Just wanted to stop in and introduce myself...

 I'm a 30 year old mom to 2 boys (19 months & 3.5 yrs), I work full-time and my DH works way too much and travels fairly often.  I'm currently at 164 lbs, I was 135 when I got pregnant with my first child in 2006 so you can do the math    We eat about 75% organic already, and we are very fortunate to belong to a wonderful CSA and have a farm that provides grass-fed beef, pastured chicken, eggs, pork, lamb and raw dairy and cheeses less than 5 miles from our house.  I plan on incorporating some dairy into my diet, so I guess technically that would make me lacto-paleo if we want to put a label on it.  Honestly, it'll take some experimenting to see what works for me individually so I'm going into this with an open mind.  

First off, I have a nasty Diet Pepsi habit, have kicked it several times over the years but it always comes back.  Yes, I know it's poison, it's got to go. I always laugh that all the organic I eat means nothing when I'm guzzling down chemicals every day.  I've also got a Starbucks habit (not the 'I'll take black coffee kind'), another one that's got to go.  On the bright side, I LOVE meat, bacon and eggs are probably the best breakfast ever, adore big yummy salads and could care less about pasta.  My biggest stumbling block is going to be preparing food ahead and planning - but people with crazier lives than mine do it every day.  Looking forward to meeting some fellow souls working towards a healthier existence.    

Emiloots,

I'm new to, and it does have it's challenges when you're going solo in a family environment.

What I've been doing so far is I cook twice the meat I need at night. So I'll grill 3 chicken breasts and eat 1-1.5 for dinner and throw the rest in the fridge. Then, come lunch time the next day, all i need to do is throw a quick salad together and cut up the chicken from last night and i'm good to go.

I also drank alot of diet soda and coffee. So far I'm doing really well on H2O only. (well a bit of black coffee in the morn) But i'm honestly not missing the diet sodas at all.

Keep up the good work.

No3

If you're drinking the sugary crap from Starbucks, you'll be undoing all the diet changes you made, and probably won't lose much weight.

For starters, it might be beneficial to give yourself a "cheat day". Most people here disagree with this, but I don't. Give yourself a weekday that you allow yourself to drink your Grande Ultra Frappa-latte-ccino on. Only do it on that day.

You *know* this stuff is unhealthy, but you don't have a good enough reason to stop doing it. How about grandkids? Do you want to be the grandmother who sits around in a chair grumbling about all her health problems and taking handfuls of pills? Or do you want to be the grandmother who actually plays with her grandkids?

Welcome.  Cutting back to one latte a week is not bad.  To lose weight as a female, you may eventually have to remove the cheese - maybe when the time comes you can get your CSA farm to give you fat for tallow and lard instead.

To save time on food preparation, you might want to get yourself an old cast iron frying pan from eBay, made back when they were heavy enough to even out the weight, if you don't have one already.  With mine, I can make dinner in 15-20 minutes for myself, my wife, and our 2 year old daughter - our 7 month old son is still breast feeding.

On weekends, I'll make a roast that's big enough to provide lunches for the week.

Starbucks will have to be the first thing to go if you do not see results though, bear that in mind.