Wednesday, July 7, 2010

Rooty tooty fresh and fruity hot patootie stay humble stay low blow like hootie shoop shoobie doobie

There's about four songs in there.  Gives you an example of my mental state.

I'm back!!!  Mostly alive, not entirely of sound mind, body is so-so.  How is everyone?  I had four lovely days of sleeping many, many hours and reading many, many hours.  Then I cleaned my house.  I'm ready for another four days of sleeping and reading.

Before things got too insane at the office, I was trying out the paleo diet for about a week.  For those not familiar, you're eating lean meats, fish, most nuts, most veggies, and fruit.  No dairy, grains, sugar, or legumes.  Starches like corn, peas, green beans, and potatos (all kinds) are out.  No cured meats like bacon, ham, or deli meat.  Honey is okay.  Cheating on this diet is encouraged.  I like the meat and the cheat parts the best.  I'm moving back towards being on paleo again.

It's kind of odd to have meat for breakfast that isn't bacon or sausage.  I had shrimp for breakfast a few times, this morning I had beef (London broil -- it was tasty).  Dairy is the hardest thing for me to cut out; I like my cheese.  But you can cheat, as long as cheating isn't the norm, so I can still have cheese.  Some folks are paleo plus cheese.  Weirdly, grains like wheat are the easiest to avoid.  When I think about chowing down on stuff, I usually think meat.  Most people think bread.  I always had to make a conscious effort to eat grains. 

Getting a variety of fruit and veg is a little difficult for me.  I have fruit issues.  Mostly involving bugs and mold, but many involving the ease of access to a fruit.  As in, I either don't know what to do with it (peaches still mystify me unless they're out of a can) or I don't want to bother to take the time (oranges).  I love apples but you either have to hold it the entire time as you eat it, or you have to cut it up which takes time plus the flesh turns brown. 

See, issues. 

Today I have grapes (good for easy fruit access, although you have to pay attention that you don't pull them off with stem still attached, which annoys me) and raspberries (if I don't eat them today I'll end up throwing them out for fear that they have bugs and/or mold).  A romaine salad topped with crab.  Grilled boneless pork loin chops. 

I find I graze more with this than anything else I've done previously.  You think at first that you'll need more than a serving of beef for breakfast, but I nibbled on that for at least an hour and wasn't hungry for a couple hours more after that.  I'm sitting here now thinking about breaking for lunch (as in, actually eating food) but I'm just not all that hungry still.  But I have a good book to read so I guess I'll nibble some more.

And maybe go look up the warning signs of protein overdose again. 

Cheers,
the CilleyGirl

3 comments:

  1. Well done on the Paleo!! I find that I don't get hungry on high protein diets either...and can sometimes even 'forget' to eat! Like I thought THAT would ever happen to me?!?! Glad you have caught up on your sleep and welcome back...I missed ya!

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  2. Your breakfast meat could be bacon or sausage. Saturated fat is VERY paleo. Don't be fooled by one author that twisted the facts to make his variation on the diet more politically acceptable back when it was published in 2002. In no way is a true paleo diet lean meat. They ate the entire animal. They ate all the fat, the organs, and the bone marrow. Cordain makes the silly assumption that like us they only ate the muscle meat and threw away everything else. Ignoring that our taste buds find fat to be tasty.

    It has never been proven that high intakes of saturated fat and cholesterol are detrimental to our health. The American Heart Association bases their "low-fat" prescription off of five studies:

    (1) The first one was Ancel Keys study done in the 70's that generated "The Lipid Hypothesis" which argues that eating saturated fat and cholesterol give you high cholesterol, and high cholesterol gives you heart disease... totally bogus, and debunked numerous times. The debunking is best explained in Gary Taubes's "Good Calories, Bad Calories." [Basically he had data from 21 more countries but he cherry picked the seven countries that showed what he wanted to show.]

    (2) The Los Angeles VA Hospital Study (1969): Researchers didn't collect data regarding smoking habits for some men, and stated later that half the participants strayed from the prescribed diet.

    (3) The Oslo Diet-Heart Study (1970); basically proved nothing regarding deaths from heart disease and a low fat diet.

    (4) The Finnish Mental Hospital Study (1979): almost half of the participants either left or joined half way through the 12 year study.

    (5) The St. Thomas' Atherosclerosis Regression Study (1992): 74 men showed a reduction in heart disease by those who ate diets low in saturated fat... but they were also required to eat less sugar. Since the message needed to be "saturated fat bad" that little detail is often left out.

    Let me sum it up: Cholesterol doesn’t lead to heart problems. Cholesterol is absolutely essential to good health. A major factor is the small dense LDL particles that cause problems.

    For a more complete definition of the diet see Paleo diet explained.

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  3. Thanks Don for the info and the link; I will check that out. I love bacon, ham and sausage -- not enough to want it all day long (okay, maybe sometimes) but it is pretty tasty stuff!

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