Recipe: Easter's Fruit Buns Gone Primal!

(Before I begin, please let me apologise for the SUCKY quality of the following pics - the food was delicious, but the time of night was far from ideal for phone-cam photography :(

For the last two years, there have been many a delicious aroma flooding the air of the staff corridor at school: buttery popcorn, pizza, crepes... Yet, no delicious scent tugged at my nose hairs (...ew) so much as that of freshly toasted Hot Cross Buns! Both years, I have planned to try my hand at a grain-free, sugar-free version, and somehow missed the boat.

Not this year!

Despite my punishing holiday schedule of play rehearsals, holding choir auditions, hosting visitors, supporting friends' Melbourne International Comedy Festival shows, and recovering from a post-term stress flu, I put today aside as a cooking day, making a huge batch of Nola for the beau, and a pile of cauliflower pizzas for tonight's dinner and tomorrow's lunch.

Then - bun time! With bonus biscuits!

Daylight was done by the time these beauties come out of the oven - a sun-struck snap will get pride of place once dawn breaks tomorrow!

Ingredients:

2 cups almond flour
1 cups coconut flour (or just another cup of almond if you don't like coconut)
250g butter, finely diced
2 T cinnamon (or more, if you love it like I do!)
1T nutmeg
Pinch of salt 
6 eggs, separated
1/2 cup maple syrup (optional, but encouraged if you're not using fruit)
3 large apples, peeled and finely diced

Optional - substitute one apple with a cup of juicy fruit of your choice (I would have liked to add sultanas/raisins but the beau's gut doesn't like them)

Method:

1. Preheat oven to 175 deg Celsius. Line muffin pans or grease/paper a slide.

2. In a large bowl, combine almond flour, coconut flour, spices, and butter. Using your hands - yes, do it! - rub the butter into the flour mix until the whole lot resembles fine crumbs. Then, add the maple syrup and egg yolks, and still well. Feel free continue the manual manipulation, but be prepared for stickiness.

3. Add the chopped apple (and other fruit, if using), and stir. Be sure to dice your apple more finely than I did - I had to use my stick blender to make the apple-y dough more consistent, and lost some of that delicious baked-apple crunch.

4. In a separate bowl, whip the egg whites until fluffy. Add gently to the large bowl, and fold until both mixtures are combined.

 5. Softly roll balls of the mixture and place onto greased slide or into muffin pans. For a glossy finish, top with some egg white and/or milk (I didn't bother this time).

BONUS: I decided to save some mixture to see how it would go as biscuits, so I lined another slide , rolled some smaller balls of apple-y dough, and topped a few with 100% cacao buds.

6. After 45 - 60 minutes in the oven (or about 30 - 40 minutes for the biscuits), the buns should be golden brown on the outside and should withstand a prod without feeling at all squidgy. The photo below is a decent indicator of the final product as produced by my temperamental oven, despite the lack of natural light.

Although I'm not at all religious, why pass up the chance to top my baked goodies with chocolate?? For these criss-crosses, I melted some 100% cacao with some butter, then lead the mix across the cooled buns with a knife. Of course, at any other time of year, you can use the excuse of aesthetic merit and drizzle the chocolate stylishly over the fruity goodness.

 

Thus far, they've received the nod of approval from the beau's sister, who is visiting for a few days, and I've enjoyed a couple of the biscuits. The beau will be trying one when he gets home, and I have high hopes...

Serving suggestion - slice the buns in half, then toast in the oven. Top with a generous amount of butter, and some sliced banana or strawberry compote. Of course, some whipped cream never goes amiss! These could easily pass as scones, given the lack of yeast, so they're perfect for High Tea.

Keep your extras in an air-tight container to maximise their lifespan. Don't forget that coconut flour tends to be quite drying, and this effect increases as the buns age.

The Pursuit of Health - No more PCO (for now?)!

Apart from a bout of pneumonia when I was very young, and picking up the annual cold or spatter of gastro, I have always had a rock-solid constitution and have never suffered chronic or acute health woes.

It''s a shame that I've almost always been a bit chunky - having a bit of a gut when you're young promotes rude or judgemental comments from adults (who usually think they're being funny and that the jokes will go over your head), and over-reactions from parents. Having a muffin-top in your teenage years soon develops into self-consciousness and ridicule. Kids can be very cruel.

Society, and the medical industry, say it loud and proud - being overweight is unhealthy.

Really?

I was a champion in the 'throwing' events at school, and was a competitive swimmer - until one of my teachers made a comment about the fact that I wore a towel around my waist to 'cover up' (I just thought my towel was pretty and wanted to show it off). I walked up to 3km from the bus stop to my farm almost every day, with a couple of musical instruments and a heavy bag of books in tow.

(Men who don't like to read about women's issues might want to skip this next bit)

The first real health battle of my adult life is/was my PCO - a reproductive situation which appeared as incomplete ovulation and resulting lack of menstruation.

Given recent events, it would seem that this issue may have stemmed from my pursuit of weight loss.

Just over two months ago, I finished my Yasmin-driven menstrual cycle. I stopped taking my pill, and waited to see if nature would take its course. I have been trialling this method of 'testing' every three months or so for the past year.

What made this trial different? I was back to my original weight (more fat than before, though), and I was enjoying sweet potatoes and fruit regularly. Stress was diminishing as the teaching year tapered away to nothing, and the weather was showing signs of pending loveliness.

Three weeks after I stopped taking Yasmin, my period arrived. With the severity of the cramps and the brevity of menstruation, this clearly was not the doing of the pill. This was back to my high school suffering. Four weeks after that, I had another one. Crampy death pain hell.

Hurrah!

So kids, what to make of this?

Was it the sudden drop of 5kg of body fat in January '09 that threw my body for a loop, and stopped it recovering until that fat has been restored? I have read many times that a girl's weight during puberty sets the normality level for her reproductive system, and swings this way or that in weight or body composition can confuse said system...

Was it the fact that I cut carbs to 20g per day, except for Christmas '09 and much of '10? Was running on ketones insufficient to adequately feed all systems in my body?

Was I failing to meet my caloric needs? We can scrub this one since during my carnivore experiments I ate far beyond my caloric needs, although the ketone question may come back into play here.

Was it the combination of drugs - BCP and another nerve-repairer like DepTran? This is possible if the problem started pre-2009 but was masked by the pill - but then why weren't other 'tests' successful?

The only way to know is to try self-experimentation and to gather the experiences of others with PCO, but this would not be enough to establish a cause. The medical profession still has no idea what causes PCO. I would have been quick to blame environmental factors in the past, but the return of ovulation defies this hypothesis.

Nevertheless, I wanted to put this bit of intimate detail into the blogosphere since the PCO post is the most visited of my posts, and since my situation is reversed, I want to let fellow sufferers know that there is hope!

Additionally, although PCOS is related in some way to insulin resistance, and shows some improvement when treated with a low-carb diet, there's a chance that non-PCOS PCO could actually be caused or impacted upon by a low-carb diet. I would be interested to hear from others who try or have tried tweaking their diets and what results they've seen.

But first, I will be trying the harder of the possible 'causes' of PCO to see whether my periods cease - lose fat. Since I'm eating paleo foods at least 90% of the time (including sweet potato, but not normal potato, rice, or dark chocolate), it's easy for me to stick to my new 'normal' eating plan. I don't think about it much, but I fast all day on work days since I'm not usually hungry and don't have time to futz in the kitchen or sit in the staffroom and watch colleagues eat garbage whilst they talk about Weight Watchers..! I eat something (often mashed sweet potato and butter) when I get home, and then have dinner with the beau. Ultimately, I'm trying to ignore food until hunger kicks in, and this will be made easier when fruit season finishes! I haven't been eating enough meat either, with this hot weather keeping me away from my usual home in the kitchen. I'm sure you will have heard about the manic weather in Australia of late - massive flooding, cyclones, heat waves... Good times! The hot weather is also partly to blame for the lack of posts - the computer room is usually the hottest place in this house, and the laptop is too hot to have on one's lap too long. The other reason for the quiet period was because I was waiting for my, er, period so that I could write this post!

With this year's school play about to begin rehearsals, I need time flexibility. Fasting works elegantly for me, and now that the house is no longer a giant sauna I will be capitalising on the fast by working out before dinner. Rather than paying for my belly dancing and circuit classes, I'll be looking for shorter, harder workouts like the Tabata training I played with last year, though my fatty misery meant I didn't enjoy the experiences, thus becoming unsustainable. I'm in a better state of mind now, though you couldn't pay me to get on the scales! I received a big discount on some Zumba classes across town, so that will become my 'play' time. I know that exercise is not enough to cause fat loss, but I'm hoping that physical stimulation will signal to my brain that it should crave healthy food and discourage over-eating since excess with be-labour my digestive process and slow me down!

Mission: Retain reproductive health. Encourage my body to physically reflect the healthy state it is in. Continue to relax my attitude toward my excess chub. Eat really well. Continue to use this blog as a feeder into the primal community, since clearly my experiences are not unique.

Finally, I recently began to doubt whether I really wanted to be a teacher, given the prospect of teaching a subject I'm not that interested in, and not getting much support for the programs I have started and continue to run alone for very little monetary and time compensation.

Today was day four with students back at school.

I knew by the middle of day one that I was where I was meant to be.

I was born to be a teacher, I love students, I love my subjects, I love my relatively short but intense work day, and I love the fact that I can give extra experiences to my students by means of running plays and so on even if I don't get that much in return! Let's face it, I'm a giver.

For myself, I have my dancing, cooking, jewellery-making, reading, and entertainment pursuits. This blog helps me to get my ideas in order and keep my recipes at hand, but it's really here for the rest of you, whether you have fellow health-seekers in your social circle or only online. I am pleasantly surprised by positive comments, and shake off the negative ones, but could quite happily run this blog without a comment section since I write it like a book, not as a beacon of attention. I consider comments as the commenter's book, sharing ideas as much with fellow readers as with me. Read and write on, lovely visitors - your experiences and perspectives have just as much a chance of inspiring someone to health success as my posts. :)

FOOD PORN TIME!

Oh hey, ten litres of awesome coconut oil, sup? (Let's just ignore for the moment that I actually ordered ten 1L containers, and that nui have ignored all my emails requesting empty containers to 'decant' the oil into, since it was bought to give to friends & family... Nui = crapness. Their oil's okay, but they won't be getting any more of my money.)

Bacon & veggie frittata!!

The leftovers

Homemade beef burgers cooked on the BBQ, and summery salad.

I made sushi! Rice is for lame-o's.

Typical dinner - hunk of meat (chicken), mashed sweet potato, assorted green veg. Yum!

See above, though with tomato instead of sweet potato. Obviously was too hot to be boiling things that night!

Happy February!

Recipe: Mediterranean Chicken Balls!

The free-range chicken mince that my supplier sells is, without exception, too low in fat to really produce my chunky chicken burgers with an adequate moisture level.  I have been toying with ways around this - adding fat simply renders out during cooking, extra egg tends to escape as well, and adding coconut or almond flour changes the taste too much. The solution? More (finely processed) veggies!

Ingredients (four servings):

500g ground chicken
3 or 4 eggs
5 spring onions
1/2 red capsicum (bell pepper)
1 tomato
10 asparagus spears
1 cup shredded cabbage
Optional: fennel (out of season here), bacon, a handful of basil, thyme, or lemon sage, a splash of lime juice, paprika, salt & pepper as desired.

Method:

1.  Preheat oven (or grill) to 150 deg C. If using an oven, line a baking tray or two with baking paper.

2. Prepare your veggies by washing and then processing with a food processor. You could also chop them extremely finely, if you have the will and elbow grease!

3. Combine veggies with eggs and meat in a large bowl, and stir until thoroughly combined.

4.  Grabbing small handful of mixture, roll into balls (or grab larger handfuls if you want to make patties/burgers, especially if grilling).

5. Place in oven/grill and cook until the centre of the ball/patty is thoroughly cooked. This took about 5 minutes on my grill, and 20 minutes in the oven.

Serve as is, or in a lettuce leaf, topped with cheese or tomato chutney, etc. Sorry for the lack of finished-product photo - we were too hungry to wait!

Dr. Briffa's Christmas List

I am catching up on blog reading after taking a Christmas break to my parents' farm. I have a few things to post about, when I'm done updating my jewellery store, but this particular post by Dr. Briffa was too perfect a reminder of the knowledge we should take into a happy and healthy new year:

1.     For weight loss, neither ‘eating less’ nor ‘exercising more’ appears to work particularly well in the long term. While the calorie-principle has underpinned weight loss advice for some decades, its application in the real world has, generally speaking, been a crashing failure.

2.     Low-fat diets are not effective, overall, for weight loss either (despite what most doctors, dieticians and health agencies would have us believe).

3.     Low-carbohydrate diets generally outperform low-fat diets for weight loss, and also lead to greater improvements in a number of disease markers including triglyceride levels, blood sugar levels, blood pressure and measures of inflammation.

4.     Low-carb diets have the potential to improve blood sugar control in diabetics, and often lead to much lower requirements for medication, and quite-often, the ability to dispence with medication altogether.

5.     Lower-carb diets tend to be more satisfying than higher-carb, low-fat ones, which means individuals quite naturally tend to eat less (sometimes a lot less) without hunger.

6.     There is no good evidence that saturated fat (found, for example, in meat and dairy products) causes heart disease.

7.     There is no good evidence that eating less saturated fat has benefits for health.

8.     There is no good evidence that taking dietary steps to reduce cholesterol has broad benefits for health.

9.     There is no good evidence that margarine is healthier than butter (and at least some evidence exists which suggests quite the reverse).

10.  There is no good evidence that artificial sweeteners such as aspartame promote weight loss, and considerable evidence exists which suggests they have the potential for adverse effects on health.

11.  There is no good evidence that insoluble fibre (e.g. bran) has benefits for health.

12.  Fructose is not a ‘healthy sugar’, and despite the fact that it does not raise blood sugar levels in the short term, it nonetheless has the capacity to damage health.

13.  The consumption of dairy products is not required for good bone health (we did fine without it for over 2 million years, by the way).

14.  Not all of the nutritional information we get is in our best interests, and is often driven by a motivation for profit. That’s one of the reasons why, some of the time, there can be a yawning abyss between what we’ve been told repeatedly for decades and the truth of the matter as revealed in the science.

If I hear anyone I love talking about their weight-loss resolutions, I know where I'll be sending them.

Fall-back Favourites: Fried Cauliflower Rice

When I'm pressed for time, I have a range of meals that I make without having to think about the details. Chop chop and in the pot - curries, stir-fries, etc. So in my new series of Fall-back Favourites, I will note the details of some of these recipes where measurements are open to interpretation, and effort is minimised. Check out the first two recipes in this series - Roast Leg of Lamb  & Stuffed Capsicum (Peppers)

I was grilling some salmon a few nights ago, and was out of cabbage, so could not make my usually fatty side dish of sautéed veggies. I improvised with the foods I had in the fridge, and  came up with a really tasty way of making fried cauliflower rice, the perfect accompaniment to seafood dishes or spiced meat mains that could do well paired with absorbent sides.

Ingredients:

Cauliflower, riced in a food processor (one head feeds at least four people)
Other vegetables - I used spring onion, capsicum, carrot, and broccolini
Fats for frying - I used bacon grease and coconut oil
Eggs - one or two per person
Optional - during step 2, add herbs such as coriander, and/or add a splash or two of sesame oil or soy sauce.

Method:

1. Heat fat in a large frying pan.

2. Add veggies, and sauté gently.

3. When veggies are done, remove from pan, and set aside. Keep warm.

4. Add eggs to the pan and scramble until cooked well.

Serve fried cauliflower rice topped with egg.

If you want the rice to be the main meal, rather than a side, try adding crispy bacon or diced chicken.

Here's the beau's meal, with the rice and eggs serving as a base for a delicious salmon fillet.

Fall-back Favourites: Stuffed Capsicum (Peppers)

When I'm pressed for time, I have a range of meals that I make without having to think about the details. Chop chop and in the pot - curries, stir-fries, etc. So in my new series of Fall-back Favourites, I will note the details of some of these recipes where measurements are open to interpretation, and effort is minimised. Check out the first recipe in this series - Roast Leg of Lamb

This is a fantastic way to glam up some leftovers in a tasty capsicum (or what Americans call bell peppers). Whatever meat and veg you have in the fridge will work - chicken and chives, beef and broccoli, lamb and leeks... You name it! Here's a breakdown of the last batch I made:

Ingredients: 

Bacon grease or coconut oil, for frying
Diced vegetables - I used spring onions, red onion, and tomato.
Meat - I used sliced ham
Eggs - one per capsicum
Capsicum/peppers - one per person

Method:

1. Preheat oven to moderate (150 deg C).

2. Slice tops off capsicum, and remove all seeds. Put the tops aside, and sit the capsicum on a tray.

3. In a frying pan over moderate heat, melt oils and add onions. Sauté until cooked through.

4. Add tomatoes and meat. Once they are slightly cooked, add eggs and scramble until all ingredients are cooked.

5. Scoop frying pan mixture into the capsicum, sharing the mixture evenly between the peppers. Replace capsicum tops.

6. Place pan in oven and bake until capsicum is starting to brown. Top with cheese if you like.

Serve carefully, as most capsicum don't like to stand upright and will spill their guts if toppled. If your capsicum is particularly uneven, wrap the base in aluminium foil and create a steady base.

This meal is an absolute favourite of ours - I love the adaptability, and the beau is obsessed with the flavours. In terms of vegetable-based foods, this is second only to cauliflower pizza in my book!

Fall-back Favourites: Roast Leg of Lamb

When I'm pressed for time, I have a range of meals that I make without having to think about the details. Chop chop and in the pot - curries, stir-fries, etc. So in my new series of Fall-back Favourites, I will note the details of some of these recipes where measurements are open to interpretation, and effort is minimised.

First up, a classic leg of lamb. As an Australian, I take pride in my preparation of lamb, and now that my kitchen is equipped with excellent crock pots, fats and spices, my roasts are unbelievably tasty, even without using sauces or elaborate dressing techniques.

Secret ingredient: organic, grass-fed lamb! I imagine that grain-fed/finished lamb needs quite a lot of dressing up to mask the flavour of rank chemicals and tasteless meat, but pure lamb, fresh from Farmer Dan's farm is the pivotal ingredient. The preparation and cooking technique is to enhance the flavour, not change or mask it.

You will also need: coconut oil, bacon grease or other animal fat, dried or fresh rosemary, dried basil, fresh or dried garlic, salt.


Method:

1. Pre-heat your oven to moderate (150 deg C).

2. Place leg of lamb in a pot with a lid - it needs to be big enough to house the lamb comfortably, with space all around the leg.

3. Melt your fats, and combine with the herbs and spices.

4. Rub your seasoning all over the lamb, including the underside and under any flaps of loose fat. If you want to cut strips across the fat so that the seasoning reaches the meat, you may. I don't bother when preparing grass-fed meat.

5. Cover pot and place in oven for a couple of hours. You can leave it for longer if you need to - just lower the temperature to 100 deg C.

6. For the last ten minutes, remove the lid and raise heat to 200 deg C so that the fat on the roast sizzles and crisps.

7. Remove from oven and allow the roast to rest for 10 minutes in the pot, before removing roast and placing on a wooden board. Be ready for the juices - catch them if you can.

8. Carve and serve the meat, drizzling with fats and seasoning left in the pot. You could add some cauliflower rice to the pot to soak up the juice, but this is too fiddly for my fall-back plans.

Et voila!

Unwound

The holidays are here! After many long weeks of hard work, with the last few weeks spent furiously marking exams, writing reports, and making sure everything was all set for next year, my colleagues added a new layer to that stress by inventing an 'office/row of desks decoration competition'! It proved to be a wonderful bonding exercise, since for most of the year the people in my row are too busy to socialise, and reminded me that very little of our lives and choices are in a vaccuum - there is almost always a support system there, waiting for your call of help. It was all hands on deck for the last week of term, following my theme of 'recyclable & hand made White Christmas', building a tree out of paper, wreaths out of old plastic bags, putting cellophane on the windows, making snowmen out of wire and cotton wool, and grabbing shredded paper to scatter on the ground to look like snow. Other rows/offices let one or two people do all the work, spending lots of money at fabric and decoration stores, and some didn't bother to do much at all.

My row won! We celebrated as a team, and now have the newly-generated inaugural banner hanging at the end of our row, to remind us throughout 2011 how we worked together to create something beautiful and very personal.

Now that the working year has finished for me, and doesn't start up again until February, I can return my attention to participating in my other tribe - the paleo/primal community. I have been reading all of my blog and news feeds throughout the busy year, but have given very little back of late. I intend to make the most of my Summer outside and getting lots of sun, air, and activity, but at the moment it is SNOWING in parts of Victoria, suggesting we will have the cool festive season of 2006. Boo! I'm already betting that we won't get the scorching hot weather until school resumes in Feb and we're stuck in classrooms with piddly little fans or broken air conditioning. Bleeeeurgh... Just give me a few weeks of perfect weather in January, please?

So, how's the primal living going, Jezwyn? Well, I'm glad you asked. I was continuing my experiment of having a few carby days a week, enjoying mashed sweet potato and lots of berries. However, as of today I'm cutting those foods out again for a while, as I was starting to crave sweet foods almost constantly. Now that I'll be home most days (going out at night, usually, since the beau only gets one week off work), the pull to grab tomatoes and carrots out of the fridge for constant snacking is dangerous, so I'm going to start monitoring carbs again to see if that kills the cravings. I suspect higher carb days (especially starchy carbs) are quite good for me physiologically, but perhaps they do mess with my blood glucose/insulin too much and affect me psychologically. With Christmas lunches and dinners coming up, I don't want to be falling face-first into the Fruit & Nut balls I've been asked to make! I also wanted to try making a lower-GL dessert in the realm of fruit puddings to share at Christmas, but I would have to be tasting the recipes as I played, so that one will have to wait until next year too.

So, although it'll be hard to fast since I'll have few distractions, I will be eating more meat (yay for Christmas!), eggs, and fats, plus leafy greens which I will track to be sure I'm not going to be breaking out of ketosis too much. I've found myself turned off from meat a bit lately, but hopefully the variety of roasts and seafood that are synonymous with this time of year will help shake that feeling. I'm usually fine once the food is ready to eat, but getting uncooked beef and lamb out of the freezer doesn't inspire me at all. Weird...

My belly dancing class is on a break as well, with no classes for two weeks, so I'm looking at the other group fitness classes to go and play in. They have circuit training, so I think that's probably a good choice since I could use some strength work and a bit of cardio given I'm not walking/riding to school every day nor lugging around great tubs of books.

Blatant plug: As a stress-release activity in the past few weeks, and now as a creative outlet to keep me inspired during the holidays, I have been making jewellery again. I love getting feedback on my designs, so if you like jewellery you can look at my Facebook Page where about 150 of my pieces are currently visible in albums, or you can look at my Zibbet store, although I can only list 50 items at a time. I feel a bit dirty mentioning it here, but jewellery making has been a big part of my life of late, and is the main reason I haven't been updating this blog as much as I'd like. It's also a great way to stay busy whilst trying to ignore carb cravings! ;)

I have a couple of recipes that I've been waiting to share with you, so I'll end this post with a little comic strip that summarises so neatly the problems the world is faced with in terms of food:

Get Real!

The most artificial things I have done in the past year (other than flying halfway around the world) have been to dye my hair (as a post-show mood booster), and get a spray tan for Halloween. Naturally, now that the red I put through my hair has all but faded, leaving me with a warmer brown tipped with lighter streaks from sun bathing, and that my fake tan has faded but my real summer tan has started to show, I am constantly being asked whether I've had my hair done (often 'have you had a haircut?' which intrigues me...) and being told I look really nice and healthy! Message received world - stick to what evolution gave me.

It makes sense for my real food diet and grounded approach to living be reflected in how I look; however, hippy fashions really don't suit my curves. so I guess I'll have to stick to fuelling my addiction to curvy-friendly and feminine couture. Ah well... Alannah Hill herself looks about as far from realistic as you can find wandering the streets these days, but this cavegirl needs her frills!

As for the no-frills aspects of my life, I have been asked via comments and emails to share the details of my way of eating, especially since I'm finding my health improve in leaps and bounds now that the DepTran repercussions seem to finally have been eradicated from my system. I can't quantify how amazing it is to be rid of the psychological drive to eat, to feel satisfied by food again, and to see other improvements such as skin clarity, better sleep, tolerance of heat and cold, and insusceptibility to the colds and other bugs going around. I attribute this restoration of health to the long process of ridding the body of detrimental substances, since I've seen gradual improvements every week since the low points mid-year. However, that in itself isn't enough to start driving fat loss once more, so that achievement I can attribute to my current lifestyle.

Let me break it down:

I don't have 'rules' anymore, but instead make decisions based on a consolidated understanding of my body and evolutionary science and medicine.

Obviously, processed foods including grains, sugars, and vegetable oils are permanently off the menu.

However, now that the weather is getting better and I'm getting out more and being more active in general, I am finding that I can tolerate real carbs more and more with repeated exposure. At the moment, I can eat up to 150g carbs (including fibre) without significant weight gain afterward. I may hold a little extra water if many of those grams came from fructose, but it leaves my body again after a couple of days.

My exposure method had mostly been to eat sweet potato (mashed with butter and nutmeg - yum!!) with dinner on the weekend (Saturday, usually), and eat some berries one or two times a week or so. I eat copious amounts of vegetables - I've overdone it a couple of times, eating a kilogram of veggies over the course of a couple of hours! Not advised... - usually sautéed in butter. Cabbage and zucchini are still my favourites, adding in asparagus, spring onions, and leafy greens like spinach and bok choi when the mood strikes me. I count these carbs (usually around the 30 - 60g per day mark, though I log at the end of the day) even though other experts suggest that veggie carbs don't really count.

Breakfast of primal royalty!

Essentially, this is my 'Keep It Real' Diet - I eat what I feel like eating, when I feel like eating it, and apply logic to my impulses to explain why I might be drawn toward one meal and not another. Sometimes my choices are made for me - today is 'fresh wild-caught salmon day' at my butcher's, so sashimi was a done deal for dinner:

...with a big bowl of sautéed veggies and bacon, of course.

Sometimes I have to force myself to eat whatever's in the fridge - I'm still disinclined to eat beef, even though I love rare steak once it's in my mouth, but whilst I stand in front of the fridge it's the last thing I want. And if I find myself getting to excited by the prospect of sweet potato mash (and why wouldn't I be?) I stop and check whether the excitement is coming from my taste bus or from the dark place in my brain that wants to ride a sugar rush. The temptation of berries often fails this little test, but sweet potato hasn't messed with my blood sugar very much at all. My post-carb test is to have a shower early the next morning - I tend to feel nauseated and light-headed if I've eaten too many carbs the night before, suggesting blood glucose imbalance. It's worrying in the pre-diabetes sense, but it's also a reminder why I keep my carbs low - no, it's not because I'm following the advice of the latest fad diet guru, but because my body has been damaged from years of carb abuse. I now look younger and healthier than I have since my childhood, even though I'm almost as curvy as I ever was. It's not a coincidence, and I listen attentively whenever my body has something to say.

Lately, it's mostly been saying "Seriously, isn't 500g of sautéed cabbage enough?? You're a bloody slave-driver! You'll be sorry..."

Even minced beef works in the pan with my veggies - so much broccolini!

So here's a run-down of my usual intake rhythm (not an eating plan but a reflection on what I've been naturally doing):

Monday - Friday (working days): Fast til I get home (somewhere between 4pm and 6pm usually), unless calories have been a little low, in which case eat bacon for breakfast and hoard the drippings for veggies later! Dinner: usually meat with a hefty side of sautéed veggies. Calories and carbs are variable - I eat to appetite.

Sautéed bacon and veggies, topped with runny fried eggs

Veggies, mushrooms, and rare porterhouse steak

Weekend: breakfast/lunch and dinner, sometimes separated into three distinct meals. One lunch or dinner will include sweet potato mash or similar starch, and fruit and nuts are free game.

Sweet potato mash must always be eaten by using crispy bacon as the spoon. Always.

I tend to hit a bit of ketosis during my fasted days, of course, yet I'm keeping my metabolic bases covered by cycling carbs all over the town, and not letting my calories find a routine. Sometimes I feel like I've eaten too much, but I never leave myself hungry. This, in turn, is keeping my cortisol in check, as reflected by my sleep habits, skin, and overall mood.

The only victim of this process has been my digestion - hitting it with larger, veggie-heavy meals has been tricky at times, but it is adjusting very well. Now that the weather is heating up, I've found it hard to keep my liquids up given I already inhale water all day, but now have to additionally compensate for water lost through sweat and digestion 'hurdles'. My water bottle is a permanent fixture in my hand or bag, and now that I teach only two classes (pared down from my usual six thanks to the seniors finishing up this week), I'm never far from the filtered water in the staffroom. You know you're keeping it real when your 'naughty treat' is chilled filtered water! With a violent Aussie summer approaching, it doesn't stay chilly in my Sigg bottle for long...

So, on the carbs front, it has been great to build up my tolerance again, which I suspect couldn't have been done without a long healing period between early 2009 and now. I am in touch with primal peeps on Twitter who are still in my old boat - they touch one gram of carbohydrate over their 20g threshold, and their weight jumps up. Even when I was lapping desperately at the Gary Taubes pool of information, I thought it couldn't be healthy to be that impacted by such a subtle sway in diet - yet I proved it to myself again and again. As I have now shown, a healthy(-er) body should be able to deal with all sorts of diet and lifestyle changes without immediate, negative consequences. I still feel best on a meat-only diet, and I'll happily throw in a meat-only day into the mix whenever it's convenient, but it's good to know that I can be more flexible.

On a psychological note, I know that I enjoy the flavour of food more when I've put effort into its production. This is a known psychological behaviour - we prefer anything we had to work for. Rodent studies have shown mice who have to work harder and harder to get sweet water (hello carbs) end up preferring that flavour to other sugared waters once all are freely available. People who learn how to do origami end up rating their own works as highly as they do origami made by experts. t makes sense from the evolutionary perspective - we form attachment to the fruits of our labour, we enjoy the food we have laboriously hunted or foraged for, we care for our children and will protect them before looking after our own well-being, etc. So, with this in mind, my enjoyment of the vegetables I prepare potentially exceeds that of the meat I slap onto the grill or toss into the oven because my brain doesn't register the meat as 'something I had to work for'. The combination of real food and real effort results in real enjoyment - I savour both aspects of my typical meat & veg meals because, overall, it took me time and effort to prepare and cook. The physiology and the psychology are both piqued and I am left deeply satisfied.

It seems like I've put a heap of time and effort into organising what I should eat, when and why to maximise my fat loss, but really everything has fallen together with a bit of sensibility, hormonal balance, and a willingness to fast frequently. Reading the work of blogger like Chris Masterjohn, Martin Berkhan, Matt Stone, and others who don't follow the typical paleo WOE has been interesting, and has given me new ideas to play with. Many of their ideas won't work for my body and lifestyle, but their articles have resulted in a follow-the-yellow-brick-road perusal of all sorts of other information online, tweaking my understanding here, and pushing my self-reflection there. Stephan Guyenet's message hits home more and more for me: neither carbs, fat, nor saturated fat make you fat, but rather modern, refined, industrial foods bring in the diseases of modern civilization.

One caveat - despite my increasing tolerance of carbs and understanding of the incredibly wide range of evolutionary diet components humans have evolved upon, I still can't handle it when the middle-aged ladies in the aisle of desks next to mine cluck at lunchtime about their Weight Watchers canned tuna and yoghurt. Vom. Get real, ladies. I've yet to snap and rant at them about the idiocy of their processed & calorically-restricted diet, and experiences like that of Primal Muse sure help me bite my tongue for just one more day...

One final note of what's real in my like - realty. Ooh, see what I did there? Yes, I'm house hunting, hoping to buy my first home, so the beau and I have been trekking around our neighbourhood, falling in love with some gorgeous modern townhouses and snarling in disgust at the state of older, uglier homes carrying the same price tag! We're lucky in that we have quite a bit of dosh with which to service a loan, so we're not having too much trouble finding aesthetically pleasing places that are still in walking/cycling distance from my work, have a yard for the animals we'll get, are near parks so the dog(s) can go for a run, don't need renovating (neither of us are patient enough for such things), and can fit all of our amassed frippery (piano, huge couch, big dining table... Yikes!) I'm in charge of vetting online properties, organising our inspection schedule, whilst the beau has been lining up meetings with financial planners and agents. The bureaucracy is horrible and so unreal. So much fuss over which bit of money goes where and why and crunching figures and planning loans and sorting out insurance and BLAH! The beau is in London right now to collect some massive geek prize for being the best geek or whatever, so that leaves little non-driver me to bus/ride/walk around the nearby suburbs all day on Saturday, trying to get to properties whilst they're open for inspection. It should be interesting... Just give me a sunny day, okay?

Forecast for Saturday

Partly cloudy. Winds northwest to southwesterly averaging up to 20 km/h tending southeast to southwesterly up to 25 km/h during the afternoon.

City Centre   Partly cloudy.   Min  9   Max   23

Hrmph.

(Aren't you glad I didn't say 'For real?!')

Bits & Pieces

Food!

I'm still fasting til dinner most work days, with a couple of low calorie days and some high calorie days, and things are going really well! Here are some of the nourishing dinners propelling my metabolism and nutrition as I focus on trimming down and improving my belly dancing:

Tangy Italian Chicken in Bacon

Chicken drumsticks, roasted whilst woven with bacon, served with a sauté of green cabbage, zucchini, green capsicum, carrot, and fresh basil.

Cauliflower Pizza

More cauli pizza, with grilled salmon and a typical veggie sauté.

Jonathan's chipollatas, scrambled eggs, and a veggie sauté.

Chunky Chicken Burger, a hard boiled egg, beetroot, and veggie sauté.

Beef pocket steak, and veggie sauté.

Halloween!

I dressed the beau as a Hulk Hogan-esque 80's wrestler, complete with artificial abs and injuries! I really should have been a stage make-up artist, considering the number of people who were convinced by the gash and the six-pack! ;)

It wouldn't be fair to post a shot of the beau without also putting my own goth-ish belly dancing costume up for speculation! Baring my less-than-twiglet-esque midriff took some serious, er, guts... But thankfully everyone was pretty much distracted by my bust! Note the wig and the fake tan - now that's commitment! 

 Shoes!

I've officially worn through my VFF KSOs! Pretty happy with the location of the dull zone too - hip hip hooray for VFFs! What's more, the number of stockists in Australia apparently exploded in the past year, and one in Melbourne is having a MASSIVE 60% off sale, bringing all styles down under the $100 mark! That's a big change from the $200+ I would have been paying before, or $150 if I shipped from the US again... Woohoo!

Glad it's fine weather right now, since this tiny patch of exposed fabric will have to keep me going for another few weeks!

Pets!

The beetroot that I served myself in a meal posted above was pretty tasteless (and not organic, which I found out later, explaining everything...) so I fed the raw leftovers to the guinea pigs. Now, from certain angles, Toffee's beet-fest was only minimally noticeable, but from others...

RAARGHH!! I VAMPYRE!! IMMA EAT CHU!!!!

Jiggle jiggle!

Greetings primal peeps! A spot of meta-blogging: In less than a week, my Year 12s sit their final exam, and there will be a whoosh of released anxiety and spare time flooding my way! I can't wait! I haven't been able to spend nearly as much time as I'd like on this blog since I've been getting home quite late most nights and wanting to crash, or I've been out, savouring the gorgeous sunshine as much as possible before finally capitulating to the army of mosquitoes and hiding indoors... and then crashing. So much crashing. One particularly memorable crash occurred in the hammock very recently - the hoards of twilight bugs very thoroughly savaged the top of my right foot before I finally came to once more. Thankfully, the book I had been reading was flopped across my face, so I was protected from facial swelling and subsequent blotchy goodness.

Anyway, I have been thinking about how my blog fits into the paleo blogosphere of late. I have been somewhat disheartened by the wrenching turn some blogs have made from being personal journals with scientific curiosities being discussed, to blatant agenda-pushers in the guise of pursuing further scientific knowledge. Some have always been unashamedly biased - I read Charles Washington's ZIOH blog with the expectation of one-eyed discussion of current findings/reports - but some are masked, giving the illusion of scientific objectivity whilst conveniently ignoring other possible understandings or research. Bleh. So even though I would love to include documentation of the interesting things I read about health and nutrition, and my own opinion on scientific research, I would hate to annoy readers the way other blogs do me. Thus, I will continue to share my online findings via Google reader (check the right-hand navigation bar for current shares and how to subscribe), and update my Show Me The Science page as necessity dictates.

In the meantime, I am going to continue my blog in the opposite direction - it will continue to be a personal documentation of my journey, my culinary experimentation, and other such things. So nothing will change, except perhaps the frequency of posts now that things are winding down and days are getting longer and hotter! End of meta-blogging.

With the sun peeping out for increasingly long periods during the day, I have been getting as much sun as I can, and building up a nice tan (read: blood serum D level). I'm still supplementing D on the days when I remember to supplement, and am also taking fish oil, Mark Sisson's multi (til I run out), potassium & iodine, magnesium, and a pro-biotic (since it's in the fridge anyway..). I am taking care to cover my bases there since I've been playing around with fasting quite a bit of late, and am also pushing for fat loss and muscle gain.

Fat loss: I began documenting my weight at the start of the month, after a few weeks of experimenting with alternating between high carb / low carb / zero carb / fasting. Interestingly, I didn't find much of a change in energy level during the experimental phases - no boosts after a dinner of sweet potato or a snack of fruit, no drops during 24 hour fasts... I also noted that my weight was rock steady throughout, even though I was eating now lower than my BMR required, and sometimes significantly more. This suggested to me that perhaps my physiology had finally achieved homeostasis post-hormonal imbalance & carb resistance acclimatisation (translation - my body was back to normal after DepTran screwed up my hormones and (maybe) long-term low-carbing left my body unable to deal with the intake of more than a few carbs). Before, I was highly affected whenever I would vary my food and activity choices, and my weight fluctuated wildly. It's significant to note that the weight where my body decided it was happy to stay was two kilograms more than my pre-primal weight. According to modern theory, this can be attributed to caloric restriction - although I often ate quite a bit of food, especially when I followed a meat-only diet, I suspect that overall I was eating a lot less than I did in the past. Metabolic studies would expect that any diet is going to have the long-term result of increased belly fat, so it looks like my results fit this description even if other factors drove the gain. For this reason, I'm trying to be very careful about monitoring my eating patterns.

Although I am not following a particular regime, here's a loose description of what I am doing to encourage fat loss without the rebound effect described above:

I am fasting quite regularly - at the moment, this is more a time conservation activity, since if I don't have to organise breakfast, let alone lunch, I can just get about my business. I usually have something to eat once I arrive home, and have a big dinner. Whilst the beau was overseas, this was wonderfully freeing - I would eat what I wanted, when I wanted it, rather than have to worry about making sure he ate his dinner early enough. I recently read about Martin Berkhan's 'Leangains Diet', which supports my typical work-day fasting habit.

To avoid my body adjusting to a caloric intake standard or building upon my carb resistance, I include some sweet potato or fruit at least once a week - usually on the weekend. I ensure my caloric intake varies every few days, whilst making sure my overall average is at or slightly below my BMR.

Most days I eat just meat and vegetables, favouring my preferred preparation method: heat a big pan, put fat in pan, put meat in pan, fill rest of pan with veggies, serve when everything is cooked to taste, and sprinkle with iodised salt! Even though this is leaving me with fewer and fewer opportunities to construct exciting new recipes, it's making me really happy! All I use is a knife, a chopping board, and my gigantic cast-iron frying pan, so washing up is a breeze (and I don't even bother to wash up unless I've used raw meat).

I'm eating a LOT of vegetables - most days I easily clear the 500g mark, and sometimes I hit a full kilo of veg if I've eaten two or more meals! The incredible (to me) aspect is that even with all that plant matter, I still rarely clear more than 30g net carb per day! When I think of how timid I was back in the low-carb days pre-primal, serving myself only one floret of broccoli, and running away from carrots, I want to slap myself! I love veggies, and now that my system seems to be healed, I don't notice any digestive issues whatsoever - no bloat, no farting (not even after I eat cauliflower and broccoli!), and no sluggishness. I don't regret my meat-only days - they would not have adversely affected my carb resistance any more than my more varied 20g carb days did - but it's still good to discover that I can incorporate vegetables into my diet without sacrifices the digestive benefits of being carnivorous. Whether the few sugars from plant foods are speeding up my eventual aging or not, there's no way to tell, but I still know that I'm better off than the average SAD person, and have a slightly better chance of finding suitable foods at functions and outings. I also note that consuming slightly less meat per days could have an impact on sustainability, but given the fact that I eat more veggies by weight than I would be eating meat, I'm not sure which way that impact leans. I also know I'm not saving any moolah in the process, since I buy organic veggies 80% of the time (I relax when it comes to low-pesticide varieties of veg that are grown locally and sold in supermarkets or conventional groceries). The veggies are still primarily a tasty way to transport added fats, but the volume also helps to fill me up.

As noted, I add in some fruits and maybe sweet potato and other starchier roots weekly, and if I'm feeling particularly underfed I'll enjoy some nuts. I still have a bit of a problem with nuts being hyperphagic for me - I actually noted a flash of desperate 'eat more nuts!' desire after finishing a bite of walnut last night! Not good... Plus, my gut doesn't deal with nut binges very well, so if I can't happily control my portions, it's better if I avoid them. Once I post this, I'll be heading to the kitchen to use up the current nut stash in a batch of Nola, using the subsequent leftover egg-yolks as an addition to dinner.

Since the start of October, I have lost 4kg, with my scales reporting a decrease in fat percentage. The figure on the scales does tend to bounce around, but I monitor my flab by feel - I've already been through once phase of jiggliness/shedding, and am onto phase two. Unfortunately, tomorrow is a friend's Halloween party, and I was planning to go as a gothic bellydancer with exposed midriff, but right now my gut is as wobbly as a skinny-fat person's cellulite-stricken thighs! The blubber sits away from my muscle - my stomach undulations give the impression of foam floating atop the ocean - not sexy! But anything could happen in the next 24 hours - I will be avoiding bloat, drinking lots of water, and crossing my fingers... And speaking of belly dancing:

Muscle Gain: Belly dancing is re-shaping my body dynamically! The current teacher taking my group whilst the usual teacher (and half the class) is in Egypt is an expert in upper body work and floor work, and even though we've only had two classes with her I'm seeing an improvement in my arm tone and shoulder flexibility. Belly dancing in general is whipping my abdominal muscles into shape, with my obliques refining particularly noticeably. My love handles are still present, yet my overall silhouette has become more slender in this area, meaning I can get away with wearing my airy-fairy summer dresses without worrying around hiding the bulge with stockings or granny panties! My thighs are getting stronger, but hopefully not bulkier - it's impossible to tell whilst I'm burning fat simultaneously. I'm not sure whether my 4kg weight loss has been impacted by muscle gain at the same time, but I would tend to guess not. I'm not seeking a gain in muscle bulk but muscle tone, and I think I'm well on my way! I don't really practice in between my weekly lessons, but with some more time available to me in future I might start up some sessions. In the meantime, my hula hoop still gets a spin every now and again, especially when the beau is around to be mesmerised... :)

As you can see, the proportions of my health efforts are heavily biased towards diet, of course, but with my new gym membership and hot weather coming up, I intend to be more active in my free time, given that I'll be spending more and more of my working hours stuck at my desk. Here's hoping I can get back some swimsuit confidence before the beach weather really hits!

Finally, for your viewing pleasure, a few samples of my dining habits from the past fortnight:

Porterhouse steak, drenched in garlic butter, with a side of sliced veg

Chicken Caesar salad

Bad photo of an amazing squid & veg sauté

Roo burgers, with asparagus and button squash

At the Valedictory dinner for the graduating class: salmon steak and steamed veg (the salad was dressed). Had to fight to get my needs met, but in the end I was very pleased!

Rare roo steak with sautéed veg

Chicken drumsticks with sautéed veg

Jonathan's classic Italian sausages and sautéed veg

How to eat well at a shopping mall: pork roast and veg from Rhumba's at Westfield Doncaster

Bacon & veg sauté to go under some grilled chicken (two serves here - this is my big cast iron pan!)

The finished product!

PS - You may have noticed some Amazon & Google advertising on my site or in my posts. This is a test to see whether this kind of monetising generates enough income to buy my own domain name. I'm going to try it for a couple of months to see what the interest is. Don't go out of your way to click on ads, of course, but if there's something you're genuinely interested in, then hey, that's a few cents towards my domain. I want a true impression of likely activity in future.