Guest Blogger: Meet Elizabeth (and her soon to be abs)

Dear abs,

I f&*%ed up. We had something pretty great and I acted like a selfish jerk. Life got busy and difficult and I took you for granted. I was weak and let my vulnerability get the best of me. I threw away everything we had for some wild fun with poutine, beaver tails and those other trashy pub food that were just so charming and exciting at the time. I miss what we had and was foolishly tempted by those bastards and now all of my memories of you are buried under layers of… well… fat. 

I’m sorry. I know I’ve said that before, but this time I mean it. I am going to change. We’ll see each other again soon. I promise.

Elizabeth

Hello friends of Dave and Pat. Who am I? My name is Elizabeth and Dave and I are friends from work. There was a time when every time Dave and I would talk, I would have some scandalous tale to share. A time when life was super exciting and I had the time and energy to get into buzz-worthy trouble.

Unfortunately, in the past few months, the story-well has run dry. I moved across the country, got a dog, continued to tackle an MBA in my spare time, and started a new and fairly demanding job. All of these things are fantastic. However, they’ve left me feeling tired, stressed, and just kind of grodie (that’s totally a word). It also doesn’t help that I’m an awful cook and extremely lazy in the kitchen. Cue take-out food.

Recently I was starting to feel like something needed to be done to stop this madness. I know what good feels like and this ain’t it. Not even close. Sure I could use to shed some of these pub-pounds and it wouldn’t hurt me to find more time in the day to exercise. But this need for change was more about doing a better job of fuelling my body so that I can take on all the hectic things on my plate and still have energy left for tomfoolery.

What happened next was totally serendipitous; I saw Dave’s first blog post about his paleo challenge. I had actually just been researching the paleo way but seeing a friend commit to it really motivated me to want to get my ass in gear. So, in true tag-along form, I decided to also embark on a 30 day paleo challenge as well. I mean, with Dave and Pat making it look so damn easy and delicious, how could I not?

So here I am on day 5 and so far so good. While my ‘cooking’ is limited to chopping, boiling, and stirring in a combination that cannot contain more than three steps, I’m actually having fun. My goals for the next 25 (and probably more) days are as follows:

• Continue the paleo lifestyle
• Play outside of my culinary comfort zone and see what I can actually create in the kitchen (with the help of Dave and Pat’s recipes!)
• Be patient while remember that this is a wellness journey and not a fad diet

And, if at the end of this, I am reunited with my beloved abs… well that will be the cherry on the top of my sugar-free, dairy-free sundae. 

Thanks for the inspiration, boys!