Welcome

Hello followers and passers by and welcome to my blog. Here you will find my stories and musings on how to live a heathy and nutritious life based on the Paleolithic way of eating. I've been eating and living like this since 2009 and I've been reading and gatering a lot of information since my journey began.

Thursday 31 March 2011

Well Done to Men's Health.....welll, almost

This post's story is related to a question I had from an old friend of mine asking about what my diet looked like before and what it looks like today.  A great question and one that I'll half answer in this post.

I'd like to start by talking about the March 2011 issue of Australian Men's Health.  In there is an article about saturated fat.  I quote from the article "fat is by no means the sure fire way to a heart attack" and that what we've all come to "learn" about fat could be wrong.  I applaud Men's Health for publishing such an article but unfortunately this is nothing new in the modern day media as the article "What if it's all been a big fat lie" written by Gary Taubes in 2002 will attest.  And if you ever get a chance to read any of Taubes' books you'll discover that there's never been a link between saturated fat and heart disease ever, period.

The Men's Health article is a good one and at the very least will get a bunch of us rethinking and questioning what we "think" we know about saturated fat.  However, I wanted to pull them up on a couple of things.

In the article they give a suggested diet and in that suggestion they suggest having a serving of pasta (albeit brown) followed by a big bowl of ice cream.  These two foods are a long way away from the paleo diet. Both are highly processed, one contains wheat and the other contains a large amount of sugar.  To cut a (very) long story short, both will induce hunger and weight gain.

To answer my firend's question about what I eat now and to give an alternative recommendation to the Men's Health readers and writers here's what I suggest and do eat on a very regular basis:

  • Breakfast - Scrambled eggs (made with a little cream), chopped frozen spinach (microwaved with a little lemon juice) and a tomato salsa
  • Lunch - Simple salad of red lettuce, cucumber, tomato, avocado and topped with a big tin of tuna in oil
  • Dinner - Sliced veggies (eggplant/aubergine, onion, capsicum/bell pepper, zucchini/courgette coated in spices and olive oil and then thrown onto the BBQ; T-Bone steak done on the BBQ with some butter; some (undrunk and saved) red wine with butter, garlic and spices simmered in a pan.
  • Dessert - a handful of blueberries with coconut cream
The dinner above sounds exotic (steak with a red win jus) but only takes about 10-15 minutes to prepare and about 5-10 minutes to cook.  And for anyone with children this is a dead-set way to get your kids to eat veggies; mine love them!


Above is a pic of my veggies cooking nicely just the other day.  I'm feeling hungry just looking at them.  Make extra and pop them into a container and have them with breakfast tomorrow morning!

Feel free to contact me for any other paleo cooking tips and advice and tomorrow I want to talk about my home made paleo gel that I'll be using on an adventure race this weekend.

Take care until next time.

PommieMJ


Wednesday 30 March 2011

The story continues.....

As I said in my first post, this will be a collection of my regular stories and conversations with people and low-and-behold one of those conversations took place today.

I also got an email off of an old school friend yesterday who told me about their high blood pressure, so high blood pressure or hypertension to give it it's medical term, is the topic of my first post and is also how and where it all began.

In 2003 as I went through the process of getting my permanent residency for Australia, the doctor noted that I have a very high blood pressure.  I can't recall it exactly but it was something like 190/110.  I went to my GP and then had a million tests.  But I knew something was wrong because every time I went to one of the places/clinics to have a test, I was surrounded by much older much larger people.  A young, slim, athletic looking person stood out in those waiting rooms!  Every test came back with no answer and so I was diagnosed with "essential" hypertension and a week later started taking a low dose of medication.

Not that I ever understood the "essential" part; as if I was missing something, or needed it? Go figure??

Initially, I was on the lowest dose of medication but the dosage increased a little in 2007 as my blood pressure had crept up from the 120/80 range to the 140/90 range which was out of the so called normal range.  That's another blog post right there.

And as I said in my first post, I went back to my GP in late 2008 and my blood pressure continued to raise and now my cholesterol was high.  So, after that bad news I researched a lot of Internet material and read the book "The Paleo Diet" by Dr. Loren Cordain which, I followed very closely for just over three months.  When I returned to the GP's office and had more tests my cholesterol had been cut in half and my blood pressure has dropped to below normal.  Consequently, my GP halved my medication and I was back on the lowest dose.

My GP was astounded as to how I had managed to turn this all around in such a short period of time.  I owe that to Dr. Lorien Cordain's book.

Hypertension is a serious condition and is an indicator of future health problems such as stroke, heart disease, cardio vascular disease, kidney disease to name the usual suspects.  However, in my opinion high blood pressure is a disease of inflammation of the arteries.  And through the changes I made to my diet, I managed to significantly reduce and potentially remove, that inflammation.  And that inflammation was caused by the processed carbohydrates and seed oils that I had in my diet.

I encourage you to check out my opinion and let me know what you find.

Look after yourself and take care until next time.

Tuesday 29 March 2011

Introduction

I've been pondering about starting a blog for a few months now and finally decided to give it a go.

I'm a firm believer in the paleolithic diet and nearly every day someone asks me about what I'm eating or how come I stay so fit & healthy.  And every day I'm amazed by how little most people know about what they put in their mouths.  They tend to be more interested in what's happening in the latest episode of some soap opera or TV show than what's happening to their health.  Most people think that if the don't eat fat and go to the gym a couple of times a week then everything will be fine.

I used to think the same myself until about late 2008 when a general visit to the GP to have my blood pressure checked, he thought it would be a good idea to have some blood work done.  Anyway, turns out that I had (in my GPs opinion) high cholesterol and he also needed to increase my hypertension medication.  I was a slim, very fit and (I thought) helathy individual and here I was, already on one medication and about to have to take another.  I was eating a low fat, high carb diet and following all of the dietary recommendations from the government.

I left the GPs office with a badly photocopied piece of paper with a list of things I shouldn't eat and had an appointment booked to go back in four months.

I was astounded; I was depressed; I was really ticked (insert your own expletive) off.  Heck, I was angry.

And then I started to do some research.

I'll talk about where I got started and the results of that research in my next post.

So what you can expect to see here on this blog are:
  • regular observiations and summaries from the dialogues I have with people
  • links to great research, books, podcasts and blogs that I come across
  • anything else I can think of
Take care until next time.