When I first told people that being on the Paleo Diet meant that I had to give up dairy, carbs, and sugar, their first reaction was, “Then what do you eat?!” I thought that it would be helpful for anyone considering the Paleo Diet to hear about what a typical day was like. I have written about different Paleo recipes – but I haven’t explained what my day of eating was like, and I think that contextualizing it will be helpful for others. So here we go, here are 5 examples of what I ate:
Day 1
Breakfast: An Apple, sometimes with Almond Butter for Dipping
Lunch: Southwestern Chicken Soup
Snack: Pistachios
Dinner: Lemon Butter Chicken with Roasted Carrots and Parsnips
Day 2:
Breakfast: Poached Eggs with Spinach Pine Nut Pesto and Roasted Tomatoes
Lunch: Herb Roasted Tomato Soup
Snack: Clementine
Dinner: Almond Crusted Chicken with Vegan Cauliflower Mash
Day 3:
Breakfast: Baked Scrambled Eggs
Lunch: Butternut Squash Soup
Snack: Avocado Pine Nut Puree with Sweet Potato Chips
Dinner: Steak with Mashed Rutabaga
Day 4:
Breakfast: Two Eggs, Scrambled with Salt and Pepper
Lunch: Balsamic Chicken and Sweet Potato Salad
Snack: Nuts or an Apple
Dinner: Spaghetti Squash with Spinach Pine Nut Pesto
Day 5:
Breakfast: Clementine
Lunch: Poached Egg Salad (without the croutons)
Snack: Paleo Prime Cookie
Dinner: Crock Pot Chicken with Vegetables
Plus, it is important to drink lots and lots of water. I had at least 6-8 glasses of water a day.
I hope that these examples show that I enjoyed meals that I was excited to eat, and that I didn’t really feel like I was on a diet. The examples above make it seem like I was doing an unrealistic amount of cooking. In reality I made double batches of recipes so that everything I made lasted for at least two meals. Some of these meals require very little preparation time – especially the crock pot meals.
After a couple weeks of eating Paleo you get used to it. I did let myself cheat for two meals a week, so I could still go out to restaurants and socialize with friends.