Let's just say, it was quite difficult to peel myself out of bed this morning and trudge off to the fifth and final day of an incredibly long and draining week. However, after hoping on the scales, I was glad I had made it out of bed, because that way I was able to discover that I was at my new lowest weight ever! Apparently I dropped half a kilogram overnight, so thank you caloric restriction! Three days of keeping the calories below 1400 seems to have done the trick, with yesterday's 1800kcal boosting my BMR back to normal. Today I've boosted a bit higher again, since I still felt a bit tired today, mostly due to stress and cold weather - I was fidgeting like crazy all day, burning fuel left, right, and in my jiggly centre.
I left myself just enough time this morning to whip up shakes for breakfast and lunch, upping the amount of heavy cream to elongate my satiety. The fuel lasted me about four hours per shake before hunger struck, so that was a good metabolic sign.
For dinner, I fried up two organic lamb forequarter chops in a copious amount of coconut oil, and then mopped up the rest of the oil by sauteeing a bit of red cabbage.
Since dinner was very early (4:30pm), and my calories were very low, I used my handy stash of fatty bites to boost my numbers - macadamia nuts! True, they're probably not supported by the Eades', or at least not in the proportion I enjoyed, but I'm pretty much making my own rules since I know what works for me. I will, however, continue with the Six-Week Cure so that I can pass on an authentic-ish experience to Mum, whom I will be encouraging to play it by the book. It's clear to me that the way I was eating before was better for me than this program, given my stomach soreness and nausea of late (still a twinge now and again), but since there are only two days left of non-primal eating, I'll take the hit. :) Plus, if my egg protein, due to arrive some time next week, is any good, it might be nice to keep a dairy-free portable primal lunch option on hand for emergencies.
And for a sweet ending to a long week, check out this adorable music clip for "Camilo (The Magician)" by Said The Whale - pick the primal moment!
Elevenses - an additional serving/snack beyond the 'norm', usually accompanied by tea or coffee.
Also, an hilarious pun since it's Day 11 of the Six Week Cure. Oh, I crack myself up.
Today I vowed to boost my calories. Since the protein shakes are still a bit iffy, I didn't want to boost the amount of protein in them. Instead, I doubled the amount of cream.
I ate a high-calorie breakfast, in as small a meal as possible: an almond pancake with cream, and a generous serving of bacon. Then it was a shake for lunch, and a shake for an afternoon snack.
For dinner, we had juicy, amazingly tender, organic porterhouse steaks, and to up the calories further, I sauteed some red cabbage in a hefty amount of coconut oil:
Well, that certainly satisfied me! I logged my food into my tracker, and even though the calorie count for bacon online is much higher than the info on my packet, I still ended up around the 1600kcal area! What??
Bring on elevenses - macadamia nuts! Ah, faithful, high-cal friend, how I have missed you! 1oz would bring up my calories to 1800kcal, without blowing the carb budget. Win!
Well, just my luck, the bastards aren't all that tasty - a couple of my ounce seemed burned or something, and only two had that distinctive macadamia flavour! So much for paying through the nose for organic nuts if they're going to be that bland! I guess I'll use the remaining nuts as a crust from some salmon - I haven't had that in ages! Since pre-blog times!
So while this week hasn't been as smooth as last week, particularly in my stress levels have taken a hit as my senior students jostle to use up any free time I have available for exam preparation, the scales are showing progress, and my waist measurement has also snuck down a teeny bit. Hopefully today's energy intake boost will kick my metabolism back into the normal range - I felt snoozy at various points of the day today, suggesting a drop in BMR.
The general knowledge of my eating preferences increased its circle today, when at the end of a meeting with the boss, he offered me a lolly. I declined, and let slip that "I haven't eaten sugar in almost a year!" He looked up at me in friendly surprise and asked, "What kind of diet is that?!" I decided to keep things simple and retorted, "The 'Eating Healthy Foods' Diet." He smiled, unwrapped a lolly, and popped it into his gob. (He's a slender bloke of 50-something, an ex-P.E. teacher, so he probably would have understood the Primal idea, but time and place... And at least my response was probably generic enough not to offend him or make me seem all that weird... Probably.) :D
Another two-shake day (8am and 1:30pm), this time without a fried egg in the morning - chose a sleep-in instead. I felt less than lovely around three hours post-breakfast shake, mainly when I was bent over my desk, marking essays. So I'm thinking my queasiness has to do with my stomach being empty...? But I'll soldier on - only four days to go!
At home I gobbled up the remains of last night's chicken - the wings, and some under-carriage meat, and then prepared a bacon and spinach frittata for our main course:
Simple and delicious!
Now for a few links to pieces that have blown my mind of late:
I have just been reading a very interesting paper by Joaquín Pérez-Guisado of the University of Cordoba entitled "Arguments in Favor of Ketogenic Diets". As its title suggests, it reviews the benefits of ketogenic diets (ie high fat, very low carbohydrate diets) and concludes:
Low carbohydrate diets are a safe, effective way of losing weight, promoting non-atherogenic lipid profiles, lowering blood pressure, diminishing resistance to insulin with an improvement in levels of glucose and insulin. They also have neurological and antineoplastic (anti-tumour) benefits.
The author discusses the evolution of the human diet, the biochemical rationale of the ketogenic diet, its anti-tumour effect, its anti-inflammatory effect, its effectiveness in weight control, its cardiovascular benefits, its benefits in the prevention of and treatment of Type 2 diabetes and its neurological benefits.
(If anyone questions your decision to do a low carb diet, just give them this paper and blast them with science!)
The paper is very well-researched with 181 references at the end, and is definitely worth reading.
Personal note: my Dad currently takes a blood thinning drug as he has cardiac issues and has had incidence of troublesome clotting in the past. As he is a farmer, and is constantly getting himself into scrapes, this means that every cut ends up leaking for ages. This medication has distressed me for a while now, and I have been watching out for a safer alternative to help maintain his health more naturally and with less risk of him bleeding out up the paddock... Just recently, a saviour popped up in a couple of links, covering both sides of Dad's issue - plain ol' omega-3-rich fish oil!
Firstly, Dr. Stephan Guyenet explores the heart attack risk reduction potential of the essential fatty acids in fish oil in his post, The Low-Hanging Fruit.
Then, Dr. William Davis had me excited for Dad, then terrified at the arguments regarding 'bleeding episodes', then consoles and resolute that this was what Dad should take by the time I reached the closing statement of Does Fish Oil Cause Blood Thinning? I don't know whether fish oil alone would do enough for Dad's issues, but I'm certainly going to recommend he takes some every day anyway! I already do, so here's hoping 'preventing hereditary cardiac issues' is added to the lists of benefits I am experiencing thanks to upping my EPA intake!
Answer = yes, but not as noticeably and distractingly as yesterday.
I started my day with a shake made of plain protein powder, cacao, cream and a pinch of stevia - no added leucine to try and see if that was the culprit. I also took a sachet of Damage Control Master Formula, and fried up an egg in coconut oil to provide a solid cushioning for my pain modifier (for a damaged nerve, no big deal, but not something I want interfering with my life forever, so the drug gradually 'cures' the sensitivity) when it hit my belly. I figured the egg and oil were harmless enough since the Eades' encourage six-weekers to put both in their shakes. Result = less noticeable nausea, but some aftertaste issues and tongue furriness. I also seem to have nasty breath odour, which may be attributed to the shakes or to fat-burning. Fingers crossed for the latter, but something tells me it's the stevia or the leucine...
I packaged up a shake of my vanilla mix inc. leucine, with cacao and cream and stevia, to take as lunch, and had to force it down at 2pm. A bit of a stomach gurgle resulted, but nothing too drastic.
It was a delight to walk home in the sunlight after a long day, but I couldn't face shake #3 so I opted for a tiny dinner entree - bacon and egg!
And as the main course, I prepped a chicken and served myself the legs, but in my haste to be fed and out the door (another night at the Theatre to get to, darlings!) I completely forgot to photograph my plate. So you'll just have to trust me :)
Stomach-wise, something is still not 100%, but I'll repeat today's plan to see whether the culprit is my pain modifier. Plus, it was easy again to keep my calories really low - thanks to the lunchtime shake, I didn't feel hungry until I arrived home, and that hunger is always psychological :)
Hmph. The weigh-in today puts me pretty much exactly where I was this time last week. My weight snuck up a bit in the first couple of days and managed to get down to a 0.5kg loss by Friday, but now we're back to the status quo. So the only theory that makes any sense is that my calories are too high or my metabolism has taken a hit. So the plan for this week is to drop my average calories down another 300kcal per day, and see how I go...
Edit: I should counter-point the negative with this - I have observed an increased jiggliness around my flabbier areas (including breasts, boo) which usually suggests the fat is being burnt and the scales are soon to show a drop too... I could also have possibly gained some muscle - my thighs feel a bit springier, and I find myself bouncing up our hall steps where once I used to trudge... Energy, or muscle growth, or both? Who knows! So even though the scales haven't really shifted this week, I am happy, and am feeling light and buoyant :)
So the plan calls for another week of shakes, but I have hit upon a snag - my new protein powder, a self-mix of protein, leucine and vanilla, doesn't seem to be going down well. Today I sampled the mix on its own, and it is nasty! I added some cacao to see if that would help, but it remained nauseating until I added a tiny bit of stevia. I I slurped down the final product as breakfast, but shortly thereafter felt less that healthy. Nothing major, just some mild nausea, a sensation that accompanied me on and off throughout the rest of the day. I had packaged up another serving for lunch, and I drank it like a good girl, mainly to avoid hunger pangs. Instead I was greeted with further digestive clangs. Hm. From what I can see, the likely cause could be that most protein pre-mixes include digestive enzymes to assist in the uptake of protein, and I bet they do a swell job of preventing the ill-effects I have experienced today. My response is two-pronged:
1. To take some of Mark Sisson's Damage Control Master Formula with each shake, as it contains a "digestive enzyme blend" and may help to zero in on what my reaction is caused by; and,
2. To buy another canister of Natural Factors Whey Protein so I can splice my plain powder with it and see if I can get away with that. It will halve the carbs while boosting the protein and leucine, but it will take time to get here... I have sent off an order to iHerb.com for the same French Vanilla flavour as last time, as well as a canister of an Egg Protein - carb-free and apparently tasty, so it will be good for the future if I want to keep protein shakes in my repertoire, at least til the end of this experiment! Of course, I cannot splice whey and egg (or maybe I can?) so I'll be going back to whey first to help use up this Professional Whey - there's 5kg to get through, and I would like it to be what I pass on to Mum so I need to find a way for her to find it palatable as well.
I also need to check that the nausea isn't caused by my new pain modifier, which needs to be taken with food, so tomorrow I'll eat a little solid breakfast with my shake to see how that affects things. This side-effect, should it be caused by the drug, should subside by itself in a matter of days. However, given the strong chemical after-taste and tongue weirdness I'm experiencing, I think it might be more than a little pill...
Tomorrow, I'll be running on Plan #1, aiming for low-cal and low-carb. If I experience any more nausea, I may have to skip ahead to a meat week until my new powder arrives.
As hardly needs stating, I couldn't face my third shake of the day, so I ate a brie omelette (that's the last of the organic brie) as afternoon tea, and then wasn't hungry for dinner, so left it at that. And thus begins the new season of dining in the sunlight on the back porch...
I'll be weighing in tomorrow to give a starting point for Week 2, but overall the average for this week has been a small loss, back to where I was pre-Thailand. I feel very sleek as well, although I'm starting to suspect that my body resents all the dairy... I will be happier this time next week, with nothing but meat ahead of me!
The first two shakes of the day finished off my Natural Factors protein powder mix, which meant I was going to have to tackle a DIY mix for shake three and beyond! I have mixed up a new canister of the following:
1kg Professional Whey WPC 64g leucine powder (there is already some in the protein powder, so this addition brings each 40g serving up to 7g leucine) 8g organic ground vanilla (more for the aroma than flavour)
To this afternoon's shake, I added 1/4 teaspoon stevia - too much! To the average person, it wouldn't have tasted all that strong, but I swear the sweetness damn near blinded me! Glad I didn't add it to the canister without trialling first. I will go without sweetener if possible, if the powder tastes okay. We'll see how I go tomorrow morning...
I had looked forward to dinner all day - another brie omelette, and a scotch fillet steak, to eat whilst sitting in the glow of the sunset...
The omelette went down easily, but I was sensing some serious satiety signals before I'd made much of a start on the meat. So I stopped! It's a good sign that the protein shake kept me full; that will help me get through tomorrow. But that gorgeous meat going to waste - I can hardly stand it!
All in all, that first week hasn't been difficult, though it has been a bit boring. Roll on Week 2...
Another lazy morning of sleeping in, followed by a day of lying in the sun and mucking around on the computer. Plus, our monthly delivery of meat from Organic Direct arrived! So we're all set for the meat weeks of The Six Week Cure. For those of you interested in the Carnivore Cost Calculation series, here's what AU$370 got us:
The big freezer section of our new fridge (bought for the extra freezer space) is chock-full of meaty goodness! The haul is well over 60 servings of meat, so should last the month out even if I eat meat twice a day during the meat weeks. We've also plenty of whole chickens, drumsticks and breast portions left over from a couple of months ago - we've both gone off chicken a bit. It doesn't satisfy me much and the beau isn't a fan of plain chicken. But now that the weather is warming up, I'll be grateful for leftover chicken that I can whip into an egg scramble, or pack up for work, or even eat out on the veranda as the sun sets...
Today started with a late breakfast shake - my system does NOT enjoy such a large, cold beverage in the brisk morning air! But I imagine it will be nice to have a shake on hand further down the track on hot summer mornings where cooking is simply not an option... A few hours later I took another shake for lunch, after lounging in the sun to top up my vitamin D levels.
Organic Direct knocked on the door at around 3:30pm, and I grabbed out the rolled beef roast and popped it into the oven (after searing the edges on the stove). By 5:30pm, it was tender, juicy, and perfectly cooked:
Now, does that really look like 1000kcal of meat? I don't know whether to trust NutritionData.com or not on this one... Fingers crossed I don't end up ravenously hungry at bed time, even though my data tells me I've covered my needs for the day... I cooked up an omelette as a side, since I finally found a wheel of True Organic brie, but it's not nice alone! Melted, however, it is delicious! So I ate an Eades-approved amount, especially since I cut my cream-in-shake amount by half today, and only made time for two shakes (I really wasn't hungry when I had to force the second one down, and didn't feel like stuffing myself with a third). I've hit the bottom of my original whey protein canister now, so tomorrow I'll be cutting into my half-tonne of Professional Whey protein and experimenting with ground vanilla and stevia... Wish me luck!
Recovery Day #2 - much more successful, far less stressful. I didn't have to leave the house. I bathed in lovely sunlight while spending time with the cavy boys. And I finally tried a coconut protein shake! Plus, I'm already down half a kilo - possibly more since I'm still full of the half-kilo of steak from last night!
I stuck to dairy for the first shake of the day, laced with leucine.
Then I opened up the can of coconut cream, to discovered the contents had completely separated, leaving the thick white meat at the top of the can and the water trapped below. I scooped out 30g of the meat and plopped it into the shake, adding some raw cacao in case the flavour was too intense. After whipping madly, the coconut still stayed primarily separated, but the taste was good enough to allow the leftover meat to be swept up and licked off a finger. Then it was left up to time to see how my body would react... Well, there were some stomach pangs shortly thereafter, and a few hours later another mild reaction emerged... But all in all, not as bad as the other coconut cream tests! However, I think I'll stick to dairy cream, since my body prefers it, and it's only for 9 more days!
Shake number three was back to a lovely creamy vanilla shake!
Dinnertime!
Scotch fillet, bacon, and two fried eggs - yum!
Organic Direct arrives with my new beef steaks & roasts, lamb chops, chicken thighs and other goodies tomorrow!! I'm definitely ready for my meat weeks!
Recovery day - a sleep-in; a lounge outside in the sun; a blog reading catch-up session; a walk up to the organic grocery for this week's veggie box and some cream; and two delicious protein shakes - both with added leucine powder (which doesn't really mix in well, bleh) and one with raw cacao powder (a subtle choc-milk effect, yum!). How relaxing!
But then - no time to fit in my third shake before heading off to the city; a long and frustrating call to my telecommunications company that had cut off my mobile account for no clear reason (my credit card expired so a payment was declined, but instead of getting in touch with me to get my new card details, they just shut off my phone - glad I didn't find out when I was trying to call the police or something!); a panicked rush to get to the bus stop in time; an awkward conversation with a random old bloke on the bus who started by asking about my Vibrams and then wanted to know everything about my childhood; a frantic race on foot through the city to get to my doctor's appointment (thank Gawd for the FiveFingers!); a very depressing appointment as my current nerve damage drug has demonstrably had no effect - so now I've been given yet another one to try; a major traffic jam.
So after my best anti-stress efforts in the morning, the afternoon certainly reset my levels back to tense and bristling. And I was starving! We were off to a BBQ & lawn bowls event thrown by the beau's work, and whilst everyone else stuffed themselves full of floury sausages, chicken kebabs covered in sticky sauce, and Indian 'salads', all involving some kind of nasty (pasta, chick peas, etc), I was specially allocated a stack of steaks, cooked to my liking - rare!
The first BBQ of the season, and we're off to a roaring start! Full disclosure - see that steak above? Well, multiply it by FOUR and you've got my dinner. Aw yeah. Perfect steak, everyone else flopping carby meat products onto white bread, and what am I going to do, just leave the other steaks to waste? Heck no! I imagine I downed around half a kilogram of cooked steak... Easily! My stomach wasn't used to having that much food in it, but it wasn't a problem - I felt great!
After demonstrating my impressive beginner's luck when it came to lawn bowls, espite my "putting groceries in a shopping cart' lackadaisical style (it was too cold to take time and aim!), we popped around to pick up a delightful selection of summer reading from my very talented friend Lily - check out her gorgeous photography on her blog.
Then it was off home, with the prospect of my third shake - was it even necessary after all the steak? I figured the fat content was necessary. But after downing most of the shake, my stomach hit 100%, and the pain was amazing! A mix of uber-burp fullness and 'look ma I'm pregnant' bulging - wow! I'll definitely be avoiding having to drink a shake soon after a filling dinner again! Yikes!
Hm, how did I end up going for such an unimaginative title for this series? I guess it's a bitter signal of the stress of the past couple of weeks. Not long now and work becomes a smooth cruise to summer. Amazing that I'm already lusting after holidays, when I'm only recently returned from Thailand, and it's the third week of term! Yikes. My first exam period as a VCE teacher. Scary stuff. I can't wait to see how the cherubs do on their exams, but at the same time...
Anyway, onto the tastier topics -
I had my three shakes as breakfast, morning tea and afternoon tea (no lunch, technically). 8am, 11:15am and 3:30pm, to be specific. I increased my scoops to 2 per shake, and I'm trying a new type of cream - I have upped the fat content from 45% (the old highest amount) to a whopping 52% thanks to the new double cream at Coles. I'd still love access to raw cream, or at least organic cream, but no dice at the local. I'm going to the organic grocer to pick up this week's veggie box tomorrow, so I'll suss out her tiny dairy section while I'm there. Her prices are outrageous though. I also suspect that if I asked Coles to supply some organic cream, they'd do it. The local is very much about supply and demand - we've noticed that the beau's old granola brand is only available in the teeny box size now that he and his appetite for the huge boxes has left the premises. We only go there at all if we have no time during 'normal' business hours to visit the organic stores. We have our meat delivered, and we pick up our veg. Truly, the only need we have for Coles is dairy, and that's usually just for the beau. I'll be so happy when we don't need to visit their food section at all! I may still avail myself of their hosiery dept. from time to time... :)
As promised and long-lusted after, I planned to enjoy my last piece of pork roast for dinner. I hoped to come home straight after the final school bell and get that baby in the oven. We had tickets to a movie in the city, so we would need to leave before 6pm. Heaps of time to prepare and enjoy a porcine feast. Ah, fate. I didn't end up leaving work for two hours, leaving me 30 minutes to cook and eat the pork roast, with its heady layer of fat and skin just begging to be crackled!
I heated the grill press.
I removed the skin, oiled it, and whacked it onto the grill.
Once it started to vaguely crisp, I plopped the rest of the roast in with it.
I continued turning the crackling to help the fat render and skin fry.
With five minutes to spare, I served up two pieces of luscious, perfectly cooked pork to each of us, hoarding the not-quite crackly crackling for myself:
Since this would otherwise be a single-shot post, have another shot of my tasty tasty pork dinner, in the arrangement it landed as I flung it on the plate in my urgency to scoff and scoot off to the cinema:
Meanwhile, my new protein powder, and leucine powder have arrived! Interestingly, my new protein powder already has a massive amount of leucine in it - 2.7g leucine per scoop vs. 1.3g leucine in my current powder. Eades instructs us to take 2.5g per shake, so if I double-scoop my shakes from now on, then even my original powder provides me with enough leucine. So I may have wasted my money here, but hopefully it is useful down the track, even if I don't need to add it to my powder... I'll need to do some more research, and see if I could benefit from it when the shake programme has ended. From what The Six Week Cure states, I probably already get plenty of leucine anyway, and I'm not really a prime candidate for lean mass loss. So I'll be looking into what benefit it may have for my mother, primarily.
Along with the leucine powder, my new protein powder also came with a packet of raw organic cacao powder, which I am keen to try, despite its carb count. I'll check to see how hefty a hit the necessary amount will be before I give it a whirl - probably around 3g carb per shake. I also received some organic vanilla to flavour my new neutral powder. I wonder if I'll need to dust off my hardly-touched bottle of stevia powder in order to make the shake palatable...
The beau is whisking me off to his work's BBQ tomorrow night - an unadulterated couple of steaks have already been set aside for me! Ah, sometimes this is just too easy! :)
Okay, Day Two: meal o' the day was dinner since I had a special function to go to centred around eating, so to sup on a shake would have been awkward and inappropriate, and the majority of my day was laid-back so it was a safe time to try the shake-only day...
Decided to try crushing ice as part of my breakfast shake, packaging up ice-free mix for lunch and an afternoon snack.
Dinner - Entree: three cubes of roasted lamb, with some other stuff that I ignored but was apparently delicious.
Dinner - Main: beef sirloin, huzzah! In nothing but its own juices, sitting on a bed of bleh with a side of pfshaw, both ignored. Shame the beef was cooked beyond recognition and was nearly impossible to cut... But hey, beef!
Success! Am feeling very slim and the scales are reflecting this information, despite my monthly bloatiness. Very positive!
Out of sheer fear of hunger with nothing but protein shakes to keep me going, I loaded up on protein and fat this morning - scotch fillet steak, bacon, and fried eggs, topped with melted butter (used to cook the eggs):
A Carnivore Cost Calculation note - I was going to stop monitoring my meat costs for this fortnight, but if every meal is going to be like this morning's, it'll be pretty balanced in terms of representing my normal 'big' meat meal, if not a little bigger! I need to do a summary post of my spending thus far, and then this fortnight's meats can have their own summary post and side-note in the on-going record. Organic Direct delivers this weekend as well, and their prices are more representative of my usual expenses - the local butcher is quite a bit pricier so the tallies thus far are probably above-average. We'll see...
I packaged up two bottles of protein shake (one serving of shake each) to serve me for lunch and a snack to keep me going through my late afternoon Monash tutorial. And it worked! Admittedly, I wasn't really a fan of that much extra liquid interrupting my day (and I don't just mean stopping to drink), but hopefully various organs will learn to accommodate that change.
I wasn't able to snap a shot of the shakes, but I can promise you that they looked nothing like these:
My day ended with another shake for dinner, made with a full litre of water to replace my usual tea consumption. The Drs. Eades say that white tea is low enough in caffeine to remain in the program, but I'm still cutting back to give my liver the best chance, should it have any stored fat...
So that's Day 1 under my belt, exactly where I hope to find less of me by the end of this programme! Tomorrow will be the reverse of today - tomorrow night is the Year 12 Valedictory Dinner, so I'm going to plan to enjoy some of what is served there, if the meat isn't smothered in sauce. I'll drink my shakes for breakfast, lunch, and late afternoon, and will see how I go with dinner! If there's nothing appropriate and I'm feeling fine, I might fast through dinner in anticipation of a nice big breakfast the next day! The one downer of this fortnight is the lack of food - the novelty of drinking something that comes closer to milk or ice cream than I have tasted in ten months is still not enough to off-set the pleasure I get from a nice thick lamb chop, so I'm hanging out for my daily meal! I'm already thawing a pork roast in anticipation for my next dinner day - but I'm so busy this week, it may not happen until Friday! Is it wrong to cook up an entire 400g pork roast for breakfast?
As planned, I decided to fast all day (except for copious amounts of highly diluted organic white tea, as always). rounding off the late afternoon with an organic scotch fillet steak, supported by some of last night's leftovers (giving the veg-heavy parts to the beau and keeping most of the sausage and chicken for myself):
Just look at that delicious vein of fat! Can you believe the boy won't eat his?? And he doesn't even offer it to me while it's still warm (hint hint!!)...
My mother is fairly lean, and always has been. When she was young she was essentially a beanpole, and during her twenties and pregnancies she developed a normal hip-and-thigh roundedness. However, these days she is far more worried about her middle, so when the Drs. Eades came out with their new book, a crash diet no less, entitled The Six-Week Cure For The Middle-Aged Middle (although it looks like it's coming out again in December retitled Lose Your Middle-Aged Middle...), I immediately thought of her. I have already encouraged her to go low-carb, and as primal as possible: she currently eats almond pancakes for breakfast practically every morning, she cooks with coconut oil or butter, she eats meat and veg for her dinners (although Dad persists with cooking potatoes and buying processed foods), and she only eats chocolate occasionally (or so she says - she's a bigger choc addict than I ever was). She has probably dropped a bit of fat, but her belly bulges (a tiny little roll of fat, really) continues to bother her. I'm more bothered by the idea of her suffering from osteoarthritis, etc, since the big six-oh is just around the corner...
The Eades' plan sounded suitable for both our agendas - upping the protein intake and focussing on saturated fat, while tapping into and applying science supposedly specific to weight loss during middle age. I bought the book today (after a tedious and tiresome battle to find a retailer of the ebook that catered to non-US customers), and have already read half of it in detail after originally skimming the lot to see whether Mum could fit the programme into her schedule. Well, the 3 shakes + 1 meal fortnight is a big ask of her, although once she hits the meat-only weeks I'm sure she'll cope easily (although she might miss her pancakes), and the final fortnight matches up with how she already eats, really. How to encourage her that following a somewhat extreme diet for the first two weeks might be worth it...
Give her proof. Well, hopefully. Yep, I'm going to have a crack at losing my middle-aged paunch... Except that I'm 24 and probably don't have much in the way of visceral fat given that my waist-to-hip ratio is already 0.7, with my remaining fat sitting as a muffin-top/love handles, which the Eades' say is very much a marker of teen/youthful subcutaneous fat. So hopefully any fat loss will be enough to demonstrate the usefulness of this plan, even if it's not technically around my waist but perhaps below my belly-button instead. This does mean I have to add dairy back into the mix (I could not find any egg protein powder, so it had to be whey, and while I might give coconut cream another shot as the 'cream' in the shake, dairy cream is a safer bet), but I guess we can't claim protein powder to be 'not primal' if we accept vitamin and mineral supplementation to be perfectly reasonable. It's just two weeks. My one meal will be meat meat meat, referring to the plan's recipe section for guidance on portions (although they do say that they essentially leave it to the individual to eat as much protein and fat as they need, especially during the second fortnight, but the first fortnight is supposed to be calorie-restricted...) And then I get to go back to being a proper carnivore for another two weeks (and beyond - the Eades' are bright enough to know never to claim that we need to eat any form of carb, so huzzah!).
I have my protein powder and my cream, but my ordered leucine powder will take a couple of days to get here from Sydney, and the DAG oil is a no-go in Australia, it would seem. I might have a look in the body-building health food store in the local shopping centre the next time I'm in there (rarely these days), but otherwise I'm not worried about it. I haven't worked out when I'm going to have my meal - I'm thinking that dinner makes the most sense so I can cook for the beau at the same time, but since Mondays are super-long I might have a meaty brekkie tomorrow... And then there's the entire lack of time or resources at work with which to make the shakes, so at best I'd have to bottle some and take it with me...
Wish me luck! I'll be sure to make fully fleshed-out primal meals for the beau so you still have something pretty to look at beyond one pic of meat & eggs per day!
Today is Carb Allowance Day - I can have vegetables, fruit and nuts, if I so desire.
Even so, most would consider eating 150g of macadamia nuts somewhat excessive. Seems my body was craving fat - while scanning the more carb-dense nuts, my hand drifted - virtually of its own accord - to a (thankfully small) bag of organic macadamia nuts. And I swear they were the only organic nuts of any kind in the entire supermarket, so ten points to my instinct! We were off to see the NT Live transmission of All's Well That Ends Well, staged at London's National Theatre. Running time: 3.5 hours. I had slept through breakfast, and the show ran through lunch, so snacks were necessary. A bag of Pork Krackles (never again - I never noticed they included vegetable oil, hydrolysed soy proteins and tapioca starch! Plus they shredded the roof of my mouth!) accompanied the macadamia nut purchase, as did a highly-necessary bottle of water. The show was lovely, cleverly directed and designed, and the snacks were a nice indulgence.
While I could have called it quits on food for the rest of the day, I knew I should probably make some vague effort to achieve some kind of nutritional value in my day's diet. What did I have on hand that didn't require defrosting? Pure beef sausages, a leftover uncooked chicken breast, and loads of veggies. Hmmm, what can I make with that...?
The "Who Needs Pasta, Anyway?" Italian Chicken & Beef Sauté
Ingredients:
250g chicken breast 4 pure beef sausages (I suspect Italian sausage or pure pork would work too, or meatballs) 1 large brown or red onion, diced 1 zucchini, chopped 6 tomatoes, diced 1T minced garlic 1T fresh basil, chopped 1t paprika 1T butter
Method:
Cook chicken breast and beef sausage, and cut into bite-sized pieces.
In a deep cast iron pan, melt butter over medium heat. Add garlic and onion, and sauté until fragrant.
Add tomatoes, zucchini, herbs and spice. Stir until tomato begins to break down. Allow to simmer for 5 minutes.
Add the meat, and stir until all ingredients are thoroughly intermingled. Turn heat down, cover and cook for 15 minutes.
Serve with baby spinach and a sprinkling of grated Parmesan cheese if desired. Makes 3-4 servings (we ate one third each, with one third left to fight over for breakfast!)
Buon appetito!
And that's my Carb Allowance for this week! I still managed to stay under the 20g net carb mark, so I'm happy. And hopefully the sudden hit of fibre won't mess me up too much. Tomorrow I suspect I will fast (read: sleep) for most of the day, with something big and meaty for dinner... Scotch fillet steak, anyone?
To follow on from the Lierre Keith quote in yesterday's post, today I found an excellent summary/review of The Vegetarian Myth, by Dr. Thomas Cowan of Fourfold Healing. This piece may well be a good starter to send to your health- and enviro-conscious friends, as well as every vegetarian you know...
The Vegetarian Myth by Lierre Keith
Very occasionally powerful, life-changing books are written that give one the palpable sense that "if people would only listen" the world might be a different place. The Vegetarian Myth by Lierre Keith is one such book. In this book Lierre essentially tells two intertwined stories. One is the story of the deterioration of her own health as a direct result of adopting a vegan diet. The second is the related tale of the destruction of our planet essentially as a result of the widespread adoption of agriculture, specifically agriculture based on the growing of grains. Her central premise is that, unlike what we are all led to believe, the absolute worst thing that could ever befall humans or the earth is if we all adopted a vegetarian or, worse yet, a vegan diet. To many, this is such an unbelievable head spinner that they simply will not even be able to entertain the ideas that are presented by Lierre. The ideas, the argument she presents to make her case are powerful, coherent and irrefutable - grains and in fact a grain-based (i.e. vegetarian) diet are literally killing us all.
First, the ecological argument. We are told that the biggest users of fresh water and the most wasteful, ecologically speaking, food we can eat is meat. We are told that if instead of feeding grains to cows to get meat, which is anyway poison for us to eat, we should feed that grain to people thereby feeding at least 30 people with a grain-based diet for every one person we can feed on a meat-based diet. We are told to eat low on the food chain to conserve resources and be ecologically friendly. And, finally and crucially we hear people proudly announce they don't eat anything with faces as a sign that they are living out their deeply held convictions about social justice. The facts actually tell a completely different story.
Imagine the Middle East 10,000 years ago when the only people living in what we now call Iraq, Lebanon, Israel, Egypt, etc., were nomadic hunter-gatherer types. This area was referred to as a paradise; it was lush, fecund; Lebanon was the land of the cedar forests. The area between the Tigris and Euphrates was literally paradise on earth. Then came agriculture, specifically the growing of grains. As happens where grains are grown and irrigation is used, the soil began to lose its vitality, the humous layer was lost. The irrigation and the converting of perennial grasses and the animals that live on these grasses to annual crops is akin to mining the nutrients and the fertility out of the soil. Without sufficient animal manure and animal bodies to put nutrients back into the soil, without the annual flooding of the plains that is stopped when irrigation systems are used, the land loses its nutrients, the soil becomes more salty and, as evidenced in the Middle East, eventually, inevitably the land becomes a desert. Lierre describes this process in intimate detail so the reader is left with no doubt that in human history, whenever the transition from perennial grass- based land - alongside naturally flowing lakes and rivers, co-existing with verdant forests - is converted into grain based agriculture, the inevitable result is everything dies. Everything - the plants, the insects, the wild animals and eventually the people.
If this wasn't reason enough for conscientious people to shun a grain-based diet, Lierre spends the second half of the book detailing the negative health repercussions from adopting a grain-based, vegetarian or vegan diet. For those familiar with the work of the Weston A. Price foundation or The Fourfold Path to Healing, this will come as no surprise. What will be eye-opening for many is a detailed chart that compares the physiology of meat eaters with that of herbivores. If you still have any doubts that humans are literally physiologically required to live on mostly an animal food diet, I recommend checking out this enlightening chart. Lierre has done her homework. She references many studies that have been done in the last 100 years documenting the superior health outcomes, the absence of chronic disease, and the total absence of cancer and heart disease in people who eat the food that comes naturally out of a perennially based grass and forest system. What do these people eat? What is the "human" diet, the diet that works back to heal the land? Conveniently it is one diet, called the GAPS diet. As probably more than a hundred of my patients can attest, those who have literally regained their health as a result of the GAPS diet, it is no surprise that the very diet that can heal so many sick people is the very diet that,when applied to agriculture, can heal a "sick" earth.
Get this book, read it, pass it to your friends, especially your vegetarian friends, for as Lierre often says in our current situation, it is not enough any more to just have good intentions. You also have to be informed about what it is you are fighting for.
Decided to fast through breakfast and lunch so that I could enjoy a generous serving of dinner - corned beef silverside, served with fried eggs and butter!
The beef turned out tender, moist, and flavoursome! My technique is awfully simple - place meat, 1/2 cup of apple cider vinegar, 1T cloves, 1T black peppercorn, and two bay leaves in a deep saucepan, and add water under meat is covered. Bring to the boil, then reduce heat and allow to simmer for 90 minutes. Allow to rest briefly out of the water before carving. I used to serve it with gravy, and I thought about trying to make my first Hollandaise sauce, but decided to go with runny egg yolk and the butter I fried them in. Delicious!
Carnivore Cost Calculation:
Organic beef silverside - $17/kg, so my serving cost about $10 (300g cooked). Eggs - $2
Total - $12
Well, this would have been a terribly brief entry, except that I have some more links to share with you...
First up, I recently watched a video recording of a lecture given by Dr. Chris Gardner, a director of Nutrition Studies and an associate professor of medicine at Stanford. He studied four popular diets, determining that (relatively) low-carb diets showed the greatest improvement in all bio-markers. Dr. Eades and Tom Naughton have both published write-ups about the studies, so they make great complementary reads, or will give you a good summary of the lecture if you don't have access to the video below:
To help explain why wearing Vibram Fivefingers is so good for us, I found this intelligent blog post by Anthony Johnson a terribly long time ago, back before my Vibram enthusiasm hadn't been tainted by damaged Sprints. To catch my non-Twitter followers up to speed, I had to engage in an epic struggle in order for the original retailer to respond to my messages of complaint, who then forwarded me to the US supplier, who then sent me back to NY Kayak, who then... And so on until I changed the tone of my emails from polite to, well, you know... Only then did the US supplier pull his finger out and get in touch with a 'local' store in Sydney, who would swap my faulty Sprints for a new pair. This took at least a month. I quickly sent off my shoes (another postage charge on top of the original International shipping of AU$45), and then headed to Thailand. Upon my return, I emailed the Sydney stockist to ask why the shoes hadn't been returned. Well, it turns out that the US guy never bothered to tell Sydney that my Sprints were fuschia, a colour not currently sold in Australia (hence why I imported them), and they had been trying to ring me while I was overseas to ask what colour I would like instead! I promptly sent an angry email to the US supplier, demanding a pair of fuschia Sprints or my money back. The US guy then told NY Kayak to refund my money. So they did - the cost of the shoes, and FIVE dollars shipping! Never mind that I paid FORTY-FIVE bucks and had been screwed around for two months! Sheesh... However, Sydney then contacted me to ask whether I would like them to repair my shoes since they couldn't get their hands on a new pair of fuschia Sprints... I was a little confused, since I thought the shoes would then be sent back to the manufacturer since I had been refunded, but apparently not! So I said yes! They have been fixed today, and Sydney has popped them in the mail - I should have them in my hot little hands early next week! Woohoo! It's been a painful struggle, but in the end I will have what are essentially free, slightly damaged but repaired fuschia Sprints to show off all summer!
I recently discovered Sheryl Canter's Normal Eating Blog, a lovely resource of articles detailing health and nutrition written in highly accessible language. I am planning to spread her post entitled Good Nutrition: Myths & Facts around my work and personal networks since it's such a straight-forward primer to the healthy eating habits I have discovered as well as an explanation of why we should only eat foods that supported us throughout the majority of our evolution. Another great article is her summary of Good Calories, Bad Calories. Sheryl's candour and non-threatening tone makes her writing quite soothing to read - perhaps an appropriate style through which to ease loved ones into deeper thinking and life-altering realisations when it comes to health and well-being.
Here's one for teachers and parents to think about - with all the information out there, what's most crucial and relevant to teach our kids so that they can make healthy choices? Every Kitchen Table has come up with their 10 Things We Should Teach Every Kid about Food. I'm certainly working it into the English curriculum, and am very proud that my Mum has a kitchen garden at her school and that the information I am passing to her about nutrition may be feeding to her tiny 6 & 7 year old students through that program.
Meanwhile, I hung out with a few staff members after school (they drank their booze and ate their chips, I supped on green tea, and no one made fun of me at all), and - like all conversations with me these days - we ended up talking nutrition, sustainability, and health. Apart from encouraging everyone to eat more roo meat (and already a few of the gathering of 15 do, so huzzah), we discussed why it's misguided for the daughter of one teacher to be pursuing the vegetarian lifestyle for ethical reasons. I only commented once that the soy faux-meat products that the daughter has been introducing into her family's dining routines are terribly unhealthy, before focussing the discussion on why it's incorrect to assume vegetarianism is better for the environment. I would love for each and every staff member to be given a copy of The Vegetarian Myth by Lierre Keith (or at least give me one to share around - it's so pricey over here!), but in the meantime I was essentially espousing information like that of Lierre's quote below:
"The environmental movement has taken up the plant-based diet as the way to save the planet and they’re wrong; they are not wrong in their basic values; to repeat justice, compassion, sustainability are the only values that are going to get us towards the world that we need. But a plant-based diet is not the way to do that and that’s because agriculture is an inherently destructive process. It is in fact the most destructive activity that people have done to the planet. Agriculture is carnivorous and what it eats is entire ecosystems; the only hope we have to save this planet is to restore the perennial polycultures, so [the native] grasses, the forests, the wetlands: it has to be restored and we humans have to learn to take our nourishment from inside those living communities instead of imposing our food across them. When we do that imposition, we destroy and what we leave behind us, is Desert. We’ve Got to Stop! The hopeful moment here is that if we took all the agricultural land essentially east of the Mississippi, and we turned it back into grassland, to the perennial polyculture that it desperately wants to be, the US would immediately become a net-carbon sink. That’s how much carbon would be sequestered … and that’s with everyone still driving their SUV’s around all the way to hell! If everyone on the planet did it, if we took all the agricultural land in the world, and we let it return to whatever it used to be (grassland, forest, wetland)? … It would take 9 to 10 years… to sequester ALL of the carbon that’s been released since the beginning of the Industrial Age.”
One of the other topics that arose during the afternoon was whether or not science should be involved in treating infertility, etc... I made the point that a lot of perceived infertility today is linked to diet and yet doctors aren't making those connections - they want to treat the symptoms with drugs and invasive procedures rather than pick up on the lifestyle problems. I was shouted down by one of the science teachers who asserted that infertility is normal and that there are many natural genetic mutations etc that cause infertility. So it was nice to come home to a new post on The Nourished Kitchen that supported my point completely: How the foods you eat are keeping you from getting pregnant. That's not to say that the science teacher was wrong, it's just that I think it's more of an issue that a significant 'symptom' such as infertility is just one in a growing list of 'ailments' that are treated these days, rather than prevented where possible. I felt like pointing out to this teacher, who is also the mother of the vegetarian I mentioned earlier, that soy is a big player in the growing infertility rates, so maybe she shouldn't be feeding it to her three kids if she didn't know whether tofu was fermented or not... But I chose to play nice. :) For now...
Breakfast: Beef mince and bacon, fried in a little butter (I'm all out of home-rendered lard!)
After work, I was whisked off to Crown Casino by the beau for a classic date - dinner and a movie! First up was Fame at Village Gold Class, where we took in a late lunch of wagyu beef burger (no lettuce, relish, or bun!), and a cheese platter of cheddar and double brie.
Then it was off to Rockpool Bar & Grill for a scrumptious steak - a Cape Grim dry-aged grass-fed rib-eye on the bone!
Aw yeah... Best date ever!
Carnivore Cost Calculation:
Beef & bacon - $4. Cinema food and dinner were courtesy of the beau, so I don't want to know how much that cost! :)
I concede, sometimes alliteration is achingly arduous... And a bit of a stretch. IT may also impinge on my coolness factor. A little.
Breakfast: Let's start with the lamb (and a little bacon, mostly for colour)
Late Lunch: a lovely plateful of buttery squid - is there anything finer or simpler to whip up upon arriving home of an afternoon?
Dinner: The other creature from the deep - a luxurious wild Atlantic salmon fillet, with a few anchovies, and a dollop of butter to help balance the protein-heavy nature of today's eats
Meanwhile, I figure it's about time that I share some more research into the carnivore lifestyle, to continue to demonstrate the variety of folks eating all-meat or some variation of Zero Carb as well as the ways in which scientific research continues to prove that our ancestors did happen to know what they were doing.
I'll start with one of the big guns - Dr. Michael R. Eades, whose newest book, The 6-Week Cure for the Middle-Aged Middle has the primal Twitter community (not all of whom are middle-aged) gulping whey protein shakes in the desperate hope of shedding an inch or so from their waists. Hm. While they enjoy their quick-fix (and I do hope it works, for the sake of waistlines and bio-markers everywhere), I'm more interested in what Dr. Eades presents about our pre-shake evolution:
Are We Meat Eaters or Vegetarians: Part I & Part II.
Dr. Eades is also quite active as a micro-blogger through Twitter, sharing cutting-edge research and articles that strike his fancy - not surprisingly, most are studies showing how beneficial low-carb diets are for preventing/curing this or that health issue.
Then there's Dr. Dan whose blog is At Darwin's Table, one of the first blogs I found when I started my process of self-education. He too has done a Meat Eaters vs Vegetarians series, with a Part I and a Part II, and it is the latter that I find particularly interesting. While Dr. Dan doesn't go into sources - presumably in order to keep his posts concise and accessible? - I find his conclusions regarding the necessity for fish oil in the human diet very interesting. I have been taking fish oil every day for a long time now, so I'm glad there's historical precedence supporting that my actions are the right way to go. I also eat salmon regularly, but whenever I tell myself that I should have salmon for dinner, my whole body starts screaming for red meat! Gotta go with those instincts...
Some other blogs that have been inspiring and challenging my knowledge of late (with a recent relevant post to get you started if the blog is new to you):
And as always, check out my Girl Gone Readin' list for some of the most interesting and active health and nutrition blogs if you love keeping up with the science and anecdotal evidence of like-minded individuals as much as I do!
Since Spring has finally sprung, I have a query for any carnivorous readers who have been doing this for longer than I have - whilst I fully intend to live on barbequed meats for the majority of summer (in Australia, we're all carnivores in summer!), do you have any other meal recommendations? I'm thinking cold roast chicken, tuna, crayfish... Any favourites?
One of the most memorable dishes I tried while in Thailand was a watery stew labeled 'Tyrolienne Beef'. Internet resources disagree as to what 'Tyrolienne' actually is, so I went with my sense memory...
Ingredients:
800g diced beef 1 ox kidney 4 chopped tomatoes 1 diced onion 1T black peppercorns 2 garlic cloves 1T chopped basil 3 bay leaves 3 cups water
Method:
Slice or dice kidneys into the same thickness as beef.
Place all ingredients in a saucepan, and heat on stovetop until water begins to boil.
Once stew is boiling, reduce heat and simmer for an hour with the lid off. Enjoy the delicious odours that will permeate your kitchen and home!
After an hour, bring stew back to the boil until liquid is at desired thickness.
Served topped with some fresh basil (I didn't have any more).
Today's eats:
Breakfast: fasted. Amazing that I wasn't tempted to snack on nuts while I made the beau a new batch of grain-free granola - just almonds, walnuts, coconut, sweetener (slowly weaning him off it though...), and egg whites.
Lunch: Tyrolienne Beef & Kidney stew! My first try of kidney... Definitely an acquired taste/texture, but one I'd like to cultivate for the nutritional value of organ meats.
Dinner: Egg yolks from making granola in the morning, scrambled in a little butter.
A container of crab meat has been sitting in my fridge for a long, long time, so today it was time to find a way to use it. I really wasn't sure if just crab meat and egg yolk could turn into anything of note, but would you look at that...
Ingredients:
140g crab meat (that's the size of the containers in Australia at least...) 2 egg yolks 1 teaspoon of preferred herbs/spices (I chose paprika, thyme and fennel seeds) 2T lard
Method:
Mix crab meat, egg yolks and herbs in a bowl.
Heat lard in a large frying pan.
While the fat heats, take tablespoonfuls of crab mixture and roll and press in your hands to make flat, round patties about a centimetre (half and inch) thick.
Place patties in frying pan for a couple of minutes until edges brown and crisp up, then flip carefully with a spatula to brown the other side.
Delicious served warm and plain, and I bet they'd also be lovely with some mayonnaise or topped with a slice of tomato for the primal non-carnivore.
Ahhh, sunny Saturdays. Nothing to do but cook and buy fresh, organic meat. A perfect way to mark the real beginning of my Carnivore Cost Calculations - how much does it cost (in Aussie dollars) per day to live on a diet of organic (where possible) meat?
Breakfast: Two lamb forequarter chops - $4.
Then it was off to the shops in my KSOs, to Belmore Meats. It's still another two weeks before my freezer is restocked by Organic Direct, and we were down to diced beef, and a whole lotta chicken. So I took the opportunity to stock up on the items that are sold at a good price from the organic butcher (whose prices are fixed - no 'specials' here, sadly) - the steaks and such are best left for the monthly shipment.
The haul:
1.35kg leg of lamb @ $16/kg 1.7kg (10) lamb forequarter chops @ $16/kg 1kg corned beef silverside @ $17/kg 400g ox kidney @ $10/kg (can't wait to cook with kidney for the first time!) 1.1kg (10) pure beef sausages @ $18/kg
Total expenditure: $92.50
Meals: 15 or more breakfasts, and 3 dinners for two people with leftovers.
Lunch:Crab cakes, my newest experiment, and an absolute winner! Crab costs about $8-$10 per container, depending on the kind of meat, and two organic eggs run to the order of $1.50 or so, so this meal isn't cheap. Perfect as an appetiser at a luxurious dinner party though.
Dinner: Leg of lamb ($21), rubbed in lard and sprinkled with thyme, rosemary and garlic...
Then popped in the crock pot and cooked in a moderately hot oven for four hours...
The result is tender, perfect meat sitting in its own incredibly delicious gravy! Who needs Gravox when you have this?!
Carnivore Cost Calculation: $4 + $12 + $11 (half the roast, no leftovers this time) = $27. Given that I wasn't actually hungry for lunch and just felt like testing a recipe idea, I only really needed $15 worth of food today. So for those of you who want to watch the purse strings, that's 700g of organic lamb for $15. Nice. Conventional meat would probably be even cheaper, of course. Grok on!
I cut out grains, sugar and starches at the beginning of 2009. I have been keeping a journal as I have progressively shed my bulges and my processed foods. I am aiming to live a clean, primal lifestyle, and I wish to share my eating habits with those who wish to clean up their lifestyle and live happily and healthfully. As the cliche states - if I can do it, so can everybody else.
I cut out grains, sugar and starches at the beginning of 2009. I have been keeping a journal as I have progressively shed my bulges and my processed foods. I am aiming to live a clean, primal lifestyle, and I wish to share my eating habits with those who wish to clean up their lifestyle and live happily and healthfully. As the cliche states - if I can do it, so can everybody else.