5 days a week, 6 hours a day!

By Jake

Going full on paleo is a huge challenge to everyone, some more than others. Everyone has their own personal issues that add to the difficulties of giving up all of your bread, your sugar and limiting your fruit. For me the added obstacle when going paleo/primal was the fact that I’m at school for 5 days a week, 6 hours a day with all of my mates around me digging into KFC and McDonalds while I eat from a lunchbox I brought from home. At first I was a little jealous of them, I wanted some of that. I mean what can one fast food meal hurt? Physically, probably not much, but if you allow yourself to cheat while your making the transition to clean eating you’re only making things a lot harder for yourself. After the first 2-3 weeks I started to get the hang of cooking paleo meals for myself, and there was no way I was jealouse of everyone else eating fast food because I knew what I was doing was better for my body and health, and chances are it actually tasted better as well.

While the end result of your diet is up to you, having good resources and support on hand is helpful. There are some great paleo/primal diet friendly sites out there, and two good starting points are Marks Daily Apple and The Foodie. These two sites are great, but if you dive into the forums on the daily apple, beware that these people take their diet to extremes. When I first started browsing the forums, I cut out a heap of foods, and basically looked into every single thing I was eating to the point of orthorexia. I was turning into this guy (worth a read). The forum is a great tool, but when you look at how everything you eat affects your body on a chemical level, you're only stressing yourself out. All you need to do is eat real, unprocessed food in reasonable amounts. Don’t worry about when you eat, or how much you eat, let your body tell you.

Favourite on the go lunch:
Mushrooms, onions, capsicum, zucchini, broccoli and either pork or chicken tossed in with a can of Ayam coconut milk and some curry powder. Not exactly a restaurant meal, but I can throw it up quickly in a skillet before school and it tastes great.

If your having trouble trying to find some of the stranger paleo food such as coconut oil, unsweetened coconut, nut meals, or of that sort of thing check out Eumarrah on Barrack street, and for Tasmanian grown produce head for the Hill Street Grocer.

One last thing I learned from eating this way around people my own age. “You can lead Grok to water, but you can’t make him drink (unless he’s thirsty).” Don’t try to convert everybody. Or even explain yourself. Its you’re choice, if you don’t want to eat something, don’t eat it, make yourself accountable for you’re own actions.

Good luck to everyone with your clean eating and dry July challenges!