Sounds like everyone made great choices and had a good Saturday!
As far as fruit is concerned I stick to berries, maybe a banana once in a while, and some citrus in marinades. I notice a difference in my weightloss slowing if I eat too much fruit, plus it makes me crave sweets especcially if I eat fruit in the morning.
With dairy, I try to keep it low. I don't do much yogurt anymore, but I do have heavy cream,whole milk,goats milk,goat cheese(I love this stuff!), mozzerella 1x week, cheddar/gouda once in a while. Like fruit, if I eat too much dairy I will gain weight. I keep it very low!
Bob, great snapshot of your observations. I have to agree with the lack of support, if I was low carb and low fat then everyone would be all for it, but even when I choose to discuss the way I eat with family now, I hear "you are trading sugar for heart disease." I just shrug it off now, I can't make everyone see the light if they aren't ready to!
I'm so jealous of your hikes, I don't get opportunities for those in my life right now with a 5 yr old and 10m old, plus I have worries being a female and going for a hike alone, but hopefully 1 day my husband and I can get my mom to watch the kids and we'll go for a hike, I have a state park 3 miles from me that has 18 miles of hiking trails so this summer I will get it done!
Kaplods: Good job on recognizing a potential binge situation and using a smaller bowl! The sauerkraut sounds yummy, that isn't something I have ever fixed but I always love it. I think my hubby would love that! I'll have to try it.
Hi everyone.
Saturday was a miserable eating day and I was so sick that I know I will be eating right today. Won't go into the details but cookies were involved.
Bob you sound like you are doing great! I'm doing this mostly for how it makes me feel......more energetic, less migraines and stomaches. But weightloss would be nice. Plus it just seems to make sense to me.
Ilene, that salmon burger sounds delish!!! I think I will make that this week. I love to cook and I find the challenge of cooking paleo fun.
Everyone else, keep up the good work!
Denise
I should just stop buying almond butter. I never used to eat bananas, now I have two because they're so good with almond butter. Fruit causes a sweet thing with me too. I have to be very cautious.
Dairy? cream in coffee, and cheese ... it's just so easy to grab, and cottage cheese the odd time because it's cleaner than prepared salad dressing (sorta)
Thanks Denise. I hope I am this enthused in six months.
Kara, In a way the lack of support is motivating me to prove them wrong and maybe even help some of them eventually. Obesity runs in the family. I can see the lack of support being a drag eventually, so I need results to prevent that. All the moms in the family went out to breakfast last Sunday and one who ordered oatmeal, whole wheat toast and peaches claimed she had the healthiest meal. I argued the one who had bacon and eggs was better off.
Also, I am in the Mojave Desert (the gateway to Death Valley) so hikes will be limited in about 4 weeks due to extreme heat. I'm going to hate that. I've become as much a fan of walking in town as out in the desert, but I think the paleo barefoot ideas are cookoo.
On dairy, it seems the paleo diet has evolved (how appropriate) to accept dairy as real food. Dr. Loren Cordain, one of the pioneers of paleo eating, disdains dairy and ruled it out as neolithic and unhealthful. Mark Sisson has posts on his blog that both encourage and discourage dairy. He never rules it out or encourages it in volume. Dr. Harris, who is my go to guy, loves butter and cream and finds them very nutritious and healthy for someone who doesn't have lactose tolerance or other dairy issues. My dairy is very limited lately, but Kathy's mention of taco meat got me into a bunch of sour cream yesterday with grilled chicken in taco seasonings.
I look at almond butter every time I'm in the store. I'm afraid of that stuff. I'd just grab a bunch of celery and scoop it out of the jar til empty. I eat too many almonds as it is.
Speaking of almond butter, if anyone has a Trader Joes nearby, they now have almond butter with roasted flax seeds. It's amazing. I don't feel the need to overeat it, luckily.
I didn't eat all that much dairy and fruit anyway. Maybe one dairy item and one fruit a day at the most. I'm more concerned with quitting grains than anything else. The more I hear about grains, the more I want to stay away from them. Especially the ones with gluten. Jimmy Moore just did an interview with Melissa Diane Smith about her book Going against the grain. I listened to his podcast of it a couple days ago. It was really interesting.
I'm doing pretty well today. I fasted through breakfast and ate an early lunch of grilled chicken, green beans (and a few of my daughters fries and pepsi). At least I took the bun off of my sandwich and didn't get my own order of fries. Improvement!!!
Wendy, I listened to that interview last week also. I even looked up Melissa and had a little email exchange with her. She strongly favors lean meats and I still wonder if that isn't best myself, but I think the fats are helping me.
Anyhoo. Yeah, grains are probably the biggest demon exorcised by primal eating. I have completely lost interest in them. I think I am brainwashed, but whatever works. I avoid a few drops of soy sauce at this point. NO grains. Period. I can't say if it's grain or sugar, probably both, but my stomach is much happier without them.
A seconding on my tummy feeling better these days! I was using omeprazole 20 mg twice a day for pretty severe GERD. I haven't used it in weeks, although I have had to eat a couple tum's here and there, on the days I have indulged in coffee.
Bob, I'm sorry if I sparked a sour cream binge! I use a tablespoon or two with my taco meat. Top it with shredded lettuce and some more tomatoes and it's a pretty tasty salad.
Today I had
2 eggs and 5 slices bacon
goodish size salad with kalamatas, artichoke hearts, carrots, and a bit of shredded cheddar with caesar dressing.
muscle milk
taco meat
I don't like using the muscle milk, but I didn't pack anything and all of the meat dishes at work were not appetizing. Hospital food ain't exactly the greatest. Yesterday when I packed a lunch, I ate much better.
I am really trying to eat 5 mini-meals because I think doing so caused a little "whoosh" this week. I actually *think* I'm down another pound but I have one of those old-fashioned scales that make it hard to tell exactly what weight you are within a pound or two.
It's hard eating so often (actually, the eating part is not hard, it's the planning and preparing that's time consuming), but I'm going to keep doing this and see where it brings me. Having done this for more than a year now, it's still difficult for me to figure out the *why* of weight loss at any particular time. Why this whoosh now? Perhaps it's working because my last meal of the day is so small, or perhaps because the meals themselves are small and can digest more easily even though I'm eating the same number of calories. Perhaps it's because I've been doing water exercise classes and swimming vs. going to the gym. Perhaps it's because it's May 2010 and the time is right.
Whatever reason, I hope it continues. Only 10 pounds from onederland!
I went way off track over the weekend. I'm paying for it now - my tummy (err, entire digestive tract) is NOT happy. But, I'll fix it today! Started off with 1.5 protein shakes and am more than halfway through my 1.5-liter bottle of water this morning, so the rumblings are settling a bit
If I didn't have milk for my protein shakes and cheese, I would NOT be a happy camper! And I use Hood Calorie Countdown milk, which has Splenda in it, so it's about as far from "primal" as milk can get! But I strive for 100-150 grams of protein daily, so with my smaller stomach capacity, I need these shakes in addition to food. I will be ordering some samples, though, of fruity flavored protein powders I can mix with water instead - thought that would be a nice change for during the summer.
I don't typically eat much in the way of fruit because, for me, carbs are carbs, regardless of form, at least in how they affect my glucose levels. I love bananas, but I think I've had maybe 3 in the past year. I went through a spurt of eating apple slices with peanut butter, but I cut that all out to lower my carb intake. With summer quickly approaching, I know I'll be having fruit at family picnics and such (often the best alternative to whatever else is available!), but I avoid it on my own time to keep my carbs in check.
Wendy, I listened to that interview last week also. I even looked up Melissa and had a little email exchange with her. She strongly favors lean meats and I still wonder if that isn't best myself, but I think the fats are helping me.
Yeah, my only worry with fattier meats is when eating non-organic, since toxins are stored in the fat. I don't eat that much fatty meat, except rib eyes, but that's not too often. I'm trying to get more of my fat through organic butter and coconut oil.
CJ, That's so exciting to be so close to onederland! Have you been doing primal this whole time?
Thank you, Kathy!! The first month (March 2009), I did standard "diet" fare based on the recommendation of my personal trainer ... high carbs, low fat, and lost one pound I think. It was agonizing because I counted calories religiously, worked out 6 days a week, etc. etc.
Then, I went on strict Atkins emphasizing whole foods, and that's pretty primal although I didn't even know about primal then. I did very well on Atkins, but then I started traveling a lot, eating out etc. and felt I needed something with a bit more flexibility (yes, I know people do okay on Atkins when eating out, but I wasn't one of them).
I actually had been calorie counting all along because my software tracks both carbs, calories (and everything else) so I just switched to sticking with calorie-counting, although I still kept quite low on the carbs ... almost always under 100 grams (usually much lower) and little to no wheat products.
Then I started reading about primal and realized that, food-wise, was pretty much what I was doing, it just gave a name to it. I haven't incorporated the HIIT yet, although I do exercise and try to do "mini" HIIT (jog, then walk, then jog; swim, swim hard, swim; etc).
Anyway, primal makes fundamental sense to me, although, as I said, I eat some dairy and a little fruit. I keep it mostly to proteins and veggies, though, and I'm not afraid of fat. My diet probably averages 55% fat.
Some things about the diet I'm absolutely sure of:
- "real" foods are the thing to eat
- no HFCS or any other added sugars of any type
- no trans fat
- little to no grain
- minimize starches, only eat "real food" starches when I do
- minimize processed foods
- certain fats are not your enemy (mono-unsaturated are good)
- use olive oil, not seed oils like corn, soybean, etc.
- eggs, fish are good
- supplementing with Omega 3 fatty acids
- supplementing with Vitamin D
- helps keep blood sugar low (I'm not diabetic, but I track my BS because it runs in my family)
Other things I'm not so sure of, mostly because the experts don't agree. I've seen studies on all these things that come down on both sides.
- sat fat? is it good or bad?
>meat fat
>coconut oil
- dairy?
- fruit?
- legumes?
- nitrites ?
- nuts (they're high in omega 6's)?
- frequency of eating - mini-meals OR intermittent fasting OR standard 3 meals?
- how important is total cholesterol? Who should take statins?
So, that is sort of my mental breakdown on primal, and I will just keep muddling through as best I can.
Any thoughts regarding the above lists would be great! Thanks! CJ
I think that mimicking a primal diet is pretty difficult, but it's an excellent way to think about how we eat.
I do include some very non-primal foods (like Splenda), but I try to keep things in perspective. Mimicking the fat/carb/protein/vitamin & mineral/ calorie ratios to me, makes more sense than mimicking the exact diet (it's not palatable and probably not safe to eat insects in the proportions that early man did).
I'm not philosophically opposed to eating insects. In fact, I think it would be kind of cool if we developed better insect harvesting techniques, and could rely less on pesticides. Eventually insects would be safe to eat once again. That being said, I've never intentionally eaten an insect, and I'm not sure I could do it. I think I could eat an ant (I've watched Anthony Bourdaine and Andrew Zimmern do it often enough on their food/travel shows), but I don't think I could eat a grub or a spider (maybe the grubs that when you deep fry them, are said to have the texture of popcorn or cheesy puffs).
I don't eat insects, and I don't eat much animal bone, skin, and other connective tissue, so I don't mind getting my calcium from supplements and occasional dairy servings.
Today was a good example of keeping the "spirit" of primal eating. I had a slice of super-thin crust pizza. I was tempted to go down the dark path of "I blew it, so I'll have another piece and start fresh tomorrow."
Instead I imagined Grok. Occasionally Grok would have encountered high-carb treats. But they were few and fat between. High starch or high sugar foods like some tubers, honey and really ripe fruit weren't frequent treats, because there was too much competition for them - or they were difficult to aquire.
So, I imagined that pizza crust (about 80 calories - it was a super thin crust, and I had a slim slice) as a starchy tuber or a piece of very ripe fruit. Grok probably would encounter such foods rarely, and when he did, he probably had to work pretty hard to get it (imagine the difficulty in harvesting wild honey).
So instead of grabbing that second piece, I reminded myself that Grok could have occasionally found a similar treat (ok, not very similar - can't think of an primal equivalent of pizza) - the chances of him getting a second would be pretty unlikely, and would have probably had to work pretty hard to get it.
So, I stuck with the one piece, and I'm going to add some time to my walk.
Don't get me wrong. I'm not justifying the pizza. It falls under the 90/10 moderation that Mark talks about in the book and on the website, but it really helped to put it in a primal context. It's so easy to think of diet changes as black and white, on and off. Especially when it comes to weight loss, it's the way I'm used to. I've had to struggle with that, especially because 30 plus years of dieting has taught me to be rigidly on-plan or out-of-control eating and rarely anywhere in-between.
I'm working hard at stopping that. For some reason, though it seems that the primal concept really helps me stay focused. I'm trying to be as much like Grok as I can be...
And right now, that's not very. I have no illusions here. If I were dropped into the Paleolithic era right now. I'd be dead within a month (who am I kidding, probably within 24 hours). But, by trying to imagine what I would need to learn in order to stay alive then, I think is really helping me learn what I kneed to do in order to stay alive now.
- dairy?
- fruit?
- nuts (they're high in omega 6's)?
- legumes?
Mark's done a handful of posts on dairy. He's a fan of some of the benefits, but it falls in the limited consumption category with fruit and nuts. Berries are the preferred fruit, all others very limited. Nuts are okay, but also in small amounts. They are my weakness on this diet. I like crunchy.
I have always minimized nitrates because of the bad press. I've dug into this one pretty deep because of my budget, love of salami, and a few other processed meats, and *I personally* am not worrying about them.
Quote:
Originally Posted by CJZee
- frequency of eating - mini-meals OR intermittent fasting OR standard 3 meals?
- how important is total cholesterol? Who should take statins?
Meal frequency is not necessarily part of the primal equation as I understand it. There is a movement within for IFing, but that can be said of many diets these days. This one, I think, is up to the individual.
They hate statins and think total cholesterol is a bogus number. The ratio of hdl to ldl is more important, and I am not educated enough to comment further.
Hope this helped. I'm leaving for LA and dining at my favorite Italian restaurant tonight. This should be an interesting three days.
I'm agreeing with Kaplods. I'm finding that eating primally blends quite nicely with my beliefs wrt eating locally, whole foods, natural ingredients etc If you can't figure out how they did that ... it's probably not food
Caveman in training? Old fashioned girl from farm country?
Have you been doing primal this whole time?
