Part of the problem is that every day paleo mostly consists of meat and veg and maybe some fruit for dessert or some nuts [...]]]> I read a number of blogs from Paleo eaters, and while I enjoy them, I’ve been seeing a lot more…excuses lately. These so-called excuses are almost always about non-paleo recipe ingredients.

Part of the problem is that every day paleo mostly consists of meat and veg and maybe some fruit for dessert or some nuts for a snack. This doesn’t mean the diet is at all boring, but it does mean that half the recipes seem to be for desserts. It’s not that hard or complex to make meat and vegetables taste great, after all.

I’m not even going to pretend that it’s easy to stick to a Paleo diet. If you’re not surrounded by like-minded people all the time, it’s socially difficult. If you eat out much it’s even harder. Personally, I’ve only made it two weeks on full paleo, then I added dairy back in and made it an additional month or so before I started experimenting with adding back foods and ethanol.

If you’re putting up a recipe for paleo pancakes, cave cookies or a dish containing white potatoes, why do your readers need to hear about how you “don’t eat like this all the time”? Anyone reading the recipe can see that it contains butter or potatoes or whatever. Flag it as non-paleo, mostly paleo or primal or whatever you need to do. It’s not a competition or a re-enactment – just tell us what’s awesome about it and get on with the recipe!

I always wonder if the rationalizations are about assuaging guilt. Guilt over eating is stressful and unhealthy. Please do *yourself* a favor and move beyond it. And speaking of guilt, the other thing that drives me bananas is the idea of a “cheat meal.” Who or what are you cheating (on) exactly? Is there a referee watching and waiting to call you out for crossing some line? Are you “on a diet”, or is this a lifestyle change? I hope it’s the latter, but either way, a “free meal” sounds one hell of a lot better than suggesting you’re “cheating” on an inanimate concept like the Paleo Diet.

This is not the most awesome picture, but it’s the one [...]]]> I don’t believe I’ve said much about this here, and I’m a bit behind everyone else because my copy of Robb Wolf’s The Paleo Solution was to be shipped when Amazon ran out of copies. I attended Robb’s seminar in July at Potomac CrossFit.

This is not the most awesome picture, but it’s the one I’ve got!

Long story short, I think Robb is a great guy as well as being extremely knowledgeable. His book is very easy to read, and I’d recommend it for anyone interested in learning more about nutrition and digestion. Even if you’re not sure that you’re interested in going Paleo, it’s chock full of information.

I did get to ask Robb my most pressing question: Why can’t I lose weight on a ketogenic diet? Yeah, that’s right, I don’t lose weight. In fact, according to my BIA scale, I put on fat and lose lean mass. I don’t *gain* weight even if I eat a lot, but my body composition definitely goes the wrong way. At this point, my weight is normal so everything is about body comp for me. The answer was “Cortisol“. My workouts force gluconeogenesis which raises cortisol. This causes my body to decide to break down protein instead of running on fat because it thinks it *needs* that fat.

Obviously, this doesn’t happen to everyone, but if you’ve stopped losing weight via low-carb, you might want to try easing some carbs back in. It helps if you have a glucose meter so you know how you handle carbs. My sugars are normal and stable. I have other hormonal issues to deal with (thyroid, estrogen dominance), but hyperinsulinemia and hypoglycemia are not among them. I can’t eat a breakfast composed entirely of caffeine and carbohydrates, or I do get hypoglycemic, but I figured THAT out in high school, though I didn’t know what was going wrong. I just knew that I felt like crap, so I started eating sandwiches for breakfast instead of cereal.

At this point, I have decided staying full Paleo is not for me. I did find out a number of things that I should not eat, and for that, I’m really grateful, but I just can’t ban whole classes of food forever. Here’s where I’ve landed.

• Gluten: Total lifetime ban. I just cannot digest it, no way no how. I only eat it accidentally.
• Legumes: Extremely minimal consumption. I do not do well with these at all. I recently tried adding them back so that I could unify more of the meals at home (Tino is a vegetarian), and it was a bad idea. In addition to the digestive issues of the infrequent bean eater, I also had noticeable bloat and inflammation. Incidentally, broccoli does the same thing to me, whether it’s cooked or not. I have to eat all my crucifers cooked, but only broccoli (so far anyway) messes me up this much even when cooked. It’s too bad, because I do actually like it. I also adore green beans, but I have to only eat them once in a while – they actually cause trouble for me like beans and broccoli.
• Vegetable Oils: Minimal Consumption. I eat out too much to eliminate them completely, but I either get all my dressing on the side or bring my own. I can’t eat fried food out of fryers that have contained gluten, so I do eat little of this outside the house. Basically, I eat McDonald’s fries now and then. Pretty much everyone else I know of cooks fries and breaded items in the same grease. At home, it’s very easy to work around with Extra Virgin Olive Oil for salads and Light Olive Oil (100%, not extra-virgin) for cooking where butter, bacon grease or ghee won’t do for some reason.
• Non-Gluten Grains: I eat white rice and corn tortillas with no blood sugar problems, no carb cravings and in moderation, no weight gain. My diet is a lot more enjoyable for this inclusion. You can only eat so many sweet potatoes. I do have problems with some of the more exotic non-gluten flours, so I try to stick to stuff I make myself from rice flours or eat foods that are inherently gluten free, like corn tortillas. I do have to watch it with the corn chips – I can really over consume those if I’m not careful with portions. I have yet to find a gluten-free beer that I actually enjoy. I hate sorghum in beer – it tastes metallic, and rice beers seem to always lean towards white ale, not something I never liked much. Nothing has enough hoppy bite either, so I just stick to wine and cocktails.
• Refined Sugar: I generally avoid this, but I don’t freak out about small amounts of sugar in stuff (liqueurs in cocktails in small amounts), and once in a while I like some ice cream, a gluten-free brownie or whatever. I do avoid HFCS because it’s always a sign that a product is totally jive.
• Potatoes: With the skins on, white potatoes are a problem for me. Yams and sweet potatoes are not an issue at all.
• Dairy: I eat dairy, but I’ve very recently made changes to that.
• Intermittent Fasting: I exercise fasted at about 7am, and I don’t generally eat after 7pm. I eat breakfast between 8 or 9am. This sucked the first few days, but I think it’s really working, and now I’m used to it. Basically, 13 hours every day, some days a little more. If I get much over 14, I turn into a raging bitch, and nobody likes that.
• Alcohol: I average out to slightly less than two drinks a day, cocktails or wine. My most common cocktail now is a Martini, and I generally only drink before dinner (except wine – that’s with dinner). I try not to overindulge as it’s dehydrating, and if I drink after dinner, I generally pay for it in less restorative sleep. I’m not binge drinking on the weekends, in other words, but some days I drink wine and cocktails and others I abstain completely.

If you’re not sure why you feel like crap, the Paleo Diet is a great way to straighten yourself out. After you’ve eliminated the possibly meddlesome foods for at least three weeks, you can add one back in ONCE and find out what happens. If you haven’t cut them for 21-30 days minimum, you’ll never sort that out. I really didn’t know that adding legumes back would be so bloody obvious. Lots of people tolerate legumes just fine but can’t eat corn. Everyone is different, and it’s worth finding out where you are at if you aren’t looking, feeling or performing to your potential.

I have recently cut way back on fruit. I decided I’m better off with the sweet potatoes, corn tortillas and the rice than eating more fruit. It’s not that I’m afraid of fructose exactly, but I think starches are a better choice for my goals. I’m also no longer using dairy as a protein source (the Zone was a bad influence there). I do eat my home made raw milk yogurt with frozen berries or cherries every day. I’m back to drinking my coffee black. Dairy (or coconut milk) would break the fast I’m trying to keep, and I’ve found that I drink a LOT more coffee if I have half and half or coconut milk in it.

I quit caffeine completely for three days and felt like a wet dishrag almost all the time. I could get out of bed just fine, but I felt groggy or just unmotivated most of the time. I’m now back on half the coffee I was drinking before. I feel like what I was doing before was probably excess and that this is more moderate.

I also cut back on nuts. The fat blocks for The Zone drove my consumption up. I eat less than 1 ounce of nuts per day. Most are unsalted and raw, but sometimes, I eat roasted and salted cashews.

I’m doing my workouts (CrossFit, three days on, three days off) fasted, and I’m trying to eat my largest and most carbo-rific meal at breakfast. Lunch tends to be small, and dinner is kind of medium. Some days I have a snack at 3 or 4pm if I’m hungry and my lunch was a bit *too* small.

I have no idea if you can call this Paleo or not. Certainly, I learned things from it and incorporated elements into my diet. Beyond that? I don’t care. I’m doing well, and things are moving in the right direction, and I think that’s a lot more important than obsessing about what to call my style of eating.

Just in the last few months I have finally wrapped my brain around the idea that insulin [...]]]> I’m pretty big on diet shake-ups: if what you’re doing is not working for you then change it. Doing the same thing (or more of it) and expecting better results is just *nuts*, if you think about it.

Just in the last few months I have finally wrapped my brain around the idea that insulin is not the only hormone. I’ve recently gone back and read the actual food suggestions in Neanderthin and The Paleo Diet and found that those diets have 25-35% of calories (maybe 150g in a 2,000 calorie diet) from carbohydrates. For The Primal Blueprint, that’s near the top of the curve, but it’s definitely still on the curve. Certainly, from the point of view of the USDA Dietary Guidelines, that is a low-carb diet, but for people that come from a world of GCBC and Atkins…from the way they react to the idea of eating a banana, you’d think it was SAD-levels of carbohydrate.

I found myself saying on a forum “but I eat a lot more fruit than is currently fashionable in Paleo circles”, and I realized that it is probably more than just fashionable — it’s more like a dogma. In particular, there seems to be a terror of fructose, but the accepted leading authority, Robert Lustig, has no problems with fruit. He thinks fruit juices are a really bad idea, but not whole fruit because it comes with fiber. I’ve seen others (and I’m not sure who, unfortunately) say that juice is OK if it’s fresh squeezed in your own kitchen (something Ray Audette has on his Neanderthin meal plans, BTW) – that what makes fruit bad is *cooking* it. Since virtually all bottled juice is pasteurized, that would eliminate all but that you’ve squeezed yourself. That whole end of the discussion seems to provoke incredulity in people like Jimmy Moore who think all sugar is bad and that’s that. I believed for a long time that any kind of sugar would make me gain weight, but it just doesn’t.

A trip around paleohacks.com will show that there are more than a handful of folks that have stalled out with muscle gains and/or weight loss while eating 50g or less of carbohydrate a day. I see people on the low-carb boards and forums decide that they are eating too many calories, so they take carbs lower or go ZC because more protein and/or more fatty meat allows them to eat fewer calories. They either can’t stick to it or it still doesn’t work, and they just come on and off the threads alternately sounding discouraged or confused. It gets a little sad to read because it gets to the point where, though they diet is failing them ultimately, they think *they* are a failure for not sticking to it properly. If you can’t stick to it, that’s a failure of the diet too. TRY SOMETHING ELSE. Many of these folks have lost a lot of weight already, and they have demonstrated they have will power…but suddenly it’s not working, so it must be their fault!

Here’s how it seems to me:

• If you have an insulin resistance problem, low-carb will work well for you and you probably don’t need to deliberately reduce calories. You may or may not be eating less, but reducing the glucose load on your already burdened liver and pancreas is so helpful that you lose weight no matter what.
• If you don’t have an insulin resistance problem, low-carb will work well for you if it causes a decent-sized spontaneous reduction in calories.
  

The insulin resistant folks seem to stop losing weight when they have solved their sugar problem. This is often way before they’d *like* to stop losing weight. Eventually, kind friends and internet acquaintances start talking about how health is more important than appearance. Goodness knows, I think that a long-term low-carb diet is quite healthy for people. All their biomarkers are excellent, but if they want to be thin, they need to take a chance on something else!

I’ve made this marinade twice now, and both times it was excellent, but I think I got better results today.

1/4 cup fresh squeeze lime juice 1/4 cup pineapple juice 1/4 cup diced onion 1 t. sea salt 4 garlic cloves Rooster sauce to taste (I used a goodly squirt)

The lime and pineapple work really well together. I used boneless [...]]]>

I’ve made this marinade twice now, and both times it was excellent, but I think I got better results today.

1/4 cup fresh squeeze lime juice
1/4 cup pineapple juice
1/4 cup diced onion
1 t. sea salt
4 garlic cloves
Rooster sauce to taste (I used a goodly squirt)

The lime and pineapple work really well together. I used boneless skinless breasts and thighs, and marinated at least four hours. I chopped and skewered the meat, and grilled over charcoal fairly slowly, dumping on additional marinade and rotating the skewers.

Chicken is not my favorite meat, but these were darn good.

I had these with traditional BBQ fare on the 4th and today I just had slaw and mango. The mango worked really well with this.

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 [...]]]> 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.

The rest of it is about evolutionary diets and fitness. It’s definitely worth hearing, no matter which thing you’re interested in.

Re: [...]]]> I found an interesting Russ Roberts podcast with Art DeVany. The first 25 minutes is about baseball and steroids, and while I’m not a baseball nut, I still found DeVany’s ideas quite interesting.

The rest of it is about evolutionary diets and fitness. It’s definitely worth hearing, no matter which thing you’re interested in.

Re: cardio vs HIT, I never thought of this (paraphrased from memory and show notes):

For example, most of the early laboratory work on exercise was done with aerobics exercise because that was done in the lab. You can’t do anaerobic or intense exercise very well that way because the body never hits a steady state. Models are far more difficult. There’s bias toward testing aerobic exercise simply because that’s where the light is…

(i.e. Look for your keys under the street light because the light is better there.)

I have switched to sprints/HIT myself – it sure takes a lot less time! That’s not to say that I won’t do walking, hiking or yoga, but for the moment, I’m not taking them seriously as training exercise.

The “Tough Love” section applies to ANY dietary changes you want to make. The whole article is absolutely worth [...]]]> The Whole9 folks are doing another Pure Paleo 30-day challenge. You’ll find an explanation of it here, and if you’re looking to cut the crap out of your diet, there’s a lot of support available.

The “Tough Love” section applies to ANY dietary changes you want to make. The whole article is absolutely worth reading, but this bit is super important:

1. It is not hard. Don’t you dare tell us this is hard. Giving up heroin is hard. Beating cancer is hard. Drinking your coffee black. Is. Not. Hard. You won’t get any coddling, and you won’t get any sympathy for your “struggles”. Because if we (Dallas and Melissa) can do this while living out of a car on our road trip, relying on a restaurant or a cooler for 90% of our meals, while constantly socializing for business, YOU HAVE NO EXCUSE. It’s only thirty days, and it’s for the most important cause on earth – the only physical body you will ever have in this lifetime. So suck it up and join us.
   

2. Don’t tell us you “slipped”. Unless you physically tripped and your face landed in a box of Krispy Kremes, you DID NOT SLIP. You made a choice to eat something of poor quality. It’s always a choice, so do not phrase it as if you had an accident. Commit here, 100%, for the full 30 days, or go somewhere else.

3. You never, ever, ever HAVE to eat anything you don’t want to eat. You’re all big boys and girls. Toughen up. Learn to say no (or make your Mom proud and say, “No, thank you”). Learn to stick up for yourself. Just because it’s your sister’s birthday, or your best friend’s wedding, or your company outing or the Fourth of July does not mean you have to eat anything. It’s always a choice, and we would hope that you stopped succumbing to peer pressure in 10th grade.

4. This does require a bit of effort, people. If you’re cutting grains, legumes and dairy for the first time, you have to replace those calories with something. You have to make sure you’re eating enough, that your vitamins and nutrients are balanced, that you’re getting enough protein, fat and carbohydrates. You’ll have to figure out what to eat for lunch, how to order at a restaurant and how often you’ll need to grocery shop. There are a ton of good resources search-able on this site, and Googling “Paleo Recipes” is a great place to start. We’ll give you plenty of resources here, but take responsibility for your own plan. Improved health, fitness and performance doesn’t happen just because you’re now taking a pass on chocolate milk.

I’m a big believer in the whole idea of diving into your changes 100%. Whatever you want to cut, CUT IT. There’s a lot to be said for making a decision and sticking to it. No tapering off. I’m not a smoker, so I’ve never had the experience of quitting smoking, but I’ve certainly seen a lot of people around me quit. I can tell you that the people I’ve seen who quit successfully do it cold turkey.

Step up to the plate and COMMIT to whatever it is you’ve decided to change about your life. It will boost your confidence, and it will make you feel better about everything you do.

Anyway, I’m not sure what the legality of this is, honestly, but this magazine [...]]]> Well, I didn’t get my actual menu items up, and it’s not going to happen before I go hiking. Work has been taking up my time that I would normally use for blogging. We all have to work some time!

Anyway, I’m not sure what the legality of this is, honestly, but this magazine is off the news stands, their website has absolutely no content from the magazine, and this is not the kind of thing you find on microfiche at the library!

The small images link to large ones.