What is the Paleo Challenge?
The Paleo Challenge is a 30-60 day challenge similar to our 6Pack Challenge designed to help participants clean up their diet. For 1-2 months, they are restricted to eating lean meats, vegetables, nuts and seeds, some fruit, little starch and no sugar. Whether they choose to do the paleo diet or paleo zone, the goal is to achieve the results you want as well as a lifestyle makeover.
Participants who followed this strictly, like Raquel here, found the most results! However the level of participation is purely up to the individual. To help facilitate this, we created different levels to make it easy to follow by working with what you are willing to give up. See the 5 levels of Paleo. If you pick level 3 you are doing everything underneath level 2 and 1.
About Our Winner
Hometown: Ladera Ranch, CA
Age: 29
Anaerobic member since: September 2010
Weight Lost: lost 10 pounds on the challenge!
Paleo Challenge Level you selected: Level 5 baby! Go big or go home, right? 
Still doing Paleo? YES! Love it, I’m a convert.
Favorite Paleo Dish: Tough call- there really are so many! I became somewhat of a Paleo blog enthusiast searching out new recipes and I discovered a whole world of amazing Paleo dishes. One of my favorite dinner meals I still cook often is a recipe I found through The Foodee for pork chops with cinnamon apples and cranberries, YUM. I’m not kidding about the blog obsession, I’ve even started my own site to keep track of all my favorite dishes and links. This is very recent so it is still a work in progress but would love any feedback! Check it out at occavegirl.com =)
Hardest thing to give up: Cheese and Wine!
What sort of changes have you seen in your body, health and fitness since starting Paleo? So obviously there is a lot of room for improvement, but that being said, seriously so happy with my results from the challenge. I lost 10 pounds and went from a jeans size 28 to a 25! I am in better shape now then before having kids. And aside from the physical changes I just FEEL so good. I sleep better and have more energy. I am working on the strength part but at least now I can actually see the muscles I am working on, woohoo!
How did you feel when you first started eating Paleo? The first couple of days were tough. I was a bit sluggish and tired. It was hard not to think about all of the off limit food. Everything I couldn’t eat looked so good!
Did eating Paleo get easier or harder as time went on? How difficult is it now? It got much easier as time went on. When I finally stopped thinking about everything I couldn’t eat and started focusing on all of the amazing options I could eat it actually became fun! Not to mention that after about a week there is this undeniable feeling of…well it’s hard to really even say what it feels like, you just feel GOOD. Like your body is just working better. It’s not difficult anymore because this just feels normal now. This is how I eat. And if I feel like having a cheat meal or 2 a week or a glass of wine here and there I do. And I just get right back at it the next meal. But taking a cheat meal is always a good reminder of how crappy those foods can make you feel.
Did you cheat ever? If so, what was your punishment? =) I did cheat once! It was on Superbowl Sunday and I had about 2 1/2 margaritas. Amidst all of the amazing food I COULD have cheated on at this party I stayed strong and ate clean but I just couldn’t say no to those margaritas! Word of warning, in the absence of all sugar and bread, it doesn’t take much to do the job! I had to do a treadmill tabata run at a 12.0 incline and 7.5 speed and it was totally worth it.
What sort of changes in your life have you experienced while eating Paleo that were totally unexpected? I’m not going to lie, my motivation for doing this challenge was completely vain…I just wanted to look better in my bikini! All of my goals were focused on losing weight, going down a size, etc…I didn’t expect that it would become this amazing lifestyle change. Another unexpected change was how, ahem, digestively healthy I have become. That didn’t used to be the case but I am happy to report there is no longer any problem in that department! Oh, and I didn’t expect to lose 3 inches from my neck. That was weird.
Any advice for people thinking about Paleo or are just getting started? Stop thinking about it and just DO IT! And really do it- the whole thing, for at least 30 days. You won’t regret it. Right when I started at CrossFit in September of last year, Jeff gave me the token welcome call before my first work out to make sure I was prepared etc. He asked me about my nutrition and gave me the quick Paleo talk…at that time I was just not buying in to the whole “Paleo thing.” I was pretty self assured that I knew plenty about good nutrition and his whole spiel sounded a little too radical for my liking…it was going in one ear and out the other actually, ha! So fast forward to January and by then my curiosity was peeked, I went to the nutrition seminar, it was all making more sense…plus it was a CHALLENGE. I like challenges. The rest is history. I think I kind of went backwards in that I jumped in without really knowing all there was and at about day 10 when I was on some kind of feel good high I started wanting to get my hands on everything I could find Paleo- I bought “The Paleo Solution” by Robb Wolf and “The Paleo Diet Cookbook” by Loren Cordain and devoured every word. And then of course my obsession with blogs as I have mentioned. There is a wealth of knowledge out there people! It was motivating to read so many great testimonies. I guess my advice is to go for it. You have nothing to lose and everything to gain.
