I love eating Paleo. I love knowing that everything that is going into my body is good for it. Not just neutral, non-bad food, but actually good for me. I love the feeling of energy and well being. I love having the confidence that I know this will work. Looking at the food, you can just see that there is no way to be unhealthy eating it. I love not having to count, or adjust, or guess, or do math...I eat when I am hungry and I will lose weight if I have weight to lose - and I will stop losing naturally when I don't have excess weight left. I am not depriving my body of anything it needs; as a matter of fact, I feel I am getting more vitamins, minerals, and protein than I ever have before. It is all so simple. I love it.
Here is what one of our breakfasts look like. Eggs are fatty, so we limit our intake to about 6 per week (which for us isn't difficult...we aren't big egg eaters). These are simply fried in canola oil and sprinkled with pepper. Fried eggs can be healthy!
This is one of my favorite ways of cooking chicken. It is easy, fast and delicious. I cut off all visible fat on the breast, seasoned it to taste and fried it in a very small amount of olive oil in a skillet. The Paleo mayo is from The Paleo Diet book and the recipe is:
Omega-3 Mayonnaise
1 whole egg
1 T lemon juice
1/4 tsp dry mustard
1/2 c olive oil
1/2 c flaxseed oil
Put egg, lemon juice, and mustard in blender and blend for three to five seconds. Continue blending and slowly add oils. Blend until the mayonnaise is thick. Scrape mayonnaise into a snap-lock plastic container and refrigerate. The mayonnaise should keep for five to seven days. Makes 1 cup.
Tim doesn't like the mayonnaise very much...it has a very strong olive oil flavor. We have found a lot of other paleo mayo recipes so we will be trying them out.
Today is CrossFit day. I am hoping to not get quite so sore this time. :) We will see what the WOD is I guess!
Tomorrow is the one month mark. We will be posting our weight loss and before and current photos. Stay tuned!
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| Paleo breakfast |
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| "Holly's" Chicken, mixed veggies and Paleo Mayonnaise with salt free lemon pepper |
Omega-3 Mayonnaise
1 whole egg
1 T lemon juice
1/4 tsp dry mustard
1/2 c olive oil
1/2 c flaxseed oil
Put egg, lemon juice, and mustard in blender and blend for three to five seconds. Continue blending and slowly add oils. Blend until the mayonnaise is thick. Scrape mayonnaise into a snap-lock plastic container and refrigerate. The mayonnaise should keep for five to seven days. Makes 1 cup.
Tim doesn't like the mayonnaise very much...it has a very strong olive oil flavor. We have found a lot of other paleo mayo recipes so we will be trying them out.
Today is CrossFit day. I am hoping to not get quite so sore this time. :) We will see what the WOD is I guess!
Tomorrow is the one month mark. We will be posting our weight loss and before and current photos. Stay tuned!
August 3, 2010 at 6:49 PM
You don't need to cut the fat off the chicken breast. That is the tastiest part. And you don't need to limit eggs. Fat is very paleo. You should ignore the one author that to sell his books made his diet politically correct back in 2002.
There are books and websites pointing out the health benefits of cholesterol consumption. You can find them listed on PaleoDiet.com.
Furthermore 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.
August 3, 2010 at 9:17 PM
Thanks for all the info Don, and your comment!
I cut any visible fat off since we don't have easy access to free range meat, and feed lot cows and farm raised chickens are so much more fatty than would be found in the wild.
As far as the eggs go, I can only imagine that hunter/gatherers wouldn't have access to eggs at all times and when they did, there would not be very many...so limiting the quantity makes sense. Also, modern eggs are more fatty and have fewer vitamins and minerals than wild eggs due to the environment in which the chickens live - even the free range aren't as free as wild birds. :)
That's how I came to the conclusion to follow the advice of Dr. Cordain in his book. It makes sense and he actually does encourage consumtion of saturated fats...just not in the quantity we have available to us now-a-days in our meat supply.
I encourage all comments and differing opinions though! That's great. :)
August 3, 2010 at 9:31 PM
I don't buy the argument that in nature animals are leaner. Our paleo ancestors ate all the fat, including the suet around the kidneys, the bone marrow, the organs. This is way more than the amount was sold surrounding your purchased meat. There is another argument, which you didn't use, that would argue to remove the fat. This is the paleo fat is from grass-fed animals, and the fat you trimmed off was from feed-lot animals, which have a less favorable Omega 3-6 balance. I do mention that in my Paleo Diet Defined.
As for eggs. People living in temperate areas think in those seasons. But we evolved in the savannas and forests of Africa. I've been learning some about barn owls. In places with favorable temperatures year round, like Southern California, they lay clutches year round. There is every reason to believe that eggs would have been available year round.
The problem is you haven't yet accepted that the Lipid Hypothesis is a fraud. You need to get over that hurdle. It isn't easy, as it has been drummed into you for your entire life that fat is bad.