My Paleo Diet Blog

[Septimus39]

Actually, chances are good all your European dairy is pastured. That just means that the cows graze on grass instead of being confined to feed lots and being fed corn and soy (along with a hefty dose of antibiotics). Cattle evolved eating grass and wandering around, so they're much healthier when they're allowed to do that. Grassfed meat (and dairy) is higher in Omega 3s and lower in saturated fats. Grassfed beef actually has the same amount of Omega 3 as wild caught salmon does! Going with pastured also helps you avoid the antibiotics and other toxins that can worm their way into the meat and dairy, because grassfed animals are just generally healthier and don't need meds. I'm not familiar with the brands you'd have in Europe, for the most part, but I know that Kerrygold butter from Ireland is pastured and absolutely delicious. There's also some Kerrygold cheese called "Dubliner" that's fantastic and very flavorful. Organic Valley in the US does a great job with their dairy, and you can find pastured milk, cream and cheese at most health food stores. They even have some raw cheeses, which is great. Raw (unpasteurized) dairy is very tough to find in the states, and each state has different rules about how it can be produced and sold. It's nice, though, because there are a lot of helpful enzymes still in the dairy that make it easier to digest, and those enzymes are damaged or destroyed by the high heat pasteurizing process.

A lot of people do have problems with dairy making them feel sick or with it causing acne and joint pain and a bunch of other issues. If you want to go all the way clean (no dairy) for 30 days and then try adding back in pastured dairy on a limited basis, that would probably be for the best. I never did cut dairy out, but I switched to pastured and raw and notice that I don't have anywhere near the same issues that I do with conventional dairy.

[mule]

I've been toying with the idea of taking a deer and having the meat ground for making jerky. Storage is long lived, mobile and ready for snacking or meal time. Have you ever given it any thought?

PS, you need to write articles for mags ect. Your are quite the prolific writer.

[Septimus39]

Actually, I've got my eye on a flank steak in my freezer for jerky. I watched this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rIK4DVLHf7Y If you sub wheat-free Tamari sauce instead of the wheat-ful soy sauce, it's all gluten free.

That got me thinking pretty seriously about making jerky, but it also got me thinking that my "all heat/no air" dehydrator may not be the best option. I'll get it figured, though. And then I'll get to making these: http://stevesoriginal.com/cart/Paleo-MRE

"Prolific" is one word for it, I guess. I just figure I never learned how to shut up properly.

[mule]

Good video.
The meat processor my brother uses is really cheap. So I was thinking the whole deer would be ground up for jerky. My family isn't into venison steaks, but will eat it in jerky. I have a seal a meal unit with rolls of the bag material, which makes it easier to do. The recipes I have seen use the oven at 200F to dry it. You can do large pans that way and make it quicker. Or, I can smoke it on my Traeger grill. Which, I probably will do some that way too.
I would be more likely to use Worcestershire sauce than soy... I like it better with meat. I started weight watchers a few months ago and have done really well on it (36lbs). But, I have started wanting more meat since I'm working out quite a bit. Jerky is one of my favorite snacks. Now I just have to go shoot a deer this weekend. KS has a late doe season, they are like rabbits out there.

I never learned how to shut up properly myself. I just don't take the time anymore to blog... In person, it's dangerous.

[Septimus39]

Wild meats are awesome for paleo, since they're also high in Omega 3s and low in toxins and the like. If that deer jerky works out, I'd love to hear about it. I know you're supposed to be able to make jerky out of ground meat, but I haven't really looked into how it's done yet. Doesn't it get all crumbly on you when it's dried?

Also, found this amazing thread on low-carb diets in general: http://nuclearfuzzgrunge.com/tlcm/

I'm reading the whole thing and learning a ton. It has a lot of great info and links to even more great info in it. It would be easy to spend all day chasing links in this beast, but you'd have so much knowledge at the end it would be a day well spent.

[Septimus39]

This is a fantastic and compelling article written by Gary Taubes that I think everyone should read: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/17/magazine/mag-17Sugar-t.html?pagewanted=all

It's pretty long and rather dense, but it really lays out everything in a way few others ever have. Even if you don't like the idea of giving up your bread and potatoes, there's a heck of a lot of reason to give up refined fructose-containing foods and beverages, or at least to reduce them by a great extent. I'll be writing another blog post on this tomorrow, but I wanted to share this as soon as I finished it.

[Dave_M]

I used to hard eye-roll at so-called Paleo diets until I realized it's almost exactly how I eat.

Though, I tend to find that grassfed beef tastes like mud.

[the_alias]

Septimus - aha yes majority of stuff here is going to be grazed in an actual pasture. Thanks for the explanation.

I've always drunk Organic Valley when I've visited the US so that is a good thing I guess!

[Bobbicus]

Grains are just filler and delivery mechanisms.

Truth. I've found when I miss anything with grains, it's not the taste, but the texture - usually crispyness. That's one thing I haven't really been able to replicate.

[Septimus39]

I hear you there. I sneak some organic corn chips every now and again, because I definitely miss the crispy, too. I hear that some people have luck frying cheese to get a crispy texture out of it, but I haven't tried it myself. I also made some dehydrated kale that was pretty darn tasty, and had a crispy texture to it. Speaking of which, I should make another batch of that.

[the_alias]

Nuts for crispyness?

Or try sweet potato or parsnip crisped in the oven?

I made a meal plan/recipe thread: viewtopic.php?f=50&t=89323

[Septimus39]

I've seen people do sweet potato fries and chips fried in coconut oil or bacon fat. That's another one I've really been wanting to try, but haven't gotten around to yet.

You can also see about finding bread made exclusively of tapioca starch, as that comes from a tuber (casava root) and seems like the most benign of the flours (except maybe coconut flour?). I've found stuff in some of our stores made by a company called "Against The Grain" that makes tapioca starch baguettes. I made garlic bread with those for a party at a non-paleo friend's house and everyone loved it. This place: http://livefreefoods.com/ also sells bread and hamburger buns made of tapioca starch that are somehow magically packaged to be shelf stable for months.

I try not to push it too hard on the "grain alternatives" just because I know they slow down my weight loss and keep the taste for carbs stronger, but it's tough with a pregnant, non-paleo wife who just wants her PBJ sometimes. So I'm finding ways to at least try to keep her gluten-free and low-ish carb, even though I know it's not optimal.

Awesome on the recipe thread! I'll get to posting in there for sure. Thanks!

[Septimus39]

Biltong means "Butt Tongue"? I'm in.

[Bobbicus]

I try not to push it too hard on the "grain alternatives" just because I know they slow down my weight loss and keep the taste for carbs stronger, but it's tough with a pregnant, non-paleo wife who just wants her PBJ sometimes. So I'm finding ways to at least try to keep her gluten-free and low-ish carb, even though I know it's not optimal.

Warning - this blog can be a complete timesink

I like Kurt Harris because 1) he knows his stuff and 2) he's not afraid to change his mind with new information, then explain exactly why he changed it.

One of the big things I got from reading him was that I started eating rice and potatoes again - they don't spike my blood sugar, so I figured why not? They're not filled with anti-nutrients, and fortunately for me Trader Joe's has a white-rice pasta macaroni and cheese, which fixed a gaping hole in my diet.

Plus, I've found that using "grain alternatives" is pretty self limiting, since they tend to be expensive.

[Septimus39]

I've heard mixed reviews on the starches, but I'm leaning more towards being friendly to them the more I learn (and the leaner I get). Not making them 50% of my diet or anything, but at least incorporating them more often into my recipes and the like. I think a lot of it depends on how metabolically deranged you are. If you're super insulin resistant and overweight and have a lot of inflammation, I'd still avoid them for the most part, but once you get leaner and healthy I think they're plenty fine. Super tasty, and really open up some recipe options, too.

I actually wrote up my definition of the Paleo Diet today, which I tried to make flexible enough to incorporate Kurt's ideas as well as some of the more mainstream paleo guys. I think we're getting closer to figuring out what really is and isn't good for us, and having these different people offering slightly different options is a great thing for people to be able to find the plan that best fits their own style.

http://paleogeek.wordpress.com/what-is-paleo/

[ogreboy]

Wow, I was wondering if any other prepers, were doing the paleo thing. Its good to see all these ideas.

My wife and I have been doing strickt paleo since Jan 1st, we just went in cold turkey, it seemed easier that way. We really went on a bender eating all the junk in the house before we started, trying to use up all the foods we wouldn't eat when we started. But we also have some food stores that are non paleo, but I decided to keep everything that was long term 5+ year shelf life. I also have some freeze dried stuff that is paleo, like powdered eggs (I'm sure there not omega 3 enriched), canned bacon (also not the best quality) and some freeze dried fruit. I was going to get some freeze dried meat and veggies, but I am holding off until I can really see what our diet will ultimately look like. I don't get to keep canned chili anymore and most canned soups are out, but I have canned chicken, tuna, and salmon. There are plenty of canned and frozen vegetables that are still great. Its easy to keep a couple of hams and turkeys in the freezer too. But almost all of our food now is fresh, so I don't know how much I want to store because I don't want it to go to waste.

As far as the cost goes, it dosen't seem to be super expensive, we rarely ever eat out anymore, and fruit, veggie, meat is not terribly expensive unless you really need strictly organic, and grass fed. If you are strapped for cash eating non organic paleo has to be better than a standard non organic diet. It will be nicer in the summer when there are more famers markets around, and I keep saying I will sign up for a CSA, I think that could actually save some money even though you have to put out quite a bit upfront.

Keep all these great ideas coming.

[KentsOkay]

Great info, going to try and give this a swing. I need to do something to my diet. I barely maintain the weight I have (just shy of 140 at 5'7'" tall), and id like to put on lean muscle mass. RIght now I eat a lot of whey protein and oatmeal and I think its fucking my insides over.

[Septimus39]

We really went on a bender eating all the junk in the house before we started, trying to use up all the foods we wouldn't eat when we started.

I actually didn't do that this time, but I've tried a lot of diets (a lot) and the big "night before binge" was a feature in all of them. Sometimes it was more like the three days before. When I tried the "Slow Carb" diet from Tim Ferriss' The 4-Hour Body, I binged for longer than I actually managed to stick to the diet. It was pretty bad.

I'm curious about something, though. For all the people who are either already doing or looking into trying the paleo thing: have you read any of the books on the subject, and if so, which ones? I tend to be pretty obsessive and researchy, so since college, I haven't changed my diet without reading the book first, as it were. I'm thinking there's enough good, solid info online at this point to find out how a given diet works, and what it entails, but I try to go to the source these days. When I was in college, I tried the Atkins diet based on my very (VERY) limited understanding of the principles as I heard them from from some friends who also hadn't read the book. It went very poorly for me, so I've tried to be pretty careful about getting a clearer picture before starting since then. I've now learned much more about Atkins than I did when I actually tried it, and I was absolutely wrong about how it worked when I tried it.

[the_alias]

I read the Primal Blueprint and the free ebook Stone Age Power.

Primal Blueprint references Loren Cordain a lot who wrote The Paleo Diet

[Septimus39]

I'm going to check out Stone Age Power, for sure. Thanks!

Also, found this: http://www.awlr.org/index.html

Great idea, and a neat project. I already joined and put in my info.

[Dave_M]

I try not to push it too hard on the "grain alternatives" just because I know they slow down my weight loss and keep the taste for carbs stronger, but it's tough with a pregnant, non-paleo wife who just wants her PBJ sometimes. So I'm finding ways to at least try to keep her gluten-free and low-ish carb, even though I know it's not optimal.

If it's gluten-free, it isn't bread. I mean, I don't know what it is but it's not bread

My woman likes potatoes and bread and everything else carb related so there isn't any go-around; obviously it's easier for both to be on the same meal plan but generally we eat the same meals--just that I eat more protein and she eats more carbs. In regards to staving off cravings, do you allow yourself to have a cheat day?

[Septimus39]

I actually didn't get bad cravings for starchy foods, just for sweets. It's a bit weird, because I was an absolute carb addict when I started this whole thing. I would eat just a bowl of 4 cups of white rice with margarine on it, or absolutely ludicrous quantities of potatoes, bread and pasta. But when I cut that stuff out, I really didn't miss it much. I still do small quantities of potatoes, corn tortillas or rice sometimes, so maybe that's helping? The thing I noticed (with previous diets) when I used a cheat day is that I went way off the rails, sometimes so much so that I wouldn't ever come back. If I want sweets now, I'll just eat some fruit or an 85% dark chocolate bar or some coconut milk ice cream or whatever and that does it for me just fine. I'm okay with some cheats, I just try to keep them relatively limited and as non-irritating to my insides as possible (I avoid gluten even when cheating, because that tears me up for days). I also try not to plan them ahead of time. If we go out to eat and they have a good gluten-free dessert, I'll get one, but I don't schedule my cheating ahead of time. I think that makes it easier not to go completely nuts with it. It also helps to have filled myself up with good protein and fat before I go after the carbs, since I can't eat as much.

One of the things I've read (and experienced) is that eating carbs is a bit of a feed-forward mechanism. The more you eat, the more you want to eat. When you really reduce your intake, you also really reduce the cravings. It can take a week or two of willpower to get to that point, but it seems to be a pretty consistent thing with most people I've talked to. Once you get past the initial cravings, they really taper off and don't come back unless you keep them alive with cheat days and the like.

Hope it helps!

[Dave_M]

The thing I noticed (with previous diets) when I used a cheat day is that I went way off the rails, sometimes so much so that I wouldn't ever come back. If I want sweets now, I'll just eat some fruit or an 85% dark chocolate bar or some coconut milk ice cream or whatever and that does it for me just fine. I'm okay with some cheats, I just try to keep them relatively limited and as non-irritating to my insides as possible (I avoid gluten even when cheating, because that tears me up for days). I also try not to plan them ahead of time.

For me, I find a cheat day reminds me of why I eat the way I do; an entire day of eating like shit and then feeling like shit just makes me want to go back to my old routine. I think having a certain day to cheat means that I'm far less likely to cheat during the rest of the week because I can tell myself, 'you can have that on Tuesday--you don't need it now'. I find the more relaxed one gets during the week the more it messes up the rest. In regards to, 'not coming back' what I do is throw away any leftovers at the end of the day. Like, eat half a pizza on cheat day? Don't have the rest for breakfast tomorrow, throw it in the trash tonight etc.

they really taper off and don't come back unless you keep them alive with cheat days and the like.

I really don't have any crazy cravings. After a couple weeks without candy (I wasn't much for sweets in the first place) I would pretty much force myself to eat a snickers or a donut on cheat day just because it was cheat day. My main problem is that when I'm hungry as hell and have limited options of places to eat (such as a gas station) there are very few low-carb options. Usually I just buy some jerky and call it good. Other times I'll hit a drive through and just throw away the buns. It really is staggering to think about how much grain is in our diet.

My pain problem was pasta. At this point, I don't miss it at all.

[Septimus39]

I started this last week and have dropped 4 pounds in 5 days, I went cold turkey. By day three I had such a headach that I HAD to have a coke. That took care of the headache and I have been good ever since. This is the only diet I have ever tried where I am not hungry.

Congrats! That's awesome!

Dave - I think some people really do well with the cheat day, and it definitely helps them stay on track during the week. It's probably just something that each person has to tinker with and figure out what works best for them. The big thing I see throw people off (of a new diet or a workout plan or any other new habit) is that they'll screw up and then give up. As long as someone is committed enough to get back on track after a misstep, I think just about any method will work for them. That's really what's making this stick for me. I read enough to really believe it, so when I went off the rails it was easy to get back to it. I think that might be a factor for people, too. If you don't know enough about why you're doing what you're doing, it's probably tougher to find your way back after a bender.