This week's Paleo/Sugar Detox Eats

I am plugging along with my detox.  Unsweetened coffee, treatless evenings, and no tasting the baked goods I make.  Meh.  It's not that big a deal.  I have some peanut butter after dinner instead of a GFG cookie or whatevs (only until Dec. 1 when I start Whole30- then no PB! eek!!!)

I am the tiniest bit bummed that I will not be able to eat the pumpkin pie bars I am so excited to make next week, but that just encourages me all the more so to make sure the foods I make that I CAN eat are  super delicioso.

That's the interesting thing about this detox that I have figured out.  Because I can't rely on treats, I am spending more time and thought on my actual meals.  Before I would just scarf down some raw veggies and deli meat because what I really wanted was my paleo dessert, but now I am putting a bit more effort into what I eat, to make sure it's nutritious and super yummy.  It's kind of neat!  It's an unexpected effect of this detox, and I'm really digging it.

For instance, here are two recent detox meals:

These are not elaborate meals by any stretch of the imagination.  In fact, the top meal was a total last minute, just got back into town and have no fresh food spur of the moment thing.  Everything you see pictured was frozen.  Well, not everything.  The fish, green beans, and cauliflower were frozen.  Then I had some sad looking baby carrots that I knew we wouldn't eat, so I decided to puree them too for some lovely orange mashed cauli.  Below are some romaine hearts with smoked oyster salad.  YUM.  If you are like me and can't get too excited about tuna salad, try an oyster salad.  Open a tin of smoked oyster, mush it up with a hard boiled egg, some sliced green onion, salt, pepper, and top with grape tomatoes and you're done.  In the past, I probably would not have taken the extra time to make a little salad to eat on a cute little romaine taco, but given the fact that there was no dessert to be had later, I had to get creative and make dinner more fun!

So that's been a great lesson in all this.  Maybe if I spend more time and energy on healthy meals, I won't care so much about the sweet snacks for after the meal.  I am going to concentrate on this and see where it takes me.

Another fun detox takeaway so far?  This one is also a very welcome side-affect.  In the past, any deviation from my normal routine would cause a fair amount of anxiety on my part.  Holidays, travel, family gatherings, etc.  How would I adapt?  How would I avoid the incessant comments and remarks from well-meaning but obnoxious friends and family?  How would I would summon the will power NOT to eat forbidden foods and so on.  Well, after traveling home last week at the last minute for a funeral followed by days of being surrounded by crappy SAD food, I can say that this detox is incredibly helpful in navigating the minefield that family gatherings can present.  Not only should I not eat that stuff, because you know, I'm diabetic, I follow a more ancestral, unprocessed, gluten/grain/sugar/starch free diet, all the usual stuff, but I CAN'T eat that stuff.  I am doing a detox!  It's not allowed!  That is the whole point of this detox!  It's not just, oh gee, I shouldn't.  It IS the whole god damned point.  And if I slip up, that erases the weeks of detoxing I've already done!  This works for me.  It may be counterintuitive to others, but for me, this really works.  I have a very real and tangible reason to say NO.  It's like that part of my brain that says to just have a bite, a taste, is turned off.  I wouldn't recommend doing a 2-phase, 8 week detox over the holidays to anyone, but if you are the kind of person that appreciates structure and rules and doesn't have emotional attachments to food, this might be a good way for you to avoid a lot of the frustrating aspects about the holidays.  And it's also a great way to ensure excellent blood sugar control and weight control over the holidays.  Rather than freak out about getting into shape after the new year, losing those couple pounds you put on, why not just buckle down a bit and prevent the entire situation to begin with?

So, those are my findings so far.  As for the cravings, I still miss treats.  I miss a little sweetness in my coffee.  I'm not sure if those things can be overcome.  Ask me on January 1st.  But I am enjoying the extra care I am putting into my meals and I am finding that I get more excited about meals than I used to, which is cool.  I don't know if I can live my whole life like this, if for no other reason than I truly enjoy baking and experimenting with different ingredients, but a little palate-reset now and then certainly can't be bad.

Until next time GFGs! Xoxo