Astrogirl » caveman

Primal Play

Nicole — Mon, 28 Jun 2010 17:38:56 +0000

After spending the afternoon at the St. Louis City Museum, I’m starting to think fun exercise is something I need fit in every week.

The grind that occurs at the gym is a big reason why I don’t go to one.

I don’t really do any exercise I don’t enjoy. If I don’t like it, I find some other way to work that part of my body, but I haven’t really had so much fun being active for a long time, with the exception of some days backpacking. A lot of backpacking is about immersion in nature and meeting constant challenges, but sometimes, it really just is a long slog up a viewless mountain in 85′ heat. Other times, it’s physically fun, climbing over weird terrain along the side of a cliff or scaling a pile of boulders. I used to actually dread that kind of thing, but the last four bits of complex rock terrain I’ve done[1], I actually recall quite fondly! Anything on the A.T. with a bad weather trail is generally awesome.

The only kind of gym I’d actually consider would be CrossFit, and I’m not doing that because it just means I will spend waaaay too much time commuting to a freakin’ gym. It’s certainly a different kind of workout experience, but it’s still mostly about meeting challenges. CrossFit supports a number of sport activities, but most people don’t seem to make time for those, and instead spend their time at the box. I know people get a big sense of accomplishment, but I also note that CrossFit and the Paleo world generally contain a lot of forceful, Type A personalities who are also free-thinkers or libertarians. CF is kind of an anti-gym already, but I sure haven’t seen anything about it that looks painful.

I’m thinking more along the lines of climbing more trees, and when I get back to Virginia, I’m going to hike a section of the Massanutten Trail that’s a knife-edge for a long way. The map is labeled “experienced hikers only”. I’ve done it before, so I do know what’s there.

[1] Off the top of my head: Blackstack Cliffs, Laurel Canyon, a big pile of boulders near the Vermont line (with it’s own blue blaze for bad weather) and Albert Mountain.

Two Tidbits

Nicole — Thu, 25 Mar 2010 16:24:59 +0000

There’s a great Primal Checklist here.

This coconut milk is the best adapted for use in coffee that I’ve yet encountered. It’s thick and creamy enough, but not oily or clumpy in the least. Best of all, it’s *nothing* but coconut milk. In case the link breaks, it’s Aroy-D 100% Coconut Milk in an 8.5 ounce aseptic box. I paid the same price on the web page (89 cents), but bought them in person at Global Foods in Kirkwood, MO. I bought four, then went back and bought eight more, and if I’d known they were *this* good, I would have bought a case.

I’ve been seeing this market from I-66 near Manassas: Juliana’s Sari Sari Store. Apparently, a Sari Sari Store is a Filipino convenience store, so I will try there next time I’m in the area. I will also try the general Asian goods store in Manassas since there’s apparently some people from the Philippines in Manassas.

Time to Clean it Up

Nicole — Wed, 24 Mar 2010 01:04:08 +0000

We were in St. Louis for a month (returned late last night), and during that time, I gained some weight. I did work out quite a lot, so I’m sure it wasn’t all fat, some of it undoubtedly was. I have a lot of signs of inflammation, my digestion is messed up, and I’m just not feeling tip-top.

The problem is that these trips tend to involve a lot of drinking, social activity and a lot of eating out. This means my self-control goes out the window, and I wind up eating things I shouldn’t. Having gluten intolerance cuts way down on an entire class of low-quality neolithic foods, but my diet was still pretty lousy. I also had gluten-free pizza twice (I made it myself), and I used up a loaf of gluten-free bread in the month I was there. It’s the best gluten-free bread I’ve ever bought in a store (Glutino), but it’s still not so awesome that I can’t avoid it in the future.

In short: I’ve been eating crappy food, drinking too much booze, and I have not been sleeping enough. The sleep is easier to fix, and that should take about a week. The drinking is easy to fix because I can just stop drinking. Pulling certain foods back out of my diet…that’s always a bit harder. Basically, I’m leaning a lot more paleo/primal than I have been for the last month.

Here’s the list that needs to get the axe:

Corn – This eliminates virtually every commercial gluten-free cracker and bread. Disallowing the oil means that I probably can’t eat anything deep-fried outside the house since corn oil is in almost every single fryer on earth. This makes it really easy to eliminate the next thing.
White Potatoes – I’m not sure they actually are a problem in and of themselves, I know that I can’t seem to draw the line and just eat a little bit of french fries. The fries are, of course, all fried in mostly lousy fats, and many contain trans-fats, so it’s best to just not eat them.
Legumes – Needless to say, this one is very hard to avoid in the wild because there’s soy in seemingly everything. I don’t eat a lot of it, but I have some tofu shirataki noodles to use up first, then I’ll cut it. I’ve only been eating soy sauce for a couple of months after not eating it for a very long time, so that won’t be too hard to drop. Virtually all soy sauce that I encounter in restaurants contains wheat, so it was only something I ate at home anyway.
Dairy of certain types – UHT Pasteurized, anything with vegetable gums or preservatives, cheese or dairy that I know or suspect is not 100% real (think American cheese, for instance). If it could have junk in it, I shouldn’t eat it. I plan to stick mostly to my raw milk share, and I’ll eat some of that as yogurt. I’m sure I’ll eat cheese at home.
Nuts and seeds that are high in polyunsaturated fats (and their oils) – This one is controversial with a lot of people because, well, a lot of literature says that these oils are very healthy. I’m sticking to macadamias and cashews anyway. Yes, I know that some paleo types think we shouldn’t eat cashews, but they are mostly monounsaturated fats, and I don’t agree with the reasoning anyway. Cutting nuts out of my diet is hard for me, and my goal really is to cut the polyunsaturated fat content in my diet rather than to stick to someone else’s rules. Avocados and olives are fruit, so they and their oils can stay (and are mostly monounsaturated), though I don’t really eat avocado oil. Peanuts are a legume, and are possibly the worst offender when it comes to overloading oneself with Omega-6.
The rest of the grains (rice, millet, etc) and pseudo grains (like quinoa and buckwheat) – I don’t seem to have problems with them, however, so I’m not in a big hurry there. I don’t eat that much of these anyway.

Already axed are gluten-y grains – Wheat, Rye, Barley, Spelt, Triticale. Can’t digest them, don’t eat them anyway. As I look over this list, the bad stuff I’ve been eating is all fried potatoes. Not entirely, but mostly.

Tomorrow, I will have to do some shopping. I was able to produce lunch and dinner out of what I had on hand, and I can definitely make breakfast tomorrow…but then things start to get a bit more grim. On the bright side, the fridge was so empty that I could see how badly the glass shelves and the produce drawer needed cleaned, so now that’s done.

Fat content of various protein sources

Nicole — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 23:24:25 +0000

This is something I did for my own reasons, but I’m talking about it on a mailing list, and posting a table in there is *not* convenient.

Mostly, I was interested in polyunsaturated and saturated fats in various foods, but it’s always interesting to be reminded about some other facts. We’re always hearing about how, say, bacon is chock full of ARTERY-CLOGGING SATURATED FAT(!), but it actually has more monounsaturated fat than saturated.

I was also surprised (though I really don’t know why) at how much more fat farmed fish has. I knew about the lack of Omega-3, but I didn’t realize just how much fattier it is generally.

Anyway, the fats are at the bottom of the chart. If you want an excel copy to mess with, I can email that to you.

All the numbers are courtesy of the USDA food nutrient database (free for the taking). I have it loaded into MySQL on my computer so that can get up to all sorts of trouble with it.

A few great food/nutrition blogs

Nicole — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 19:39:10 +0000

At the moment, one of my favorite bloggers is Melissa McEwen at Hunt/Gather/Love. She was recently featured in a New York Times article on Paleolithic Diets. She’s written a lot of great things in her quite new blog, but this one about Kale Chips … well, this is my new favorite way to eat dark leafy greens. And my previous favorite way included bacon grease. I’ve been hearing for some time that a bag of baby spinach done like this is also delicious, and I kept meaning to try it but never got around to it. Now I’ve gotten around to it, and wow!

Another that’s high on my reading priority list right now is Richard Nikoley of Free The Animal. He’s also a paleolithic eater, but he’s less dogmatic than many. Paleo tends, like fruitarian diets, raw foodism, veganism and the pure carnivore diet, towards dogmatism, something I find dull and kind of annoying. Richard has a real attitude, and I do enjoy watching him rip into conventional wisdom/idiocy. Here is one of his great entries about this very thing. His comment feed has grown so large and popular that I think it merits a forum.

And one for the road: Kurt Harris, MD. His Smoking Candy Cigarettes piece is destined to become a classic. While it covered something that’s always driven me nuts about paleo food blogs as well as low-carb recipes, it seems to have struck a chord with others as well. This is the idea that whatever you’re making has to be prefaced with “low-carb” or “paleo” because it’s really an *imitation* of some other food that doesn’t contain any foods on the blogger’s banned list.

OK, back to my delicious kale chips.

Paleolithic Diets

Nicole — Sat, 09 Jan 2010 12:29:13 +0000

The New York Times and the Washington Post have both run articles on Paleolithic diets so far this year. Yeah, it’s diet season.

Both are interesting, but their focus is different. The New York Times was mostly about lifestyle, and the Washington Post talks a little about CrossFit, but has more about the diet than the NYT.

I’m not sure I’ve detailed what a Paleolithic diet *is* on my blog, so for those who don’t know: meat, vegetables, nuts and fruits are the allowed food groups. No grains, no legumes, no dairy.

I was particularly interested to find out that Nassim Nicholas Taleb is a Paleo eater.