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3 Reasons To Try The 30-Day Paleo Challenge

Life's Too Good Posted on by

3 Reasons To Try The 30-Day Paleo Challenge

So, broadly speaking, there are just 3 reasons you might try the 30-Day Paleo Challenge.

What is the 30-Day Paleo Challenge? you may be asking.

Well we’ll tell you that part in a minute (thanks to some help from my friend Alison Golden who is far more expert in all things concerning the Paleo diet than I’ll ever be.

So here are the 3 reasons you might try the 30-Day Challenge (I left off the …and 10 Reasons Not To this time).

3 Reasons To Try The Challenge

So I reckon that this kind of challenge is going to be something anyone would try for one of the following reasons (or a combination of these):

  1. For The Challenge
  2. To Improve Your Health
  3. To Lose Weight

In my case, I’m clearly in Camp #1. I don’t particularly need to improve my health (though there’s always room for improvement so I’m happy to do so anyway) and I don’t particularly need to lose weight. Plus I don’t particularly like diets.

Actually there is a 4th reason:

4. Somebody asks you to review their book which is all about the Paleo Diet.

When Alison asked me to review her new book: The Modern No-Nonsense Guide to Paleo, I thought the best way to do this would be to actually try the Paleo diet, to give me a little more focus when I was reading the book. i.e. I’m actually going to do this thing. Then I thought it would be a cool thing to offer to my readers both in terms of the challenge and with Alisons really generous agreement, the book (to 3 lucky ‘winners’ who’ll be taking the challenge with me).

So there are 4 of us taking the 30 Day Paleo Challenge together. Here we are:

[audio:http://173.254.28.76/~lifesto5/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/Paleo-Challenge-Participants.mp3]
Audio checkpoints:

00:01 Alan
00:50 Razwana
02:17 Susan
04:04 Lynn

More on that and on how you can join us in a moment.

I have already read Alison’s book and can recommend it (you can read my review of her book here) and even if ultimately I suspect that full-Paleo isn’t going to be for me, I can’t really say that until I’ve tried it, tested it and experienced it for myself, can I? I reckon that I’ll take some aspects of it with me after the experience though and hopefully it helps me to curb some of my sweet-tooth tendencies – or at least understand them better.

If you’ve been reading Life’s Too Good for any amount of time you’ll already know I like to learn, experiment and challenge myself whether in terms of lifestyle design (e.g. health), wealth (e.g. investment) or business (e.g. projects & entrepreneurial enterprises)… and I would encourage you to do the same.

I always tend to learn lots doing these little experiments and as I did when I tried the slow carb diet, I expect I’ll learn lots not just about food but about myself and my own tastes and cravings doing this particular challenge.

I also expect this challenge to be much harder than the slow-carb challenge and I’m going to deliberately going to test my will-power in terms of not removing any of the Non-Paleo food etc as Alison suggests (mainly because the rest of my family can still eat what they like so why should they have to make compromises?).

My biggest fear: No tea for Alan for a whole month!!

So What Is The 30 Day Paleo Challenge?

Best I let Alison explain this for me. Listen to the following audio and all will be revealed. It’s a great interview. The discussions about Abstainers & Moderators and Will Power are worth listening to whether you’re interested in Paleo or not.

[audio:http://173.254.28.76/~lifesto5/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/Alison-Golden-Interview-2-Paleo-30-Day-Challenge.mp3]
Audio checkpoints:

00:01 Intro: 4 of us doing Paleo Challenge
00:29 What would the ‘Rules’ of a 30-Day Paleo Challenge Be?
01:52 What should we expect in terms of our initial reaction?
04:57 Paleo tailored for specific conditions
06:00 The basic template
06:24 Doing it for the challenge
07:38 Setting a benchmark
07:45 Did you enjoy writing the book?
09:15 Falling off the wagon
10:53 The nature of a well-formed habit
12:03 On writing the book…
13:22 How is the book going to help us in our 30 Day Challenge?
19:13 Abstainers & Moderators
25:20 Will Power as a finite resource
27:50 Comparison to Slow Carb Diet & absence of ‘Cheat Day’
31:12 Celebrations & Holidays
44:30 Can we eat as much as we want within the approved diet list?
47:57 Some specific ingredient questions

Note: You can also learn more about Paleo from my previous interview with Alison which is in the article: Should I Try The Paleo Diet?

How Can You Join In?

Well that is easy. Just follow the same rules we’re following. In our case we’re going to be taking the 30-Day Paleo Challenge through the month of May (yes, I know, that actually makes it 31 days – so OK, we are doing a 31 day challenge – it’s just widely known as the 30-Day Paleo Challenge). Follow the rules and ask any questions or make any comments or observations in the comments section at the bottom of this article.

Note: If you are reading this later in May (or any other month of the year for that matter), it doesn’t mean you can’t join in, just take the challenge until the same time the following month. e.g. if you’re reading this on 7th May and you want to start your challenge on 9th, then just take the challenge until 9th of June. If you’d like to start on 5th August, do the challenge until 5th September… and so on…

Specifically, Here Is What You Do

  1. Add a comment below to simply tell us You Are In (i.e. you’re taking the 30 Day Challenge too) and your start date
  2. Follow the rules below

P.S. If you do decide to join in, I know of at least 4 people who can offer you their support.

The Rules:

  • Eat: nothing but the foods contained in the following list (taken from whole9life.com): Paleo Shopping List Note: The whole9 website is worth a look too if you want more info on Paleo: www.whole9life.com
  • Drink: Water & anything derivative of the above food list (i.e. that means herbal teas are allowed but no milk, ‘green smoothies’ are allowed but nothing with artificial additives, no sodas etc).
  • Movement, exercise, sleep are all hard to measure but we’re going to be taking guiding principles from Alison’s book. For those who don’t have this you can either buy a copy, do your research online (it’s pretty straight-forward and easy to find articles about Paleo), find out from Alison’s website: PaleoNonPaleo or just act like a caveman ;-)).

Simple, right?

Comments

3 Reasons To Try The 30-Day Paleo Challenge — 18 Comments

    • Er, I’m pretty sure you do kind of have to give up alcohol for Paleo – but just for 30 days!

      if you’re still in, despite this, then feel free to let me know here and I’ll try and help/advise/support you any way I can…

      Reply ↓

  2. Isn’t it funny how the “milk for tea/coffee” can be such a sticking point for many! I found it very hard on Paleo initially, but now I enjoy mate tea (black) and even crave it. Strange how you can retrain your taste buds (as long as you don’t “cheat” because otherwise your taste buds remember what they used to have! 🙂

    Reply ↓

    • Problem for me is that I think I may just qualify for the worlds biggest tea addict.

      Well, addict is perhaps a bit strong. Tea lover.

      I am doing everything I can to stick at it – I usually have extremely good will power but it’s harder than I thought. Coconut milk and almond milk just don’t help much (though better than nothing) but you’re absolutely right, and I don’t want to cheat.

      I didn’t expect that Ibuprofen would feature in my diet… but it is.

      P.S. how long did it take you before you started enjoying black tea? … and didn’t it make your mouth feel fuzzy?

      Reply ↓

      • Also – have you tried green tea or jasmine tea?

        I’m thinking I may just switch to green tea as it’s healthier, plus I don’t quite like the fact that I’ve been getting headaches from not drinking as much tea (at least I think that’s what it is).

        Loving green tea as much as I used to love black tea with milk would be infinitely better than loving black tea as much as I loved white tea in my book – if that’s even possible…

        Reply ↓

    • Thank Vicki,

      I may end up doing so – i.e. using milk just for tea. What would be even better is if I develop a taste for, say, green tea and end up liking it just as much as I liked black tea with milk before. Not sure if that’s going to happen but that would be the ideal.

      I think green tea pure and simple has to be the healthiest choice.

      For the moment I’m still experimenting (within the rules of course ;-))

      Reply ↓

  4. Why no tea? Can’t you drink it black? When I did my challenge I went from 3 cappuccinnos a day to black coffee. Not much fun but much better than not having coffee at all. And you get used to it. In fact I enjoy black coffee more than flat white coffee now. But I still indugle with cappo’s on the weekend 🙂

    Reply ↓

    • You’re absolutely right Vicki, and I hadn’t fully appreciated that.

      I love my tea with milk but not to give up completely, you’re right I could try it black and will probably do so – perhaps with mint & cardamom seeds (like persian tea) – or as you say, drink coffee black.

      I kind of think that black coffee is not particularly healthy either though, so not being a coffee drinker to moving from tea to black coffee doesn’t quite feel right for me either.

      I’m going to try and locate some almond milk too and see if that works as a milk substitute in my tea if I need it.

      When did you do your challenge & what happened afterwards?

      Reply ↓

      • I did the challenge last November/December. I was strict. I commented on your post with the interview with Alison back then. I really enjoyed the challenge and have stuck to it pretty much since. I do have milk or cheese occasionally, white potatoes on occasion and even rice. But not all the time like I used to. I eat a lot more colourful veggies now and have nuts for snacks. I didn’t look for substitutes such as almond milk – too processed and contain additives. You can make it yourself but you really do get used to black coffee and tea. Just like you do without sugar. I definitely feel so much healthier and less bloated. Good luck and have fun with all those veggies 🙂

        Reply ↓

        • That’s right – but I didn’t know (or remember if you told me) what happened afterwards – i.e. long after the challenge do you have an improved diet?

          Good to see you do seem to have. So there’s hope for me 😉

          I hear what you’re saying about the almond milk being processed & having additives but I did study the label hard. I think it’s allowed.

          I find black tea leaves my mouth feeling fuzzy 😉 I don’t mind it too much with almond milk, still nowhere near as good as with normal milk (to my taste so far just 1 day in) but still better than nothing.

          I think it’s more enjoying a hot but still refreshing drink more than anything, so I just need to find an alternative I like (says the man who is crazy about tea trying to be optimistic).

          Reply ↓

  7. I’ve just finished all of my biscuits.

    Tomorrow is going to be tough. I don’t have my almond milk or almond flour yet. But the kitchen is full up with meat and vegetables.

    Reply ↓

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