Archives for July 2012

I half heartedly considered putting up something on the blog last night.

Went nowhere. Beatrice took me out for sushi instead.

I had just put version 2.0 of the book to bed—off to the editor—and we’ll see what comes of it. I ended up working far more on V2 than V1. It’s done for me, now. Still simple, designed for beginners, but: tons more info, more options, more ideas and more motivation.

…In other news, for the first time since the last Troll Virus months ago (and only one or two prior, ever), I’ve had to ban a girl who didn’t seem too trollish at first, but turned out to be…and then proved herself a troll in competently going around the ban—which is great because that proves she doesn’t respect the property of others (i.e., classic troll). As I write, she’s busily unplugging and plugging back in her dynamic IP modem to grab another IP, using different screen names, different email addresses…all in order to get comments through. But, you get to judge for yourself, as always. I gave her the benefit of dozens of comments, replying civilly to almost every one. But now she’s butthurt because she doesn’t, apparently, get to own my blog and I won’t let her own it. I’m so ashamed.

…Oh, and if you like animal fat, you’re contributing to the destruction of the planet. Y’know, just so you know. I certainly didn’t want any of you to take it non-seriously. Indeed: those links? The survival of the planet and the human race? Yep. At stake. So there you go.

I’m gonna go off and fly my ass off for the better part of a week. Same wing as last year. I’m going to go use global warming to my advantage, if I’m lucky, because hang gliders have two sources of power: gravity and solar (I’ll defer to the aeronautical engineers to explain why). Here’s some recycled photos from last year, ’round this time.

Human Wings

Bird Like

A Far Cry from the Drilled Tubing & Hose Clamps of the 70s

Everyone always asks and so yea, we wear reserve parachutes, repacked once per year.

Never Used

Oh, and did I mention? This one has sprogs in lieu of luff lines for reflex protection. Aren’t you glad?

Negative G Protection

And it arrives on the top of the car, and after taking you a few thousand feet over launch and keeping you there for as long as solar power will allow—which is usaually a few hours or until you tire—you pack it up, toss it top the car and haul it off to the next mountain to do all over again.

Portable

Now isn’t that fucking cool? Really.

I’ll try to report on-scene, as events and circumstances develop. There might even be the most amazing camping cooking you’ve ever seen. We’ll see. No guarantees, and I still have no idea what’s on the menu for my duty night. But it’s pretty much camping, cooking real and damn good, and hang gliding for the next week…upon which it becomes all about #AHS12.

So stick around, will’ya? (all except that troll, of course).

Here’s the post that kicked it all off. This is chapter 9 of 12, to give interested readers the chance to take on the free ebook chapter by chapter over the weekend, debate it amongst themselves, or even challenge the author who’s keeping tabs.

~~~

From: Man Alive! A survival manual for the human mind.

by Greg Swann

Chapter 9. The high cost of mindlessness.

When you are not thinking carefully, you are not not-thinking. If you are not asleep and not unconscious, you are always thinking – always sustaining an uninterruptible mental “dialogue” with yourself in Fathertongue. But if you are not thinking carefully – thinking mindfully – then you are thinking carelessly – mindlessly. Most of the academic nonsense I have mocked in this book consists of a scrupulous cataloging of the processes and consequences of human mindlessness – which is misrepresented by the professoriat as being the normal state of human consciousness.

The existence and substance of mindlessness are not what the researchers intend to document. Their work is simply a reflection of the fact that, for each one of us, the world we see outside the mind is the one we are looking for from inside the mind. If you want to be excluded entirely from any academic “study,” all you have to do is question the premises – the prejudices – undergirding the “research.” It suits the professorial temperament to insist that your purposive behavior must be the end-consequence of some type of mindlessness – genetics or physical-, psychological- or behavioral-determinism or brain chemistry or vestigial animality or social dynamics or anything except rationally-conceptual volitionality – free will. Accordingly, if you should dare to peek behind the curtain it will turn out that you are not an appropriate test-subject. If the territory does not correspond to the map, by all means dispose of the territory.

…

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I’ve tried a lot of stuff over the years. It’s so easy initially, because when you switch to real food in place of processed and fast, there’s a spontaneous reduction in caloric intake for nearly everyone. That’s why both paleo and LC work so well initially for the fat people out there. Amazing how switching out processed crap for real food nourishes and satiates you better, and you naturally return to some measure of the real animal you were supposed to be in the first place.

But it’s a double edged-sword. It’s so easy for so many—so long as you resist the temptation to indulge too often—that an almost mysterious or magical element can seep in and some of us—me included—take (or took) some delight in believing we could just eat as much as we desired, so long as keeping it Real™.

Alas, it’s individual, too. Whether it’s because of just the right macro-ratios anyone happens to get right for them, their ability to keep reducing that intake as they lose weight and their base metabolic rate (BMR) comes down, age factors, gender factors… I don’t know. I have a hard enough time figuring it out for myself, much less advising anyone else beyond the basic principles to be applied…and then you’re on your own. Thankfully, I suppose, basic principles are so effed in general that just those alone make profound differences for many.

In the last 8-10 weeks I’ve been simply getting back to basics. What?

• Real food (meat, fish, fowl, vegetables—including starchy ones—fruits, a few nuts now and then, a little dairy…mostly the fat).
• Reduce drinking calories (including booze).
• Intermittent hunger or fasting. Just don’t worry about being hungry. Do something instead.
• No serious weighing or counting, but just a general sense of intake, ensuring it’s less than what you need to maintain body fat levels. Easy to do and your hunger can be your guide to that.
• Choose very nutritious foods, i.e., eggs, liver, shellfish—including oysters, clams, mussels, and so on.

And fat begins melting away again.

What about the gym and the cold therapy? I tend to go to the gym spontaneously, when I feel I need to get that workout; but when I do, I mean it. I generally do 2 types of sessions, now: (1) DL and leg presses, both heavy, but also light enough to do 2-3 sets in a 6-8 rep range. (2) standing presses, bench or chest presses, and weighted chin-ups or pull-ups. That’s about it. Other than than, it’s play in the backyard with kettlebells.

As to CT, it’s just fun and invigorating, and so I do it, as well as time in the pool. I’m not convinced it has any effect that will overcome bad habits elsewhere. I have a new experiment along the lines of CT, more isolated…I’m still evaluating that. But, I’ve just got to say it: whatever you think you want to try, great. Try it. But I think that a solid diet and discipline in the amount you consume—with excellent, nutritious food choices making it the easiest possible—far outweighs anything else you can do, even solid exercise.

So just a short post, to make it simple. Simple is good.

Yea, I maybe want to blog more about fat bread and applications, including mayonnaise making, tuna salad and all sorts of cool such things which, quite to the contrary of motivating me to go hog wild with neolithic foods, has had quite the opposite effect. More on that later.

I’m dashing to finish up V2.0 of the book, now with plenty of pressure to get ‘er done. But I kinda blew myself out a couple of days ago with it and have dreaded getting back to it. I’ll get it done, but my mind is so elsewhere at the moment. Some bullets:

• After just shy of 20 years at it, I have decided to close the company I started in a bedroom in 1993 with a coupla hundred bucks to my name (definitive decision Tuesday last). I grew it to a few dozen employees. I’ve hated it for years. Why do something you hate? For money?
• I have not only four other books in the works with Hyperink, but I spent all afternoon up in their offices Wednesday shooting video for a beginner’s course on Paleo. This, I love. …Though I didn’t love the 2-hr drive back down to the South Bay in “rush” hour traffic.
• I have two other primary initiatives, one as an adjunct to the business I’m shutting down—the part I like—and one as very paleo related. More later.

What this means is that I’m going to move more and more into this landscape as a livelihood…because I love it, because I likely can, and because I really have a sense of how to do it far different than others—which is perhaps the most passionate aspect of it. And let’s face it. All the blog posts I’ve done are here. There’s a ton of them. In essence, every time I write a new one, it’s like competing with myself. How can someone make it truly better, in perpetuity? The reality is that it’s not possible in an ever increasing sense, and so you have to figure out different channels, new subjects, and so on. Look: how many times can I call dietitian morons fuckheads, and have you laugh?

Yawn. See?

So in less than a week I head up to Hat Creek to fly hang gliders for a few days. Videos of all that here on YouTube, the 4th, 5th and 6th on the list. This will I be my 15th or 16th consecutive year of flying that amazing site. I’ve lost count.

The day after I get back, it’s off to Boston and the Ancestral Health Symposium: #AHS12. Did you see the posts I did about last year’s event?

• Crazy Stupid – Paleo – Love #AHS11
• My Ancestral Health Symposium Presentation – Self Experimentation #AHS11
• Appreciating the People of the Ancestral Health Symposium 2011 #AHS11
• The Beautiful People of the Ancestral Health Symposium #AHS11
• The Great Ancestral Health Symposium Blog Post Roundup #AHS11
• Human Animals Eating Animals #AHS11
• No Church Revival: #AHS11
• Ancestral Health Symposium Controversies Podcast: From High Heels to Gary vs. Stephan #AHS11

I actually just surprised myself at how much that event meant to me, realizing how much I blogged it. My presentation is going to be unique amongst all other presentations…I hope. I intend to demonstrate that diet and nutrition aren’t the only thing grains and agriculture fucked up beyond reason and recognition. Mine is: paleo Epistemology and Sociology. Looks like the schedule has Ron Rosedale, MD and I at 20 minutes each, going up against Terry Wahls, MD, with a 40-minute presentation.

When I get back, it’s but a few days until I head off to Austin for The 21 Convention. I’m basically delivering the same presentation, only far more detailed, an hour vs. the 20 minutes I have at AHS. Other speakers include Keith Norris, Skyler Tanner, Doug McGuff, and Dave Asprey. Robb Wolf was on the schedule as well, but at last I heard he had to cancel. Greg Swann, the guy I’ve been featuring chapter-by-chapter for his book Man Alive! got a gig speaking there too, as a direct result of that series. He goes up right before I do.

Well that’s it for now. Sorry that my blogging has so sucked rancid dog semen this week. I ate something that didn’t quite sit right a couple of days ago and am just getting back to feeling human again.

Well, I’m two chapters away from completing version 2.0 of Free the Animal: How to lose weight and fat on The paleo diet. It’s actually been a lot more work than version 1 for me, for various reasons but mostly because I really want to improve it a lot. Anyway, that’s what’s been taking up my time.

In other news, my publisher has begun putting up excerpts on Amazon that cover various topis, 5 in all, so far:

• Natural Disease Prevention and other excerpts from Free The Animal
• Eat Like A Caveman and other excerpts from Free The Animal
• The paleo, Primal, Ancestral Lifestyle and other excerpts from Free The Animal
• A Primal Weight Loss Plan and other excerpts from Free The Animal
• The Cholesterol Con and other excerpts from Free The Animal

They’re 99 cents each.

Now, I’m off to San Francisco to the publisher’s office where he’s arranged for a videographer and an interviewer to do about 90 minutes of footage about the paleo diet. More on that later. It’ll probably be something like a beginner’s instructional guide in 5-10 minute chunks.

Here’s a couple of photos I took while Beatrice and I were in Santa Cruz Monday. It’s a juxtaposition, needing no explanation other than that in the second photo, it’s what we actually ate, and that was after splitting and finishing off a whole dungeness.

A picture worth a thousand words.

Later.

Here’s the post that kicked it all off. This is chapter 8 of 12, to give interested readers the chance to take on the free ebook chapter by chapter over the weekend, debate it amongst themselves, or even challenge the author who’s keeping tabs.

~~~

From: Man Alive! A survival manual for the human mind.

by Greg Swann

Chapter 8. The integrity of art.

The universe is internally self-consistent. This is what we mean when we say it “makes sense” – the laws of nature are comprehensible to us because they are all consistent with each other, all superficially differentiated manifestations of the law of identity. This is actually a matter of controversy right now in theoretical physics, where the self-consistency of the universe and humanity’s seemingly uncanny adaptation to it are held to be evidence – in the mother of all We-Now-Know-We-Know-Nothing theories – that there is not merely one universe, but, the physicists claim, as many as ten to the five-hundredth power universes.

I am not making this up. I’m inclined to think that there can be only one everything-that-exists, and that, where the math does not conform to the observed evidence – where the map does not correspond to the territory – it is probably not the evidence that is incorrect. And doubt you nothing, the theologians are dancing in the streets: No longer are they the only madmen insisting that the cosmos consists of the products of their fevered imaginations. They get to play the Even-Physicists-Agree card over and over again, to the detriment of clear thinking everywhere.

…

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Isn’t it cool that with eBooks, you can go to 2nd Edition only 6 months after publishing the first? I follow Seth Godin’s Domino Project posts on ePublishing and I think he’s dead on.

This is the future, while all the while I see book after paleo book coming to be published in the traditional way. …And because they’re publishing them one on top of the other—don’t get me wrong, these are all excellent books—what happens to the poor authors? Focus shift, that’s what. As soon as the newest one hits the shelves, the authors of the past ones are all on their own. …And don’t even get me started on shelf space, printing economies of scale, and supply chain for dying brick & mortar operations (I looked into all of this very deeply before making my decision).

I have zero of these constraints, and while you can have a dead-tree-version of my book, it’s print on demand; so even that supply is just as endless—albeit more costly—as are the eBook versions (Kindle, Nook, Kobo, iBooks and PDF).

I’ve previously blogged about this revamp for a 2nd Edition and I’d expected it to be finished around the first of this month. Then I dug in. There was so much to rework (editing to shift focus) and add that I’ve kinda gotten caught up in it, much to my general satisfaction—and it doesn’t hurt to have Theresa Noll, an editor who can write in my style, such that I often can’t even tell the difference between who wrote what.

The first edition was a bit quick and to the point. Now, I have the chance to make it much more of what I wanted. I spent all day today just reworking a section in Chapter 3 on nutritional density. I’ll blog about that tomorrow, as a teaser.

Sales. Well, after the initial expected bump because it was new and many had been waiting forever, it settled into a monthly trend downward, as should be expected. But then something interesting happened. It began increasing again. As it stands, an average of 1,500 copies are being sold monthly, and with the deal I have with the publisher, it’s officially real money, even at the $3.99 price for the eBook. So, instead of pulling out all stops to get as many sales in that first 2-4 weeks for dead tree books on limited shelf space, I have a completely open-ended situation here.

And I love it.

But here’s another thing: I’m actually the best selling—or very nearly so—author for Hyperink, my publisher: with hundreds of books published so far. That get’s me a lot of attention, a lot of help—focussed help and attention. And guess what? We’re now mapping out a deal for about 90 minutes of video instruction for paleo, all professionally recorded and edited. I’ll be up at their offices next week to white board the whole thing (sorry, do-nothing bitches). This, in addition to the fact that my second book (unrelated to paleo, but where I’m a 20-yr expert) is in draft, and we have 3 more books planned. The next one related to this bog will be about paleo Society / Anarchism / Philosophy / Atheism / Don’t Fucking Vote / Death by Government / Don’t be a Moron. Ha!!! They’re actually quite excited about that because my blog archives are so damn deep on all those issues (and I have tons more material).

So, are you a blogger or an expert in a field? For the time being, Hyperink has said they’re not going to do a competing paleo book, but how about sub-tpics like fasting, exercise, nutrition, or whatever?

Here’s the page for bloggers to register their interest. To wet your appetite for possible things, here’s a screen clip (click for big).

Hyperink Blog to Book

Recognize anything? Yea, so on this page, I’m featured in my dirty tank top after the last day at NovNat with Hyperink’s other top selling bloggers to book: Brad Feld (Co-founder, Foundry Group; Co-founder, TechStars), MG Siegler (General Partner, CrunchFund; Columnist, TechCrunch), and Lewis DVorkin (Chief Product Officer, Forbes Media; Founder, True/Slant). Quite a lineup. There’s a quote by me about the publishing experience and also a couple of quotes from my commenters about the book. Check it out.

So, who thinks I would have been better off self publishing, or going with a publisher that churns out paleo books one on top of the other? This was published six months ago and things are really just beginning to warm up. Had it been a big hunk of paper, it would mostly be long forgotten. On to the next big chunk of paper.

OK, so what if you’re not a blogger? Well, the royalty deal is different if they have to create a book from interviews with you—as opposed to cull material from your blog that’s already written—so here’s the page for experts. Are you an expert in any niche you can think of?

Remember, this is Amazon’s Long Tail strategy, but without the massive warehouse, employee, and distribution costs. And, since it’s an eBook, you can keep it fresh and new for many years to come at little cost or effort. If it works, you can become enough expert to write another book in a different area, and another and another—until it all adds up to  a steady and important income.

Give it a look if it interests or intrigues you.

You know what the hell is funny? It’s googling for a proper caesar dressing recipe, only to find most of them with no raw egg yolk or anchovy. That is not caesar dressing. Not in this world. Luckily, I already know how.

Ingredients:

• 2 anchovy fillets, finely chopped
• 2 large garlic cloves, finely chopped
• 2 large egg yolks at room temperature (pastured is best)
• 2 tablespoons lemon juice (fresh squeezed is nice)
• 1 dash Worcestershire sauce
• 1/4 cup olive oil (or as needed)

Instructions:

Chop up the anchovy and garlic as finely as possible, then crush and slide across with the side of your knife blade to make a paste (this takes some work and practice). Alternatively, you could use a small food processor or, my favorite method: an old style garlic press with the small holes and tight piston plunger. Put a chunk of anchovy at the bottom, piece of garlic clove over, crush and repeat, until done.

Put your paste in a bowl, the 2 egg yolks, lemon juice, Worsh, and then whisk to mix. Once smooth, slowly introduce the olive oil at a drizzle (like making mayo) until you have emulsification. Some recipes call for using the white of one of the eggs to help get a thicker emulsification, but I always go with the traditional. You can also add a pinch of sea salt and black pepper, or to taste.

This will give you enough dressing for 2 1/2 — 3 heads of romaine lettuce, which will be enough to cover 4 dinner plates.

…You know what else the hell is funny? It’s googling for chicken caesar salad preparations only to find that virtually every one calls for skinless chicken breasts. What in holy hell?

OK. Onward. I placed two full chicken breasts (yes, with the skin, silly) in the oven on a rack, 350 for about 45 minutes or so. Take them out and let them cool 30 minutes so the juice remains in them, before slicing. Fire up the grill on high, let it get hot and grill the skin side and the underside, about 2-3 minutes each with the lid open (you don’t want to heat the inside any more) You can also use the broiler in your oven, but you won’t get the grill marks which to me, is aesthetically pleasing. I then let them rest at room temp for 30 minutes—or you can let them sit for hours, doesn’t matter. I don’t want hot or cold chicken on my caesar salad. I want it room temp.

Slice it up and present with a sprinkle of course sea salt and some cracked pepper. This way, your guests can put the portion of chicken on their salad they wish.

The last step is to dress the salad right before serving so that the romaine is nice and crisp. Take great care to get very fresh romaine, snappy and crispy. Makes all the difference.

You’ll also want to serve some freshly shaved parmesan cheese. But no croutons, of course.

And so there’s the beautiful finished product. …By the way, I’ve been experimenting with iPhone pics using Instagram, trying different effects. Damn cool app, especially combined with the various sharing features.

I’ll sing the praises of tumblr first. “Those” get a brief mention later.

I got a micro-blog off and running, as I trumpeted yesterday…and, well, let’s just say I’m impressed with the individuality and anarchy of the thing—as least so far as I’m seeing (exceptions always abound). Literally: there is everything there, as audaciously unabashed and varied as it’s possible to be—but in a pretty sane social network environment. Count me refreshed; on levels of refreshment.

This morning I was checking out those who’d chosen to follow Animal Parts—like, including young women who post artsy but explicit S&M pics and other porn (hey, whatever floats your boat, if consensual…), use f-bombs with abandon, don’t really give a fuck what you think…and: this is the archetype of the sort of person I like the best in my observing people space—provided they do quotidian productive things as well.

It’s not that these are my values at all—quite to the contrary. I got over my WOW, FREE PORN ON THE INNERNETS!!! stage in 1999, shortly after going from modem to DSL for the first time. More is less. Get it? Used to take forever to load a big pic on a 28K modem, so at least there was anticipation. With DSL, you could see as much as you eventually didn’t want to see anymore.

…But that’s just me.

The value this absolutely does represent for me is that people are figuring, calculating, pursuing and socializing their own values in micro. But even more importantly: not requiring I pay or contribute to it. Seems to me they have only one request: leave me and my  friends The. Fuck. Alone. I’m fine with that.

I hope I’m right in a general sense…that the principal ethical principle eventually extends to bullshit like “universal health care” and all other wanker pussy sissy liar posuer fucking bullshit. So, that…when you shit out of your own mouth, stupidly using a general collective term like “society,” you’re increasingly laughed at (or are told to fuck off…I don’t much care which, though I have an affinity for the latter).

Go take a big eyeful of tumblr. Tell me that’s a monolithic “society,” as every single elected criminal and their bedfellows in church and media have used the term since elections got cool and shit, and people got more stupid than fucking stupid.

It’s a million “societies,” and the only relevant question is then: whose society?

I ask this question all the time in comments: whose society?

The other relevant question is what are you “social engineers”—who industrially imagine everyone just about the same because there used to be factories and the human drones have been largely replaced by electromechanical ones—gonna do now? I have a modest suggestion: …(you can guess)

It’s delicious to me that so many out there don’t like me, hate me, whatever….

There you have it.

Here’s part one, where the first attempt was made. While the results for that high-fat, low carb, moderate protein (from eggs, not gluten) bread were decent, I wanted to improve. A bit more rise, a bit less dense, and good adhesion, i.e., sticking together.

Success!

First, I want to relate something odd but very surprisingly pleasant. I love how I feel after eating this bread. I’m so used to expecting burps, heartburn, and slowdown after having an indulgence like a sandwich or burger that I was kind of expecting it here, for whatever reason. Nope, none of it. I even made a grilled cheese sandwich last night with the last of it and felt stellar. This is good news, because this is really nutritious bread and there’s no meaningful compromise.

OK, as I mentioned before I had a difficult time making butter out of the macadamias and got more like a very stiff peanut butter with chunks. I speculated that I didn’t get as much of a rise because of the chunks or, that there was less fiber available to act on the other ingredients, and especially when it comes to sticking together.

Problem solved. This time, I used my big Cuisinart. Whereas my first “dough” was more like beaten eggs, this one was a nice, thick paste.

Ingredients:

• 5 eggs (medium to large size)
• 1 cup raw whole macadamia nuts, made into butter per instructions
• 1/2 cup coconut butter
• 1/2 cup almond butter
• 2 tablespoons coconut flour
• 1/3 teaspoon sea salt
• 1 1/2 tablespoons apple cider vinegar (Bragg)
• 1 teaspoon baking soda

Instructions:

Place the macadamias into a heavy duty food processor and process on high to achieve a nut meal. Add one of the eggs, and after another minute, another egg—until you get a nice macadamia nut butter. Add the remaining ingredients, except for the vinegar and baking soda. Once everything is all mixed, run the processor on the low setting and introduce first the vinegar, then the baking soda.

Place the dough in a standard bread pan greased with butter, ghee or coconut oil. Bake at 350 for 35 minutes. Remove from the pan and set on an elevated rack to cool.

…So, as you can see, as a comparison with the photo on the previous attempt, this batter is way thicker. Obviously a consequence of getting the macadamia into an actual butter and probably the addition of the coconut flour which is essentially just the fiber.

Blurry Batter

And here’s how it came out. Quite different and looking a lot like Jeff’s bread as linked in that first post and the original inspiration for my attempts.

Macadamia Coconut Almond Butter Bread

It holds together real nice, tastes great. You also see that I added a half cup of almond butter. I discussed my reservations with almond butter in the last post, but this reduces it by 2/3. So rather than 30 grams or so of omega-6 polyunsaturated fat in the loaf, you’ll get about 10 grams—perhaps a gram per slice. Acceptable, in my book.

So let’s look at the nutritional profile, based on the ingredients above (eggs, nut butters). FitDay doesn’t have coconut flour but since the fat is removed I presume it’s just mostly insoluble fiber. Click both images for the full-sizers. Remember, this is for the whole loaf.

Macronutrient Breakdown

Nutrition Profile

Now that’s damn nutritious bread…uh, eggs and low PUFA nuts—80% fat, mostly saturated and monounsaturated…i.e., quality fats. Here, compare it to the common shit people eat. Well, so, I’m declaring this a real win. The entire loaf comes to 2,000 calories. You could eat an entire loaf per day, it’d be “ovo-vegetarian” if you don’t grease the pan with butter, and you’d get better nutrition than 99% of vegetarians and 100% of vegans.

Give it a shot and let everyone know if you manage to improve it.

You already know Jeff Nimoy from the bread post (there’s another loaf in the oven right now—with mods—and it looks very promising).

Anyway, in addition to being The Cooking Caveman, he’s also the founder of SamePlate.com, a dating site dedicated to initially matching people by their food and dietary preferences. Damn fine idea, if you ask me. From this man’s perspective, there’s got to be nothing worse that a date that’s a picky, finicky eater. …Except a vegan; but then, I repeat myself.

Here’s the press release. An excerpt:

LOS ANGELES – SamePlate.com is the first and only dating site in the U.S. that matches couples based on the food they eat (or don’t eat), as well as the diet they follow. Founded by Emmy Award Winning writer and producer and CookingCaveman.com blogger, Jeff Nimoy, SamePlate.com helps singles to find successful relationships through the one thing we all have in common…food.

Go have a look at the rest of the background, and by all means, share this around the Paleosphere. …And yes, there are categories for paleo, Primal, Caveman, LC, Atkins, etc.

We need more paleo babies or our plan for world domination will get seriously behind schedule.

Ha, bet that got your attention.

It’s not entirely true, of course, but you’ll see what I mean later. One thing I can tell you up front is that this recipe uses no seed, grain, or nut flour—and neither is it virtually all egg, or egg with cheese, like Oopsie Bread.

Backing up a few days, I was scanning the comment thread on that ridiculous Forks Over Knives piece and came across a comment from a writer and voice actor in LA, Jeff Nimoy. Like I sometimes do when I don’t recognize someone, I shoot over to their blog if they have one, to see if there’s any there, there. And indeed there was. I took an immediate liking to it—likely in part because the guy is a professional writer and things like that matter to me.

So go check out Cooking Caveman.

…Anyway, one of the posts I came across was this one on bread: The Paleo Bread Search is Officially Over!

I’m declaring this last batch of almond butter bread as the winner of my 2+ years searching for a decent paleo bread substitute.  The first time I made it, I still had some problems (like it kept falling apart), but I tweaked the recipe, and now I finally have a bread that is tasty, doesn’t fall apart, and for the very first time, tastes as good toasted as it does NOT toasted (previously, it was only enjoyable toasted).

Intrigued on two counts. First, he’s been at this a while. While I’m not much into paleo reenactment and as such, don’t do cakes, cookies, brownies and all the other treat-like stuff, a decent bread for tuna salad, egg salad, a BLT or a burger would be nice now and then. But I’ve never tried it. Imagine how much time in experimentation I could save if this pans out?  Second, I’ve tasted a few of the breads made with nut flours and I just don’t care much for them and they don’t seem to hold together very well. I’ve always figured that was because the nuts are often in small chunks, not really flour, and if it is flour—like coconut flour—it’s just the fiber and none of the fat. Nut butter, eh? Sounds intuitively on track.

But there’s one problem for me. While I’m not a super stickler for all things paleo by any means—and I’m fine with dairy fat like butter or cream—I try to limit consumption of nuts and stopped using almond meal a long time ago. Basically, I see almond meal as the nut equivalent of fruit juice. It’s concentrated, and almonds have a high content of pro inflammatory omega-6 polyunsaturated fats. When I eat almond, I eat whole almonds so I know how much I’m getting.

But then I thought: well if the nut butter is the key to good bread, then any nut butter should work. How about coconut butter or macadamia nut butter? I ran some numbers. Now I couldn’t find the amounts of n-6 (omega-6) in the nut butters, only the oils, but it’s probably pretty close and anyway, it’s the difference that counts.

So for the 1 1/2 cup of nut butter this recipe calls for, you’ll get about 35 grams of n-6 in the whole loaf with almond butter. But if you use coconut, macadamia, or some combination, you’ll get about 4 grams in the whole loaf—9 times less.

So I set out this morning.

Basic Ingredients

Here’s Jeff’s original version of the recipe (to which he made a couple mods):

Ingredients:

• 1 cup almond butter
• 3 eggs
• 1 Tablespoon vinegar
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/4 teaspoon sea salt

Instructions:

• Blend almond butter and eggs until smooth
• Add in remaining ingredients
• Pour into a sprayed 8 1/2″ by 4 1/2″ loaf pan and smooth the top
• Bake at 350 degrees for 30-40 minutes
• Let cool before slicing

His final version, same cooking instructions:

• 4 or 5 pasture raised eggs (depending on the size, if they’re huge, use 4, if small, use 5)
• 1 1/2 cups of organic almond butter
• 1 1/2 tablespoons of organic lemon juice
• 3/4 teaspoon of baking soda (which turns it from paleo to paleo-ish)

Here’s what I did:

• 4 pastured eggs (they were big)
• 3/4 cup organic coconut butter
• 3/4 cup raw macadamia nut buter (had to make it myself, see below)
• 1 1/2 tablespoons apple cider vinegar (Bragg)
• 3/4 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/4 teaspoon sea salt

I could not find any macadamia nut butter at Whole Foods, so I took 1 cup and ran it in a small food processor. It basically created a moist meal, not a butter. So I added about a Tbsp of soft Kerigold and a dash of olive oil and it sort of turned into something almost like a nut butter, but with chunks—so chunky nut butter. As luck would have it, it came out to exactly 3/4 cup.

Ready for the oven

I greased the pan with unsalted grassfed Kerigold organic butter. Baked it at 350 for 35 minutes.

Nice rise

It was only after I took it out of the oven, noticed the size of the loaf and read Jeff’s stuff more closely that I realized he doubled the recipe. That’s what I’ll do next time.

Also, looking at his pictures, He appears to get a bit more rise, a bit more fluff than I did.

Not bad. Definitely tasty. Holds together.

There could be reasons for that.

1. Perhaps, that I did not get the macadamia into a true butter, releasing all of the fiber to act on the eggs.
2. The fat content difference between almonds, macadamias and coconut.

I’m leaning towards (2), primarily. I ran more numbers. Indeed, for a 1 ounce serving of coconut meat there’s 17 total grams of fat. For macadamias, 20 grams. Almonds have only 13 grams. So, probably the fact that there’s 35% more fat in my recipe makes a difference in the density. We’ll see what happens when I double the recipe.

For shits & giggles, here’s the saturated, monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fat profiles for the different nuts and the combination (based on a 1 oz serving of nuts).

• Almonds: 1g / 8.6g / 3.6g (sat / mono / pufa)
• Macadamia: 3.4g / 16.5g / .37g
• Coconut: 16g / .8g / .2g
• MacaCoco (1/2 oz each): 9.7g / 8.65g / .29g

I do love how the combination gives you the benefit of the saturated coconut fat and the monounsaturated of the macadamia. Vitually no PUFA, which is great. Eat fish for PUFA.

So now you know the story behind the title. So what do you think? Anyone have a better idea? One thing I’m for sure going to do is find a way to make real macadamia butter (I think maybe they have a grinder at Whole Foods). Or, I can just buy some online.

Burger time tonight!

Addendum: Here’s the burger.

Burger

I toasted the bread under the broiler with a bit of butter, let it cool. I cut that patty in half for obvious reasons. So, it ended up a huge 4″ thick burger at least. At that size, it was bound to break up a bit and it did. Normally, when that happens with an indulgence meal. I just toss the bread. Not this time. The bread is ambrosia. I ate ever single crumb of that fatty wonder.

Here’s the post that kicked it all off. This is chapter 7 of 12, to give interested readers the chance to take on the free ebook chapter by chapter over the weekend, debate it amongst themselves, or even challenge the author who’s keeping tabs.

~~~

From: Man Alive! A survival manual for the human mind.

by Greg Swann

Chapter 7. A calculus of morality on a first-grade number line.

Spirit your mind back to your first-grade classroom. Can you see that number line tacked up above the blackboard? In the middle is the number zero – one of the most important inventions in mathematics, incidentally. To the right are the positive integers – 1, 2, 3 – up to 10 or 25 or 100. To the left are the negative integers – and take a moment to salute the incomparable genius of subjunctivity who first thought to count things that are not in evidence to be counted. Your teacher used that number line to demonstrate to you, by moving his hand to the right or to the left, that 3 + 5 = 8 or 9 – 11 = –2. In other classrooms in other times or places, teachers might have used stones or sticks or an abacus, but the essence of the demonstration, whatever form it took, was that arithmetic is an ontologically-consonant notation system: The map is not the territory, but the map is demonstrably correspondent to the territory. That sort of demonstrable one-to-one correspondence is present in every practically-useful Fathertongue notation system, obviously, and absent from all the useless ones. This is what it means for an idea to be ontologically-consonant.

…

Read More

I’d been looking forward to this for a while. Things just came together. A couple of weeks ago, the way cool Clifton Harski got in touch, offered to come over and school me, I offered a BBQ in return, and as luck would have it, Dr. BG (Grace) (link removed) is back from China for a time. She and I had lunch last week at The Left Bank at Santana Row (huîtres, steak tartare, steak frites) and it was the most natural thing in the world to invite her to come along.

Clifton Harski — about 225#?

What kinda dude is Clifton? He’s international. He lived all over the world all his young life, owing to his father’s occupation. From 20-30 or so, I travelled the world, lived a total of 7 years abroad. When I talk with Clifton, it’s as though there are a thousand things that need not be addressed—because we’re both dudes who get that we live on a whole planet, and the country and culture of where we were born is a separate thing.

Perhaps that’s why my Frenchman friend, Erwan Le Corre, tapped Clifton to be the very first guy to take MovNat out of the cloister and into the mainstream with 1-day courses all over America.

Clifton also has the perfect demeanor of a trainer—as does Erwan and Vic. Here’s a list of what he taught me to do, kettlebell wise, yesterday. Google or YouTube each exercise and chances are, you’ll find out how to do each one.

• Bottom up rack walk
• Farmer carry
• Suitcase deadlift
• Single leg deadlift
• Goblet squats
• Single side front squat
• Reverse lunge
• Turkish get up (the Holy Grail)
• RKC swings
• Windmill
• Standing press
• Halo
• Rows
• Floor press

We did all of those. Not like full exercises in reps, multiple sets, but typically some number of reps for each. In terms of the weight, I have a 26lb, 35, and 44. Clifton says I  might want to get a 53 to finish out the set. Initially I was using the heavier bells and in some cases like the farmer carry, the 35 and 44 together. As things progressed and I got a bit fatigued, we went to lighter ones to focus on proper form (and especially for overhead work like windmills).

About 2/3 of the way through, here’s me.

Turkish Get Up? That was totally effed, man.

Here’s some random pics of the whole affair. Clifton has a knee injury. 500 pound DL. He’ll recover. Surgery on Monday.

“Ok, what are you going to do now?”

Beatice gets in on it. Why? Just wait.

Art – Single leg DL with the 35 & 44 bells

Reverse Lunge – A variation on the Goblet Squats I’d been doing

Windmill

The 180 degree marvel of kettlebells

I don’t do it justice, because a blog or a video clip never can.

…Clifton got here between 1:30 and 2. Dr BG…Grace? about 3pm or so. We had hours of talking, fun, a fire in the backyard.

Clifton & Grace

I took that pic with my iPhone, intending to post it to the FTA page. But I guess it went to my small personal thingy, close friends and family only. I asked the question, ‘who are these people in my backyard?’

My longtime real-space friend, Allesadro (a PhD physical chemist from Italy), replied:

I don’t know but he’s smoking hot!

Robert, another close real-space friend asks:

Uhhh, do we get a clue?

Ale rejoinders.

Here’s your clue: hot!

I delighted in texting that to Clifton.

We had dinner, too. Grace hit Whole Foods on the way over. 2 Porterhouse, 4 NY Strips.

Meat – 2 porterhouse, 4 NY strips form Whole Foods

I eventually got around to grilling it, doing a dijon vinaigrette, and a pound of browned butter, poured over the steaks.

2 Guys, 2 Women. What’s in store?

Not too much for me…

Oh, Clifton…

Clifton ate huge, I ate big, and the grills ate far more than average.

Clifton, starting on a fat NY after finishing off the whole porterhouse (and potato)

In the end, after all that, here’s what was left, and we sent Clifton away with (he promised to eat it all bare handed and I reminded him of being barefoot, too).

Not bad for 2 guys and gals

It was a marvelous time. Wish I had pics of the hours after, around the fire, primal wise. There’s just something about sitting around a fire.

I wanted to show you this to encourage you. paleo and Primal is easily big enough to hook up with people, do this sort of thing, enjoy it and/or publish it too, to encourage others.

I think that if you haven’t, yet, you will be amazed at the ease with which you can come to appreciate other people in profound ways. You may notice that the level of conversation is high.

Don’t you just love it when someone purports to be an authority, bemoans the fact that nowadays, people have little need of such self-proclaimed authorities and actually—gasp—go find their own information, act upon it, and manage their own issues? Hell, they might even go to an English major!

By now, most everyone has heard of or seen the stupid, misinformed, alarmist, hand-waving diatribe against The Paleo Diet over at “Forks Over Knives,” authored by none other than John McDougall, MD. It reads like someone from high school wrote it.

As such, there’s really no point in going over the masses of bullshit. It’s more wrong than a very wrong thing. And for one thing, Cordain as the authority? Who even hardly cites him, anymore that much? What about Sisson and The Primal Blueprint? How about Wolf and The Paleo Solution—or the many other recent works out there, blogs by MDs, PhD’s, English majors…or even general shit stirring, hit & run guys  like me? How about the thousands of commenters in all of the blogs and forums of all of us, detailing their successes, mistakes, adjustments, continued success, more mistakes…in a continuing self-directed process? Yea, I know. It’s anecdotal. Nothing to see here. Move along, citizen. Trust the “controlled” studies and the results of the faceless, whom you’ll never get to question or interrogate as you can in comment sections and forums.

So I did scan through the comments of that poor excuse for an article and came across one thread that illustrates my points, above. Yes, a comment and ensuing thread by none other than Garth Davis, bariatric surgeon. Or, should I say: total, demonstrated failure at helping obese patients lose weight through proper diet, nutrition, exercise et cetera? You know, like this shit stirrer seems to be able to do quite effectively (and Sisson, and Wolf, and Hartwig, and many others). …No “knives” involved—except those Forks & Knives, hardy har har, we use to properly eat real food. Contrast all those cited testimonials with these on his clinic website. And he’s gonna lecture us?

So here’s where the thread begins.

Such a great article. I have been making these arguments to patients and physicians alike. It is amazing how easily people will adopt a fad without looking at the facts. paleo diet is much of the same, and the same has gotten us sick and fat!

Ah, he’s been making these same arguments, eh? You mean those same stupid, alarmist arguments? You mean against the sorts of things my readers, Sisson’s, Wolf’s, Hartwig’s find so much success on without resorting to Knives Over Forks? Perhaps that’s your fundamental problem, doc: you spout the same shit over and over and ultimately, you end up having to cut. What’s that saying about doing the same stupid fucking shit over and over again, expecting other than a stupid fucking shit result?

Here’s some more choice excerpts from the thread.

Dropping processed food will help everybody. BUT epidemiological studies ate clear. The EPIC study, the China Study, The seventh day Adventist study all show that the more meat consumed the lower the life span and the more disease. The paleo diet has very little if any good scientific evidence. That said if you increase your fruit and vegetable consumption you are doing a lot for your health and the paleo diet is A LOT better than the standard American diet.

Oh, gee, thanks doc. By the way, no study shows anything of the sort. Then someone cites Denise Minger’s great work tearing apart The China Study limb from limb—where that original critique post sits at 875 comments, many from researchers and statisticians who confirm the soundness of Denise’s work (in-between the typical ad hominem and argument from authority comments from ignoramuses). The doktor continues and yea, it’s a mess.

Deb your reference to Denise is EXACTLY the reason I started this page. The China study was a HUGE epidemiological study. In order to draw conclusions the raw data has to go through a regression analysis to eliminate confounding factors. A lay person such as Denise simply cannot understand that data. For instance she states that in one area in China they increased grain consumption and then gained weight. What she does not know is that there were several variables causing increase grain including loss of crops. This region ALSO increased meat consumption. There are confounding variables. You cannot simply say there was increased weight because of grain. That blog you referenced is the exact pseudoscience that leads people along the wrong path and the exact reason we are the sickest country in the world. Remember the blue zone studies of the healthiest cultures in the world? None if them are a paleo diet. All of them ate beans. In fact beans were the most common food eaten by people who lived over 100, and yet paleo forbids beans. You say you have read articles on both sides and I can tell you that is not true because there are no peer reviewed journal articles on paleo diet that are worthwhile epidemiological studies.

Where to begin? Did he even read the far more exhaustive critique? Did he catch the part where she actually used the original monograph? Probably no, and no. He’s basically just another wanker so cock sure of himself he can’t be bothered with “A lay person such as Denise [who] simply cannot understand that data.” He can’t even get enough of his own appeals to authority.

Here is Dr. Campbell’s response to your above reference. Remember he is the former chair or nutrition at Cornell and hold a PhD in nutrition. Needs (sic) has no qualifications. Just a blogger with opinions.

Well, ok, how about another blogger with “opinions,” then? Ned Kock. Only, this one happens to be a PhD-level engineer and mathematician—who actually writes code for his own statistical analysis. Here’s his China Study posts, and guess what? Using even a different data subset then Denise and different multivariate analysis, he largely reached the same findings.

So, for example, in his post The China Study II: Wheat may not be so bad if you eat 221 g or more of animal food daily, Ned finds this:

What we haven’t done yet, however, is to look at moderating effects. And that is something we can do now.  A moderating effect is the effect of a variable on the effect of another variable on a third. Sounds complicated, but WarpPLS makes it very easy to test moderating effects. All you have to do is to make a variable (e.g., animal food intake) point at a direct link (e.g., between wheat flour intake and mortality). The moderating effect is shown on the graph as a dashed arrow going from a variable to a link between two variables.

The graph below shows the results of an analysis where animal food intake (Afoods) is hypothesized to moderate the effects of wheat flour intake (Wheat) on mortality in the 35 to 69 age range (Mor35_69) and mortality in the 70 to 79 age range (Mor70_79). A basic linear algorithm was used, whereby standardized partial regression coefficients, both moderating and direct, are calculated based on the equations of best-fitting lines.

From the graph above we can tell that wheat flour intake increases mortality significantly in both age ranges; in the 35 to 69 age range (beta=0.17, P=0.05), and in the 70 to 79 age range (beta=0.24, P=0.01). This is a finding that we have seen before on previous posts, and that has been one of the main findings of Denise Minger’s analysis of the China Study data. Denise and I used different data subsets and analysis methods, and reached essentially the same results.

Here’s some other specific posts to check out, all basically confirming the lay English major, know nothing’s findings.

• The 2012 red meat-mortality study (Arch Intern Med): The data suggests that red meat is protective
• The China Study II: Fruit consumption and mortality (not protective)
• The China Study: With a large enough sample, anything is significant (“with a large enough sample one can easily ‘show’ that drinking water causes cancer”)
• The China Study one more time: Are raw plant foods giving people cancer? (“Thanks again […] to Ms. Minger for making the data available in easily downloadable format and for doing some superb analyses herself.”)
• The China Study again: A multivariate analysis suggesting that schistosomiasis rules! (“Denise herself posted the data she used in her analysis. This data is from the China Study. So I decided to take a look at that data and do a couple of multivariate analyzes with it using WarpPLS […] So, in summary, this multivariate analysis vindicates pretty much everything that Denise said in her July 16, 2010 post. It even supports Denise’s warning about jumping to conclusions too early regarding the possible relationship between wheat consumption and colorectal cancer (previously highlighted by a univariate analysis”).

Is that enough, Doktor, you condescending little asswipe? You fucking failure!

Go to hell. Straight. Or, how about getting your inflated head out of your ass, do some real research and thinking for yourself and turn yourself into an real asset to obese people.

It is hard to argue with someone who believes mingers critique is a slap down. It just tells me you have no background in reading scientific data. Minger selected data to make a point without factoring in confounding variables and doing statistical analysis. Taking a statistics course does not make you a statistician. The actual china study was printed in Nature, one of the premiere scientific journals that only accepts peer reviewed statistically analyzed data. You cannot take raw data and make conclusions like she does. Her opinions were printed in her blog, not a journal. The problem is that lay people just cannot understand the difficulty of statistical significance and therefore will believe anything anybody tells them. That is the gigantic problem we have. The Weston price foundation is one of the least scientific organizations I have ever studied. Why would people believe Minger over physicians and epidemiologists? I think because most statisticians are not as eloquent. While others are spewing nonsense the scientists are studying. Recently the European Union did the largest epidemiological study to ascertain why Europe is having increased obesity and cancer. The first article was published in the journal of Clinical Nutrition. The answer: meat. Funny enough it is the same answer found in the china study. Same answer found by ornish and essylstyn. I am an evidenced based medicine doctor. Years ago I wrote a book espousing the virtue of the zone diet. But unlike everybody else I am not wedded to one idea. I can make serious scientific investigation. The serious science is clear, meat is bad for you. Very bad for you.

What a moron. And he cuts into people.

Ok commenters, your turn. I’m particularly interested in other sources confirming some of Denise’s work. You can also contradict the Doktor’s completely unsupported, well contradicted claim that “…meat is bad for you. Very bad for you” if you like.

Go.

I’ll tip my hat to the new constitution
Take a bow for the new revolution
Smile and grin at the change all around me
Pick up my guitar and play
Just like yesterday
And I’ll get on my knees and pray
We don’t get fooled again
Don’t get fooled again

The product of CAFOs (concentrated animal feeding operations)

…Grassfed cattle are totally anarchist. I pulled that image off the Paleo + Libertarian Group on Facebook this morning.

Time for another installment of inspiration, especially for those of you just starting out, or considering the “Paleo / Primal / Caveman / Ancestral” approach to life, activity and diet. Many more stories here, and there’s a book too.

So, in no particular order…James from Australia on how he’s really looking into this, Larry creates a weight loss registry, Justin has a problem (now resolved), 19 yr-old Alex from the UK gets results, Kat is a reformed raw vegan, Scott’s in the best shape of his life, and I finish it off with a self-indulgent rant over pettifogger wankers that’s just al in a day’s work.

~ An email of appreciation from James in Australia. While not so much of a success story yet, this was received some months ago (I’m way behind getting to all of these) so I hope he’s continued to put things together.

I initially was buoyed by my enthusiasm for work but long hours quickly became long weeks. I ate bad food (wrong stuff, too much). My exercise was lifting the phone receiver and occasionally walking to the copier. The suits I bought to work in stopped fitting comfortably, and eventually stopped fitting at all.

I became depressed – I began to lose some of my vigor for work that began to sap my vigor for life. I was becoming unhealthy and could see and feel the effects—I felt slow and sluggish, my knees and hips and low back began to ache after too many hours in a too old chair (I have some residual issues from basketball and football), and I was tired all the time. I had to arrest, or at least resist, this slow decline I was having at the ripe age of 23.

My chance encounter with Free the Animal was probably not so chance after all—it was quite patently what I needed to find, when I needed to find it.

I’ve spent many hours (some of it work time, shhhh) reading your writings. Our opinions differ in places and converge in others and this is natural—given the breadth of your writing and the topics you’ve addressed, it would be bizarre for it to be any other way. But the vitality and ferocity of your approach to bullshit is refreshing, and reminds me that for keeping the mind fit there is no better exercise than wading through the quagmires of bullshit that dot our modern intellectual landscape. It is messy but necessary.

Anyway, a thankyou. It has been and continues to be a pleasure for me to read you. I wish you the very best of health in the future and continued vivacity in your writing and thinking.

(In terms of actual adoption – I am slowly trying to adopt some of your approaches (whole food clean eating, intermittent fasting but with corresponding feasting, and short but intense exercise regularly). The actual enactment of the eating plan have been very difficult. Put plainly, I stink at cooking, do not know how much of each ingredient I need, and worry that I regularly miss my ‘macros’. In a day to day sense, I am just not sure and feel as though I’m ‘doing it wrong’.)

~ Sorry this got shoved in a folder and not published immediately, but Larry writes:

My name is Larry Istrail and I am currently a medical student involved in obesity research. I have a master’s degree in nutrition and have been researching the benefits of paleo and carbohydrate-restricted diets for some time now. I have recently created the Ancestral Weight Loss Registry, to collect and publish data on the best ways to lose weight and get healthy on a paleo and/or low-carb diet.

I really enjoy reading your blog and following your tweets. Your transformation story is very inspiring! My goal is to get people like you, as well as those that were less successful to share their story for the greater good of carb-restricted eating.

The only way this registry will be effective is with a lot of data. I have had a large amount of interest already, and need your help to spread the word. Would you be willing to write a blog post urging your readers to join? Whether they were successful or not, I would like them to register.

I have also created a Related Science library, documenting the clinical data testing the safety and efficacy of carb-restricted diets.

Check it out, register, participate.

~ From Justin:

Huge fan of your website. Your posts on LDL cholesterol changed my understanding of the whole thing. After seeing your posts, I had my doctor order a NMR Lipoprofile with my yearly physical. I haven’t gotten it back yet, but I expect good numbers. I’ve been gluten free for about 4 years and paleo/primal for about 2. I do have some strange results on another test that I wanted to get your opinion on.

My blood work is showing some slight albuminuria – that is, proteins that otherwise stay in the blood are getting pushed into the urine. My doctor wants to put me on ACE Inhibitors (I told him NO). I’m at a loss as to why this is happening and how to fix it. If you could shed some light on this for me that would be great. Feel free to post the contents of this email if you make a blog post about it.

As to symptoms, the only thing I can think of is I think my cortisol might be high – feeling stress during the day, trouble falling asleep at night. Also have to pee in the middle of the night (never used to happen at all). I’m going to get some blackout curtains and try some magnesium oil and see where that takes me. Robb Wolf notes that sleep deprivation blocks the nighttime pulsitile release of aldosterone with the effect of increasing nighttime urine production, and also that elevated cortisol alters normal sleep cycles and can result in increased nighttime urine production. Hopefully this is all just tied to sleep issues?

Any input for Justin? [Update: email from him indicates the problem was isolated to excessive fruit and when he cut back, problem resolved.]

~ Alex from the UK appears to be on it, and for all the right reasons.

First, let me introduce myself. My name’s Alex, and I’m a 19 year old guy from the UK. My mum’s a highly gluten-insensitive and fructose-aphobic Italian (apparently Italy has more Celiacs than any other country on earth!) and, unlike my brother, I’ve inherited those ever so pleasant traits from her.

As a teenager who got into weight lifting, diet was always important to me…for the wrong reasons. I was happy to stock up on bagels, processed burgers and Skippy peanut butter if it meant I got my calories and my protein in at the end of the day…several years later, and I’ve been battling with never-ending shoulder pain and low back pain that has held me back from being where I want to be. In other words, the conventional diet has failed me, as it has so many others. In the past few months I’ve had a greater and greater interest in eating a more ‘evolutionary’ diet. At first I thought paleo was for nutjobs, but as I read more about it, and found out about the history of illness and stunted growth on my mum’s side of the family (bread and pasta lovers, if they could get it, little to no meat. Mum’s granddad from the meat-deprived south was 4’10, her father from the slightly more carnivorous north is 5’6. Go figure).

Recently, I took the plunge and made the slow transition to eating in this new way. I can confidently say that it’s the best decision I’ve made in a long time; I used to get an inflamed gut and even pain in my abdomen; gone. Over the course of a grain-based ‘bulk’ I ballooned from a 32 to a 36 inch waist; grains are gone, and I’m at about 35” with no strict dieting (yet), although I feel much smaller there at times. My teeth, which were in no good state beforehand, have improved dramatically. And I think I’m right in saying that grains have actually made my injuries worse – having ditched gluten outright these past few weeks, I was experiencing little to no joint pain, even when lifting. As of last night, which involved Yorkshire puddings (if you don’t know what they are, it’s a good thing – too good to resist) and cheesecake, I’ve had terrible pain, both in my gut and joints, and wasn’t able to lift as a result of it, it was that bad.

In other words, I’m writing to say thank you for being one of the many sources from which I decided it was time to ditch gluten and processed crap, and start down a road that would lead to better health, energy and even confidence. I’m more than confident that by the end of 2012 I’ll be a totally different person than I am now.

~ Kat is a Reformed Raw vegan. This one’s for reels.

I stumbled across your website and debate with (fruitcake) Durianrider, and I felt compelled to share my story with you.

I grew up on what I always felt was a very standard diet, with lots of home cooking and little fast food. I was always a pretty healthy and active kid who had an interest in health and eating right until high school, when I fell into the trap of eating what my friends were eating. I gained about 20 lbs in that time, and after recovering from a skiing injury and becoming very sedentary and sick my senior year (and gaining an additional 10 lbs), I was determined to find a better way to eat.

This was in the late 90’s, when the vegan movement was picking up a lot of speed.  Shortly after graduating high school, I decided that it was a good decision for me. I literally went vegan overnight. I couldn’t understand why I wasn’t feeling better, but kept it up while eating plenty of vegan junk food. One day, while piddling around the internet, I came across a website that talked about great health achieved through a raw vegan diet. Again, I transformed the way that I ate overnight.

Upon getting better after I became incredibly sick from “detox,” I felt better than I had in a very, very long time. I had lots of energy and was losing weight! I was ecstatic! It was hard to keep up, but I persevered. I started to notice a difference in the way I was thinking after a short time, however. I started feeling like I knew better than everyone, and soon after, that I WAS better than everyone. I have always been a very humble person, so this feeling was very disconcerting to me. It became so disconcerting, in fact, that it drove me back to eating cooked foods. I went on like this for years – going raw vegan and returning to cooked foods, all the while wondering what was wrong with me.

Why couldn’t I do this?  Well, in my quest to be able to eat perfectly, I developed an eating disorder. I became bulimic, binging and purging multiple times a day most days (all on vegetarian/vegan foods, depending on where I was in my neurosis), and beating myself up about it all constantly, knowing that “if only I could stick with a raw vegan diet, then I wouldn’t be going through this.” By this time in my life, I was a divorced single mother. My oldest child was getting old enough to realize that something wasn’t right, and it occurred to me one day what exactly was happening.

I knew that something had to be done, so I sought out therapy and began the road to recovery. I started to accept that the way I ate as a child was okay…that eating a variety of foods was okay. I chucked everything I had led myself to believe and started eating whatever I was craving.  Interestingly enough, one of the first things I recognized as needing to eat was a steak. So, I went out and got one, found out how to cook it, and ate it that night.  I thought it might make me sick because it had been so long, but surprisingly, it didn’t.  Not only did it not make me sick, I felt great the next day! I did not feel like my body was eating itself anymore, as I had even before the disorder. I continued to add in more different meats and seafood, enjoying every bite along the way. I gravitated away from grains and sugar, and I loved my steamed veggies. I had the energy and the desire to workout again and play with my kids more.

This was about two years ago. In that time, I discovered primal eating (thanks to my dear mother-in-law, who also messed up her body severely through becoming raw vegan for far longer than I ever lasted…her thyroid and pancreas no longer work right), and realized that, just through listening to my body, I had been slowly gravitating that direction on my own since my recovery. My husband is on board with joining me now, and I find it interesting that my kids are rather drawn to these foods instinctively as well. I weigh less than I have in years, have more energy, and best of all, eating has become and joy again and not a burden. I truly believe that a raw vegan diet is a bad idea, and it gave me many distorted beliefs. I strongly advocate against it.

I thank Weston Price for his studies, and all the primal / paleo eaters for being inspiring and, most importantly, REAL.  Thousands of years of evidence does not lie, nor does the way I feel.

Wotta story, eh? Screw the vegan menace, and the hummus they slid in on.

~ And Scott rounds out this installment of six, with a bunch more to go over the next perhaps few weeks.

Thank you so very much for your blog, and the information you give out.

I came to your site originally from Tom’s FatHead website, after being sent to view the movie by a very dear friend of mine who is a chef. I guess you could say the rest is history.

I’m not in bad shape, but thanks to you and the inspiration of others doing similar work, I am by far after the past year in the best shape of my life. I eat real foods, and skip over the crap. Sure, every now and then Steak and Shake will lure me in (maybe once every 2 or 3 months,) but I know I’ll pay the price for it, and I accept it under those terms.

I ordered your ebook, and that day I read it. And then I read it again. I read it a third time. Congratulations… it really was that great a read. I’ve sent a number of friends the link, hopefully they will join in the health.

Thanks also for bringing Denise Minger to those of us in your regular readers, holy cats, man, she is amazing.

Glad to see the work you do, inspiring people to live their lives.

Glad to be a fan.

…I suppose it’s to be expected that in the weird way I conduct myself—stream of consciousness, often; obnoxious, often enough—that I’d increasingly get all sorts of criticism and scorn here and there, around the Paleosphere. Of course, that only means I’m effective, just as are many others upon whom so much scorn is heaped. It actually, really really does…fer reels…and those stories above, these stories here, and the dozens I have yet to put up (I’m up to about January 2012, now), prove it.

That’s right, they prove it. I’m effective, a real value to real people who really need it, and all the folks I’ve ever seen criticism from? Uh, not so much? Uh, put together even? So in great measure, I really have no choice but to accept, even embrace the hate. If I wasn’t getting any, that would be cause for concern—because the world is chock full of types who never really do anything much of any import…they merely fake it, fooling their own sense of self esteem by tearing down those who actually do things, do them effectively, and are recognized as such by the only people who matter one shit-worth anyway: those who benefitted.

Ha ha ha! And guess what? I’ll continue to be a value for those in need, and all the little pettifogging wankers out there can just go fuck themselves. …Wankers… useless, ineffective wankers.