Finding a Label That Fits, aka I Don't Care If It's Paleo

It seems that some of the people who influenced me when I first went "primal" or "paleo" back in 2011 are squirming a bit under those labels. 

That actually pleases me, because I just can't seem to be comfortable with those labels myself these days. I played with the term "easygoing paleo" lately, but that was because I didn't know what else to call myself.

Here's the thing: I have no patience for conversations based on "Is it paleo?" I agree with Melissa McEwen over at Hunt Gather Love that it's about eating in whatever way works to improve or sustain your health. It's a process of discovery, not an education on how to conform to a label or some one-size-fits-all set of rules.

As we experiment over time, some things that work for me won't work for you and vice versa. I don't see that as failure. Ideally, as we learn from our experiments and personal reactions we can all succeed in becoming and staying as healthy as possible. We can share information at community level for testing at the individual level.

As Melissa's current post points out, what works in one month or year isn't necessarily what works later. We start with different problems and our bodies change over time based on so many factors that we're trying to catch raindrops with a sieve half the time. Sometimes the changes allow us to be more indulgent and other times they force us to retreat back to "safe" foods for a while.

So, where does that leave me? I'm doing very well, thank you. I am ignoring, quite cheerfully, all the conflicting admonitions about what are/aren't the correct paleo foods, ratios, macros, schedules, etc.

I don't care what is/is not paleo or [insert label here.] I care how I'm reacting to my last few meals and what that says about planning my next few meals.

Please note that I'm not anti-paleo or [insert label here.] The latest findings and recommendations are of interest and may generate new ideas for me.

I know that how quickly/slowly I lose my remaining excess fat will be influenced by how often I choose to indulge in a sugary treat or extra fruit. Right now, I'm not indulging often because losing fat is a higher priority than dessert.

The only problem I have is coming up with a label that does describe my current eating habits. There's some overlap with paleo, vegan and other regimens that emphasize whole foods, but I don't think I'm in full compliance with any popular approach. I suspect that means I'm doing it right, so if we must have a label for my eating habits I choose "common sense."

Resuming Water Kefir Production

Note: I read and enjoy every single comment. At the moment, though, the darn blog isn't letting me reply. My comments disappear into thin air, so any comments received will be answered by inserting them as q/a updates to this post. fixed!

I think I mentioned in one or more of my recent posts that I used to brew and drink water kefir, then stopped during a significant relapse back onto SAD (standard American diet) because water kefir only tastes good to me if I'm not eating a lot of sugar.

A week ago, I decided that since I've been back on whole foods for a while it would be nice to have water kefir available again. It seems to have a great effect on my gut, making me more lactose tolerant, and I enjoy making home-made sodas by adding fruit juice and bottling it.

Anyhow, my new water kefir grains came yesterday. Very exciting! I'm pretty sure they were somewhat starved; when I opened them, they looked a little dehydrated and there was an "off" smell I don't remember from the first time I ordered grains.

I gave them a good rinse and put them into feeding solution, expecting to refresh the liquid this afternoon. Last night, though, I noticed the liquid was already a very light color and I realized I may have put in too many grains for the amount of feeding solution I made. So, I fed them then and carefully measured the right amount of grains for the amount of solution.

This morning the grains look more plump and the solution is lightening but not yet exhausted. I want a mid-day feeding schedule, so I plan to feed them again in a few hours. They may or may not have consumed all the sugar by then but I'm only planning to drink a small amount so it doesn't matter. 

Update: It's now mid-morning and I just did a routine jostling of the jar. I have tiny bubbles! That's a great sign that my water kefir grains are happy and are actively turning my feeding solution into water kefir. 

One thing I learned the first time around is that you start with a small dose and work your way up to a glassful per day. Water kefir clearly makes it though the stomach and interacts with your gut flora. If you happen to have some nasty bugs, or SIBO, the kefir could actually make you ill if you drink a lot to begin with. Since I had a very unhappy gut a couple days ago I plan to be very careful.
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Update #2: I started a new brewing cycle at noon PDST as planned. I was very happy to see a few grains that were markedly bigger than any of them were when received. As suspected, they were dehydrated when they arrived.

I measured 2 tbsp of grains into 2 cups of feeding solution in late evening yesterday, and by noon today I had about 3 tbsp. In a full 24-hour cycle the ideal is for the grains to about double in volume.

I tasted the "kefir" from this batch. Because of the incomplete brewing cycle, it still had a sweetness to it and didn't yet have the signature kefir flavor; it was as if I was expecting to taste hard cider but tasted fresh cider instead. I will consider tomorrow's spoonful my first "dose" and take things very slowly as planned.
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I was disappointed when I bought supplies for brewing the water kefir. I found a lemon and organic raisins easily, but I didn't yet find a wheel of dehydrated, non-additive figs. Not only do the water kefir grains seem to like having a fig in the solution, I absolutely LOVE the fermented figs after they've been through 1 or 2 brewing cycles. So I need to try more outlets to find some. The fermented raisins are okay, but nothing like as good as those figs.
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Update, 4/14: I'm now making and drinking carbonated blueberry sodas   as described in Brewing Water Kefir, part 2. The grains smell nice and fresh and they're doubling in volume each day. The fresh water kefir has a nice zing to it and the first soda, which I drank today, had great flavor and was nice and fizzy.

The good news is that I didn't have any strong reaction to drinking water kefir again despite my relapses last winter with wheat. Apparently my gut community was still pretty robust, because the kefir tastes great to me both fresh and carbonated and there was no churning or cramping from the initial doses of the kefir.

Online Reading and a Digestive Upset Impact My Thoughts

Note: I read and enjoy every single comment. At the moment, though, the darn blog isn't letting me reply. My comments disappear into thin air, so any comments received will be answered by inserting them as q/a updates to this post.fixed!

Well, this will be a fun post to write! It's now about 2 months since I went back to eating whole foods. I resumed reading some paleo blogs and discussion sites a little over 2 weeks ago and I resumed posting thoughts on this blog at the very end of March. And today, I have suffered the first digestive upset not caused by wheat since April 2011.

So, what has been the impact of all this? Well, good and bad--what else did you expect?

Let's consider these things in temporal order:

My return to eating whole foods again fostered a dramatic improvement in my subjective health and energy. I did things differently this time. 

In April 2011, for my first few weeks I ate a high-meat, high-fat, very-low-carb regimen. I then gradually introduced fruit with later additions of fermented foods and tubers.

This time, with a playfully coined label of "easygoing" paleo, I reverted immediately to the fully-rounded whole foods assortment I had most enjoyed in 2011-2012. During my first 2 weeks I had 2 social situations in which I ate a significant amount of sweets. At the first, I deliberately chose to take a sugary dessert--jello, mandarin orange segments and whipped cream topping. At and after that event, I hit the jello hard. At the second event, a buffet, I ate a pretty spartan paleo meal with 2 exceptions: a tall glass of Coke and a few bites of a breaded fried chicken wing. The Coke was wonderful, but I think the breaded wing bit me back a little.

Since then my general regimen has been to eat fruit and low-starch vegetables as desired, with main servings of meat and tubers on alternate days. About the only specific goal I have tried to follow is to average 6 teaspoons or less of sugars per day from my honey, fruit and whatever.

During the first few days that I resumed scanning paleo sites, I enjoyed checking out the recent topics and seeing which sites were about the same and which had changed in tone or opinions. The impact of the sites on my mental state was benign. I'm pretty comfortable with my approach to eating and whether I agree or disagree with other bloggers doesn't seem to affect my mental balance.

I also resumed reading and participating in 2 paleo discussion sites: the paleo sub on reddit.com and the question/answer forum on paleohacks.com

My reactions to the 2 discussion sites are different but, surprisingly, both have had a negative impact on my mental balance. In the case of the subreddit, I think I simply don't have a "pure" enough alignment with what their definition of paleo is. On paleohacks, I'm troubled by the amount of spam and the impulsive, anxious nature of many of the questions. I tried to respond to some of the latter, but I found myself stirring up the old conflicts and anxieties of my disordered past. <Step away from the edge!>

Resuming my participation in this blog has been a positive thing for me and a few of my recent posts actually were valuable to me this morning in an unintended way.

That's my segue to discuss today's digestive upset. I was quite surprised to wake up this morning with a bloated, gassy gut. Unlike my historical symptoms from wheat, there was no brain fog or GERD or head/chest congestion. Just the unhappy gut.

I walked my dogs and when we returned I used the bathroom. [warning: I'm about to get grossly specific so make your own best choices.]

The ensuing bowel movement was larger than my usual. It looked completely digested, but was the consitency of oatmeal which is definitely not my norm. After a brief period of relief, I noticed lower gut soreness and mild cramping and was back in the bathroom. This time, I had a very small movement with some gassy spatters.

Okay, another short period of relief followed by more soreness and somewhat more urgent cramping sent me back to the small room. To my considerable surprise, this third movement was about normal volume but consisted of at least half undigested food. The 2 most untouched items were sweet potato and chopped hazelnuts, which had been eaten on recent-but-separate days. 

The bottom line there is that something I ate was apparently contaminated or beginning to spoil. It shut down my gut temporarily and some of my food was pushed through rather than being digested. I'm not assuming the guilty party was either the yam or the nuts--it could just as easily have been the the boiled shrimp or fresh pineapple I also ate on the days in question. Whatever the cause, my Superwoman cape is slightly tattered because this is the first time in 2 years that I've suffered any illness or GI distress not caused by wheat.

So, where does all this leave me? 

1- I plan to continue eating mostly whole foods with occasional sugary treats. The only thing that will stop me from sweet indulgences is elevated blood sugar.
2- I will still read at least a few of the paleo sites listed on this blog's reading list, but I may prune that list and I plan to *stop* visiting the 2 discussion sites. It's just not worth risking my hard-earned and slowly-gained mental balance even if I know I could possibly serve as a resource for some anxious people. If I can't control my own anxiety, it's not feasible right now.
3- I won't change anything because of today's gut rebellion. If you are going to buy and eat fresh fruit, vegetables and meat and particularly if your budget forces you to shop at big-box supermarkets, you will occasionally bring home some uninvited guests. That beats the heck out of eating processed food-like items that are mildly toxic in their own right and have minimal nutritional value. After all, I used to have an unhappy gut every morning.
4- I will continue to share thoughts on this blog. I won't recommend any one way of eating other than to build your nutritional foundation around foods that have been processed as little as possible. After that, to each their own!

Next Day Update: LOL, my resolution to avoid the discussion sites isn't going so well. Curiosity is driving me back "to see if I have comments deserving responses." Yeah, right. Okay, so I'll probably keep visiting *but* I am doing better at avoiding threads that seem based on anxiety. 

Yesterday after my gut calmed a bit I ate a baked potato, a baked sweet potato and a leftover piece of beef with garlic. Everything seemed to hit the spot except the garlic. My spirits are good but my lower gut is still a bit sore so I plan to avoid citrus, nuts and garlic today--mainly because the thought of eating any of them turns off my appetite. 

Thoughts About Ancestral Eating

Note: I read and enjoy every single comment. At the moment, though, the darn blog isn't letting me reply. My comments disappear into thin air--maybe the universe is trying to tell me something?

I've been somewhat philosophical this weekend, pondering what I/we mean when we say we practice ancestral eating. There are many iterations out there, after all.

I was reading a great blog post over at Paleo for Women and her comments were centered around the recent paleo conference, paleo fx.

Two of her comments caught my eye: eating lots of fruit, and being ashamed of it, and "I suspect the paleo diet’s infatuation with fat with some day be debunked." She wasn't saying fat was bad, by the way, but questioning the assumption that it's somehow holy and the only good body fuel.

Anyhow, I had to laugh when she said she "came out" about loving fruit but still shaded her confessed intake downward--I did that just yesterday! When I wrote my Saturday Brunch post I described my fruit dish as "banana and a mineola orange" rather than "2 bananas and a mineola orange." I definitely eat more fruit than many paleos if their online comments are accurate.

Her other comment, about paleo infatuation with fat, also struck a chord because I'm convinced it's healthy, for me at least, to avoid meals that consist only of high-fat/starch foods. My gut, brain and muscles all perform much better after meals if I eat a combination of food types and densities. On a daily basis, that means my main dish may be meat and/or tubers but the total meal includes greens, low-starch vegetables and/or fruit. If I eat just the meat/tubers my brain and gut just aren't satisfied enough to leave me alone until the next day. I love fatty meat, but it's a bit much without the salad. I enjoy tubers, but I enjoy them more paired with colorful low-starch veggies.

This morning I was not in a mood to cook; I spent my time outside enjoying our beautiful cool Nevada morning. So, I popped 2 nice potatoes into my toaster oven, one sweet and one white, and went back outside.

Since I wanted to go low-prep, I completed my meal plan with banana (just 1 this time) and an orange. When I dished out the sweet potato, which was ready before the white one, I rinsed and added canned green beans. The beans have a pleasant flavor with the yam and make a decent substitute for greens when I'm too lazy busy to make a salad. I might have added broccoli, asparagus or something else low starch instead. Low-starch plants add a nice amount of food volume while diluting the intensity of the tubers/meat. I didn't bother heating the beans; I just put a little butter on the yam, waited for it to melt, then dumped on the beans. I flipped them over after a minute or so and they were nicely warm when I ate them.

When I finished my potatoes--the white one was simply buttered with salt and pepper--I had the banana/orange dish as my dessert.

What works for you? Do you also eat meals of mixed food densities, or do you strongly favor density vs. volume?