The Truth About Fish Oil

I thought since so many of us are consuming massive amounts of fish oil I should post this article. I haven't had time to explore the issue and whether or not its a real concern, but I think it's worth looking into.

In the name of friendship

I ventured to the land of carbtastic goodness for dinner on Day 2 for my friend Jack. We went to Maggiano's for his b-day.

How to make pasta and bread and cheezy goodness paleo-like? You don't. You don't get the pasta, you don't get the bread and you definitely don't get the cheesy goodness (or chocolate cake). What you can get is delicious normal food and a night out with your friends.

I ordered the Beef Braciole hold the pasta and add steamed veggies. It was delish - I wish I would have snapped a photo. There was some cheese, but the waiter promised me it was but a tiny ingredient. Wondering if this heightens your taste buds for the things you have eliminated because I was able to taste the tiny bit of cheese. And my paleo tastebuds were less than 2 days old. You really never fully know what you are getting when eating out anyway. You just do your best.

Would Byers have been OK with this? Probably not, I'd probably be fired and not allowed back in to her challenge. For me, it is still within the boundaries of this challenge. I mean you still have to live your life. Well, maybe I'm a little disappointed truth be told as I typically do all or nothing.

But anyway, I count this as a successful Day 2. Again, if you think this is about the caveman, and eliminating every ounce of non-paleoness in your life, you are missing the point. The point is about experimenting with how food makes me feel. Beef Braciole made me feel full and satisfied whereas I feel certain the pasta-bready-cheesy goodness would have made me feel like crap. And again, giving up heroin is hard. This is not hard giving up pasta-bready-cheesy goodness.

P.S. I have lost the 3 pounds of cookie palooza.

P.S.S. Thanks to my fellow diners who let me be high maintenance and supported me in counting this as a successful Day 2!

Whole30 for a whole 30

I have been toying with a 30 day challenge since January. Just didn't know what I wanted to do. I really have to psyche myself up for these kinds of things. Well, I did and I am psyched. I'm going paleo style for 30 days. Pretty much following the advice given over at Whole30.

http://whole9life.com/2009/07/the-w30/

I have to say, Whole30 is probably the best tough love regarding nutrition I've seen in a long time. Melissa Byers (of Urban Gets Diesel) really tells it like it is. The things that resonate with me most are 1) Its not hard - giving up heroin is hard - this is not hard eating good quality food. 2) If you think it is about the caveman, you are missing the point.

I agree. I'm looking at this as an experiment. Kind of excited I guess. I wonder what I'm going to feel like, how I will perform and even if I will look different.

I eat clean about 90% of the time, so the big changes are no dairy (i heart cheese sticks) and no grains (I have brown rice pasta at least 2 or 3 times a week). I am still tracking my food and activity in my weight watchers tools and I'm still going to go to the meetings - just because I think it will add something to my experiment.

So, I took on the challenge and I am going to report my progress right here on our blog.

Day 1 was not so bad. I had a terrible cookie palooza last night in preparation and I really do regret it. I felt awful today. I'm sure tomorrow will be better. I am posting a picture of my first dinner. It was actually awesome. Giant bed of cabbage with ground beef and spices and onion, tomatoes, red pepper and avocado.

Overall message re: Day 1 - cookies are evil; raw cabbage is a good noodle substitute - who knew?

To Dairy or Not to Dairy?

As people are looking into a more paleo style diet, there is often a question about whether or not dairy is okay to eat. There are tons of different opinions on this and good arguments on both sides. I'm posting Mark Sisson's (Primal Blueprint) and Whole 9's articles on the subject. Whole 9 is a more traditional paleo stance that says no dairy, where Primal Blueprint says we don't really know and it depends a lot on the individual. BOTH agree that heavy cream, butter and ghee are OKAY because the bad parts (lactose and casein) are not found in these products...they're essentially just fat. (Whole 9's article doesn't say this but you will see Dallas says this in one of the comments below the article).

http://www.marksdailyapple.com/dairy-intolerance/

http://whole9life.com/2009/07/dairy-manifesto/

Cheat day disaster

I had a cheat day disaster. I ate 2 cookies and a hamburger yesterday and have been feeling like crap today. That will teach me to go off sugar and grain then shock my system back to the land of the American diet. Seriously, it has been a yucky day. I feel like a kid who has eaten an entire plate of cookie and wound up with sugar shock. The reason I decided to do a cheat day was that I was getting mean. I would see people with chocolate and think very evil thoughts about them. I read the "Urban gets Diesel" blog and realized how bad it was. She wrote a post about burpees vs cookies and all I could think was: "Only a hundred burpees for a cookie? Hell yeah I will do 100 burpees for a cookie." If only it were the burpees and not the ickyness too.

First week

I have not eaten sugar or grain for a week today. It has been very hard, but I have lost 2.5 lbs. The strange thing is that everything tastes weird. I don't know if it is the lack of sugar or what but everything is just a bit off. I did try Jacks cookies (they are made with agave). They were delicious but REALLY sweet. I plan on doing this until after lent. We will see how it goes but that is week one.

I am not going to lie.

I am not going to lie... I do not eat well. I like most people fool myself into believing that I am not too bad. I do eat things that are offered to me at the office and then pretend that they do not count later on. I also just eat food with out looking at the ingredients. In the past few months I have read: all of Pollan's books, The Zone, and Animal Vegetable Miracle. I also watched a video that a fellow Crossfitter put up on Facebook. This has had a rather large impact on how I view food. As of 2 days ago, I have stopped eating sugar and grain. This is proving to be more difficult than I thought it would be. Not just because I like both but because they are lurking everywhere. Why does my Mayo have corn syrup? And what possessed them to put sugar in my Jerky? I will keep you posted on my progress but I have lost 1.5 pounds inn the past 2 days. I might tell you my measurements of before and after once I get to a happy place.