Two Weeks Of Caveman Eating
Or "not at all cavepersonning look at the archaeological evidence dammit" eating, as the case may be.
Previously on Paleo: Becca and I are testing out the Paleo diet. It's a fairly radical reimagining of how we eat based on some reasonable science that promises some pretty spectacular results.
So, Week 2 - how's it going?
Sauted Panchetta, Kale and Carrot - Lunch on Wednesday
The food continues to be absolutely lovely. We realised about a week in that we were actually rather overdoing our portion sizes - three different types of vegetable filling a plate was probably too much. We've cut that back to an average meal - lunch or dinner - of a portion of meat, 2 portions of vegetables, and nuts and/or berries as a form of desert.
Most of the time, we're either sauteing or roasting the veg, often alongside the meat. I've been discovering the joys of a variety of fats I'd not used before. Because in Paleo the calorie content of the meal comes from fat not carbs, both roasts and sautes are generous with the oils, so we've been going through olive oil at a rate of knots, closely followed by coconut oil and ghee. On multiple Paleo recommendations, I've just added lard to the options, and I can safely say that kale gently fried in lard with garlic is bloody gorgeous.
Pork Chop with peas and roast peppers - another lunch
Paleo's been a bit of a journey of food discovery so far - much like the Fife Diet when I tried that, but rather less irritating. In addition to the Many Oils Of Goodness, we've been trying whole almonds (nice, but I prefer cashews and brazil nuts). Becca's been experimenting with nuts as a foodstuff after years of avoiding them, and discovering she likes cashews. We've both been learning new and faster ways of preparing root vegetables, we've tried out sweet potatoes (Me: "Pleasant.". Becca: "MORE. NOW."), and I've significantly levelled up in both my kale and cabbage cookery skills. (Seriously, fried cabbage in a dense fat? Gorgeous.)
I've discovered that coconuts are a) a massive pain to get into (and if you're using the "hammer" method of access, make your neighbours hate you), b) contain coconut water which tastes nothing like the swill sold in bottles - it's actually nice - and c) are an incredibly good, and incredibly cheap, snack. The meat of the coconut is very fatty, meaning that a thin slice is a satisfying snack, and I've found that an entire coconut lasts - as one of my major go-to nibbles - about a week and a half. Not bad for 79p.
We're also generally liking the increase in the amount of "real food" we're eating - almost nothing from a packet or processed, and piles of fresh veg, meat and fruit at every meal. It just feels healthy, dammit. And the license to eat whatever we want meat-wise - within reason and budget - hasn't gotten at all old yet. Roast pork belly, bacon, steak, chicken thigh, roast beef - all in 400g quantities at dinner times - are a pretty good compensation for the lack of, let's face it, boring white stuff.
Venison Steak with Garlic Mushrooms And Spinach In Fond - today's lunch
On the downside, the cost is still pretty significant - I'd estimate about a 50% increase in our food bills, which were already not inconsiderable. However, we're starting to optimise that. We've already discovered that we rather over-bought in the first week, and we're beginning to pick out the cheap vs non-cheap ways of cooking and eating.
Interestingly, our current hypothesis for best possible price/quality balance is to buy our vegetables at Tattie Shaw's, the local awesome greengrocer, and our meat at Waitrose.
The contrast between vegetables at Tattie Shaw's and those at Sainsbury's is absolutely incredible. We've been buying carrots large enough to serve for two meals, in contrast to Sainsbury's pale, pencil-like things, for literally half the price of the supermarket. There might not be quite as much choice in the "flown in from Asia" department, but with unpredictable harvests, it seems that a smaller, more agile shop can source much, much better produce, and sell it a lot cheaper.
The same doesn't seem to be true of meat. We've tried the Farmer's Market today, which frankly looks to be going through lean times, and weren't impressed. Puddledub Pork were reasonably priced and looked great, but everything else was prohibitively expensive - 50% more expensive than the equivalent meat at Sainsbury's or Waitrose. Likewise, our local butcher supplied pork belly for about 30% more than Waitrose, and delivered quality that wasn't as high.
Peppers Stuffed With Panchetta/Carrot Mix
Health-wise, the first three days were great, and after that things went rapidly downhill for a week or so.
There's a well-known phenomenon, it turns out, called "Paleo flu" or "Keto Flu", which somehow all of our resources completely failed to mention. In short, it means that whilst your body adjusts from a conventional carb-based diet to a fat-based one, you feel like absolute rolled crap. I thought my cold was returning with reinforcements. Becca says she could barely think on one day. I have no idea how I got through writing a complex tutorial whilst feeling like I'd had 2 hours' sleep on another.
In addition, both of our blood sugar levels plummeted and stayed down - or so I'd surmise from the spectacular and not terribly rational arguments we had over the first weekend. I know I was feeling over-emotional, unbalanced, generally down, and, in a word, shit.
On that unpleasant segue, let's just say that moving your diet to one that features absolutely heaps of vegetables (very high fiber) and loads of fat (tends to promote diarrhea) has some additional - and highly unpredictable - disadvantages too. Hello, toilet at 5am. How lovely to see you again. We both got a stomach ache for about a day, too, although that sorted itself out as we reduced our vegetable portions from "gargantuan" to "considerable".
Chorizo Fry-Up - yet another lunch.
Upsides, however, have also been noticable, particularly in the last few days as the Paleo Flu has finally subsided.
Most notably, I've seen a significant reduction in my overall muscle tension. Muscle tension has been a problem for me for about a decade. My body gets very tense, and apart from preventing me from kicking people in the head (a problem for a man with my hobbies), that causes all sorts of phantom pains, unexpected muscle strains and cramps, and rapid muscle tiredness.
Over the last week, however, I've been noticing I'm a lot less tense. My kicks on my punchbag are about 8 inches higher than usual, and improving. The first day I noticed this phenomenon, I suddenly discovered I could easily touch my toes - where only a week before it had been a problem - and my calf muscles appeared to have given up the idea of tension entirely.
At the same time, my muscles seem to be sigificantly harder to tire than usual. On Tuesday, the first day I really observed this effect, I easily beat my personal best at all my morning exercises. On Thursday, I actually failed to notice I was walking up steep hills, and arrived back from an hour's Pilates class and a further hour's walk feeling barely fatigued. I'm also finding that I can get up earlier - something that almost never happens - and my sit-stand desk is spending more time in "stand" than "sit".
Becca, meanwhile, noticed that her skin rapidly cleared up within a few days of starting Paleo, She found that she slept better initially, and she's feeling like she has a certain amount more energy, although not as much as me.
We've also both noticed that we no longer get bloated after meals at all, which is very nice.
I don't have many measurements to back these observations up yet - I'm not checking blood pressure very frequently, as frankly I find that exercise stressful at the best of times - but I have lost half a kilo of weight so far.
So, overall - it's definitely having effects. Some good, some bad, but we're enthusiastic about continuing so far.
Previously on Paleo: Becca and I are testing out the Paleo diet. It's a fairly radical reimagining of how we eat based on some reasonable science that promises some pretty spectacular results.
So, Week 2 - how's it going?
Sauted Panchetta, Kale and Carrot - Lunch on Wednesday
The food continues to be absolutely lovely. We realised about a week in that we were actually rather overdoing our portion sizes - three different types of vegetable filling a plate was probably too much. We've cut that back to an average meal - lunch or dinner - of a portion of meat, 2 portions of vegetables, and nuts and/or berries as a form of desert.
Most of the time, we're either sauteing or roasting the veg, often alongside the meat. I've been discovering the joys of a variety of fats I'd not used before. Because in Paleo the calorie content of the meal comes from fat not carbs, both roasts and sautes are generous with the oils, so we've been going through olive oil at a rate of knots, closely followed by coconut oil and ghee. On multiple Paleo recommendations, I've just added lard to the options, and I can safely say that kale gently fried in lard with garlic is bloody gorgeous.
Pork Chop with peas and roast peppers - another lunch
Paleo's been a bit of a journey of food discovery so far - much like the Fife Diet when I tried that, but rather less irritating. In addition to the Many Oils Of Goodness, we've been trying whole almonds (nice, but I prefer cashews and brazil nuts). Becca's been experimenting with nuts as a foodstuff after years of avoiding them, and discovering she likes cashews. We've both been learning new and faster ways of preparing root vegetables, we've tried out sweet potatoes (Me: "Pleasant.". Becca: "MORE. NOW."), and I've significantly levelled up in both my kale and cabbage cookery skills. (Seriously, fried cabbage in a dense fat? Gorgeous.)
I've discovered that coconuts are a) a massive pain to get into (and if you're using the "hammer" method of access, make your neighbours hate you), b) contain coconut water which tastes nothing like the swill sold in bottles - it's actually nice - and c) are an incredibly good, and incredibly cheap, snack. The meat of the coconut is very fatty, meaning that a thin slice is a satisfying snack, and I've found that an entire coconut lasts - as one of my major go-to nibbles - about a week and a half. Not bad for 79p.
We're also generally liking the increase in the amount of "real food" we're eating - almost nothing from a packet or processed, and piles of fresh veg, meat and fruit at every meal. It just feels healthy, dammit. And the license to eat whatever we want meat-wise - within reason and budget - hasn't gotten at all old yet. Roast pork belly, bacon, steak, chicken thigh, roast beef - all in 400g quantities at dinner times - are a pretty good compensation for the lack of, let's face it, boring white stuff.
Venison Steak with Garlic Mushrooms And Spinach In Fond - today's lunch
On the downside, the cost is still pretty significant - I'd estimate about a 50% increase in our food bills, which were already not inconsiderable. However, we're starting to optimise that. We've already discovered that we rather over-bought in the first week, and we're beginning to pick out the cheap vs non-cheap ways of cooking and eating.
Interestingly, our current hypothesis for best possible price/quality balance is to buy our vegetables at Tattie Shaw's, the local awesome greengrocer, and our meat at Waitrose.
The contrast between vegetables at Tattie Shaw's and those at Sainsbury's is absolutely incredible. We've been buying carrots large enough to serve for two meals, in contrast to Sainsbury's pale, pencil-like things, for literally half the price of the supermarket. There might not be quite as much choice in the "flown in from Asia" department, but with unpredictable harvests, it seems that a smaller, more agile shop can source much, much better produce, and sell it a lot cheaper.
The same doesn't seem to be true of meat. We've tried the Farmer's Market today, which frankly looks to be going through lean times, and weren't impressed. Puddledub Pork were reasonably priced and looked great, but everything else was prohibitively expensive - 50% more expensive than the equivalent meat at Sainsbury's or Waitrose. Likewise, our local butcher supplied pork belly for about 30% more than Waitrose, and delivered quality that wasn't as high.
Peppers Stuffed With Panchetta/Carrot Mix
Health-wise, the first three days were great, and after that things went rapidly downhill for a week or so.
There's a well-known phenomenon, it turns out, called "Paleo flu" or "Keto Flu", which somehow all of our resources completely failed to mention. In short, it means that whilst your body adjusts from a conventional carb-based diet to a fat-based one, you feel like absolute rolled crap. I thought my cold was returning with reinforcements. Becca says she could barely think on one day. I have no idea how I got through writing a complex tutorial whilst feeling like I'd had 2 hours' sleep on another.
In addition, both of our blood sugar levels plummeted and stayed down - or so I'd surmise from the spectacular and not terribly rational arguments we had over the first weekend. I know I was feeling over-emotional, unbalanced, generally down, and, in a word, shit.
On that unpleasant segue, let's just say that moving your diet to one that features absolutely heaps of vegetables (very high fiber) and loads of fat (tends to promote diarrhea) has some additional - and highly unpredictable - disadvantages too. Hello, toilet at 5am. How lovely to see you again. We both got a stomach ache for about a day, too, although that sorted itself out as we reduced our vegetable portions from "gargantuan" to "considerable".
Chorizo Fry-Up - yet another lunch.
Upsides, however, have also been noticable, particularly in the last few days as the Paleo Flu has finally subsided.
Most notably, I've seen a significant reduction in my overall muscle tension. Muscle tension has been a problem for me for about a decade. My body gets very tense, and apart from preventing me from kicking people in the head (a problem for a man with my hobbies), that causes all sorts of phantom pains, unexpected muscle strains and cramps, and rapid muscle tiredness.
Over the last week, however, I've been noticing I'm a lot less tense. My kicks on my punchbag are about 8 inches higher than usual, and improving. The first day I noticed this phenomenon, I suddenly discovered I could easily touch my toes - where only a week before it had been a problem - and my calf muscles appeared to have given up the idea of tension entirely.
At the same time, my muscles seem to be sigificantly harder to tire than usual. On Tuesday, the first day I really observed this effect, I easily beat my personal best at all my morning exercises. On Thursday, I actually failed to notice I was walking up steep hills, and arrived back from an hour's Pilates class and a further hour's walk feeling barely fatigued. I'm also finding that I can get up earlier - something that almost never happens - and my sit-stand desk is spending more time in "stand" than "sit".
Becca, meanwhile, noticed that her skin rapidly cleared up within a few days of starting Paleo, She found that she slept better initially, and she's feeling like she has a certain amount more energy, although not as much as me.
We've also both noticed that we no longer get bloated after meals at all, which is very nice.
I don't have many measurements to back these observations up yet - I'm not checking blood pressure very frequently, as frankly I find that exercise stressful at the best of times - but I have lost half a kilo of weight so far.
So, overall - it's definitely having effects. Some good, some bad, but we're enthusiastic about continuing so far.