So for the past four days, I’ve been sticking religiously to the Paleo diet.

No dairy. No wheat. No soy. No corn. No soda.

Basically, I’ve only been eating things that came straight out of the earth or had been consuming the earth just a few days prior.

I still can never understand why I strayed from this diet in the first place. When I was first introduced to it in August 2012, I immediately picked it up and lost almost 25 lbs with little to no effort. I exercised less, ate MORE food [both volume and in quality], and never felt deprived.

With the holidays came laziness, pecan pie, ripe cheeses, and lots of bad decisions. Yeahhhh. I had been on a downward spiral in my dietary habits pretty much from December until this past weekend. It was bad.

Needless to say, after four days of eating clean, I’m feeling much better.

Each morning my weight has gone down on the scale. Monday morning I was 143.2 [ouch!] and this morning I was back down to 140.2. Not back to the 134.4 I was last October/November, but I’m steadily working my way back to it.

Every day I’ve eaten until I was full with no feelings of regret, deprivation, or otherwise dissatisfaction.

Here’s the kicker —

Every day I’ve prepared all of my own food. Breakfast, lunch, and dinner. I’ve made sure to  follow the Paleo diet to the T. Today was the first major challenge which involved eating out.

Could I do it?

OHHHH YEAAAAAAH.

You know, most people think that dining out is challenging, but the Paleo diet is easy. Keep it fresh, keep it clean, and don’t eat anything that doesn’t need to be refrigerated. As you can see in the above picture, that’s not hard to do at most restaurants.

At Baja Burrito Kitchen, I just ordered the “Baja Burrito Kitchen Combo” and asked them to sub the rice and beans for onions and peppers and to double my guacamole instead of the sour cream and cheese. It was DELICIOUS. A few squeezes of lime, some fresh salsa, and lots of cilantro. LOVED IT.

So, this proved that dining out on Paleo is not only possible, it’s EASY. And I don’t see this being hard at pretty much all restaurants: seafood, steakhouse, Mexican. Really, the only challenge would be Italian [no noodles? sauce over veggies? hmmm] or Chinese [um, steamed veggies and seafood, no soy sauce?]

So, theoretically, I have no reason to cheat on Paleo. I can cook for myself or pick food up. I have a collection of healthy snack food options and I also know what I can safely pick up at a gas station if I’m in a rut.

I think I’ve got this.

Bon appetit, my friends!

~ Tori