Where There Is Smoke, There Might Not Be Fire

Paleo Prep (Sunday)

I went grocery shopping for the beginning of the Paleo meal plan. In total, we spent about $180 on groceries for the week minus food that my husband was able to have and I had to avoid  and items that weren't edible. Looking at our grocery receipts, there is a sizable amount of produce and meat. It looks about right since that's about all I am allowed to eat. 

One of the recipes I selected for this week involved coconut aminos. Coconut aminos are a non-soy, gluten-free sauce made from the sap of a coconut tree. This was the hardest thing for me to buy. Not only because the employees at my usual grocery store had no clue what I was talking about (much like 90% of the planet), but they were also almost twice the price of other non-gluten soy-like sauces.  According to the author of the book I have been using as a guide, it tastes just like soy sauce. 

I find it odd that coconut aminos are allowable on a Paleo plan. If I travelled back thousands of years and asked cave people to pass the coconut aminos, would they know what I was talking about? Or would I get the same glazed-over look from them that I got from the stockers at the grocery store? 

At Whole Foods I conveniently found them in the "ethnic" section without any assistance. Then came the price dilemma, this uber-special seasoning cost $6.59 a bottle. The other gluten-free soy sauce substitute was only $3.49 a bottle (on special). The only issue was that soy was an ingredient, which is not allowed on the plan. My husband reminded me that if I was going to do this, I had to fully commit and that included incurring the cost.

This stuff better taste like soy sauce. 

That evening I prepped a week worth of breakfasts. (There is something to be said about what one can accomplish when football isn't on.) Since I was mostly forgoing eggs, in addition to grains, there really isn't anything substantial one can have for breakfast that can be prepared quick. This meant I was turning to the recipes in the Practical Paleo book for breakfast ideas. I decided to make the Pumpkin Pancakes. They used a low amount of eggs and were seemingly the least amount of work. 

The only thing these "pancakes" had in common with your typical pancake is that I made them in a pan. The first two I made were incredibly runny rather than oozy, like a thick pancake batter. (Not terribly shocking since there was no sort of grain in it.) Then I realized, I didn't add butter to the batter. The recipe called for 2 tablespoons of butter or coconut oil to be mixed in. Instead, I put 2 tablespoons of coconut oil in the pan for cooking. (Oops.) Since I already had 2 tablespoons of fat in the pan,  I opted for 2 tablespoons of butter for what was left of the batter for the double batch I was making. These pancakes were less runny than the first ones I made, but still not the same consistency. I had come too far now to toss them so I finished making the batch.

The other main component of breakfast would be baked bacon, which is exactly what it sounds like. This was way simpler to make than the pancakes. All I had to do was put a baking rack on a cookie sheet, place each strip of bacon on the rack so they weren't overlapping, place the bacon filled pan in the oven (preheated to 325 degrees), and bake for 25 minutes. The time can be more or less depending on your desired crispiness. I had not eaten bacon in awhile, so I was more excited about this than I was about the pancakes.

Week One in Review: 

• Bacon is great day for one day, good on day two, but I'm pretty sure my arteries were narrowing by day three. How does anyone have meat for breakfast everyday? 
• I am not a fan of eating things I do not derive pleasure from. In this particular case, canned wild salmon is one of those things. 
• Coconut oil has a low smoke point. Please keep this mind if you are using it as a fat for broiling. Your food won't catch fire, but your kitchen sure will be hazy. Opt for butter or olive oil over coconut oil. Scratch the butter, as I recently learned that also will create smoke under the broiler.
• Coconut aminos are to soy sauce as alligator is to chicken. Disclaimer: I have never had alligator.  
• Eating at restaurants can be difficult. In particular, Cuban restaurants. Most menu items had beans and rice as a part of the dish. I settled on a sandwich and asked for it without the bun. The server laughed as she said "This is your sandwich, without the bun." Thanks, lady. I miss bread. 
• It also be very tasty. At a local winery I opted for the meat plate with Salami with Herbes de Provence shingled in two rows, Prosciutto piled in thin mounds down the center, and heart-shaped Hot Soprasseta slices (pictured above) arranged on the opposite side. All of which were melt-in-your-mouth delicious. On a normal night I would have shared the cheese board with my husband. (I'll admit that I took a few bites of his cheese. I'm a Sconnie girl at heart, not dead.) 
• I was able to mostly stick the "Paleo" adult beverage stipulations. Saturday night I had more than the one drink limit, but not by much. Living in the Northwest there is no shortage of good Pinot Noirs. I still miss beer though. 

Nutrient Breakdown

Previous to the Paleo plan, my diet was roughly 45% carbohydrates (mainly from beans and fruit), 30% fat (mainly from olive oil), and 25% protein (mainly from whey protein). These numbers are fairly in line with what the USDA recommends for Americans. This past week my diet was 50% fat (butter and oils), 30% carbohydrates (vegetables and fruit), and 20% protein (from meats).

My cholesterol intake has skyrocketed. Before, I averaged 300 milligrams of cholesterol, which is the "limit" set by the Food and Nutrition Board and the Institute of Medicine. I used quotation marks around limit because there is no Estimated Average Requirement (EAR), Recommended Dietary Allowance (RDA), or Adequate Intake (AI) set for cholesterol. This is because all of our tissues are capable of producing enough cholesterol for their needs meaning there really is no gain by us consuming cholesterol. There is also no Upper Limit (UL) set because any increased amount of dietary cholesterol intake increases the risk of Coronary Heart Disease. Cholesterol is present in all animal tissues, so there is no way to avoid it. That is unless you are vegan. Needless to say, once I moved from my mainly vegetarian diet to the Paleo plan my cholesterol intake jumped. This past week I averaged 400 mg of dietary cholesterol a day.

I'm going to take this opportunity to stress the importance of exercise while on a high-meat intake plan like this. Physical activity can increase your High Density Lipoproteins (HDL) levels. HDL serves as the "street sweeper" of your arteries. Their job is to pick up cholesterol in your blood and deliver it to the liver, where it is repackaged into bile and excreted from the body. The more HDL you have the better, especially if your dietary cholesterol intake is high.

As for minerals, with the Paleo plan my intake of iron is above and beyond what the RDA is for it. However, my calcium intake is way down. This shouldn't be surprising since dairy is a no-no with Paleo. Currently, I am getting on average 25% of the RDA for calcium from my diet alone. As noted in Practical Paleo, spinach is a good source for calcium. But you would have to eat a lot of spinach to get your RDA for calcium in one day. I'm not talking eating one big bag (about 8 cups) of spinach in a day, its more like 10 of those bags in a day. Other good plant-based sources of calcium include kale, Brussels sprouts, broccoli, cabbage, and cauliflower. Although I am eating all of these items, my intake is still pretty low. Admittedly, I am still taking a multivitamin with calcium and even with that I am well below the RDA. (I know cavemen didn't have multivitamins and minerals, but I'm also sure they never heard of coconut amnios either. I live in the cloudy Northwest and I'd rather not have osteoporosis.)    

Goal Update

In regards to my goals, I'm not feeling anymore energetic than before. In fact I feel like I have had less energy. I still get about 7 hours of sleep a night (which is about what I usually get). Maybe its because I am having meat in the morning. It's no wonder bacon and coffee make such a great duo.

This is taking the bacon and coffee combination to a new level. Image from: http://wanderingbeancoffeeco.blogspot.com/ 

I have not been able to tell a difference in my tolerance of cold either. I have warm socks, though, and they definitely do the trick. I would rather have eggs, nuts, and seeds in my diet and wear warm clothes to keep my toes warm than be on a severely restrictive diet in hopes that by doing that it will work.

Now that I am done with the Paleo for autoimmune conditions version, I am moving on to a more "typical" Paleo diet. Signing off from week one and onward to week two!