Starting Paleo.

I have a couple of different blog posts I want to write right now, but I'm on a time crunch because it's late and I want to go to bed. My body is pulling me to sleep, which is a good sign. Those signals have been screwed up for the past couple of months. 

But I must write this. Recently my boyfriend has become more and more interested in paleo eating. What is paleo? Essentially cutting grain, dairy, legumes, and processed food from your diet. That leaves meats, fruits, vegetables, and nuts (This is sans peanuts, that's a pea and classified as a legume). The benefit is that you eliminate the some of the most common culprits of food allergies while eating a crap load of nutrition dense food. 

He's been eating about 5/6 meals paleo now. The 6th meal is usually shared with the guys at the station and whatever is, is. But since then, his incredibly finicky digestive system has quieted down and he's starting to get his undergrad abs back. You can't possibly know how bad his digestion was before, so let me explain. When we first started dating he would get regular explosive diarrhea. And next to the bathroom, I would be curled up on the bed, hidden in covers shouting "I'm SORRY! I'm killing you! My food is killing you!" To which he would reply between horrible noises, 

"No! It's ok! I'm way better than I was when I was in undergrad! You've made things much better!"

"YOU'RE LYING! NO ONE SHITS THIS MUCH FOR THAT LONG. I'M KILLING YOU. OH GOD I'M KILLING MY BOYFRIEND WITH MY COOKING."

This would back and forth for quite some time, at least once a day. Every morning, actually. Bad digestive problems. Bad. Sometimes recognize the food you ate 1 hour ago bad. To get from start to finish in an hour...your food has to be charging through. Like cavalry. We got through this because I started force feeding him activia yogurt. Then when he decided he liked it, he'd eat 3 containers a day. This helped. A lot. But still, on and off, all was not well in the gut.  

That's not to say anything of my own digestive issues. I bloat easily. Coffee gives me issues. Stress can make me blot for the door 3 times before 10 AM. When I went overseas this summer I swung between constipation and liquid fire over the course of a week, with one or two pleasant days in between. At least I was going. The other group members....were not as proactive about getting their hands on fruit and veggies as I was. Ow.

Hence, I've come to believe that the GI is a picky creature, but ultimately the canary in the coal mine for our health. Well, that and moods. 

Back to paleo. Boyfriend has gotten miraculous results of...not needing copious amounts of yogurt to keep himself in balance. His gut problems are not problems. Whoo! That's the big thing. The beautiful body is icing on the cake. He doesn't have gut problems! Considering that I love him very much and my plan is to be in it for the long haul with him, I want him to be as healthy as possible. I'm more than happy to pick up this diet with him. 

It also makes sense to me because my greatest feeling health wise was my last year of undergrad. I was biking up a big hill every day to get to class, but I was also too lazy to cook rice or noodles for the most part. Rice and noodles are boring as hell to me and they require you to take out extra dishes. So I'd often make huge skillets of stir fry and just eat the whole thing. Don't get me wrong, I ate a lot of lentils and double fiber bread too, but those gave me horrible gas. I've always needed copious amounts of vegetables to remain happy. 

About two days ago I bought the book "Paleo Solution" by Robb Wolf and I've been reading it over the past couple of days. The science matches up well with what we're being taught, and connects a few extra dots. I have more to say on that later as well as some disappointment in how little preventative medicine we get, just not now at 1:36 in the morning. 

One thing Wolf is a big proponent of is trying the diet for 30 days straight, no cheating, and then making your opinion. And in order to do that, you have to get rid of everything in the pantry that contains grain or legume, or milk. Which is a lot of food, and who wants to waste that money? As a ex grad student that is just becoming accustomed to paying extra for my health, I still have sticker shock for a lot of things. Even if something is not good, even if I hate it, I'll still hold onto it. Case in point, my boyfriend used to leave a lot of instant macaroni and cheese and canned peaches in my pantry. I hate instant mac. But I can't throw the food away, because just in case. 

So today I removed all the food, and satisfied my inner prepper by squirreling it away in the corner of my closet. It's now real emergency ration food. You know, for hurricanes, tornadoes, zombies, and stuff. And since it's shelf life stable, I can set it and forget it. Would I be happy eating that in the Apocalypse? I think it's safe to say that I'd get over it. 

Luckily, in this endeavor to clean everything out, the fridge is almost already cleaned out. I apparently have a grand stock of plain yogurt, milk, and cheese, but little else in term of offenders. I'm not willing to get rid of the yogurt though. It's a really expensive organic creamy variety that is too tasty to let go in the trash. It alone doesn't seem to send my bloat alarm off. I won't buy anymore, but I'm not going to trash it. So the thirty days will just technically start after the yogurt is gone. It's so good.

Which means I get to spend this time not sweating the small stuff, i.e. extra fruit and yogurt, while I prepare my kitchen to meet this new diet. But you know, I can certainly start the rest of it now.

I started with the pantry

Before!

after. ow.

 I say ouch, because it's disappointing when there isn't much to eat there. The glass jars of pasta sauce had soy oil in them so they had to go too which made me very disapointed. I had just bought those because I was trying to stay away form metal cans. BPA and stuff. But if I'm going to do this, gotta do it right. So I put up the pasta sauce for now. My zombie apocalypse spaghetti needs something to go with it anyway. There was also some salad dressing mix that I had been meaning to try but it had wheat in it.

Crap! I just realized that my multi vitamins probably are bound together by wheat. It's a common pill additive. Whatever, I'm going to be eating so many fruits and veggies that they'll be useless. It is a shame that I recently bought them though. Maybe I can donate them to my overseas clinic.

On the flip side, there's a lot of disgusting food I've been wanting to ditch for a while that I never bought and will never eat unless I'm forced. Canned peaches. Instant mac. Creepy canned meat with gravy. Sorry, that's too similar to dog food for me to get into.

Here's all the stuff haphazardly thrown on the table and squashed up. Its not the kind of hoarding I used to do when I was cheaper about my meals, but it's a reasonable amount of food.

Fare well.

 The next step was to go out and buy new food to stock the fridge and the pantry. I used a shopping list from Wolf's website to guide me because I wanted to make it easy. I have a tendency to buy a lot of veggies but forget the meat aisle because the prices piss me off. Then I forget to thaw what I already have. I also rarely buy condiments or things to help me cook the food. Knowing this in myself, I figured it's best to just go by the shopping list so I knew I'd have all the ingredients for meals in the book. I figure Wolf is trying to make it easy on me, so I might as well make it easy on myself.

Did I buy everything on the list? No. I ran out of money after 130 dollars went down. Restocking a pantry with new higher quality oils, buying more meat than usual, getting the omega 3 eggs, buying more at once than usual period, that adds up. And grant you me I was having sticker shock the whole time. It's always uncomfortable when you grocery bill doubles.

Some things I switched for other things. Spinach instead of mixed greens. Brussel sprouts instead of asparagus. Forget the macadamia nuts and pecans for the price. But let's not split hairs here. It's not in the spirit of paleo.

Here's what I bought. I think the chicken is hidden behind the broccoli. 

Hey, you gotta forgive the arrangement. I just tried to fit it all on the table.

Bam! It's food! The dining table is a standard card size if you're wondering. 

Then I set to making myself some dinner with left over food that I had in the fridge. Which was mushrooms, cucumber, orange pepper, bok choy, cabbage, beef, and lettuce. I had a roommate last year who used to make spring rolls with a crap load of herbs, so I figured I'd try the same with lettuce. I also had some left over vegetable soup to go with it.

I made a stir fry with the beef, mushrooms, cabbage, and bok choy. That mix was nested in romaine lettuce. The sweet peppers, cucumber, and cilantro were added fresh.

They were alright, but hard to eat. Stuff falls everywhere. Also I wouldn't add cilantro next time. I spiced with ginger, garlic, and tamari, but not nearly heavily enough. The meat could have used more something. It is pretty though.

Tonight's dinner

And I was very full when done. There's extra for lunch.

The whole meal.