You Gotta Cook!

This seems like a kind of crazy title for a podcast, but I really started thinking about this today: Most Americans no longer cook!  They buy fast food, they buy processed food to heat up, they order pizzas galore, and they go out to restaurants…  But they rarely ever actually cook a meal!

 

I know, Thanksgiving has come and gone, and most people (I hope, at least!) still cook a traditional dinner.  My daughter and son-in-law cooked a great one- all of the traditional turkey and stuffing, cranberries, and the guests like us and our in-law and fellow grandparents all brought side dishes.  The stuffing was gluten free, made of cauliflower and other veggies, as was the gravy.  It was fantastic! 

 

Actually, the traditional Thanksgiving turkey dinner is quite paleo, including mashed potatoes and sweet potatoes, salads, and all the rest… you just need to use actual, real-food ingredients like they used in any time before the 1970’s— real pastured butter and sour cream, real non-GMO vegetables, a pastured turkey, and real olive oil dressings instead of soy-ole-nightmare crap!  Easy Peasy.

 

But that is just one day out of the year.  The other 364 days, you are going to work, bringing a lunch of sandwiches and/or ding dongs, chips, or going to Burger King… then, coming home and ordering a pizza?  Hopefully, it’s not that bad- you are a paleoista, after all!  Let’s say you make a good breakfast of bacon and eggs, or just eggs- maybe with steak? (my favorite) 

 

Or, you skip breakfast and just work out instead, and sip a green smoothie later at work, say about 10 AM!  This is an ideal scenario, so let’s keep going: You take lunch, and open a tin of sardines, or else dig in to your home-packed salad, topped with tuna or other type of protein, and lathered in your home-made dressing of olive oil and apple cider vinegar.  You are doing great!

 

Then, you come home, go for a heavy hands walk around the neighborhood with little 6 pound weights for 10-15 minutes, and then fire up your Weber grill to produce a slab of wonderful ribs, along with a baked potato, slathered with pastured butter and sour cream. 

 

What a perfect Paleo Day you have had!  You feel great, energized really, not bogged down with excessive processed carbs as are most Americans.  You relaxed by the grill earlier, and meditated as you sat grill side, enjoying the aroma of the ribs slowly releasing their delicious essence under the influence of red-hot hardwood charcoal. 

 

You feel so good that you and your wife take a stroll around the neighborhood after dinner, waving at your neighbors, who come out to visit and catch up.  Your perfectly trained dog walks with you, not straining against a leash at all, having been conditioned to want to please you through daily training.  Just as you train yourself, and your children, a responsible Paleoista such as yourself trained your dog!  This is the ideal paleo day- sound good?

 

Of course it does!  And it is not only do-able, it is the most natural way for humans to live.  The bottom line is this: on this day you took responsibility to provide yourself with home-cooked and prepared foods, as nature and evolution intended you to.  You lived in harmony with your biological nature, and did not insult yourself with micro-biome destroying processed and fast foods.  You did not rush from thing to thing, instead relishing nature and your surroundings, the people of your neighborhood/tribe!  You exercised, and you meditated on your blessings! 

 

Think of most of your acquaintances: they ate cereal for breakfast.  They did no exercise whatsoever, and their mobility and strength are woefully depleted after endless days of neglect.  They all had sandwiches, fast food, or other crap for lunch, and then heated up Lean Cuisine or some such monstrosity for supper…

 

And now, some have headaches, some are nursing back problems and other nagging medical worries; many are thinking that they need to make numerous medical appointments for their many afflictions, and this does not even address all of the drugs jammed into their medicine cabinets…

 

It’s your choice.  Cook your own, natural, real foods.  Exercise in accordance with your biology.  Meditate, and commune with nature and God.  Move your body through natural surroundings, and breathe clean air.  Stay away from medical Doctors and clinics as much as possible, and live a natural, clean life, with good “tribal” relations through church, family, and friends. 

 

It’s really not hard- it’s just that corporate and government special interests have made it so easy to do the opposite! And so, short term you can “get by” being a sloth. 

 

But I’m here to tell you- it is not worth it!  Go Paleo!!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Carb Questions

Like everything in Paleo land, we do things differently. It seems that the conventional, standard American diet does everything exactly the opposite of what they should be doing.

They eat wheat and grain, not only do they eat them, but seem to almost bathe in grain products, day and night! Doughnuts and cereal for breakfast, sandwiches at almost every meal, pizza and crackers- the list just goes on and on. Wheat is the worst, what with all of its anti-nutrients and propensity to compromise our guts.

But then, throw in all the other carbs everyone in America consumes, things like chips, and doodles, cakes and pies and french fries…we are swimming in a sea of carbs!
Now, I’m not totally anti-carb- far from it. Depending on your activity level and body fat levels, good carbs like sweet potatoes and white potatoes are wonderful additions to your diet. Especially if you load them up with pastured butter and real sour cream, also from pastured animals. Think of carbs like this as fuel for your perfectly paleo exercise, and also as a way to feed your millions of gut bugs in your micro biome. They need carbs, just not nearly as much as most folks nowadays consume!
But here is the key, the bottom line: Cluster your carbs into the later part of the day. That’s it! Have them with lunch and/or supper, not with breakfast. Once you eat carbs, or especially anything with sugar, such as fruit, your blood sugar goes sky high, and you need to produce insulin to bring the levels back down, and there you go on the sugar/insulin roller coaster, all day long.
So, every time you make the insulin, your blood sugar goes down, and you get hungry again. And again. And again! You find yourself eating all day long, and that is never good. And the solution, again?
Don’t eat carbs early in the day. Eggs and bacon, fine. Orange juice and donuts? The worst thing you can do. Have coffee with coconut oil and cream early on- this really fills you up, and does not spike your blood sugar at all. Work out in the morning it you can- I can attest that I really thrive on that. Then, mid-day or later, have a nice baked potato with your pork chop!
And you know what? Your energy will remain nice and steady throughout the day, and you will feel great, without those feelings of “up” and “down” as your blood sugar spikes and then plummets. You’ll probably turn out like me, since nowadays I do my main workout in the morning, and feel so good that I have another shorter one in the late afternoon! Sometimes I do heavy hands around my woodland paths, or walk with ski poles (leaning into them as I go for upper body resistance). But today, I think I will go down to my basement and do some gymnastic rings work…
Because I just feel so good, eating my carbs later in the day!


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