"This Better Work"

My trip home to California was pretty standard. I remained 100% Paleo the whole time (the only thing that may have been iffy was a small glass of organic orange juice, but I was so thirsty and water just wasn't doing it) and I survived many potential food situation disasters. I received the exact reaction from my mom I anticipated- feigned happiness, followed by suggestions of what I should do when "this doesn't work." Awesome. Luckily, I had my sister there for support. My sister is really the only other person on the planet that can truly understand what I go through with my mom, since she has similar experiences.

It is always educational seeing a large chunk of my family together. I see where a lot of my behaviors and habits come from, I see what I don't want to be like, and I see the craziness that I never noticed before. As the younger generation of cousins grow up, it is fun to see them discover themselves, and begin to resist the family tendencies. My 20 year old cousin is taking a swim class this summer in the mornings with my mom. My cousin LJ is not fat or even overweight at all. She may be a little out of shape. I watched my mom make similar comments to her about her food choices and what she "needed" to do. My cousin is a lot more polite to my mom then I was, and I'm sure its because the stuff is coming from an aunt, and not her mom. Anyway, my cousin was so excited about this new routine of swimming, and said "this better work."

I laughed inside my head, because it was a cute notion...similar to how a 5 year old packs a backpack and proclaims they are running away from home. Without realizing it, I had zero confidence that simply taking a 6 week swimming class would give her the body she was picturing in her head. I had zero confidence because I myself had made that statement at least 1,000 times in my life, only to find myself here time and time again. I then thought to my 30-day Paleo challenge. Was this any different? I get it- the way I saw my cousins naivete towards swimming class was how my mom sees my Paleo eating. As if it was cute that I was trying, but was not getting the whole picture. That the bad habits that got me here were suppressed but not gone, and eventually they would resurface.

Perhaps. But what if my cousin falls in love with swimming so much, it triggers a chain reaction of better eating and more exercise? How do I, (or my mom) know that this is not the thing that will work for her? We don't. Just like I don't know that Paleo will be the thing that "works" for me. But, I will keep trying things. I will continue to experiment with my body until I get it right. Eventually, I will figure it out, and so will my cousin.

I have been eating Paleo pretty strictly for 14 days now. I feel great. Most notably, the horrible allergies (cat) I have when I go home to California were completely absent. In past visits, I could only be in the house for a few hours before my lungs would seize up, and get congested. I had to take 24-hour allergy pills just to tolerate it. This time? I never took one pill. I sneezed a few times, but that is about it. That in itself was worth every bit of Paleo eating. I never once uttered or thought to myself the words of regret my family members did for "eating so much" or "eating all those cookies" I was free of highs and lows- even keeled the whole time. I went hours without eating and didn't want to kill anyone. The funny thing was, anytime someone would forget and offer me something non-Paleo, they would apologize. Ha! Don't be sorry for me, be sorry for you, because I FEEL GREAT.

I didn't have time to weigh in this morning, but I'm pretty sure I lost more weight, cause my clothes are even more loose. I will update tomorrow.