A Day of Eating Paleo

The simplicity of the paleo way of eating often confuses people. For 30 days you are to avoid grains, sugars, dairy, legumes(beans & peanut butter), processed foods and alcohol. Everything else is fair game. Still, we always hear what can I eat? One of the most common questions we get is what does a paleo meal look like? We hope to answer that with this post, but we need to warn you. The, "just tell me what to eat and how much and I will eat it" approach always turns out to be a temporary one. In order to have success and ultimately health with this way of eating you are going to have to do some work in planning and preparing your meals.

We have been eating this way for the better part of two years now. We didn't always eat this way. Food used to have a strong hold on us as well and if I we go off the wagon, like we have this past week, it gets tough to get back on. We have bought in to the notion that your food is not there to entertain you, but to nourish you. Once we changed our mindset to this, the idea of "I can't eat this or that" changed. It gets frustrating to hear people say, "I just can't eat...." especially when in some cases it, literally, means life and death. You can, you just choose not to. That is fine, but make sure the distinction is made. Sorry for the rant, but we had to put that disclaimer up before going into what we eat each day.

A day in the life of Dawn and Paul:

Breakfast
We eat the same thing for breakfast everyday. We spice it up by changing the meat we throw into our eggs.
4 scrambled eggs for Paul, 2 for Dawn with 2 pieces of either ham, bacon, or sausage we throw this on a bed of spinach, when we have some extra time, we saute the spinach in olive oil and some seasoning and throw it in with the eggs or make an omelet. If we have a ripe avocado on hand we will throw half in each, if not we will eat a handful of nuts.

So the breakdown by macro nutrient is:
Protein: Eggs and Meat
Carbohydrate: Spinach
Fat: nuts or avocado

Lunch
We often have leftovers from dinner the night before for lunch, but occasionally get caught needing to eat out for lunch. For this example I will use Chipotle. I order the salad with double meat(carnitas & chicken), salsa, & Guac. Add in a water and you are good to go.
Protein: Chicken and Pork
Carbohydrate: Salad greens and salsa
Fat: Guacamole

Snack
The snack varies each day, but is just a small amount, meant to hold you over until dinner. Two slices of deli turkey, an apple and a handful of nuts.
Protein: Turkey
Carbohydrate: Apple
Fat: Nuts

Dinner:
We bought a cow. You read that right, a cow. A grass fed, hormone free, antibiotic free, Black Angus cow. I told you we have reached another level of geekdom with our eating habits. So dinner time usually involves eating a portion of that cow(sorry vegetarians) For this example we will use top round roast. For dinner we try to get creative with our vegetables. The winter makes this hard, but we have recently been experimenting with various types of squash. Our favorite right now is acorn squash, we mix in a little olive oil and salt and pepper with the squash. We finish off dinner with either a handful of nuts or another avocado.
Protein: Top round roast
Carbohydrate: Acorn squash
Fat: olive oil, nuts, or avocado

Night time snack:
Just before bed we have a snack. It is usually a small hunk of whatever meat we had for dinner, a handful of grapes and a spoonful of sun butter(sunflower seed butter)
Protein: Meat
Carbohydrate:Grapes
Fat: Sun butter

Looking it over it does not seem like a lot of food and by nature, the paleo way of eating is a caloric restricted plan, but we are always satisfied and rarely hungry. Notice there are no portion sizes or amounts of food suggested. The idea being, if you are eating quality food, you can eat as much of it as you want. Part of this process involves getting in better tune with your body and it's needs. Listen to your body. If you are hungry eat. When you are no longer hungry stop eating. Don't worry about portion sizes.
Hope this helps, and you are starting to feel like you have an idea of what you are to do for the 30 days. We are sure there are or will be questions. Please post them to the comment section, as many people have the same questions and we can answer them for all. If you have individual or personal questions you would like answered, you can reply to the e-mail and we will answer them. More posts to follow.

Enjoy your last few days of indulgence! Have a safe and Happy New Year!

Food Quality & What to Eat

The focus of the Paleo diet is on food quality first and foremost. You are attempting to eat food in it's freshest, most natural state. This will involve more effort and often more trips to the store than you are probably used to. Food quality can be looked at as on a continuum with processed food on the bad side and fresh, organic, grass fed, local stuff on the good side. We want to try to move our eating habits over to the right of the continuum, but with the understanding that eating perfectly paleo all the time is nearly impossible. For example: there is a heavy dependence on fresh vegetables and fruits, and finding local, organic, vegetables this time of year can be difficult and expensive. On the continuum of food quality frozen vegetables are not as good as fresh but are much better than canned and canned are better than some sort of processed vegi chips. All are better than what many of us have been eating for the past week.

You can geek out on the idea of what is perfectly paleo food. The best being something you went out in the woods and killed, or picked with your bare hands and ate for dinner that night. But since most of us don't do that, and because we have several vegetarians joining us this time we will offer up several suggestions of foods from each macro nutrient group (carbohydrates, fats, and proteins) and let you decide from there which ones work for you. Do keep in mind that we want you to become a more aware consumer, by reading the labels of the food you are buying and look for foods with few ingredients that you can pronounce.

Below is a list of foods that are encouraged or discouraged in the Paleo diet. This list was obtained from the book Paleo Diet by Loren Cordain (Wiley and Sons, New York 2002 pages 104-112). One of the things that we differ from Dr. Cordain on is his meat restriction. Again if you think about the continuum his prescription of very lean meats is firmly on the good side, but we have had great success and better compliance when we allow some processed deli meat, bacon, and sausage. Use this list as a shopping giude next time you head to the store.

Encouraged Foods
Lean Meats
Lean beef (trimmed of visible fat)
Flank steak
Top sirloin steak
Extra-lean hamburger (no more than 7% fat, extra fat drained off)
London broil
Chuck steak
Lean veal
Any other lean cut
Lean pork (trimmed of visible fat)
Pork loin
Pork chops
Any other lean cut

Lean poultry (white meat, skin removed)
Chicken breast
Turkey breast
Game hen breasts

Eggs (go for the enriched omega 3 variety)
Chicken
Duck
Goose

Other meats
Rabbit meat (any cut)
Goat meat (any cut)

Organ meats
Beef, lamb, pork, and chicken livers
Beef, pork, and lamb tongues
Beef, lamb, and pork marrow
Beef, lamb, and pork “sweetbreads”

Game meat
Alligator
Bear
Bison (buffalo)
Caribou
Elk
Emu
Goose
Kangaroo
Muscovy duck
New Zealand cervena deer
Ostrich
Pheasant
Quail
Rattlesnake
Reindeer
Squab
Turtle
Venison
Wild boar
Wild turkey

Fish
Bass
Bluefish
Cod
Drum
Eel
Flatfish
Grouper
Haddock
Halibut
Herring
Mackerel
Monkfish
Mullet
Northern pike
Orange roughy
Perch
Red snapper
Rockfish
Salmon
Scrod
Shark
Striped bass
Sunfish
Tilapia
Trout
Tuna
Turbot
Walleye
Any other commercially available fish

Shellfish
Abalone
Clams
Crab
Crayfish
Lobster
Mussels
Oysters
Scallops
Shrimp

Fruit
Apple
Apricot
Avocado
Banana
Blackberries
Blueberries
Boysenberries
Cantaloupe
Carambola
Cassava melon
Cherimoya
Cherries
Cranberries
Figs
Gooseberries
Grapefruit
Grapes
Guava
Honeydew melon
Kiwi
Lemon
Lime
Lychee
Mango
Nectarine
Orange
Papaya
Passion fruit
Peaches
Pears
Persimmon
Pineapple
Plums
Pomegranate
Raspberries
Rhubarb
Star fruit
Strawberries
Tangerine
Watermelon
All other fruits

Vegetables
Artichoke
Asparagus
Beet greens
Beets
Bell peppers
Broccoli
Brussels sprouts
Cabbage
Carrots
Cauliflower
Celery
Collards
Cucumber
Dandelion
Eggplant
Endive
Green onions
Kale
Kohlrabi
Lettuce
Mushrooms
Mustard greens
Onions
Parsley
Parsnip
Peppers (all kinds)
Pumpkin
Purslane
Radish
Rutabaga
Seaweed
Spinach
Squash (all kinds)
Swiss chard
Tomatillos
Tomato (actually a fruit, but most people think of it as a vegetable)
Turnip greens
Turnips
Watercress Encouraged Foods

Nuts and Seeds
Almonds
Brazil nuts
Cashews
Chestnuts
Hazelnuts (filberts)
Macadamia nuts
Pecans
Pine nuts
Pistachios (unsalted)
Pumpkin seeds
Sesame seeds
Sunflower seeds
Walnuts

Foods To Be Eaten In Moderation
Oils
Olive, avocado, walnut, flaxseed, and canola oils (use in moderation—4 tablespoons or less a day when weight loss is of primary importance)


Beverages
Coffee
Tea


Paleo Sweets
Dried fruits (no more than 2 ounces a day, particularly if you are trying to lose weight)
Nuts mixed with dried and fresh fruits (no more than 4 ounces of nuts and 2 ounces of dried fruit a day, particularly if you are trying to lose weight)

Foods You Should Avoid

Dairy Foods
All processed foods made with any dairy products
Butter
Cheese
Cream
Dairy spreads
Frozen yogurt
Ice cream
Ice milk
Low-fat milk
Nonfat dairy creamer
Powdered milk
Skim milk
Whole milk
Yogurt

Cereal Grains
Barley (barley soup, barley bread, and all processed foods made with barley)
Corn (corn on the cob, corn tortillas, corn chips, corn starch, corn syrup)
Millet
Oats (steel-cut oats, rolled oats, and all processed foods made with oats)
Rice (brown rice, white rice, top ramen, rice noodles, bas mati rice, rice cakes, Rice flour (all processed foods made with rice)
Rye (rye bread, rye crackers, and all processed foods made with rye)
Sorghum
Wheat (bread, rolls, muffins, noodles, crackers, cookies, cake, doughnuts, pancakes, waffles, pasta, spaghetti, lasagna, wheat tortillas, pizza, pita bread, flat bread, and all processed foods made with wheat or wheat flour)
Wild rice

Cereal Grainlike Seeds
Amaranth
Buckwheat
Quinoa

Legumes
All beans (adzuki beans, black beans, broad beans, fava beans, field beans, garbanzo beans, horse beans, kidney beans, lima beans, mung beans, navy beans, pinto beans, red beans, string beans, white beans)
Black-eyed peas
Chickpeas
Lentils
Peas
Miso
Peanut butter
Peanuts
Snowpeas
Sugar snap peas
Soybeans and all soybean products, including tofu


Starchy Vegetables
Starchy tubers
Cassava root
Manioc
Potatoes and all potato products (French fries, potato chips, etc.)
Sweet potatoes
Tapioca pudding
Yams

Salt-Containing Foods
Almost all commercial salad dressings and condiments
Bacon
Cheese
Deli meats
Frankfurters
Ham
Hot dogs
Ketchup
Olives
Pickled foods
Pork rinds
Processed meats
Salami
Salted nuts
Salted spices
Sausages
Smoked, dried, and salted fish and meat
Virtually all canned meats and fish (unless they are unsalted or unless you soak and drain them)

Fatty Meats
Bacon
Beef ribs
Chicken and turkey legs
Chicken and turkey skin
Chicken and turkey thighs and wings•
Fatty beef roasts
Fatty cuts of beef
Fatty ground beef
Fatty pork chops
Fatty pork roasts
Lamb chops
Lamb roasts
Leg of lamb
Pork ribs
Pork sausage
T—bone steaks


Soft Drinks and Fruit Juices
All sugary soft drinks
Canned, bottled, and freshly squeezed fruit drinks (which lack the fiber of fresh fruit and have a much higher glycemic index)

Sweets
Candy
Honey
Sugars

Gearing Up for The 30 Day Challenge

The holiday season brings with it a level of gluttony and indulgence unmatched at any other time of the year. With the ginger snaps, pumpkin bread, monkey bread, chocolate truffles, Cinnamon rolls, sugar cookies and various flavors of beer and wine, and I am just talking about what I had the past few days! This challenge will bring some welcomed normalcy to my eating.

In the next few days there will be several posts detailing what you need to prepare for the challenge, but we wanted to spend some time talking about emotional eating and commitment.

We had a flash of "softness" and considered changing our approach to the challenge to allow "cheat" or "open" days at the conclusion of each week. We thought this might help with compliance and attract some of the people who have been sitting on the fence, because they thought the plan was too strict. These are often the people who need this the most, and we thought we could draw them in and, hopefully, the results would be all the motivation they would need to continue. You can see where, in theory, this might be a good idea. However, in practice, it fails to address the greatest problem we all face in our attempts to eat better and live a more healthy life. That problem is the emotional control food has over us. This control is strong! Why else would we look at a large pan of monkey bread, which has no nutritional value to speak of, and eat the whole thing! We have been conditioned from a young age to reward and comfort ourselves with food. At our kids pre-school, everyday is some kids birthday and the subsequent celebration with cake and cookies. As adults when we celebrate something, we do so by going out to eat and drink. Even in death, the traditional way to assist a family who is mourning is by making food for them. There are several other examples, but the point is made that we have conditioned, in our being, a strong emotional link to food and eating.


In order to gain some control over that conditioning(I feel strongly that you cannot break it altogether) it is going to take a strong commitment. That is why we have decided to stick to our strict 30 days of clean eating. If we add in cheat/open days than you are just hanging on each week and giving the foods that control you even more power by using them as a reward for what you should already be doing. This is going to take a strong commitment on your part, but I can promise you that it will be worth it in the end. One of the many reports we got back from people who completed the challenge last time was the growth in self confidence, from committing them selves to something and seeing it through. One of the stories I like to tell my classes at school is that of Alexander The Great. It is said that when he would fight battles he would arrive by boat. Once all of his men were on shore, he would order the boats burned. This meant they had no way to retreat. Total commitment. Conquer or die. This is the type of commitment that will get you through this challenge and life for that matter. Who's with me?

"The quality of a person's life is in direct proportion to their commitment to excellence, regardless of their chosen field of endeavor"

Vince Lombardi

The 30 Day Clean Eating Challenge 2010

It's official! We will begin our 2nd clean eating challenge on Monday January 4th 2010. We are excited to get started and looking forward to many more people joining our group. Our last version of the clean eating challenge ran from late August to late September and those who stuck it out, saw tremendous results. Most have made permanent changes to their way of eating and are maintaining or improving on the results of the challenge. We will share some of those stories as we gear up and move through this next challenge.

What is The 30 Day Clean Eating Challenge?

It is an attempt to change your life through a focus on what you eat for 30 days. We know "changing your life" is a bold statement, but based on the results we have seen both, in our own challenge, and ones done throughout the country, we are comfortable making it. We are confident that if you can commit to 30 days of eating nothing but what the body was meant to have for nourishment, you will change your life. The obvious improvements will be in your health with weight loss, more energy, better mental clarity, better skin complexion, disease prevention etc. But the less obvious benefits include the confidence grown from gaining control of the addiction that many of us have to processed food and sugar. An addiction that can be just as strong as one to alcohol or drugs and just as hard to break. This 30 day exercise in self discipline & self denial will have a positive impact on many more areas of your life than just physical health.

The goal of the challenge is to try and control our hormonal balance with the foods we eat as well as identify foods that may be an irritant to our digestive system. Many of us have been eating dairy, gluten(grains), lectin(beans), and sugars all of our lives and have become accustomed to the associated affects they can have on our bodies; inflammation, bloating, foggyheadedness, energy swings, etc. The goal of this challenge is to get your body back to a normal state so that you can see how that feels. We can than start fresh and reintroduce some of these foods while monitoring how we look, feel, and perform when eating them. You may find that some are fine, while others cause major problems, but you will never know unless you start with a clean slate.

We have taken the name Paleo out of the challenge because people get wrapped up in whether a food is Paleo or not. The Paleo Diet was popularized by Loren Cordain and his book, The Paleo Diet, would be a great read in support of your efforts in changing your life. Here is his discription of the Paleo Diet.

The Paleo Diet is a way of eating in the modern age that best mimics diets of our hunter-gatherer ancestors - combinations of lean meats, seafood, vegetables, fruits, and nuts. By eating the foods that we are genetically adapted to eat, followers of the Paleo Diet are naturally lean, have acne-free skin, improved athletic performance, and are experiencing relief from numerous metabolic-related and autoimmune diseases.

We want you to look at this challenge as a permanent change in your lifestyle, rather than a temporary diet plan. While, the first 30 days is strict and hard to stick with, it is temporary. At the conclusion of the 30 days you can reintroduce food you enjoy and see what effect they have on how you feel and then make a determination if they are worth it.

Here it is plain and simple. For the next 30 days you cannot eat The following.
Do not eat dairy. This includes butter, cheese (hard and soft), yogurt (even Greek) and milk
(including cream in your coffee).

Do not eat grains. This includes bread, rice, pasta, corn, oatmeal, and all of those gluten-free pseudo-grains.

Do not eat legumes. This includes beans of all kinds, lentils, and peanuts. (No peanut butter)

Do not eat sugars of any kind, real or artificial. No maple syrup, honey, agave nectar, Splenda, Truvia, Stevia, etc.

Do not eat processed foods. This includes protein shakes, processed bars (like Zone bars), dairy-free creamers, etc.

What can you eat, you ask?

Meat, seafood, eggs, vegetables, nuts, seeds, fruit, oils (like coconut, or olive) That's it!


We will be here to help with shopping lists, meal plans, recipes, and all the why and how you need to know. We also have several second time challenge members who will be here to help out. Use the comments and the blog for strength and encouragement as we work through the 30 days. We will have two posts a week to check progress and offer tips and suggestions. All the info you need to start the challenge will be posted just before New Years Day, so you will be ready to go on the 4th.

This will not be an easy experience but nothing in life worth anything is easy, so start the new year right and join us for the 30 day challenge! If you are not ready to jump in on the 4th, don't worry, you can jump in whenever you want. However in order to get the cleansing effects of the plan you need to put 30 days together.

Leave a comment letting us know that you are in. If we do not have your email address leave that as well so we can send you updates.

Update

We hope everyone is enjoying the holiday season. No matter how early the stores start with the Christmas stuff, it still seems to sneak up on you. We will complete the movement series this week and switch our focus back to helping you navigate the holiday season with some sort of quality control on the nutrition front. I have been playing around with the blog and hope to soon make the blog and our web-site all one thing. While my technical capacity is growing, (I would say I am about at the level of most 5th graders now) it takes time for me to figure it all out.

We are also gearing up for another 30 day challenge! We do not have a date set in stone yet but want to take advantage of the new year resolution energy that may help some get through the first two weeks, which seem to be the hardest for most. If you did the challenge last time, we hope you had some positive results and are eager to dial your eating habits back in. I know I have fallen off of the wagon a bit and am looking forward to getting back on track. We are hoping to expand the group and offer not only clean eating advice but also a daily, body weight, workout that everyone should be able to do, using the movements from our movement series. More details will follow.

The Warrior Dash!

Nothing keeps you motiovated quite like having something concrete to train for. We came across this little gem yesterday and have already signed up. It's called the Warrior Dash and it can be summed up in three words, mud, sweat, and beers. We would like to encourage everyone we know who is working on their fitness, to join us at this event. It is almost a year away so there are no excuses about training time. We have already registered for the 11am heat and would love to have you join us.

The Press

The press is unmatched in its ability to develop functional strength. The word functional is tossed around alot in the fitness world and most would have you believe that functional exercises involve some sort of crazy looking equipment or large inflatable ball. How often do these "functional" pieces of equipment show up in your day to day activities? My point is, for an exercise to be considered functional, it should mimic the demand you face in daily activities. The press does just that. We are placing the body in a position where it has to maintain spinal stability while handling a load overhead. I can think of several things I have done today that involve the same "function."

Most people think of the press as just a shoulder exercise, but the ability to move and maintain a load overhead is actually a total body exercise. The exercise places a large demand on the muscles of the core in an attempt to maintain that stable spine during the movement. Now that you are, hopefully, sold on the usefulness of this exercise, lets look at how to do it.

We start the press as we start all of our movements by focusing on the feet. your feet should be directly under your hips. This is a tighter stance that your squat stance. A good way to find the proper grip is to take the bar or whatever you are using to lift and hold it across your thighs. Your hands should be just outside of your thighs. Now bring the bar up under your chin. Your elbows should be slightly in front of the bar. This is your starting position for the press.



There is a tendency as you perform a few reps of the press for the elbows to slide back behind the bar, as in the picture below. This will cause you to press the weight out, away from the body and will limit the load you are able to press. Make sure you check at the start of each rep for proper elbow position.




Like all of our movements we want to start the muscular contraction from our core and wave that contraction up through our back and into our shoulders. We do this by first contracting our glutes (squeeze your butt) while simultaneously pulling your belly button to your spine and tightening your stomach. With this solid base begin to press the weight straight up. You will need to pull your head back and out of the way as the bar passes the face. Once the bar reaches your forehead, push your head back through and continue pushing the load straight up. You complete the movement with fully extended active shoulders as shown in the first picture below. Bring the weight back down to the rack position and prepare for your next rep. Follow the same process for each rep and treat each rep as a separate exercise.



Active shoulders and a perfect finish with the load directly over the mid line of the body.

Letting the elbows slide back causes this forward press.

Another common mistake when performing the press is hyper extending the back at the top of the movement. This places the spine in a very bad position under load and can be easily fixed by contracting the abdominals to take the excess arch out of the back.

Go pick up a weight a put it over your head.