My journal

[infinitenexus]

Well, today is a great day to start on the path to raw paleoness.  I just finished my honeymoon last weekend, and this morning I got my blood test results, so I have a good solid "before" picture to work with.

Okay, as of the time of this posting, I'm 28, male, in the Army, 5'7" and about 138 pounds, athletic build, roughly 7-8% bodyfat for all of my life that I can remember.  I have been eating kinda paleo for the past year or so, but due to my recent marriage I've been eating pretty crappy (lots of pasta) to save money for the marriage/honeymoon.  I haven't had milk in a long time, and the only dairy I have is some ice cream here and there, and some cheese on my eggs in the morning.  My overall health is good and solid, but I do have a few issues that have crept in, and now I realize they are likely at least partially due to eating grains, dairy, etc.  My hopes are to eradicate or at least help these small issues.

1.  receding gumline.  Not very much, and it's also likely attributed to me brushing a little over-enthusiastically, but it still bothers me to have that at this age.
2.  Eczema.  I only have a few spots, but they're there.  Now I see that one of the causes are wheat allergies.

3.  My blood pressure is good, but I've noticed that it's gone up 10 or so points over the past year.  That worries me.

4.  ADD.  I'm currently in a military school that is pretty mentally taxing, and I simply cannot pay attention enough on my own, so while I am doing well, it's because I'm on adderal. 

Here's some of the results of my recent blood test.  I'm just going to use the abbreviations used on the paper.

WBC          4.9
RBC CNT     5.6
HGB          16.2
Cholesterol   195
Triglyceride   112
HDL              58
LDL Calculated   115
CHOL/HDL   3.4
Glucose         102
BUN             20  (can anyone tell me what BUN is?)
CREAT         1.0
NA+            139.0
K                  4.8
CA                 9.9
CO2               30
ALT              23


Overall pretty good scores, although my ALT (whatever that is) is on the bottom end of the normal range, and my LDL is a little high.  I'm glad to see my fasting glucose level is 102, from what I understand that's fairly normal.  Hypoglycemia runs in my family, and I've noticed that I seem to be very sensitive to blood sugar crashes after eating, even a lower carb meal.  I also noticed that I was more emotional and irritable during the past 2 or so months that I was eating much more grains.

***My meal plan***
I will be doing my best to maintain an omnivore style paleo diet, as raw as possible.  Being in the military, I know whenever I deploy I'll be eating cooked food and at times MREs (which are full of grains and sugars) so I will keep a bit of cooked food in my diet to make sure my body can easily digest and handle cooked foods in the even that I am deployed.  So breakfast each morning will be 3 eggs over easy or over medium, some bacon/sausage, and a few pieces of fruit and a glass of water.  Once I get my hands on a big tub of grass fed fat I will be making pemmican for lunch, since that's the easiest way to bring paleo-friendly food with me.  Probably pemmican and maybe an apple.  Until I can make pemmican, I'll probably make some beef jerky (dried at low temperatures) or maybe bring a small blue-rare steak.  Dinner will be meat and a small (1 cup) spinach leaf salad, with a few fresh organic veggies tossed in there.  Here's my thing:  I simply don't like raw, unseasoned meat yet, it doesn't taste good and I have to choke it down.  I'm a good cook and I make and am used to nicely cooked food.  I do believe in raw meat and I want to eat it, I just can't take it yet, so until I can handle fully raw meat, I will probably quickly sear a steak blue rare or less with some light seasoning on it (sea salt, cracked pepper for the most part).  One step at a time.  My wife will be eating pretty much the same way, and 1 or 2 times a week we'll have a glass of red wine with dinner (sorry, I just can't give that up :-) )

I exercise 4 times per week, generally along the lines of crossfit.  No changes there, that will stay the same.

I suck at sleeping, and having to wake up at 4am doesn't help any.  I take melatonin to help me sleep, and stay asleep.  Hopefully my sleep will improve a bit.

So I guess today is day one.  I had to grab a kinda crappy breakfast due to time constraints, but for lunch I just choked down a raw fillet mignon, and am currently munching on a fuji apple.  I usually don't eat entire apples, for some reason I always stop after eating about half.  Probably my body telling me stop, due to the sugar content.  I got a great deal on about 40 pounds of beef the other day, so I'll be eating steak for a while.  The guy said it's grass fed but I'm not sure I believe him, so I'll probably give most of these a real quick sear.  I do have some 100% grassfed beef in the freezer also though, and that I will always try to eat 100% raw.

[infinitenexus]

Yesterday I ended up without a great breakfast, but I did have a ribeye and a fillet mignon for lunch, both almost raw.  I just sear them on each side for 5-10 seconds with a little seasoning and then eat it that way.  I'm still just not enjoying the fully raw taste, but this way I can do it.  Dinner was a glass of red wine and some ground lamb patties, also just a little seared.  Today for breakfast I'm having a t-bone steak, again just slightly seared, and a couple eggs sunny-side up, yolks totally runny.  Quite tasty, I could eat like this for the rest of my life and be happy.  I'll probably have a small apple afterward.

[infinitenexus]

Well, I had been doing pretty well with briefly searing my steaks, cooking them less and less, but lately I've noticed that I was ripped off on the large order of meats I recently bought.  Most of them, right after thawing out, already smell half-rotten and brown.  So no more steak every day for me, I'll have to go resupply this afternoon I guess.  I'm hoping to pick up some grass fed fat this afternoon and some really lean grass fed steaks, so I can try my first batch of pemmican.

[infinitenexus]

Unfortunately, Whole Foods is the only local source (that I know of, at least) of grass fed meat.  Fortunately, I've compared prices and they're actually really good.  Well, for grass fed meat, anyway.  The past few days some of it has been on sale, so I've picked up a couple pounds of ground lamb, lamb shoulder chops, ground beef, other various lamb and beef cuts, and I went ahead and treated myself.  My birthday and my wife's birthdays are only a few days apart, and they're coming up in a week, so I managed to pick up an entire grass-fed beef tenderloin.  Definitely an expensive (overpriced) cut, even at the competitive prices my local Whole Foods has, but I can't wait to eat it.  Nice and full of fat, tender as can be, I'm really looking forward to it.  They sell bison, but it's not grass-fed, so I won't buy it.  I'll probably just have to order that online.  I'm not having any luck finding grass-fed beef fat locally, so I may be forced to just order it online.  Whole Foods uses any leftover fat to make their ground beef.  I really want to make some pemmican, so I think I'll just break down and buy a bucket of beef tallow online today or tomorrow.  The head butcher at Whole Foods did tell me that he's going to get some grass fed beef liver in on Saturday, and he's going to save me some.  I've never had liver, and I've heard very mixed reviews on it's taste, but I know it's full of iron, folate, vitamin B, and overall just very healthy.  Anyone that can give me any spices to pair with liver, or just any tips to make it tastier, I'd appreciate it.  I also picked up a beef tongue today, unfortunately it's not grass fed, just organic and hormone free.  Better than feedlot, I guess.  The butcher said once you get rid of the skin on tongue it's actually really nice and tender, so I'm looking forward to trying it.

Also, it dawned on me that I've been eating less than 40 or so carbs per day for about a week now, so that's really good.  I don't feel sluggish at all, I feel great.  I lead a very intensive physical training group in the Army every morning, and I haven't had any lack of energy at all.  I know part of it is mental, but with the workouts I've put everyone (and myself, of course) through the past week or so, I would have noticed immediately if I had a lack of energy.  My only carbs each day are a fuji apple at lunch and a salad with my dinner - usually spinach or kale leaves with some cucumber, small tomatoes, avocado, black olives.  I still use some salad dressing, but I'm down to only using a tiny bit.  Honestly, even if I never went fully raw, I think I could greatly enjoy eating like this.  I think it's a good mix of my love of the culinary arts and the health benefits that a raw paleo diet has to offer.  Fresh grass fed meat cooked blue rare or less (usually much less) and nicely seasoned, with a few fresh greens, it's good stuff.  Now I just need to make some damn pemmican.

Oh, almost forgot to mention, I bought a huge chunk of grass fed beef, I can't remember the cut unfortunately, and I'm dry aging it in my fridge.  It's been about 3 days now, and I can already see it taking on that nice dark red hue.  I think I'll give it about 2 weeks, then my wife and I will enjoy it. 

[infinitenexus]

Well, I got my beef tallow and a big ol' london broil from us wellness yesterday, so I thawed out the beef and sliced it up and started drying it.  A lot of people don't seem to use any seasonings at all on their pemmican, but it seems to me that it would be very bland that way, so I put a little sea salt, cracked pepper, basil, and oregano on the slices and then put them in my oven on the lowest heat setting with the door open.  I don't have a dehydrator, so that's my best bet until I get one.  I'm excited about the pemmican, I really hope I like it.  If so, it's going to become a staple in my diet.  Tonight is midway between my birthday and my wife's, so we're celebrating with a nice grass-fed beef tenderloin, and we're going to eat at least half of it raw.  I'm really looking forward to that, it's going to taste fantastic, I'm sure.

[infinitenexus]

To anyone who has never had raw tenderloin, I can't recommend it enough.  Incredibly tender and full of wonderful flavor, holy crap it's amazing.  I made the pemmican, and I'm very disappointed with it.  It's like beef flavored mud, really not that pleasant to eat.  I followed the directions I've seen in a billion paleo places online, and it just turned out shitty.  Someone said  rendering my own fat is tastier than the US Wellness beef lard, so I guess I'll have to try that.  I'm going to go ahead and eat the pemmican, but it's not very enjoyable.  Other than that I've been doing pretty well with eating lately, although I know I need to eat more calories.  Grass fed beef is pricey stuff though, so I can't always eat as much as I would like.  I need to go hunting or something and get a bunch of nice wild game for free.

[TylerDurden]

Well, others have admitted previously that pemmican tastes like sawdust. It's such an unhealthy food, anyway, that RVAFers should only really eat it if they're raw, zero-carbers and are travelling in areas where it is difficult to get hold of raw meats. For others, raw fruits etc. are a far better alternative when travelling without access to raw meats.

[infinitenexus]

It may not be as good as raw meat/fat, but it's still light-years better than pretty much anything else.  I've never heard anyone else describe pemmican as unhealthy though.  Besides, it's very stable and neat and easy to bring plenty along.  I'm getting deployed to Afghanistan in a year, so my wife could make this on a regular basis and mail it to me.  The pemmican would be a good way to supplement the highly processed food I'll be eating in country.  Plus it's a convenient way for me to eat animal products for lunch, since I bring my lunch to work.  I bring fruits, but they simply aren't high enough in calories, and I want to keep my carbohydrates low.  Not zero, but low.

[goodsamaritan]

Raw paleo is a good deal about smell and taste.
If it tastes good and your body instinct tells you it's good, it's good.
The only reason people eat pemmican is for survival.
Artificial flavors are put into it to just make it palatable.

[TylerDurden]

I understand why some people might prefer pemmican to more processed foods when no other option is available , but pemmican is really highly processed in its own right. Plus, there have been a number of accounts of bad experiences on rawpaleoforum re pemmican.

[infinitenexus]

And my main interest in pemmican is it's well-known benefits, being infinitely better than the processed cafeteria food I'll be served in Afghanistan, and stable for long periods of time.  I wouldn't be putting "artificial flavors", as anything I added would be as natural as possible, like some dried garlic, maybe some basil.  Although from a sense I guess even the most natural spice would still be an artificial flavor. 

[infinitenexus]

Well, over the weekend my wife and I went to visit Lex, and had a great time.  He showed us how he makes pemmican and gave us a nice supply of pemmican and suet and we made a dehydrator together, and had a great time in general.  Once my wife and I got back home we set up the dehydrator and made a bunch of beef jerky.  Good stuff.  I also found that if I just add a little salt and pepper to raw meat I actually quite like it.  Even grain fed meat.  I'm not sure how I'm going to make the full transition, what I'm going to eat, but I'm thinking of picking up some of the pet food and chili meat from Slankers, like Lex does, and trying it that way.  A little salt, pepper, and garlic and I'm sure it'll taste pretty nice.  My goal is to have myself and my wife eating that for dinner each night.  Right now I'm at work and it's lunchtime and I'm munching on some pemmican, the pemmican that we made with Lex.  It's a world of difference from the stuff I made, this has a much better texture and basically tastes like waxy, kinda bland beef jerky.  Not exciting, but not too bad.  I'm thinking with a tasty fat, like buffalo back fat, it would probably be quite tasty.  I'm hoping to make pemmican my standard lunch, since it's so easily portable and stable, along with an apple or something similar.  My brother is currently in Iraq, so I'm perfecting my beef jerky and then I'm going to mail him a few pounds of it, since he loves it.  I figure 10-15 pounds of beef jerky would be a nice supplement to the food over there, and since it's dried at such a low temperature, it should still have plenty of nutrients in it.  I'm in a good mood today, right after work my wife and I are driving up to San Fran to go see Devin Townsend play live, so that should be fun.  Once I start eating raw for dinner every day and sustain my pemmican lunch, I'm hoping to see some little changes, like my eczema spots go away and hopefully my hair to stop slowly thinning.  Hopefully my wife's depression and anxiety will also go away or at least lessen, that's probably my primary concern.  I just have to make sure we both start getting much more vitamin D, I know we're both without a doubt deficient, considering half the days we stay inside.