journal by leah

[zaida]

Hello! Welcome to my journal. After reading through so many other journals I have decided to start my own as I found the information in the others to be very useful and encouraging and hope my experiences will one day benefit someone else.

I grew up on a sad diet. My mom loves to cook and tends to make everything homemade. I never at out much of a kid or had too much processed boxed crap. I do not think my diet through the years was very good however I believe it could have been worse. Since changing my dogs and cats diet over a year ago to a strict raw prey model diet I have since then started to reevaluate my own diet.

I remember coming across the raw paleo diet at the time and was interested but not convinced. I decided to start adding in more raw fruits and veggies at the time and get rid of a lot of the junk food I was eating. I believed at the time that raw was superior to cooked. I started to eat my steaks rare as well. I still incorporated a lot of sad eating in my diet but my grocery shopping consisted of mainly fresh foods.

What really opened my mind was a lady that was buying some meat and elk antler off of me for her dog. She laughed as she told me how her dog eats better than her family. Here they are eating boxed noodles and the dog was getting huge chunks of meat every day. I just smiled and nodded my head but it really got me thinking. Here I am feeding my pets the perfect diet for them while my diet is hardly perfect.

So I set out on trying to find the 'perfect diet' for a human. Finding this forum has really helped clear a lot of things up for me. I completely stand by a raw meat, fat and organ diet for humans now. I am still a bit stuck on veggies and fruit. I do not feel the veggies and fruit in the stores today are close to what are ancestors would have eaten. I like the comparison of a dandelion to a head of lettuce etc. I feel dairy does not sit right for me at all and intend to stay away from it.

I have so far tried a three day period on strictly raw meat, fat and organ. The results were great. My face cleared up and my digestion felt better. On day three I felt horrible and believe I was going through a detox. Since then I have not been so good with eating right. I thought I would be able to do a gradual change but when it comes down to it that is just not my personality or style. When I make a decision in my head I tend to go forward with it without looking back. The problem too is that I find I am a emotional eater and when I allow myself the room to cheat I cheat a lot.

After pondering what to do for a bit now I have come up with a plan:

For feeding dogs when you have a dog that seems to be having problems digesting certain foods or may be allergic to something the best thing to do is put them on a elimination diet. Feed them chicken, chicken and chicken (whole pieces raw with bone) for a few weeks or until they seem to be digesting good. Then try feeding lamb for example to see if there is any reaction at all. Dog breaks out in hives then conclusion would be the dog is allergic to lamb. Then repeat the process and change lamb to something else. Slowly add in different foods and track how each different changes the overall appearance, health and activity of the dog.

I think our bodies are equipped with the means to allow us to know what foods work well with us. The problem is on sad you are mixing so many things together you can never tell what is causing problems if there are any. My plan is to eat meat, fat, marrow and organs. Once I can get those working well in my system I will try adding other things in and see how my body reacts. Sort of an experiment I guess. For example one afternoon I will eat a half a cup of blueberries and observe what happens. Then repeat again in a week or so and observe again. If needed I will repeat again and then move on to the next food item.

Now going cold turkey into this diet is going to be hard on my body and mind. If I am having trouble I will allow myself to cheat but only in the form of berries and eggs (I am not limiting myself to these two however I do not know of what else I will allow at this time).

I finish work in three days and I am spending the rest of summer working on getting my house ready to sell. After 4 and a half years of living independently I am moving back in with my parents. Sigh. I plan on leaving in a year with my parents to move back to Africa. We have bought land and are in the first stages of building a bed and breakfast there. I grew up there for three years when I was younger and look forward to returning! I want to enjoy my last year in Canada and spend it with friends and family and focus on research and my health a bit more.

I figure with not working it will allow me the time to rest for when I do detox as I know it is bound to happen. I want to try and stick to the diet as much as possible however will try not to beat myself up when I do slip as I know that is bound to happen as well. That is another main reason I have decided to start a journal. Too keep track of my eating habits and how they are affecting me. I will try and keep posting on my progress and how I am doing. Hopefully one day I can look at a cheesecake and not drool
 

[zaida]

First day back on raw-

Worked 11-7 today so at my first meal around 10. I had bought both a elk steak and a bison steak from a butcher to taste test to see which I liked better to know which one I would buy in bulk in the future. I found the bison had a very strong taste which I think will take me time to get use too. The elk was very mild tasting and I actually enjoyed it a bit. I ate a bit of the elk steak along with some lamb bone marrow.

 Note to those who want bone marrow. Don't even bother with lamb bones, I had three whole lambs that I cut up the other day and I decided to take the leg bones and scoop out the marrow. I had to saw the bones into pieces (good workout though) and then with my filet knife scrape it out. With three whole lambs I managed to get around half a cup of marrow. I wasn't doing a very good job but I can't imaging that I missed too much. Beef or bison bones seem to make a lot more sense.

I couldn't stop thinking about carbs and sugar while working. I decided to allow myself a cup of coffee just afternoon. Not a good move but it kept me from going and getting a bagel with butter. Got home around 7:30 and was very hungry. Ate more of the elk and bone marrow. Satisfied my hunger but still craving sugar and carbs. I figure it will be some time before the cravings go away.

One thing I did notice is that about 30 min or so after eating that my mouth started to salivate a bunch. Drank some water and it went away. I figure the water was needed at this point for the digestion?

I am having trouble on getting large meals down. I am not too worried about it yet but will keep it in mind.   

[TylerDurden]

Yeah, even deer marrow is really too small to bother with, usually.

Re carbs:-  Some people do badly with carbs even after just a couple of days. I would suggest readding carbs for 1 whole week, at a time, to see if there's a decent improvement. You may well find that a low-carb approach works better than a zero-carb one.

[zaida]

Thank you for the idea in regards to carbs. I am wanting to get at the point where my diet is mainly raw meat, fat and organs. I am working at getting there slowly and not pushing myself too much. I look forward to being able to experiment with it one day and find out what works best for me.

Second day back on raw. Only had one meal today as I was at work early and find it hard to eat in the early morning. I had more elk and marrow for supper. I had bacon (yes cooked) as desert for a treat after. I had some in the freezer and found it helped me from eating a loaf of bread. I have no problem eating a whole loaf of bread in one sitting if I want, especially raisin bread, so I am finding the cravings are getting too me. I wasn't happy with the way the bacon sat in my stomach though. Yesterdays supper felt much better. Tomorrow my dad is back from his one month trip from africa and we will be celebrating with a meal for him. I plan on pre eating some mutton and fat before hand and eating a small plate of food with the family. I will need to stay away from eating any potatoes and grains as I find the next day I have more cravings for them.

I found when I got a bit hungry at work today if I would drink some water my stomach settled right away and I made it through the day no problem. I think I have been misreading my thirst a lot of the time for hunger.

[PaleoPhil]

I am having trouble on getting large meals down.

I would think that it will be tough to stick to the diet while with your parents. I know when I visit my parents my mother continues to try to get me to eat more of her foods (like high-carb veggies) that made me sickly as a kid.

I am having trouble on getting large meals down.

I have trouble eating enough raw meat and fat too. So to avoid losing too much weight, for the time being when I can't eat any more raw meat and fat I eat some jerky with tallow (made at low temps), which I always have an appetite for, or cook the remaining raw meat. As long as I keep cooked meat below about 1/3 of the meat I eat I don't get symptoms like constipation and feeling off. It seems the more of it I eat raw, the better I feel, but also the skinnier I get.

I've been shocked at how little carbs it takes to cause relapse of symptoms like dry skin, dental plaque, bleeding gums, loose teeth, nightmares, muscle pains, etc. So for now I'm trying to avoid them completely.

I've found that I now prefer raw ground meats to raw steaks, yet I prefer the leaner, firmer ground meats. I don't quite understand it, but so be it. Local ground venison is my favorite of the raw ground meats, then local pasture-fed and grain-finished bison, then supermarket bison (which is quite different and is probably fed more grain), then grassfed beef. Grassfed beef is the fattiest and strongest-tasting of those and still has a little bit of a musty and sour taste to it for me--though I do like it now after not liking it for quite a while.

Hopefully one day I can look at a cheesecake and not drool

The first time I tried cheesecake as a kid I didn't like it. Then I came to like it more and more until I loved my mother's cheesecakes and custard pies--they were the best I ever tried (one time myself and one other kid gobbled up one of her fresh-baked custard pies in less than half an hour between the two of us). Those of the stores, restaurants and other peoples' were lousy in comparison. Nonetheless, until you mentioned it, I had forgotten that cheesecake even existed and the thought of it turns my stomach now--even my mother's. I've come full circle. Baked goods seem foreign too me now. Not really like food at all. The last things that still tempt me are dark chocolate, berries, mead and black coffee (which tastes sweet to me now when fresh), and they're luckily not as unhealthy as baked goods.

Good luck Zaida.

[zaida]

I haven't been able to keep up the diet the last few days. With moving and everything going on its all just been too much. The hardest part is the mental struggle for me. I have never been very disciplined with things. Once things settle down a bit I hope to be able to concentrate more on getting back on the diet. Living at home will make it harder but soon I wont need to have my strength everyday and will be able to go through all the motions of changing my diet. It has definitely given me a new outlook on life and our culture of today. I will try to report more once I am back on the diet to give a detailed experience of the changes that occur. I am leaving the country in a year and by that time I hope my body will have switched over completely. One thing I do look most forward to is the change of taste, actually to enjoy eating raw meat. I cant say I do now but I can say that I enjoy the way it makes me feel. This change is a battle for me of discipline. I would love to hear anyones else's stories on how they overcame the urge to eat SAD foods in the beginning.

[Josh]

One thing that's helping me...if you're gonna cheat, cheat low carb. If you haven't got good meat eat polish sausage and loads of butter. Just stay off the carbs

Good luck, Josh

[TylerDurden]

I haven't been able to keep up the diet the last few days. With moving and everything going on its all just been too much. The hardest part is the mental struggle for me. I have never been very disciplined with things. Once things settle down a bit I hope to be able to concentrate more on getting back on the diet. Living at home will make it harder but soon I wont need to have my strength everyday and will be able to go through all the motions of changing my diet. It has definitely given me a new outlook on life and our culture of today. I will try to report more once I am back on the diet to give a detailed experience of the changes that occur. I am leaving the country in a year and by that time I hope my body will have switched over completely. One thing I do look most forward to is the change of taste, actually to enjoy eating raw meat. I cant say I do now but I can say that I enjoy the way it makes me feel. This change is a battle for me of discipline. I would love to hear anyones else's stories on how they overcame the urge to eat SAD foods in the beginning.

I overcame the urge through various ways. Firstly , it helped a great deal that by the time I went rawpalaeo, I experienced intensely painful stomach-aches soon after eating any cooked animal food whatsoever. Since I didn't much like the taste of cooked, vegan dishes, I was able to avoid those without too much hassle.

Initially, I would just visualise in my head the potential stomach-pains every time I went past some restaurant, which would stop me, 99% of the time, in a Pavlovian  sort of way. I also started with the raw foods I did OK with. So, like most RVAFers, I started off with raw fruit and raw veg,got immediately used to and enjoyed (most) raw seafood, started with minced beef, and moved on to other meats. I admit I had trouble with raw organs like raw liver, at first, but I solved that by starting with tiny amounts(followed each time by a gulp of mineral-water) and was eventually able to increase the amounts. The key was to always make sure that, at any stage, while I was 99-100% raw, c.90% of the diet consisted of raw foods I actually liked the taste of. This meant I was able to handle the 10% of foods I didn't like but which I knew I would (in most cases) eventually get to enjoy the taste of.

[PaleoPhil]

I would love to hear anyones else's stories on how they overcame the urge to eat SAD foods in the beginning.

> I kept SAD foods out of the house
> I learned what were the least-bad food options at restaurants
> bring my own socially-acceptable food to other people's houses, or eat beforehand, or eat only the least bad stuff they have and in small amounts
> try to always keep a generous supply of my good foods at hand, both at home and at work
> I did the Pavlovian thing too: remembering the bad side effects of the foods I do poorly on, and trying to think of them as not being food at all--just bad things--and noticing the worst aspects of them (like how most of the grain foods have very bland colors and when they're grouped together they look pale, bland, dry and kind of gross when you think about it--such as the baked goods sections at supermarkets, although it helped that that never looked all that appetizing to me, but even gourmet bakeries look gross to me now)
> I also try to remember how even my favorite of the SAD foods always often seemed to be better in anticipation than in reality. I would crave them, but they would often turn out to be a bit of a let-down and leave me feeling unsatisfied and not great. Yet I would crave still more or the cravings would return later. This puzzled me. "Why do I want these foods so much, yet each time I eat them I like them less?" I asked myself. I told myself: "Something is wrong here."
> I think of raw meat/fish, fat and organs as being the food of my ancestors and part of my ancient cultural heritage--something to celebrate and be proud of.

[zaida]

Thanks for the ideas guys. I am really going to have to focus on the side affect from eating SAD. My stomach feels bad, I generally overeat, mentally I feel low, and it takes hours and hours to get over this. So for 10 minutes of eating something that doesn't even taste as good as I had craved I end up feeling like crap for a while after. Once I am moved and have no commitments it will be easier for me to eat raw as if I do go through detox or anything I will have the time to rest and recover. All I know is that I want to be healthy for the rest of my life and hopefully be fully functioning till the day I die. I fear being put into a wheelchair or not being able to even go to the bathroom myself. Tomorrow is the move so I figure I can start up again the next day. I am moving one of my smaller freezers to my parents along with a small fridge so I can keep all my stuff separated.

[William]

Fear of the consequence worked for me , others used anger.

[van]

HI,  I enjoy tremendously my meat and fat eaten this way.   First I purchased a meat grinder.  I also got an extra small sieve plate, which determines the size of the meat coming through the grinder.  The wholes are around an eighth of an inch.  I use fresh meat.  Now I buy chuck steaks and cross rib roasts, the cheapest most flavorful cuts I can get.   I used to be addicted to NY steaks for flavor and chewableness/tenderness.  But now it doesn't matter how tough the meat is.  Yeah!  After I ground separately the back fat and meat,  I make a baseball size round piece of them and place them on a plate in the fridge for keeping.  In the morning and mid afternoon I take one of each out of the fridge and let warm.  An hour before I want to eat I place the fat and flatten it out in a large, say ten inch, ceramic bowel.  On top of the flattened fat, I take a ball of meat and do the same.  On the stove I have a large cooking pot that I have about two to three inches of water at 110 degrees F, well below enzyme damaging temp.  I place the bowl in the water.  I may go back in a half an hour and heat the water back to 110 F.  I use an kitchen timer so I don't forget and leave the heat on too long.  What happens is magic.  Most of the fat has now melted into a golden liquid and is sitting around the meat like patty.  I add celtic sea salt ( really the only salt with most of the magnesium and other trace minerals left in tack,  I used to use Himalayan salt until I learned the truth about it )  and chopped fresh garlic.    I'd bet even the most sad dieter would even like this mixture.  It's exquisite, and so satisfying.  When I travel I pack in a freezer zip lock bag, one ball of meat and one ball of fat which I smush down.  I can store about five days of food in a container soft cooler that is smaller than a loaf of bread.  If out for the day,  I'll place the fat and meat in a large mouth glass jar with screw lid.  So easy to eat anywhere, and can be eaten so quickly too.  Hope this helps.  I so look forward to eating this way each meal, and of course when hungry.