When I signed up for the MovNat Seminar in August, I was a bit wary because they said we'd be on a "Paleo Diet" and I was thinking: ?!?! "Are they going to try to feed me raw meat slabs or something?" No, not really and the food was all exquisite. I'm not going to go about trying to explain Paleo/Primal here, you can go follow links if you'd like some surface explanation or some more in-depth "science" explanations...
Long story short, I heard a first-hand account of Paleo from a fellow attendee, Greg, who's been following it for a while now. His story was intriguing. Next, I came home, went back to eating my normal crap, and suddenly was ravenous all the time felt sluggish and my guts were hating me. After 48 hours of eating "normally," I whipped together a fresh spinach & basil salad with nuts & olive oil & tomatoes, had some steak, maybe another Veg & finished up with a coconut milk, banana, blueberry, almond dessert and half way through the meal I felt a whole lot more real. Let's combine this with my observations from doing calorie restriction with the Daily Plate all last year - I could eat 1600 calories... if I ate a LOT of Veg, I'd lose weight, if I ate 1600 cals worth of sandwiches & potatoes, I'd stay put. Hmmm... not all calories seem to be the same. Additionally, it's a well known fact that my body does not like digesting grain products (i.e. bread-like things). Put all this together and I decided to start researching and attempting pseudo-paleo.
I'm currently reading the book The Paleo Diet by Loren Cordain an plan to eventually move on to The Primal Blueprint by Mark Sisson The problem with both of these books is that they LOOK like and are formatted as "Diet" books because that's what sells. Eventhough Cordain has a ridiculous number of references in the back of the book - journals, papers, and other science publications to support his findings, I get irritated because he'll make statements about fact X or Y and not reference it. I'd like to know more. Oh well. And for the record, I get a lot of good info out of Mark's Daily Apple.
Anyway, so I'm trying it in bits & pieces and in addition to generally feeling better and learning about myself (like, I didn't know I didn't feel particularly well until I noticed I felt better. weird.), I've been forced out of my normal comfort zone. Let's face it, the Binkle cannot live on just Broccoli, Lima beans, Peas and chicken alone. I've been expanding my visions from Spinach salads to Spring Mix and Romaine & this has led me to start looking at the produce section differently... For instance: endives and Leeks... What are they, how can I use them & cook them? Beets - what should I do with those? After finding just beets and then bunches of beets (complete with leaves), should I buy the bunches and then eat the greens too? I've also been pushed to try more meats too. J's always wanted to eat more fish, but I avoid it since it stinks up the house & I dislike white fish generally. Well, I've been trying for more fish... found that my Shoppers carries bags of individually wrapped fish fillets that are flash frozen at sea and some of it is wild caught. This is great for me since then I don't have to worry about going out to buy fresh fish everytime, I can grab it out of the freezer for a quick meal instead of the frozen ravioli or other freezer "food product" and if baked in a sealed tinfoil pouch, the fish smell doesn't permeate the house totally. It's like rediscovering food. I found that I love raw red pepper as a snack, raw almonds taste amazing if your body needs them, and grapes are fantastic after a run. This is awesome.
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