Sunday, April 8, 2012

Day 6: Time for a change

So it turns out my friend Olelo has strayed off the diet, and I...can't blame her, actually. The recommendations, while apparently healthy for our guts and our immune systems, are heavily restrictive. Meats, organic. Some vegetables, organic. Very few fruits, organic. Coconut products, unsweetened. Fermented things. Salt, spices. These aren't the makings of a happy, creative chef. At least not this chef.

The effect of five days of eating only these foods has been to make me not want to eat. Dr. K recommends eating at least every two hours, but I simply don't want to eat something like a piece of steak or a handful of lettuce seven times a day. I've gone fairly long stretches of time without eating over the five days of this diet, and often when I did eat something, it was a small amount because what I could eat simply wasn't appetizing. Having to cook most everything I could eat from scratch wasn't always fun, either. So, in short, I have cut the time for this diet in half, from ten days to five, and officially ate food not allowed while on it today: white rice, corn, tomatoes, potatoes, to name a few.

I plan to sign up for the Personal Paleo Code and actually read Dr. Kharrazian's book. Wish me luck!

3 comments:

  1. Emma,

    Two years ago we switched to a paleo diet, nearly grain-free.

    Our only "processed" sugars are raw honey, real maple syrup, & very small amounts of local homemade fruit jams. We eat the jams in homemade yogury & on goat cheese.

    Sunday mornings we eat French toast — that's our exception day.

    For snacks, we eat raw fruit, dried fruit, & raw nuts. Our pau hana snack is stovetop popcorn, because we choose to regard popcorn as a vegetable, & yes, you may call us delusional, but it doesn't seem to put any weight on or cause any of the other negative effects of eating grains.

    Since we've moved to Argentina, we've moved our main meal of the day to lunch. At 8 PM we eat salad or cheese & nuts.

    We drink water & wine & occasionally a little beer at lunch because we like it.

    This diet keeps us thin, feeling good, & we don't feel food negative or food deprived.

    Carol

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  2. Thanks for the input Carol! After Dr. K's very restrictive repair diet (which he does advertise as temporary for most folks), the Paleo diet hardly seems restrictive at all! I noticed that you mentioned cheese. Have you found including dairy in your diet to have any detrimental effect? I hope I can have it. :) What brought you to the Paleo diet?

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  3. Mike & I experimented with non-gluten for one year with no positive effects. At Ben's wedding in Feb 2010 I talked to Ben's friend Mark about paleo. He was a rabid enthusiast & gave me the title of a book to read. Will try to remember which. Mike & I switched to paleo immediately thereafter. Getting off grains made it crystal clear to me what kinds of problems grains were giving me. When I eat grains now I feel the ill effects.

    Yes, dairy, no problem. Milk in my coffee, milk in scrambled eggs & French toast, yogurt ever day for me, ice cream every couple of weeks, & goat cheese nearly every day. Goat cheese here is very cheap. We buy it by the 10" diameter wheel. Although last night we had a special pure delicate kind we found that was delicious.

    We eat all kinds of fruit & a lot of it. Especially local fruit.

    /c

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