When I left for Ireland and Scotland, I was weighing a bit heavier than I’d like: 171.2 lbs. When I returned from my trip, I weighed in at 187.8 lbs. That’s ridiculous. It’s hard to imagine that I was able to put on that much weight in so little time. That tells me some things.

• The diet I was eating before was good for my weight maintenance.
• The diet I went to while on vacation, which included grains, sugar, dairy, and alcohol, caused my body to retain a lot of water and to gain some solid weight.
• The diet I went to is pretty much the same diet I was on before I decided to eat healthy. That diet is unsustainable long-term and not conducive to good health.

Now that I’m back, my wife and I have decided to get back to a very strict Paleo diet. We aren’t necessarily doing another Whole30 just yet: we’re going to see how sticking with a strict Paleo diet helps in dropping the weight we picked up in Ireland and Scotland.

So far, in two days of mostly eating right (we had a birthday party and a baby shower to go to this weekend that had me drinking and eating more than I want to right now), I’m already down to 182.0 lbs. That’s 5.8 lbs dropped in three days of good eating. I know that it’s mostly water weight, but that’s because now that I’ve cut off all the inflammatory foods, and my body is both reducing its swelling and getting rid of the excess water I’ve been retaining.

I’ve decided I’m using this experience to allow me to once again to experience the excitement of reaching weight loss goals, and I’m also using it to reiterate the healthiness of the Paleo Diet. I’m going to stick with it as I always have, except I’m going to be more strict with the portion sizes and allow the process to work. I’ll be reporting in on my progress as my work toward my goal of 165 lbs.