When I was planning my Paleo experiment week last month I had to think carefully about whether I would do it exactly as I would during the year of experiments by avoiding all artificially sweetened beverages, even my favorite diet sodas.  That sounds like an almost silly challenge, but I was actually just in the beginning of trying to taper off of the stuff when I was doing the experiment.  I was down to, yes down to, 4-6 cans a day.  I wasn’t sure if I was going to be able to swing it but I actually kept off of the stuff for the entire experiment and then almost a full week more, until yesterday.

With Paleo Week now behind me, I wanted to take a look back and see how things ended up.  While it’s easy to draw potential false conclusions while you are doing something, I liked the idea of looking back at hard data while thinking about how the week went.  The bottom line is that the week was very successful overall.  I got all the nutrition I needed.  I felt as good as usual, although some noticed I was a bit more irritable than usual.  I had a lot of weight loss, which I wasn’t expecting or shooting for and want to try to understand better.  I learned a few new recipes and coping mechanisms for the actual diet phase later this year.  Lastly I was able to go a whole week without consuming any diet soda or artificially sweetened beverages.

The sixth and final day of the paleo test has been completed.  Why isn’t there seven?  I’m calling tomorrow my Sabbath so I’m going to have a day of rest, already!  Most of the day was a rehash of various meals from the week but the ending came in the form of a most delicious homemade paleo ice cream (yes you read that right)!

I’m really getting into the groove, or rut, now.  I have always been able to eat the same thing over and over and over again without getting bored with it.  That’s how a lot of this week is turning out, but today still left some new discoveries to be found.

Crossing the half way point the whole Paleo thing is certainly getting easier, but there are definitely tons of landmines to navigate still.

Waking up with a hangover (even though I didn’t have a drop of alcohol the previous day), not packing enough snacks and having a tasty but not filling lunch made the second Paleo day drag on, but it ended with bacon wrapped chicken and sweet potato pancakes so all ended well.

Ah, the first day of Paleo!  The beginning of my one week Paleo expedition began somewhat auspiciously after an afternoon and night of feasting.  The trials of breaking my daily routines, attempting to avoid Coke Zero, and to eat a pure Paleo way on a day when I woke up especially irritable to begin with, certainly posed some challenges.  However by the end of the day the challenge of the diet wasn’t about what I wasn’t eating but what I still had left to eat.

After a fun afternoon and evening with friends at a pool party, which was decidedly not Paleo but very delicious, I get to start my first day of Paleo with a bit of a food hangover.  I’m sure having 5 beers over 8 hours may be contributing a little bit too it, but that’s hardly the stuff of hangovers over embarrassing internet photos.  The food on the other hand, especially with the dessert selections that I made sure to try one of each of, definitely put things into high gear.  Try this, I ate over 3300 calories over the course of the party and that wasn’t with a bunch of grazing or drinking high calorie cocktails.  Ouch!  But today is the beginning of one of the “clean” diet phases so I can pretend to be detoxing or what not.  So what are the steps for getting this week kicked off?