The new Paleo/Primal thread - please reintroduce yourself, newcomers welcome!

[misscph1973]

Wow, we got to 1000 messages!

Welcome back from the previous thread and welcome to all new!

I have been Paleo since September last year, I started as an ex-vegetarian/vegan, I wanted to give up gluten and I had been doing 5:2/IF, which lead me to Paleo/primal. I am 40, I have 2 kids age 8 and 6. I have no major health issues, but I would like it to stay that way. I have bad skin, which has improved since starting Paleo and my dandruff has disappeared. I have gained some weight since starting Paleo, but I was not overweight before, although I would like to get back on my pre Paleo weight - I just love Paleo mayonnaise too much ;) I still practice IF and I lift weights 2-3 times per week. My family is also Paleo.

I have just come back from a camping weekend where I was not strict Paleo as I was camping with other families and I just didn't want to spend my entire weekend telling my kids "no, you cant have it". I do think that Paleo camping is entirely possible, think tinned fish, nuts, sausages, eggs etc.

This is a quiet week exercise wise!
Ideally I would do 2 x boot camp, 1 x pole, 2 x spin and horse riding in between

Hello Inish, those sound like amazing changes, well done!

As you probably saw mentioned (by me and others) up thread, if you ate interested in reading more about paleo/primal, there are lots of good free blogs, most have recipes on them too, which is very useful. theres also info on feeding the whole family this way.

Marks Daily Apple, Robb Wolf blog, PaleoHacks, dietdoctor.com are all good places to start!

I'm great at buying books :P I have The Primal Blueprint, Nourishing Traditions, Wheat Belly, Good Carbs, Bad Carbs.. and this week I got Practical Paleo which is definitely my favourite! I follow a few Paleo people on Facebook too, I'll have a wee look at those websites now!

Ah! You will know it all already !

I despair at journalist standards at the BBC, really I do.

Today's story on vit k, and specifically K2, lists foods rich in K1.

For K2, eat animal fat (in butter, in meat, in egg yolk), cheeses, cream.

Not spinach, broccoli and (shudder) cereals!

Can you imagine the outrage they'd provoke if they actually advised people to eat fat?! I think there has been so much money invested in the low fat whole grain notion that its become really hard to change people's minds!

Indeed! The sky would fall in .

My biggest problem with this WOE is I'm hungry every 3 hours and its hard to keep thinking of what to eat! Do you have a "go to" snack? Should the hunger ease as my system gets used to this?

I eat every three hours and think it is perfectly normal. It is generally a mistake to try to fill up so as to 'go' for longer because your blood sugar naturally drops after three hours or thereabouts.

You shouldn't be hungry if eating enough fat and not too many carbs - but you are still eating grains? Wheat in particular increases appetite but any processed and/or high carb food will spike and drop your blood sugar and that means hunger. Some people can tolerate more carbs than others (without it affecting blood sugar too much), for some, 100g a day will be fine, for others, 50g day too much - it's trial and error to find what level suits you.

Go to snacks- coffee with double cream or small handful of raw nuts, some cooked chicken or half an avocado.

Building, if you are eating fairly low levels of carb (compared with the standard diet) your blood sugar barely rises or falls - and I've tested that out myself with a blood sugar monitor and a series of experiments (or an excuse to eat hagan daz!).
On a "clean" paleo/primal diet, blood sugar barely moves above baseline - and I'd say hunger is normal in that situation after about 6hrs IME anyway.

Carbs really do make you hungry, sooner - especially in the absence of enough fat (probably why I got incredibly fat eating a "healthy" low fat, high carb diet for half my life ).

Wow inish (are you based in ireland?) very impressive reading there Shame Tillyfernackerpants posted her question about books before you joined the thread!

Really interesting about your son, my 8 yo is v similar with up and down moods - I am pretty sure he is affected by diet but he doesnt like meat or eggs much and loves bread so trying to paleo him was an uphill battle (have given up for a while and concentrating on myself but they do benefit indirectly) Do you still give your son grains like oats and just avoid processed food like manufactured biscuits? Sorry to be so nosey! Btw are Yeo tubes and babybells ok wrt msg!

Eating 3 square meals without snacks is the hight of discipline in my eyes. I failed that aspect of whole30 because it was impossible for me to eat an early breakfast then two meals and no snacks. Postponing breakfast until late morning is one way to cut down on snacking.

Raw even if I have just some berries and yoghurt, and three eggs in coconut oil for breakfast, I get hungry again in three hours. So then I have a banana or an avocado. Then at lunch I have, say, tuna salad, or sweet potato and salmon, and I'm hungry again three hours later, so I have an apple and some cheese. Then I eat dinner ...say tomato soup and some pork and veg, and then I have to snack again in the evening...

It is just the way it works for me, so I eat little and often. Even if I don't get properly hungry, I get dizzy and shaky so eat a little to help with that. I do NOT get cravings anymore, or overwhelming desires to eat, I just get a bit hungry.

Moody boys - I can relate to that, I'm sure it's diet related, I'm sure going sugar free would improve things but that's too challenging when you're 10.
I get an empty feeling in the morning, it's not hunger as such but it is resolved with food.
I still have my burning mouth feeling and it has become even more sensitive to sugar - raw veg like carrot will now set it off and jerky, which I loved. The list of food I can eat is getting smaller and smaller.
I snack on avocados - they are pretty good at killing off that empty feeling.

Ah thanks ladies, it's great to hear the feedback! I'm trying to have about g of carbs per day and see how that goes. I don't eat really big meals so I think 3 smaller meals and 2 snacks suits me better.

giraffes We only have natural organic yogurt here, full fat. I grate up apple or chop fruit and add a squeeze of honey to "flavour" it for them. We don't have anything low fat any more.. or to be more accurate we don't eat low fat versions of foods. My kids still eat bread, but i make it myself (ok, i put the ingredients in the breadmaker :P), I always use Doves Farm organic as the conventional wheat is sprayed with weedkiller before harvesting to dry it out and make it go thru the combine harvester without getting clogged up! The same is done to Rapeseed, I can't tolerate Rapeseed Oil at all, it gives me migraines, even the organic stuff. I was watching a harvest show on BBC last night, the rapeseeds were sprayed with insecticide before being planted. And the crops were sprayed with "dessicant" (weedkiller) before they were harvested. The presenter didn't bat an eyelid! I was horrified! The kids love porridge too, but again organic. I presume all grains are harvested in the same way so we stick to organic when we have them.

Sorry, when I get started I don't know when to shut up :P we do eat cheese, but not red cheddar. The only reason it's that colour is because the manufacturers add a colour to it. It has been a lot of work, and dining out can be a minefield, but the results are worth it, we all feel so much better. Yes, I'm Irish. In Ireland. I hope to start gardening and growing my own veg next year when the kids are all at school (they're 3, 5 and 7), I'm a SAHM.

NumLock was off! I meant to say 100g of carbs is where I'm starting!

snow part of the boy thing could be due to hormones? Aren't there more hormones floating around in food/ plastics/ water nowadays? It is frustrating to know that a simple change could help them - shame its so difficult for them to cut sugar/grains.

inish you have come to the right place for a food natter . Your link about msg was very interesting. I didn't quite understand the table but noticed xanthum gum was on there which made me wonder if in someways trying to get my children gluten free by using gluten free grains could be a red herring for improving their health I was using my breadmaker to make them gluten free bread - expensive, unreliable and now additives to consider.

My dc are similar ages ds just turned 8, dd just turned 6 and dd nearly 3. I have irish parents and live in london. I guess there must be pros and cons living in Ireland following this woe?

building my natural urge is to graze rather than eat 3 big meals.

We are all different Building . The "shaky" bit does suggest low blood sugar (and I really used to get the shakes, feel dizzy and sick If I didn't eat frequently on a standard diet).

Some of us are more prone to that than others - my response might be to try increasing fat, and reducing carbs a little more (fruits, any sugars), just to see what happens - maybe nothing but maybe it might help you lose the shakes.

I have to stay quite low carb to avoid the whole blood sugar swings and crashes - any more than about 70g carb a day and I start to lose it!

I have my own theory about that - i suspect that people who have more copies of starch digesting genes (the number varies), have a lot more problem with blood sugar swings (because their blood spike higher, then crashes lower) Iykwim. I think that's one reason why some people get a lot hungrier, faster, and then eat more, put on weight easily on a SAD diet...

Ok so this is what my dc had for their school dinners - pasta and chips, peas, sweetcorn, slice of bread, chocolate brownie and ice cream - least paleo dinner ever?

Possibly giraffe! But quite "normal" for school dinners I think.

The peas might be slightly paleo- if young and sweet, they don't have the natural toxins that older peas have... But the rest is very... Meh!

Raw, thanks! I do have glucose intolerance and diabetes in the family, so am sure I am more sensitive than many people. Because I have this fatigue condition, I'm very wary of doing anything to rock the boat, but will try increasing fat...more oil with eggs, a glass of full fat milk, more avocados, more meat and fish...??

And butter! KerryGold is grassfed (so has lots of lovely omega 3, tastes fantastic and is in most big supermarkets.

Everything tastes great sautéed in it (I tend to alternate between butter and raw coconut oil), it adds fat, flavour and lots of vitamins to veggies, lean meats.

I know I was on the high end of normal for blood sugars (because of my self testing), ie metabolic syndrome, and I'm pretty sure I would have been type2 diabetic by now if hadn't ditched the SAD diet! That's a powerful motivator for me.

Milk... Is something you may need to watch, it has a disproportionate effect on blood sugar, spikes it far higher than the amount of carbohydrate in it would suggest - due to the (natural) hormones in the milk, and also the pasteurisation process (raw milk is better from this POV, but good luck trying to buy any if your wanted too, I haven't found any, anywhere locally).
I stick to cream and butter - no yogurt or milk (as I know it does raise my BS too much).

If ever I find raw milk for sale it would be interesting to test my BS after a glass of raw, and then compare to pasteurised.