Day One ….. No Grains ….. No Legumes ….. No Refined Sugar.
I’ve been doing a lot of reading about food over the years about diet and nutrition, and particularly the last several months as a result of researching information on cancer. It’s been quite a labyrinth sifting through the massively complicated information on nutrients and how to compound the healthy, not-so healthy and sickening components of food into a diet. I found that I was getting lots of confusing information on what to eat when, and then was barraged by sporadic information about the foods we are eating being unhealthy in general. What’s a person to do? Well I guess just keep getting fatter and unhealthier, since that’s what American’s have been doing since at least the 1950’s.
Then along came Michael Pollan. His book, In Defense of Food, caught my eye a couple of months ago. When I picked in up I actually thought it was going to be about justifying the foods that businesses, the FDA, and government have approved. I think really that I was kind of secretly hoping that everything else that I’ve been reading would be proven wrong. Hoping that I didn’t have to suspect and wonder about the quality of what I’ve been eating. But Pollan in a very entertaining, simple yet deep way defends food, real food. Between Pollan and several other books that I’ll talk about later, fueling a human is simply a matter of eating real versus processed industrialized food. So let’s go Paleo.
I read The Paleo Diet, by Loren Cordain, in around 2003. The book caught my eye only because I was taking and enjoying the heck out of anthropology classes at the time. So, rather than a “diet” book, I thought it was going to be, well, more anthropological. Flash forward to the present and almost a year ago a couple of young trainers were talking with me about the Paleo Diet. I’d mention that I’d read the book years ago, which I did, and remembered it as being interesting, but it didn’t stick. I glanced at my book, complete with highlighting, and checked out a couple of web sites.
So Trainer Sergio Maldonado and I agreed to do the Paleo Diet for 30 days. No grains (maize/corn, rice, wheat, barley, sorghum, millet, oats, rye, triticale, buckwheat, fonio, quinoa,), no legumes, nothing processed.
Day 1 – Paleo Diet (This is going to be a challenge.)
Before 5-mile run: 8-10 oz. Purified Water, few sips of Green Tea, 5-Baby Carrots.
After 5-mile event: 16 oz. bottled water, 1-medium sized orange
About 10 or so Baby Carrots walking to coffee.
8 oz Black caffeinated Coffee with about 8 oz. hot water added.
About an hour after the event we had Breakfast: 2-eggs scrambled with Machaca (shredded beef, more than likely not grass fed), and cactus, topped with raw onions, fresh parsley, salsa, and juice from a half a lime.
Got home, read a little, worked on the blog a little and took a long nap.
Ate a few raw almonds soaked in purified water, and drank water, and had herbal tea.
For dinner I had 2-eggs scrambled with red onions and Hickory Farms beef stick (I know it’s not Paleo, but I just cannot waste money), soaked raw almonds, an orange and an apple.
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