy levels are high, and I’m rarely sick so the Paleo lifestyle is a win/win in my book.
SLEEP
In our house we believe in sleep. Sleep is our best friend. I know, who has time for sleep these days, especially if you have kids?! This is one thing we had to learn to make a priority in our house. We go to sleep and wake up the same time nearly 7 days a week so as not to disrupt our sleep patterns. We go to bed between 8:30-9pm and wake up around 5am. Getting 8-9 hours of sleep is phenomenal and really does allow your body to repair and heal from the everyday life stressors. Lavendar oil on our pillows at night is a must…makes drifting off to sleepy land that much better!
FOOD
*I should note, I eat A LOT of food, food is my friend, my love, my life*
Breakfast: eggs, raw cheese (occasionally), avocado slices, sauerkraut and bacon-2-3 pieces of bacon, seriously bacon is your friend when Paleo!
Check out one of my breakfast omelet recipes here.
Mid morning snack: banana and/or fruit mix, chia seed pudding, grain free granola
Check out my chia seed pudding recipe here.
Mid-Mid morning snack: jerky, veggies with homemade dressing/guacamole
Lunch: leftover dinner from the night before-I always make sure to make enough dinner for leftovers for lunch, makes life so much easier.
Mid afternoon snack: deviled eggs
Pre-dinner snack: flavored almonds- I LOVE these Cherry Vanilla Almonds and other products in this brand, Olomomo.
Dinner: whatever I have on the menu-it is always meat or seafood based with lots of veggies and a healthy fat (avocado, olive oil, etc.)
Check out this Beef Bone broth recipe, a Paleo staple.
Dessert: We are trying not to get sucked into eating dessert every night so it may be a piece of fruit with almond butter. When I need to splurge, these Go-To Almond Butter Cookies are a Paleo classic.
BEAUTY PRODUCTS
As for beauty and health products, the list is constantly changing. I feel that people are really wanting to know where their food comes from and what goes into the products they are using which is creating a whole new market. I think it’s fantastic. Here is a list of what we currently have in our house:
Facial products– My skin looks fantastic with natural products, so much so that I seriously do not wear makeup. There’s just no need when your face glows from the food you eat and the moisturizer you put on it! I love these Primal Life natural products.
Tooth powder- Tooth powder you say?! Holy amazingness is what I say! This stuff does take a little bit of time to get used to but my teeth are the whitest and strongest they have ever been. The ingredients in the powder actually help heal the teeth by re-mineralization them and can actually help clear up cavities! Find it here: Tooth Powder
Hair/skin products– I’m loving this brand right now, I can read the ingredients and can find it in most health stores. I use their shampoo, conditioner, soap, and hairspray. Bonus-it tends to be on sale at Sprouts or Whole Foods at least once a month! You can also find it here: Andalou Naturals
Medicine-In the off chance someone in the house has a tummy ache or headache we use peppermint oil. I rub a little on my tummy or forehead to reduce the pain. I love this brand as they use high quality ingredients, nothing artificial. I use essential oils for a lot of other things but could talk your ear off about this…so maybe in another post. Essential Oils
We also like to use White Willow Bark pills to help with pain, it’s the same ingredient that is in aspirin but does not have all the fillers and is more gentle on your stomach.
I hope this was a helpful way to shed some light into the Paleo Lifestyle! Now it’s time to get cookin in the kitchen and follow the lovely motto below!
For more of Jen’s healthy Paleo recipes, type “Paleo” into the search bar below. Yum! Do you follow a Paleo lifestyle, or have questions for Jen? Leave them for her in the comments section.
by Jen Pedri. Hi! I’m Jen, a pediatric Speech-language Pathologist by day and a Paleonista at-home chef by night. After years of battling health issues I decided to start eating Paleo/Primal in 2013. It has been by far the best decision of my life (beside adopting my dog and marrying my hubby). My health issues have greatly diminished and I have grown to absolutely love cooking without gluten and grains because of how amazing it makes me feel. I hope you enjoy my recipes as much as my family does!
- Faithful Fitness: God, Weight Loss, and Exercise
- Why My eBook Hasn’t Been Popular
- One Weird Thing that Helps Me Enjoy Exercise More
- How Does Guilt Fit into Weirdly Faithful Fitness?
- Are there Good Foods and Bad Foods?
- The Freedom of Constraint
- Call Me Weird, But…I LOVE the Paleo Lifestyle!
- Do This When You Feel Ridiculously Underqualified
- Laughter is the best…Fitness?
- Motivations for The Coming Week
- Ask the Experts for Fitness Advice: YOU!
- I Am a Person Who
- How my Son’s Life-Threatening Condition Gave Me Freedom
- Do You Need Exercise Accountability?
- How Losing the Guilt Breaks the Cycle
- My Family Hates Exercise
- Garlic Sweet Potato Mash
- Grace for the Now
- How Workouts Can Lead to Fat Gain
- Your Expert Advice: Fitness
- Don’t Forget de’ FEET!
- Four Steps to Tell Your Support Peeps What You Need
- A Day in the Life of Maintaining a 100 lb Weight Loss
- Three Girls and a Dog
- The Red Zone: How to Enjoy the Holidays and Stay Fit
- How to Avoid Burn Out and Find Fitness Success
I would say yes and no to being more expensive. I am noticing that as this diet is becoming more popular, more stores are carrying Paleo friendly items which is helping to drive down costs. I know that Walmart and most other retail grocery stores are carrying most of the food and beauty products at fairly reasonable if not compairable costs to non Paleo items.
Just this morning before work I was at our Sprouts grocery store stocking up on grassfed meat because it was $4.99 a lb this week! I’m an avid sales shopper and cupon user and will say that I’m finding the food and beauty items are frequently on sale which makes it much more affordable. I also Google coupons for specific items just to see if there are any available, there typically are!
To help our family stay within budget we stock up on veggies and staples at Costco or Sam’s club, not sure if you have one near you? We also try to buy our beef in bulk from a local farmer once every 2-3 months, it’s so much more affordable that way.
I think the one beauty of this lifestyle is the motto of “you do the best you can”. If grassfed meat is too expensive, try organic meats or only buying the organic produce off of the “dirty dozen” list. Just do the best you can and figure out what is a priority, for our family it’s the meat, so I do not always buy organic if it’s too expensive. If you have a local CSA, you can do farm shares and have produce delivered to your house, that is another cost effective way.
I will say that it makes me sad seeing that processed foods are cheaper than fruits and veggies, something that constantly frustrates me when I’m grocery shopping.
I definitely think you can do it, just figure out which items are a priority for you and start from there 🙂
Question: Is doing everything Paleo — not just the food but everything — very much more expensive than the so-called “normal” stuff? Just wondering if I can do this on a tight budget.
Thank you, Jen, for a really interesting and informative article! I learned a lot by reading it. I thought I knew a lot about food but I learned so much from this article — especially about the beauty products.
You are SO welcome!
Where is a good place to start/good information/books etc for Paleo. It
is something I want to try but there is so much information it becomes
overwhelming. How did you start? Was it a gradual process or did you
change the diet part of it all at once?
I started by reading the book The Paleo Diet by Loren Cordain. He’s huge in the Paleo community. The book was a quick and easy read about how the diet decreases inflammation and how to make it work for you. Mark’s daily Apple blog is also fantastic!
I started after I read te book by Loren and was probably Paleo about 75% of the time until I got rid or gave away the rest of the “non Paleo” food in the house. It helps if you slowly start to gather staple ingredients such as spices so that your grocery bill isn’t insanely expensive. It took me about a month to become fully Paleo with what I ate. In the second or third month I realized I was having bad reactions to my beauty products and that’s when I made the switch to Paleo products as well.
I always tell people if you can stick with it for 30 days you are golden, it can take your body up to two weeks or so to detox from the Standard American Diet in which you may not feel the best. Those processed carbs are a beast to eliminate, which is speaking from personal experience. Do not be discouraged by that because you really will feel the awesome effects (more energy, better sleep, weight loss) within the month or so!