Jamie Fellrath | Practical Mindfulness

It was a busy day, and my food choices were a prime indication of that.  Can't wait till things slow down a bit so I can cook up some more meals. Typical morning food-wise - sardines and some black coffee.  Not that it has anything to do with Whole30, but my morning was delayed a bit when someone reported that a backpack had been left in front of our office building and they wouldn't let us in because of the potential bomb threat.  So I got coffee at Cup O' Joe and waited it out there. Lunch was easy - I had a leftover grilled turkey thigh that I noshed on, and supplemented that with some carrots and celery dipped into guacamole.  Delish. Dinner was fractured - my son had swim lessons last night, so I grabbed a handful of macadamias before lessons and then basically had a repeat of lunch for dinner. I'm going to have to put together some more big meals so that we have more leftovers.  But I'm getting back into the swing of what's tasty and healthy and what's...

Hi everyone, I'm back with another update on how I'm doing on my Whole30 challenge.  Happy to say that I made it through the first week without too much effort! Friday was the first time that my wife and I ate out - but I'll get to that in a moment.  The morning was pretty typical, though I did have some black coffee after a late night waiting for my son to fall asleep (he's autistic and very impulsive, so one of us generally waits to hit the sack till he's out so that he doesn't get up and do something that we're not in favor of, like crawling out onto the roof).  Sardines with tabasco...yadda yadda yadda.   Lunch was another pork chop, this time with a salad that I picked up from the local Kroger salad bar (which is surprisingly good.  I eschewed the bacon I normally get because I suspect that it was cured with sugar, but had plenty of great veggies and some hard-boiled egg.  Again I used my balsamic vinaigrette. When I got home, I had a handful of macada...

Just a quickie before I put up my main Whole30 post for today - I wrote an article for the excellent Being James Bond website today about the Paleo Diet.  It's strictly an introduction article, not as in-depth as many are used to, but I hope it answers some questions for my buds over there (and stirs some great conversation as well). Hope you'll check it out!  I'll have a follow-on article later on as well. The Paleo Diet - Part 1 @ Being James Bond.

Had my first on-the-go meal challenge yesterday on Day 4 of my Whole30 challenge, and it was a success. The day started the same as usual - sardines in the morning (again, slightly earlier than the previous day - I think I'm going to need to start doing breakfast regularly for a while), with a leftovers lunch of pork chop and sweet potatoes from Tuesday's dinner.  A little Himalayan salt on them, and we had a winner. And I need to stop typing "Himalayan SEA Salt."  Anyone with an ounce of geography knowledge in their head is gonna crucify me for that one.  At least I'm correcting it when I do it. So, the first challenge: last night I had a meeting at the normal dinnertime and I didn't have time to get a typical dinner made.  So we had to do the early snack plus later dinner thing - and time was a factor because we had to get the kids to bed as well. Snack was a handful of macadamia nuts that I'd bought a while back from Fresh Market in Columbus.  ...

Well, Day 4 is here, so it's time for a review of Day 3.  And a good day it was! Started off with my normal breakfast of sardines - a bit earlier than on Day 2, and that helped a bit in warding off the cravings.  Notice I said cravings.  I don't think it's actual hunger any more, but rather a sugar craving that I'd developed in my loosey-goosey days leading up to this Whole30.  So I'm just going to have to power through this a bit.   Lunch was leftovers from Day 2 dinner - thick cut pasture-raised pork chop and roasted sweet potato.  I also picked up some pink Himalayan salt to put on food here at work, as that stuff is tasty and full of good nutrients.  It's also got a picture of Rachel Ray on it.  KNOW YOUR ENEMY!   Kidding.  Sort of.  This is my horn, and I'm tooting it.   Dinner was a near master-work, if I may toot my own horn a bit.  After school, I took my son down to our local supermarket (have I mentione...

Hey folks - I'm still here. Yesterday was slightly challenging.   As I mentioned , yesterday started at around 2:30 AM with a headache, and some posters in my comments mentioned that I probably was feeling a bit underfed.  That's very possible.  I was pretty hungry all morning, even after I had a tin of sardines. Lunch couldn't come fast enough.   My mug, complete with Viking helmet logo on it.   So what did I eat?  After starting the morning off with a big mug o' water, which is my normal routine (I usually have at least one of these a day at the office), I ate my sardines at around 9:30 AM or so.  This continues to have the effect of keeping me guest-free in my office, but it also gives me a good shot of protein and fat to make the morning go more smoothly.   Lunch was right around noon, and I had another slab of leftover short-ribs with some of the previous night's Brussels sprouts on the side.  Those keep pretty well overnight, I must say...

Yesterday, I started my first Whole30 program .  And it felt as restrictive as I thought it might, but it also opened my eyes to a few things about my food choices.   To put it frankly, I may have been a little more loosey and goosey than I thought when I started this thing. First, the food:  I'm not a big breakfast person during the week most of the time, but today I was a bit peckish.  So I put away a tin of King Oscar Sardines in olive oil - my favorite brand.  And there was a splash of Tabasco on them for a bit more flavor. And yes, I ate them at my desk.  I keep a 4-pack of these treats in my desk at work.  You can get them cheap at Costco - one of my favorite finds there (along with a multi-pack of Kerrygold Butter, which is not applicable for the next four weeks or so unless I decide to try to make ghee).  I find that eating sardines at my desk keeps other people away from it and I end up having fewer people bother me. I'm KIDDING.  S...

I've been following the Primal Blueprint for a long time now, as the About page indicates.  And while I've done great with the program, I've never taken it to that further step of going really strictly Paleo.  And while the Primal Blueprint is awesome, and I'll never feel bad for having "only" done it, I've wondered for a long time if I would be better served by trying something a bit stricter. And so, without further ado, I'm going to do a Whole30 .  For those who don't know, Whole30 is one of the more strict Paleo "on-ramp" programs you can do.  Created by Dallas and Melissa Hartwig at Whole 9 , it's known as one of the more restrictive plans for getting started with a Paleo Diet, but everyone who does it successfully raves about how they feel as they get into it. And frankly, I've been a bit loosey-goosey of late with the diet.  This has occurred mostly in the ice cream arena, but while I was visiting my parents in Arizona for...

We're all surrounded by demons, those little vestiges of conventional wisdom and temptation that keep digging into our brains and diverting our energy and attention away from healthy living and back to the dark side.  It can be even harder for the Paleo folks in the world - conventional wisdom is the rule in general society, to be sure.  But these little demons can be fought off using a simple tool called mindfulness - being aware of what's going on around you and within you, and even how the outside world is affecting your inner world. Food cravings seem to be one of the biggest culprits.  The well-documented addiction to sugar and wheat products has been a big one for me (particularly sugar).  And the number one culprit for me is the Reese's Peanut Butter Egg.  Not the cups, though those are tasty, for sure.  But every Easter (and now Halloween and Christmas, too, ever since the insidious designers at Hershey's bought pumpkin- and tree-shaped molds) ...

One of my goals this year was to take as much advantage of MovNat and MovNat training as I could, given time and distance.  I've been making a point to attend all of the MovNat Meetups at MovNat Ohio thus far this year, and my workouts have been very natural and full body, to say the least. This past weekend I upped the ante a bit.  My wife and I attended the MovNat Ohio 1/2-Day Workshop up in Dublin to get a more complete overview of some of the basic techniques and ideas of this fantastic lifestyle.  And it really is a lifestyle more than just a workout regimen or even workout philosophy! Jenn and I had been to MovNat Ohio before , not just for the Meetups but also to introduce our kids to Lori Crock and Jeff Turner, the owners and trainers there.  The two of them have put together a program for children with autism to use MovNat as a fitness and even a physical therapy tool (which I, obviously, wholeheartedly endorse!).  Some of you may know that my son D...