Paleo 30 Day Challenge

I was talking about the Paleo diet over a year ago.  Blogging about it even!  Maybe it's taken a full year for the full zeitgeist to pull me in.  Maybe my jaded disappointment of gaining back a chunk of weight I lost in college on the Atkins diet is wearing off.

It was probably the movie Fat Head that reminded me of some things I already knew, but I ordered Robb Wolf's "The Paleo Solution" off of Amazon.

Some of you are instant gratification, Kindle types.  I haven't made it that far yet.  But, the standard shipping time  is a great way to prolong trying a diet or healthy lifestyle choice.  I tore through the book in a few days, an easy read.  Actually laugh-out-loud funny in a few places.  I did wonder what Robb's thing with calling me "Buttercup" was all about.

The book convinced me to do something a bit crazy. Go hard-core paleo for 1 month.  Then, if you want to slack up on some of the following, it's your funeral.

Get lots of sleep.
Moderate alcohol intake.
No grains.
No cereals.
No soy.
No corn.
No legumes.
No beans.
No artificial sweeteners.
No dairy.

Do all of this for 30 days.

I have a good grasp on some of these points.  Giving up butter is a cruelty, and a lot of Paleo people have their own special rules with butter.  For now, however, butter and I will be distant lovers.

I'm 3 days into this crazy town of a diet.  It's how we supposedly lived thousands of years ago.  Meat, veggies, and fruit.  It's already becoming something of a mantra, and something of a zen koan.

How can most restaurants not have a meal on the menu that falls into these simple, broad categories?  How have we repackaged corn and flour in so many creative ways?

Luckily, questions like the above haunt me, and give me a weird nerd rage that steels my resolve!