Persistence Pays Off

My husband has gone Paleo… finally.

I spent the majority of the winter experimenting with occasional grain-free cooking, reading Mark’s Daily Apple and PHD (and Matt Stone’s 180 Degree Health, just for balance, you know), and sneakily suggesting to my husband that white flour and sugar are the devil (he already knew, but has the type of personality that wants to rebel and eat a box of Twinkies for lunch if I bring it up).

Anyway, he decided a few weeks ago that he was just sick and tired of feeling sick and tired.  So he’s finally outlawed the grains and sugar (except for Einstein’s 4th birthday cake!).  He is still doing cultured dairy, which gives us a little more flexibility.  The first few days, he couldn’t stop talking about how good he felt (“I haven’t felt like this since college!”) and how few naps he felt he needed on the weekends!  He’s gradually settled in and gotten used to just feeling good and having extra energy.  His major vice right now is almond butter, which we are going through a lot faster than we used to.   But, phytates aside, that is SO much better than his past indulgences that I really can’t complain.

I present my husband to you as an example of will power overcoming healthy-eating obstacles.  In my husband’s line of work, part of his salary is getting free meals whenever we have guests.  So, basically, part of our salary is paid in really crappy, industrialized-type food (read: flour, sugar, and soybean oil).  And I can assure you, we serve our guests super SAD crud.  I don’t like it, but it is just how things are done in this business.

We are generally pretty bad about compromising during the summer months (when we have daily free meals), and just eating as well as we can with what we are served.  Some meals are very customizable, like hamburgers (just take the bun off), or taco salad (just skip the chips and nasty nacho sauce).  But others are harder to satisfactorily tweak, like spaghetti (um, can I just have tomato sauce over green beans?) or breaded chicken (the breading does NOT scrape off well).

We’ve been working out some alternative solutions for meal replacements (sometimes he sits with a plain salad while everyone else eats dinner, then comes home ravenous and in need of meat), and compromising a little here and there (yes, we have in fact picked the pasta out of our lasagna… it is a lot of work).

As in so many areas of family life, his decision and commitment are making it SO much easier for me to be dedicated to keeping the junk out of our diets, too.

And I have never been SO excited for summer to be over, so we can get back in the routine of home-cooked meals.