Fishing follow-up. (You did me proud.)

Happy Friday! This week could not have been more crazypants. I gave a huge presentation at work yesterday (which sucked up my 9-5 all damn week), and decided to take off for the weekend early, so today I'll be prepping for that all day. I've been neglecting my Paleo People... but from the sounds of it, you are all taking really good care of each other. Sweet.

Everyone did a FANTASTIC job with answering my three questions from Monday. You, collectively, hit the nail on the head on all three. Way to go! All I'm going to do here is repeat YOUR advice in my own words. So, for those of you heading into (or a few days past) the big Three-Oh...

1. If your tastes haven't changed yet, if you are still craving all your "old" foods or if you haven't noticed a reduction in body fat or improvement in performance... please consider sticking with this whole super-strict thing for a little while longer. You've already put in thirty long, hard days of reconditioning your body. And I bet, if you're in this stage right now, you're trying to counteract twenty or thirty YEARS of eating poorly. That damage doesn't always come undone in thirty days. There is no magic number. But what I can promise you is that it will, at some point, come undone. At some point, you will notice a reduction in cravings, a shift in body composition, an improvement in energy level. Guaranteed. So stick with it, as long as it takes. You owe it to yourself,and you owe it to your body. But let's also address one really important point right here.

This is not just about your body. This is about resetting your BRAIN. If there is one thing I've learned from my experiences coaching and running the blog, it's this... food is emotional. It's comfort, it's celebration, it's punishment and it's reward. Food is often the ONLY thing people come together over. It's used to establish common ground, form a bond, smooth over rough personal interactions. And you cannot take that piece out of this equation. (I addressed this to a degree in my Zone Gone Bad CrossFit Journal article, but I think this topic deserves more attention. Look for a write-up on this next week.)

So if you're still feeling the same way about food after your initial 30 days... hang in a little longer. Allow your body and your mind to catch up to this new way of eating, this new way of BEING. I promise you, things will change, and you owe it to yourself to be patient.

2. Cheating smart, in a nutshell. You've dropped grains, dairy, legumes and maybe nightshades from your diet. But every once in a while, you'd still like to drink a beer, have some ice cream, slather a piece of toast with peanut butter. And if you've read my H/FO Scale, you'll know I am one hundred dollars on board with that. So let's use the last 30 days as a springboard for approaching this Smart. Be patient with your cheating, too.

Introduce these foods back into your diet one group at a time. One night, have a bowl of ice cream. Then, evaluate how you feel that night, and the next day. Stomach feel like you're about to birth an alien? You may need to limit your dairy consumption to very small quantities - or, like, me, you may decide it's simply never going to be worth it. Another night, have some grains. See how you feel that day, the next day. Get the picture? Don't waste the last 30 days! You've spent valuable time cleaning out your system and allowing your body to heal. Use that platform to identify what foods are okay to cheat with and what foods may not be so much fun anymore.

Note, I am not telling you where to draw that line. Maybe ice cream makes you sick for the next three hours, but you REALLY love ice cream, so you decide it's worth it for you. That's entirely your call. But don't you at least appreciate KNOWING how it affects you, so you don't have a bowl of ice cream before, say, a big workout or while out on a date? Cheat smart.

3. Three was kind of a trick question. On a go-forward basis... apply this knowledge however you damn well please. I'm not trying to tell you how to live your life and eat your food. You've worked your own process, so all I'll ask is that you spend some time thinking about if and how you want to incorporate these principles into your daily life.

For me, I decided to stay strict a vast majority of the time. My "cheats" turned into maple syrup and hummus - both not technically allowed on a super strict diet, but still pretty damn clean "cheats". I reintroduced new food groups one at a time, and figured out that grains and sugars in small-ish quantities are totally okay, and dairy in ANY quantity is not. So when I cheat, I have, for example, one piece of french toast covered in Nutella. Not a plate of french toast, and not french toast and pancakes and a big sandwich at lunch and pasta for dinner. Just a small amount, here and there, to satisfy those mental cravings and eat something delicious.

What it comes down to is - work your own program. Just don't treat the last 30 days as something disposable - something you muscled through and can now forget about while you get back to your regularly scheduled life. Learn from the last 30 days, and figure out for yourself how to carry that with you. And, I might propose... carry that to others. (But that's another topic entirely.)

Stay tuned for Karl's story on Monday (I dare you to feel bad for yourself while struggling to eat clean after reading about Karl) and some more thoughts about the ties between food and emotion, and breaking those unhealthy strings. Have a great weekend, everyone.