My 5 Days with Paleo

I have been contemplating on going gluten-free for a while now. After learning that I am allergic to a lot of grains and essentially gluten from my Food Intolerance Test last 2014, I have been challenging myself to go totally gluten-free and see its effect on my body.

 

So I searched online for a gluten-free meal delivery service since I am not yet that familiar with the different ingredients that contain gluten and may inadvertently include them in my diet. One that I found is from Paleo Manila. I signed up for a 5-day meal plan to test their meals and see if a week is enough to see the effects of a totally gluten-free diet.

 

Paleo Manila delivers your meals the night before. It comes in a brown paperbag with the meal plan for the day attached to it.

Each bag contains Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner and two snacks. I usually eat the snacks as dessert after taking my lunch and dinner.

 

Unlike the usual meal delivery in Metro Manila, the Paleo Manila meal plan does not count calories. They usually cover anywhere from 1,300 to 1,800 calories a day. This actually worried me a little when I was starting with the program. I am a relatively healthy eater and my average caloric consumption based on my Fitness Pal tracker is around 1,500 a day. So going over my average intake might make me gain weight. But I pushed through with it since my goal was not to lose weight anyway. It was to see if going gluten-free has any tangible health benefits for me.

Omelette for breakfast, Roasted chicken with mashed sweet potato and grapes for lunch,
a serving of carrot cake for dessert

Beef brisket

The meals were pretty hearty, as expected, and they tasted good. Some better than the others. My only challenge was to eat the pork-based meals since I really do not like the taste of pork. Unfortunately, customizing your meals with Paleo Manila means adding another thousand to the weekly cost of P3,750. Too expensive!  So I just ate whatever pork came my way. Sometimes I only finished half of the pork meal. 

 

My favorite is Day 5 - they really saved the best for last.

Seafood with Cauliflower Fried Rice, Chicken Pesto, Vegetable salsa with egg

The desserts were exceptionally good except for the cookies on the last day which did not taste like cookies at all. They were more like caramel crinkles.

 

The Gluten-free Orange Nut Bread was the best! Should I decide to splurge and customize my Paleo meals, this would be my snack all week!

Gluten-free Orange Nut Bread

Five days into my Paleo diet and I lost 4 lbs!  I could not believe it! I went down from 108 lbs to 104 lbs by simply eating right even when I was technically eating more!  I felt energized and could even run 5km to 7km each day while I was on my Paleo meal plan. My digestion improved and I did not feel bloated at all. I think that was the biggest winner for me. I can finally conclude that Gluten is the cause of my bloating.

 

So is eating Paleo and the same as going Gluten-free? I have been reading about it and will share my findings with you soon. Stay tuned...

 

If you want to try Paleo Manila's meal plan, you may book with them by clicking here.