It's difficult for me and the Mrs. to get to the gym. During work hours I'm usually on the road to and from this place or that and when I get home it's all about the family; dinner (which takes 5 times longer with a baby slinging food around and trying to climb out of the high-chair), cleanup, bath, diaper, story, bed... it's eight thirty before either of us could even think about getting to a gym.
Bryan has been trying to get me into a gym for years and to this day I can barely find it on a map; so he pointed me toward the Tabata method (It's an HIIT method, or High Intensity Interval Training - Check the link in the top right corner of the page).
I'm still on the first level of intensity and I'm already seeing results - and the best part is I can do them at home without any equipment. Yes!
The first level is to do whatever exercise you're doing as hard as you can for 10 seconds, then rest for 20. Repeat 7 more times. It's 4 minutes per exercise. Later it'll be 15 seconds on 15 off, and at this point I can certainly appreciate how much more of a workout that will be. Ten seconds is a long time when you're going all out. Ask a bull-rider if you don't believe me.
Example: Last night the wife and I did push ups, Russian twists/bicycle crunches and jumping squats. Three tabata exercises, twelve minutes (plus a minute or so of rest between each exercise). I hit my personal best for push ups last night, with 87 total in the four minute period.
I can usually do about 45 or 50 push ups. With tabatas, I almost doubled that number.
I know those numbers aren't amazing for a lot of people. I know folks who can hammer out a hundred push ups and not even be proud of themselves, but I'm not that guy. For me, 87 is a huge number and I am proud of myself!
You can use the Tabata method with any exercise. I still need to incorporate pull-ups, jumping lunges and a few others into my routine. Tabata sprints are fun! I did those tonight. I'm getting faster and faster every time. It's cheetah speed, short bursts at top speed; the neighbors must think I'm a whack job, sprinting up and down the street in my five-toed shoes for ten seconds at a time.
Let em think whatever they want.
TSN
Thursday, September 29, 2011
Wednesday, September 28, 2011
Exercise: The Other Thing You Gotta Do
I've never been a great runner; I'm big and slow. It does seem to have obvious value though so I try to work it into my schedule. Even went so far as to buy a treadmill, which makes me feel like a hamster. I don't mind.
I'm one of those ridiculously tall people you see out in public once in a while, and I'm also accident prone (really accident prone)... so I'm especially worried about my joints being beaten up by the time I'm old. It's a real concern! TPT inadvertently to the rescue!
Along with TPT comes a whole sort of "back to roots" mentality, which I really dig. Part of that community is into minimalist running, so (once again tipped off by Bryan) I scored myself a pair of those five toed shoes. The idea is to simulate running barefoot without having to toughen up your tender little toes.
I went with Vibrams and it's the only pair I've owned so I can't compare and contrast between brands, but I will say this: I frikkin love them! Completely changed my opinion of running.
Running used to be awful; I'd hurt in random places during and afterward. Not anymore!
When I run now, my heels barely touch the ground. I take much longer to tire and my calves have really benefited from the workout. No shin splints either, which was a big problem for me. Just that small change, letting my feet conform to the ground they way they were meant to do, has let my body re-learn how to run properly and the results are fantastic!
I've been working the Vibrams for a good while now (several months) and I have yet to plateau. I go faster and farther every time and it takes less and less time to recover. I don't dread it like I used to, and I'm not completely worthless and sore afterwards, which makes a tremendous difference.
Look into it, there is a lot of literature online about it (http://barefoot-running.com/, for example) The only real gripe that people seem to have is that they tried to do too much too fast and got blisters. Gotta take your time!
TSN
I'm one of those ridiculously tall people you see out in public once in a while, and I'm also accident prone (really accident prone)... so I'm especially worried about my joints being beaten up by the time I'm old. It's a real concern! TPT inadvertently to the rescue!
Along with TPT comes a whole sort of "back to roots" mentality, which I really dig. Part of that community is into minimalist running, so (once again tipped off by Bryan) I scored myself a pair of those five toed shoes. The idea is to simulate running barefoot without having to toughen up your tender little toes.
I went with Vibrams and it's the only pair I've owned so I can't compare and contrast between brands, but I will say this: I frikkin love them! Completely changed my opinion of running.
Running used to be awful; I'd hurt in random places during and afterward. Not anymore!
When I run now, my heels barely touch the ground. I take much longer to tire and my calves have really benefited from the workout. No shin splints either, which was a big problem for me. Just that small change, letting my feet conform to the ground they way they were meant to do, has let my body re-learn how to run properly and the results are fantastic!
I've been working the Vibrams for a good while now (several months) and I have yet to plateau. I go faster and farther every time and it takes less and less time to recover. I don't dread it like I used to, and I'm not completely worthless and sore afterwards, which makes a tremendous difference.
Look into it, there is a lot of literature online about it (http://barefoot-running.com/, for example) The only real gripe that people seem to have is that they tried to do too much too fast and got blisters. Gotta take your time!
TSN
Tuesday, September 27, 2011
A Useless Part of a Balanced Breakfast!
It used to be at the end of every cereal commercial it'd say "Part of a complete breakfast!" or "Part of a balanced breakfast!" and eventually "A delicious part of a balanced breakfast", but never did any of them ever say "A stand-alone nutritious breakfast!"
Why not? Easy. They couldn't legally say that because they know and everyone else knows that there's no nutrition involved. That's not what it's for. Cereal with pictures of cartoons on it that's loaded with sugar and made almost entirely out of processed corn is not meant to nourish you, it's meant to attract the short attention spans and grabby hands of kids, and to then extract money from your wallet. Once it's in the pantry it's up to you to figure out how to make it nutritious.
In the morning, when the little fella pours himself a big bowl of that cereal and goes to school, he's not really getting anything that he needs. He'll be hungry again well before lunch because his brain will tell him that he's not getting enough nutrition, so he'll reach for a snack. What'll that be? Some form of pre-wrapped mass-produced food? I hope not, because that's not going to do anything for him either.
So what can I feed my kid for breakfast that has some actual nutritional value?
I love eggs, and I'm usually the one wielding the spatula in the morning so we have them pretty often. I get them from a local farm whenever they're available. I usually scramble them (sometimes with bell peppers, sometimes not) in either butter or coconut oil. I also mix in some whole milk that I buy from the same farm, which makes the eggs more creamy and delicious. There is some great information on the farms web page, it's definitely worth checking out: http://breezy-hill-farm.com/
Yogurt is also a good option (we've purchased a yogurt maker so we can make our own but haven't broken it out yet. I'll have more on that once we get it going), as are cottage cheese and fruit. All manner of berries are good and good for you.
I've never liked grapefruit myself, but don't let that stop you from eating it for breakfast.
It's easy to grab a couple of plums (they're everywhere in the grocery stores right now, I've been eating them like crazy) to munch on on the way out the door, or any fruit really. My daughter loves bananas (she calls them manamanah).
When I first started on TPT I would hard-boil a dozen eggs at a time and eat a couple for breakfast and snag a couple more for lunch (among other things). That's easy and quick. Diversify!
Breakfast is important for me, because if I don't eat it I get really hungry before lunchtime and I'll eat just about anything, and just about anything is almost never good for me.
TSN
Why not? Easy. They couldn't legally say that because they know and everyone else knows that there's no nutrition involved. That's not what it's for. Cereal with pictures of cartoons on it that's loaded with sugar and made almost entirely out of processed corn is not meant to nourish you, it's meant to attract the short attention spans and grabby hands of kids, and to then extract money from your wallet. Once it's in the pantry it's up to you to figure out how to make it nutritious.
In the morning, when the little fella pours himself a big bowl of that cereal and goes to school, he's not really getting anything that he needs. He'll be hungry again well before lunch because his brain will tell him that he's not getting enough nutrition, so he'll reach for a snack. What'll that be? Some form of pre-wrapped mass-produced food? I hope not, because that's not going to do anything for him either.
So what can I feed my kid for breakfast that has some actual nutritional value?
I love eggs, and I'm usually the one wielding the spatula in the morning so we have them pretty often. I get them from a local farm whenever they're available. I usually scramble them (sometimes with bell peppers, sometimes not) in either butter or coconut oil. I also mix in some whole milk that I buy from the same farm, which makes the eggs more creamy and delicious. There is some great information on the farms web page, it's definitely worth checking out: http://breezy-hill-farm.com/
Yogurt is also a good option (we've purchased a yogurt maker so we can make our own but haven't broken it out yet. I'll have more on that once we get it going), as are cottage cheese and fruit. All manner of berries are good and good for you.
I've never liked grapefruit myself, but don't let that stop you from eating it for breakfast.
It's easy to grab a couple of plums (they're everywhere in the grocery stores right now, I've been eating them like crazy) to munch on on the way out the door, or any fruit really. My daughter loves bananas (she calls them manamanah).
When I first started on TPT I would hard-boil a dozen eggs at a time and eat a couple for breakfast and snag a couple more for lunch (among other things). That's easy and quick. Diversify!
Breakfast is important for me, because if I don't eat it I get really hungry before lunchtime and I'll eat just about anything, and just about anything is almost never good for me.
TSN
Monday, September 26, 2011
Omelets, and the Imaginary Freshness of Vegetables
Omelets are among my favorite secret weapons when I'm on the road. The trickiest part of that is finding a place that serves them and, once having found such a place, hoping their ingredients are at least marginally fresh.
They probably aren't, unless you're in some cozy bed and breakfast where the family that runs the place raises their own chickens and grows their own veggies. That not usually being the case, I usually settle for a garden omelet anyway, with hash browns and coffee. Eating only those things would surely kill me after a while, but under the circumstances I look at that combination as the lesser of many evils.
In the grocery store: There is often a small section for locally grown produce. The stuff you'll find there is usually smaller, less vibrant looking and possibly more expensive than the mass-market stuff, but consider this:
Industry seeks to profit, not to nourish.
The vegetables are engineered to be exactly the colors that they are because it has been determined that people prefer a certain shade of green (for example) over another.
The color, shape and size of the vegetable are basically irrelevant as a nutrition gauge by the time the industry is done tampering with them.
If local, fresh-grown peppers are a perfect shade of shiny green, it's because they're supposed to be; they're healthy and ripe. On the other hand, if mass-produced peppers are a perfect shade of shiny green, it's because they've been treated with chemicals, coated with preservatives, wax, pesticides and whatever else in order to make them look that way.
Consider that next time you have a chance to buy a pepper for its beauty, or in order to save a nickle, rather than for the yummy goodness a real pepper has to offer.
I eat green peppers like apples. They're delicious!
TSN
They probably aren't, unless you're in some cozy bed and breakfast where the family that runs the place raises their own chickens and grows their own veggies. That not usually being the case, I usually settle for a garden omelet anyway, with hash browns and coffee. Eating only those things would surely kill me after a while, but under the circumstances I look at that combination as the lesser of many evils.
In the grocery store: There is often a small section for locally grown produce. The stuff you'll find there is usually smaller, less vibrant looking and possibly more expensive than the mass-market stuff, but consider this:
Industry seeks to profit, not to nourish.
The vegetables are engineered to be exactly the colors that they are because it has been determined that people prefer a certain shade of green (for example) over another.
The color, shape and size of the vegetable are basically irrelevant as a nutrition gauge by the time the industry is done tampering with them.
If local, fresh-grown peppers are a perfect shade of shiny green, it's because they're supposed to be; they're healthy and ripe. On the other hand, if mass-produced peppers are a perfect shade of shiny green, it's because they've been treated with chemicals, coated with preservatives, wax, pesticides and whatever else in order to make them look that way.
Consider that next time you have a chance to buy a pepper for its beauty, or in order to save a nickle, rather than for the yummy goodness a real pepper has to offer.
I eat green peppers like apples. They're delicious!
TSN
Sunday, September 25, 2011
Some Tips
I really thought I'd have more time tonight, but it didn't pan out that way. Instead of a long dissertation, Here's a quick list of things:
1: Don't be afraid of vegetables in the grocery isle that you've never seen before. Buy them! Look up how to cook them! I haven't had one yet that made me say "Man that's nasty!" Instead I'm more like "Wow I've been missing out on this for years!"
2: If you haven't done so already, discover sweet potatoes. They're delicious! It's starting to look like they're quite a bit better for me than regular potatoes too, which is a plus.
3: Squash (butternut, acorn, etc..): It's wicked easy to cook and it's damn tasty. Pretty much just cut it in half, dig out the seeds with a spoon, fill the spots you just dug out with butter and cinnamon, then bake it in the oven until you can poke a fork into it without much trouble.
4: Bring lunch to work as often as you can. This one kills me, every time I don't bring lunch to work and I have to try to scavenge nutrition from restaurants and such, I usually come out behind on the whole deal. TPT can be tricky on the go. Lots more to follow on this topic.
5: Water. Drink it!
6: Sleep: Get more of it! Not getting enough sleep has huge physical and mental health repercussions.
That's it for me for now, I need to get a little sleep of my own.
TSN
1: Don't be afraid of vegetables in the grocery isle that you've never seen before. Buy them! Look up how to cook them! I haven't had one yet that made me say "Man that's nasty!" Instead I'm more like "Wow I've been missing out on this for years!"
2: If you haven't done so already, discover sweet potatoes. They're delicious! It's starting to look like they're quite a bit better for me than regular potatoes too, which is a plus.
3: Squash (butternut, acorn, etc..): It's wicked easy to cook and it's damn tasty. Pretty much just cut it in half, dig out the seeds with a spoon, fill the spots you just dug out with butter and cinnamon, then bake it in the oven until you can poke a fork into it without much trouble.
4: Bring lunch to work as often as you can. This one kills me, every time I don't bring lunch to work and I have to try to scavenge nutrition from restaurants and such, I usually come out behind on the whole deal. TPT can be tricky on the go. Lots more to follow on this topic.
5: Water. Drink it!
6: Sleep: Get more of it! Not getting enough sleep has huge physical and mental health repercussions.
That's it for me for now, I need to get a little sleep of my own.
TSN
Friday, September 23, 2011
Results of the Early Stages
Well, it's only been four days and already there's a pretty intense discussion about the pros and cons of eating meat. Both sides have weighed in with excellent points, and the conversation immediately skewed off into realms of nutritional science that far supersede my understanding even at my most lucid.
To meat, or not to meat: That is not a question that I'm here to answer.
Trying to convince people to give up meat (or to start eating it for that matter) is a job for someone else. For me, the point is to try to help people understand that there is a reason to be concerned about the food we're eating. I'm no expert, I'm just here to document my journey. The first and most important thing that I want people to discover is that the isles of the grocery store are filled with food that causes our bodies to malfunction and get sick.
Since I got off to such a late start with the blog (I should have started it eight months ago when I learned about Paleo for the first time), I have quite a bit of catching up to do. In light of all the discussions and science and strong opinions that folks obviously have on the merits of carn/herb/omni-voreism, instead I'll just tell you what my results were.
After being influenced by what Rob Wolf said in "The Paleo Solution" and by what I'd learned from Bryan, who was also in the early stages of the learning process, I gave it a shot. I cut out all the carbs and sugars. I did a good job of it too, for weeks I ate a very restricted diet comprised almost entirely of meat, eggs, cheese, vegetables and butter. I ate a lot of avocados, a lot of chicken... for breakfast I'd just eat a hard-boiled egg an a handful of roast beef.
I stopped drinking soda, beer and basically all sugary drinks and just drank water instead. As a milk replacement I made a coconut milk concoction that is actually very good... if I remember later I'll include that recipe. Actually I'll put it at the end of this post. I didn't give up coffee, but I did stop putting sugar in it. I switched to heavy cream. I noticed very quickly that my level of hunger had dropped substantially.
So what happened? I lost almost thirty pounds in a couple of months.
I'm a big dude. At the end of the 2010 holiday season I weighed in at 295 pounds. That's on a 6'8" frame, so I could almost get away with it, but I knew I wasn't healthy. I watched the pounds melt off, and I admit that I wasn't doing much exercising, just a little bit here and there.
It was glorious. I know that a lot of it was water weight, which as I understand it has something to do with carbohydrates causing the body to retain water. I peed a lot.
That was before I got more information on what sort of quality I was getting from even that restricted food.
Now I know more about the condition of stockyard meat, the low quality eggs, even the nutrient depleted soil the vegetables are grown in. Still, just doing what I did, I can't argue with the results.
I've since become less afraid of carbs, and have reintroduced them into my diet in moderation, but not so far as to calculate them out to the exact number. I've really tried to resist obsessing over the numbers and all the counting grams of various vitamins and minerals. Too much information stuffed in my face at once that I don't understand usually just makes me tune it out. I've got other stuff to think about, I really don't want to spend my life worrying about how many parts per million of my urine is made up of vitamins A-Z.
I'm maintaining a weight now of 265, still with a lot of room for improvement. I'd let myself get soft, so I'm working now on converting fat stores into muscle. Bryan turned me on to High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT) which I'm actually enjoying quite a bit. More on that to follow in the posts to come, but if you want to check it out now, here's the Wikipedia link:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-intensity_interval_training
I'll put it up in the links section at the top of the page.
Conclusions: I am not a hard-core Paleo guy. The Paleo diet was a launching point for me, and I got great results from it, but I'm not prepared to take it as gospel. At this point I'm also not prepared to subscribe entirely to vegetarianism, though I do appreciate its merits.
Tomorrow (time permitting... there's a Renaissance fair in town) I'll hone in on some of the difficulties I've come across in the hunt for nutrition while on the go, and what I do to overcome those obstacles.
The Coconut Milk Recipe:
Take a can of coconut milk (some are better than others, play around with it) and dump it into a small sauce pan. Use the can to measure out the same amount of water and pour that in there. Add a teaspoon of vanilla extract, and a couple dollops of agave sweetener. Heat and stir until it's all smooth. Pour it into a container and toss it in the fridge. Shake before serving. It's pretty good! Also it seemed to keep me feeling full for a lot longer that usual, which helped a lot.
TSN
To meat, or not to meat: That is not a question that I'm here to answer.
Trying to convince people to give up meat (or to start eating it for that matter) is a job for someone else. For me, the point is to try to help people understand that there is a reason to be concerned about the food we're eating. I'm no expert, I'm just here to document my journey. The first and most important thing that I want people to discover is that the isles of the grocery store are filled with food that causes our bodies to malfunction and get sick.
Since I got off to such a late start with the blog (I should have started it eight months ago when I learned about Paleo for the first time), I have quite a bit of catching up to do. In light of all the discussions and science and strong opinions that folks obviously have on the merits of carn/herb/omni-voreism, instead I'll just tell you what my results were.
After being influenced by what Rob Wolf said in "The Paleo Solution" and by what I'd learned from Bryan, who was also in the early stages of the learning process, I gave it a shot. I cut out all the carbs and sugars. I did a good job of it too, for weeks I ate a very restricted diet comprised almost entirely of meat, eggs, cheese, vegetables and butter. I ate a lot of avocados, a lot of chicken... for breakfast I'd just eat a hard-boiled egg an a handful of roast beef.
I stopped drinking soda, beer and basically all sugary drinks and just drank water instead. As a milk replacement I made a coconut milk concoction that is actually very good... if I remember later I'll include that recipe. Actually I'll put it at the end of this post. I didn't give up coffee, but I did stop putting sugar in it. I switched to heavy cream. I noticed very quickly that my level of hunger had dropped substantially.
So what happened? I lost almost thirty pounds in a couple of months.
I'm a big dude. At the end of the 2010 holiday season I weighed in at 295 pounds. That's on a 6'8" frame, so I could almost get away with it, but I knew I wasn't healthy. I watched the pounds melt off, and I admit that I wasn't doing much exercising, just a little bit here and there.
It was glorious. I know that a lot of it was water weight, which as I understand it has something to do with carbohydrates causing the body to retain water. I peed a lot.
That was before I got more information on what sort of quality I was getting from even that restricted food.
Now I know more about the condition of stockyard meat, the low quality eggs, even the nutrient depleted soil the vegetables are grown in. Still, just doing what I did, I can't argue with the results.
I've since become less afraid of carbs, and have reintroduced them into my diet in moderation, but not so far as to calculate them out to the exact number. I've really tried to resist obsessing over the numbers and all the counting grams of various vitamins and minerals. Too much information stuffed in my face at once that I don't understand usually just makes me tune it out. I've got other stuff to think about, I really don't want to spend my life worrying about how many parts per million of my urine is made up of vitamins A-Z.
I'm maintaining a weight now of 265, still with a lot of room for improvement. I'd let myself get soft, so I'm working now on converting fat stores into muscle. Bryan turned me on to High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT) which I'm actually enjoying quite a bit. More on that to follow in the posts to come, but if you want to check it out now, here's the Wikipedia link:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-intensity_interval_training
I'll put it up in the links section at the top of the page.
Conclusions: I am not a hard-core Paleo guy. The Paleo diet was a launching point for me, and I got great results from it, but I'm not prepared to take it as gospel. At this point I'm also not prepared to subscribe entirely to vegetarianism, though I do appreciate its merits.
Tomorrow (time permitting... there's a Renaissance fair in town) I'll hone in on some of the difficulties I've come across in the hunt for nutrition while on the go, and what I do to overcome those obstacles.
The Coconut Milk Recipe:
Take a can of coconut milk (some are better than others, play around with it) and dump it into a small sauce pan. Use the can to measure out the same amount of water and pour that in there. Add a teaspoon of vanilla extract, and a couple dollops of agave sweetener. Heat and stir until it's all smooth. Pour it into a container and toss it in the fridge. Shake before serving. It's pretty good! Also it seemed to keep me feeling full for a lot longer that usual, which helped a lot.
TSN
Wednesday, September 21, 2011
Making a Meaningful Change
All the research began to rapidly unravel the veil of misdirection and blatant lies that I had chosen to ignore. One question lead to another, and another... until I began to see countless additional layers of problems with what I had so long considered to be "regular food".
The "Standard American Diet" is absolutely terrible. Once I started really looking, paying attention and letting the truth hit me, it became so obvious and so terrifying that it actually made me angry!
Our food is killing us! It's causing a huge number of the medical problems that plague us, and it's doing it every day. We're forcing our bodies to survive on very little nutrition and then we wonder why we get sick. We pack garbage, chemicals and toxins into our mouths and wonder why we have so much trouble losing weight.
We're sabotaging ourselves for our entire lives, then relying on advancements in medicine to "cure" us, when the root cause is that we've handicapped our own ability to be healthy. Nutrition isn't a cure, it's prevention. The body wants to be healthy, and it will be if it has the right tools for the job.
The meat, milk, eggs and veggies that I had left after I threw out all the processed crap was a step up, but I quickly realized that there wasn't much nutritional value even there.
The meat came from animals that were fed the cheapest possible diets, designed to get the most meat out of each animal, not the most nutrition. The milk was pasteurized (heated) which killed any good bacteria along with the bad. The eggs were laid by unhealthy chickens fed nutritionally empty diets, and the vegetables were grown in nutrient-depleted soil and covered with pesticides and who knows what other chemicals.
How the heck can I find healthy food?! Here's what I did to get started:
I got into grass-fed beef. It's out there you just have to find it. Bryan got me in touch with a guy who raises grass-fed cattle in our area and we got a lot of meat from him.
I buy locally-grown vegetables when I can, and I try to diversify the veggies I eat in order to get more out of them. Diversifying made me realized that I was living with a very narrow focus on what was available in the vegetable isle.
I wash the veggies well, and eat as many of them raw as possible to maximize on their nutritional value further.
I buy my milk and eggs from a local farmer who raises certified organic cows and chickens.
There are some great cookbooks out there that are all based on this line of thought. I'm familiar with a couple of them, "Everyday Paleo" by Sarah Fragoso (linked on this page for her blog, it's really good), also "The Primal Blueprint Cookbook" by Mark Sisson and Jennifer Meier is very good.
It's a start! It feels good having more information, especially with a baby to worry about. I don't want her eating garbage, I want her to be healthy and to have every advantage I can offer her. Good food is key!
That's all for now, but we've barely scratched the surface here. Stay tuned! Lots more to follow.
TSN
The "Standard American Diet" is absolutely terrible. Once I started really looking, paying attention and letting the truth hit me, it became so obvious and so terrifying that it actually made me angry!
Our food is killing us! It's causing a huge number of the medical problems that plague us, and it's doing it every day. We're forcing our bodies to survive on very little nutrition and then we wonder why we get sick. We pack garbage, chemicals and toxins into our mouths and wonder why we have so much trouble losing weight.
We're sabotaging ourselves for our entire lives, then relying on advancements in medicine to "cure" us, when the root cause is that we've handicapped our own ability to be healthy. Nutrition isn't a cure, it's prevention. The body wants to be healthy, and it will be if it has the right tools for the job.
The meat, milk, eggs and veggies that I had left after I threw out all the processed crap was a step up, but I quickly realized that there wasn't much nutritional value even there.
The meat came from animals that were fed the cheapest possible diets, designed to get the most meat out of each animal, not the most nutrition. The milk was pasteurized (heated) which killed any good bacteria along with the bad. The eggs were laid by unhealthy chickens fed nutritionally empty diets, and the vegetables were grown in nutrient-depleted soil and covered with pesticides and who knows what other chemicals.
How the heck can I find healthy food?! Here's what I did to get started:
I got into grass-fed beef. It's out there you just have to find it. Bryan got me in touch with a guy who raises grass-fed cattle in our area and we got a lot of meat from him.
I buy locally-grown vegetables when I can, and I try to diversify the veggies I eat in order to get more out of them. Diversifying made me realized that I was living with a very narrow focus on what was available in the vegetable isle.
I wash the veggies well, and eat as many of them raw as possible to maximize on their nutritional value further.
I buy my milk and eggs from a local farmer who raises certified organic cows and chickens.
There are some great cookbooks out there that are all based on this line of thought. I'm familiar with a couple of them, "Everyday Paleo" by Sarah Fragoso (linked on this page for her blog, it's really good), also "The Primal Blueprint Cookbook" by Mark Sisson and Jennifer Meier is very good.
It's a start! It feels good having more information, especially with a baby to worry about. I don't want her eating garbage, I want her to be healthy and to have every advantage I can offer her. Good food is key!
That's all for now, but we've barely scratched the surface here. Stay tuned! Lots more to follow.
TSN
Tuesday, September 20, 2011
The Purge
Without getting too heavily into the science behind it all (More of a "just tell me what to do already" kind of mentality), I took Bryan's advice and Rob Wolf's book "Paleo Solution" to heart. My fiancee (now wife) Jen did the same. We agreed to purge the house of all the processed foods, sugars and carbs. She had to persuade me a little. Okay a lot.
That was really painful for me... I was hungry all the time and having to watch all that food being dug out of the cupboards, fridge, freezer and pantry hurt me in my soul and my wallet at the same time... but I believed! So out it came and into a pretty good sized box, which we donated to a houseful of dudes.
I didn't feel too guilty about giving them all the food I was now convinced was poisonous, since they were pretty much living on beer and pizza anyway. I've been there...
It was a little scary when we realized how utterly bereft of food the house had become.
Almost every single bit of food we'd stashed away was made up almost entirely of corn, soy and sugar. I guess when we ate vegetables and felt healthy it must have been like a drop in the bucket of all the other crap we were eating!
There was almost nothing left in the fridge besides eggs, lunch meat, el-cheapo sandwich cheese and the obligatory bag of carrot sticks. Maybe some lettuce. Not promising, but good for a good smack in the face by reality. Obviously we needed to eat more vegetables.
That was a good start, but we had much to learn. I got into the habit of watching documentaries on Netflix and the information started piling up quick. A good place to start is "Food Inc." If you haven't seen it, it's worth your time.
There is so much to cover, there's no way I'll run out of subject material here for a really long time. Stay tuned, join/follow/comment/criticize etc! The world needs this information.
TSN
That was really painful for me... I was hungry all the time and having to watch all that food being dug out of the cupboards, fridge, freezer and pantry hurt me in my soul and my wallet at the same time... but I believed! So out it came and into a pretty good sized box, which we donated to a houseful of dudes.
I didn't feel too guilty about giving them all the food I was now convinced was poisonous, since they were pretty much living on beer and pizza anyway. I've been there...
It was a little scary when we realized how utterly bereft of food the house had become.
Almost every single bit of food we'd stashed away was made up almost entirely of corn, soy and sugar. I guess when we ate vegetables and felt healthy it must have been like a drop in the bucket of all the other crap we were eating!
There was almost nothing left in the fridge besides eggs, lunch meat, el-cheapo sandwich cheese and the obligatory bag of carrot sticks. Maybe some lettuce. Not promising, but good for a good smack in the face by reality. Obviously we needed to eat more vegetables.
That was a good start, but we had much to learn. I got into the habit of watching documentaries on Netflix and the information started piling up quick. A good place to start is "Food Inc." If you haven't seen it, it's worth your time.
There is so much to cover, there's no way I'll run out of subject material here for a really long time. Stay tuned, join/follow/comment/criticize etc! The world needs this information.
TSN
Monday, September 19, 2011
Because it's more than just a diet
I'm calling this "TPT" for "This Paleo Thing" because it's not a diet. It's something else. Lifestyle, paradigm shift, new leaf... all that. Whatever. Hear me out.
About eight months ago I had my eyes opened. It started with a few run-ins with my friend Bryan, whose eyes have been open for much longer. He pointed out some really obvious things that somehow a lot of us ignore.
Most importantly: We are feeding ourselves garbage and poison on a daily basis.
Once I started really paying attention, holy crap! It's true. Bryan recommended a book by Rob Wolf called "The Paleo Solution" as a sort of ice-breaker, so I snagged a copy and dug in. That book did a great job of convincing me to eliminate the poisonous chemicals from my food and to get some actual nutrition. That was just the beginning. There's so much more!
There are a lot of pieces to this puzzle which (largely thanks to Bryans relentless research) I am beginning to assemble.
I'll be adding to this blog regularly, weighing in with my take on the hunting and gathering that goes on in my world in my ongoing struggle to find nutrition and achieve better health. How I got through the day, so to speak. I'll have a lot to say, from a real-world regular-guy perspective. I encourage you to follow along on this journey.
It's a process and I'm still figuring it out, so if you have some ideas that you'd like to share as this progresses, please don't hesitate to post them! I'll shut up for now, I can feel myself wanting to go on and on.
TSN
About eight months ago I had my eyes opened. It started with a few run-ins with my friend Bryan, whose eyes have been open for much longer. He pointed out some really obvious things that somehow a lot of us ignore.
Most importantly: We are feeding ourselves garbage and poison on a daily basis.
Once I started really paying attention, holy crap! It's true. Bryan recommended a book by Rob Wolf called "The Paleo Solution" as a sort of ice-breaker, so I snagged a copy and dug in. That book did a great job of convincing me to eliminate the poisonous chemicals from my food and to get some actual nutrition. That was just the beginning. There's so much more!
There are a lot of pieces to this puzzle which (largely thanks to Bryans relentless research) I am beginning to assemble.
I'll be adding to this blog regularly, weighing in with my take on the hunting and gathering that goes on in my world in my ongoing struggle to find nutrition and achieve better health. How I got through the day, so to speak. I'll have a lot to say, from a real-world regular-guy perspective. I encourage you to follow along on this journey.
It's a process and I'm still figuring it out, so if you have some ideas that you'd like to share as this progresses, please don't hesitate to post them! I'll shut up for now, I can feel myself wanting to go on and on.
TSN
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)