Crossfitting, Paleoing, and Living in the 918

Hello friends! Week one of my New Year Paleo Program is over and I have to say I have had much success! Although I have been fairly hungry all week (I think withdrawals from my holiday eating), I have been doing great staying on track. Plus I have become addicted to a great citrus fruit that is in season right now, Cuties! Oh I love them. They are just the perfect snack, portable, delicious, and super easy to peel! I grab a couple for snack and I am set!

Another reason that this go around is a bit easier is because my fiance decided to jump onto the Paleo Bandwagon with me! The first time around when I went through the 6 week Paleo Challenge last spring, I was all by myself. Just me, myself and I, which made it quite a bit harder. Don’t get me wrong, he eats pretty healthy normally, but I still had too easy access to many of my favorite things like cereal, granola, cheese, etc. It was hard when I was in a crunch and had absolutely nothing to eat in the fridge to resist pouring myself a very easy and very satisfying bowl of cereal. But I resisted, made it through the challenge, felt and looked great!

This time I don’t have to worry about any of that stuff. The great thing about him doing this with me is the fact that he is so dedicated. When he decides he is going to try something, he definitely isn’t one to quit. So having a Paleo buddy to eat with has been great! We spend most of our evenings in the kitchen together, cooking, talking  sharing our days, making turkey sausage or hard boiling eggs for the next day. Whenever I have a craving for something nonpaleo he keeps me on track. It is great!

So, enough about me. Back to my week! This week was great for renewed inspiration and some great new dishes. I tried to take pictures of a lot of my food so you would have some sort of idea what I was making. So disclaimer, the light in my kitchen is very yellow, therefore casting a yellow-ish tinge to all of my food. I wish I had time to take the photos into Photoshop and make them beautiful like some of the other websites I loyally subscribe to. Alas, I am super busy so what you see is what you get.

Easy Paleo Breakfast Ok, I am a huge proponent for a quick and easy breakfast. I need something I can grab and go without spending an hour prepping something. So Sunday I made some delicious homemade turkey sausage, which is so easy because I can make up a pound of turkey into about 7 sausages and pop them in the fridge until I need them that week. Then in the morning, I reheat them in the microwave, scramble some eggs, and Viola!

Paleo Salad with Cuties!

I am in desperate need of changing up my salads. I needed a new salad that would put the ordinary boring salad to shame. You know the one; lettuce, oil, lemon juice, blah. This time I made a great salad adding a few new ingredients and tossing it with a delicious semi sweet dressing. The salad included baby arugula, cutie slices, dried cranberries and dressing.

Semi-Sweet Salad Dressing (disclaimer I know vinegar isn’t technically Paleo, but eating salads without some kind of dressing is almost unbearable for me, so I had a bit of red wine vinegar. You can easily take the vinegar out and use lemon juice.)

2 tablespoons red wine vinegar

1 teaspoon organic honey

2 teaspoon stone ground mustard

2 tablespoons grape seed oil

Whisk first 3 ingredients together. Continue whisking and drizzle grape seed oil in. Mix thoroughly and add black pepper to taste.

So, here are just a couple of my meals last week. Stay tuned and I will post some of the dinners we had as well. Hope everyone out there subscribing to the Paleo diet is having great success!

Stay active, stay healthy, and smile!