Number 9

You are not going to believe this. With a test in a few days and cravings abound I decided enough was enough- I needed some chocolate. I know, I know, it's a little pathetic that I can't go two weeks without chocolate. But seriously, I did go from eating chocolate and sweets almost daily to completely cold turkey. Or I'm weak, sure, I'll throw that out there.

We cheated. Ok? That's not the end of the story here. We start driving to the candy store, and yes "THE candy store," there's only one anymore in my mind. Candyland in St. Paul is about 100 years old and makes all of their own chocolates fresh. The place smells amazing and they have any kind of chocolate-covered yummies you could imagine. Chocolate-covered potato chi

ps are my favorite. It happens to be really close to both work and home, which is super great. Anyway, we start driving (since it's getting late, otherwise we would have walked!), and all of a sudden it starts absolutely pouring. It was literally a monsoon out there! It's a little hard to tell by the picture, partially because it's from the iphone (ha!). It was like it was a sign like what the heck are you doing? How dare you?! Because as we left the store, after getting soaked entering and leaving, it stopped. Classic.

Needless to say, we kept driving. It was that necessary. We did manage to limit our intake, if you will, and actually Alex was nice enough to humor me and join in my splurge :)

Alex's creative photography work

It was wonderful, so rather than feeling guilty about it I think I'll just let that little treat carry me through for awhile! Wish me luck!

Days 7 and 8

We jumped into this plan with intense excitement and relatively high expectations for our bodies and our will power. I'll admit, before we fully emerged we should have considered the surrounding circumstances to ensure we were making this change at the right time. Not that any time would be easy, but some are certainly easier than others. It's possible that this was not the best time.

[Side note>> at least work is always interesting? See melon]

For instance, the MPRE (ethics portion of the Bar Exam) is this Friday. Hence the less than daily posting habits that I have developed. It would be nice to pass the first time without hesitation. With our bodies fully adjusted to the paleo plan I have no doubts we would be optimally functioning machines; as physiologically prepared to take the exam as we could be. However, the place we are at currently (ok, maybe I should be speaking for myself here...) is not near optimum function.

What I'm getting at is that yesterday was a rough day for me. It may even be safe to say that it was rough for both of us. The heat and humidity (in an air-less office no less) combined with the fact that I'm bad at softball, have rocking headaches, and suffer severe cravings to create a near-explosion on my end. Thank goodness we're in this together. We managed to pull through and avoid any and all meltdowns and plan-cheating, but it was a close call.

We've also been struggling a little to keep up with the cooking. It's difficult when lunches need to be transportable and easy and some dinners need to be quick. Clearly that's a problem with our society and the paleo plan generally. NEWS FLASH- it's impossible to eat healthy when you don't have time to cook! So it should be a priority. But then we go back to the many reasons why this may not be the best time for paleo: other things may actually be higher priorities. School, family, work, studying all take precedent over chopping vegetables and brewing chili. Yet I also realize that establishing healthy habits now are crucial to a healthy lifestyle in the years to come. Let's just hope it will become more effortless as our routines develop.

When I start to doubt what I'm doing I think about the benefits that could come with the changes we are making. Check out some success stories yourself.

One down, one to go

Week that is. We are officially one week into the paleo plan! First off, I should confess the happenings of the weekend, just get it out there right away. We "cheated" on Friday. Ok, so I put it in quotes because we didn't really cheat. I mean, we did, but there was one open day scheduled in the book that we didn't use at its scheduled time so we used it instead on Friday. And it was well worth the wait.

We went to the Blue Door on Selby and Fairview. It was one of the few places neither of us had been to in St. Paul. We had amazing juicy lucys and beer- whoa, it was a superb cheat meal. And considering we had 14 meals before that where we did not cheat AT ALL, I mean no straying from the prescribed menu, it was completely alright. Not that I'm trying to justify it to anyone (or myself...), but I should explain myself a little further. We were celebrating work-related good news and finishing cleaning and moving me out of my old house, which we had just completed Friday evening. Of course we were also celebrating the end of the week and we thought cheating in the beginning of the week would keep us satisfied through the weekend.

Alright, enough about the big cheat. One last thing... it turns out that cheating Friday night didn't exactly allow us to breeze through the weekend. We had our fair share of temptations. First we went to the como zoo with Alex's parents and niece and were surrounded by dripping ice cream cones, greasy cheese curds and kettle corn. We then went out to lunch and had to find something that we knew complied with the restrictions of the plan, which is really hard when even the salads have breaded chicken and the server automatically places bread on the table. To finish the day we went to a BBQ on our rooftop where we were met by a cold keg, homemade brownies, chips, and lots of questions.

We managed to get through Saturday and then Sunday we were saved by the farmer's market. There's something about walking through the aisles of the market that just calls one to be a healthier person. I'm sure anyone who has been to the St. Paul farmer's market, or likely any good sized farmer's market, knows the feeling I'm talking about. I have to say it's one of those eyes are bigger than your mouth thing, like you see a tray of 6 green peppers and another with 4 huge cucumbers and you think, "what? $2 for 6 green peppers? that's such a good deal!" Then you buy the 6 green peppers and 4 cucumbers and by the next Saturday you've only gone through one of each because they're glowing when see them at the market but look like lame vegetables when you get them home.

Overall the weekend was successful as we managed to stick to the plan besides our one cheat day. We're struggling a little at the moment with chocolate cravings for me (typical) and general "I'm hungry but don't feel like eating anything we have" cravings for Alex. For now, off to bed with high hopes for another week!