Partying on Paleo

Hey Readers,

When I first started Paleo I knew I'd have an official cheat day on the 17th - Bryan's Holiday Party! His company throws a pretty good party with excellent pre-mixed drinks, open bar, fresh seafood, meats and cheese apps and for dinner, carving stations with sides. From the moment we walked in I had a manhattan-style drink in my hand and later finished up with Kentucky Bourbon beer. For those of you who have not tried this beer it's a must. Even beer-haters like this beer.

I'll get right to how much I cheated:

Alcohol: Check! I had 3 stiff, overpoured drinks and 2 beers. That's a lotta calories and a lot of lowered inhibitions.
Appetizers: I stuck to seafood and sliced meats mostly because not much else appealed to me.
Dinner: Roast beef and ham with some salad. The dressing is not paleo.
Dessert: Bryan made me do it.

Overall I don't feel like I overindulged with food. In fact, I got a bunch of little delicious dessert balls and didn't finish them. I walked right out with Bryan to go home and left perfectly good dessert balls on a plate, sitting on a bench! On the other hand, I definitely did with alcohol. At one point I was so happy about having cocktails that I thought it was a good idea to post that I might be hungover on Facebook. Dumb things we do when drinking. And yes, I was hungover (only a headache).

Did I gain weight? HELL YES! Whoever invented cheat days should take it back. I don't believe in them! At least not when you're in the process of trying to lose weight and happen to also be out of shape. The weight did come on over the next two days so my conclusion (FOR ME) is that a cheat day will make me gain weight every time and slow down my progress. I gained 2lbs over the next 2 days and then started losing again. Now, you'll see this in the end when I chart my weight loss, but since I first slipped up and accidentally overate until I got back down to the same weight, it took 12 days. I slipped up twice and purposely cheated once. So yeah, I'm not going to say I can never cheat, but I sure do pay a price.

But wait! There's more!!

Here my caveat: I happen to know for a fact that if I am in great physical shape, meaning my muscle mass is high and I'm fit and strong, I can go weeks eating out of control without gaining or even seeing a difference. So the sensitivity to cheating on Paleo is, I believe, based on the fact that right now my bodyhas lower than normal muscle mass so I can't "absorb" irregularities in food intake. I'll prove that theory out in February (actually I'll start before then, but that's the official month's experiment - effects of exercise with Paleo).

Coming this February....Suzanne starts moving her bum.