“Real People, Real Paleo” is a series of posts written by real people who were inspired to share their paleo story with you.  There is such diversity in the challenges that bring us to a paleo diet and lifestyle and in what we hope to achieve by adopting them.  These stories are intended to be a place of inspiration, written by real people, showing the diversity of our needs and our approaches to this way of eating and living, and explaining how each individual’s implementation of paleo meets their needs.  By sharing these people’s stories with you on my blog, I hope to redefine what paleo success is.  I do not believe that eating paleo is purely about losing weight, gaining muscle, and having 6-pack abs.  I believe that paleo is about being healthy enough to thoroughly enjoy life, whatever that means for you, and about sustainability for our entire lives.  If you are interested in writing up your story, email me at thepaleomommy@gmail.com

This is an update on Kimmy’s and Jamie’s Story.

Since I wrote the last post I have tweaked Jamie’s diet a lot as he was still experiencing trouble with sleeping (he hadn’t slept through a single night since 9 months!) and his skin was a lot better but he still had bumps on his arms and legs.

Since I read the book “Practical Paleo”, I have been following the autoimmune protocol for Jamie and have also excluded “FODMAPS” – since the first day I cut the FODMAPS out , he went back to sleeping 12 hours straight every night and continues to do so!

I successfully reintroduced coconut milk, oil and flour and he seems fine with them. I suspect he has a problem with fructose as I have drastically cut down on his fruit intake and he is much much better for it . At the same time I increased carbs from sweet potatoes, turnips, swedes, parsnips, butternut squash, plantains and other safe paleo starches.

I also increased his intake of oily fish, which he absolutely loves – just today he ate a whole can of salmon and a whole can of sardines straight out the can.

 I do feel very restricted cooking for him, but thankfully there is a lot of recipes in “Practical Paleo” and on blogs like the “The Paleo Mom”.

 A typical day looks like this (Autoimmune Protocol, nightshade free, egg free, nut and seed free, FODMAP free)

Breakfast:

•  homemade breakfast sausage (beef, turkey or pork) with a safe starch (like sweet potato) and vegetables (today he had baked asparagus)

or

• can of oily fish with safe starch and vegetables
• smoothie made out of ripe banana and half an avocado (he seems fine with avocado)

Snack:

• Pumpkin Puck by the “Paleo Parents” (they recently published an autoimmune friendly version of this)

Lunch:

•  chicken/beef/turkey/lamb/fish  meal (like beef stew, lamb chops with butternut squash and veg etc.)

Snack:

• very ripe banana

Tea:

•  either leftovers from lunch or a similar meal, he especially loves pumpkin soup with a side of meat.

I keep his protein portions fairly small now as I have noticed his digestion gets very bad if he eats too much of it.

He also gets a probiotic, magnesium, l-glutamine and b-vitamins as supplements.

 All in all he has improved so so much. He still has got sensory processing problems, but these are not as extreme as they were when he still ate gluten, nuts, nightshades and eggs. He is a very happy child and loves all his food. His skin is super smooth now and his mood is mostly well balanced!

 As for me, I have lost another 5 lbs and feel really good. I have no problems with nuts and eggs thankfully but feel lots better when I limit my fruit intake. I feel best on a low carb diet with lots of fish, grassfed beef, some safe starches and lots of vegetables. I still would never go back to eating a standard diet!