Hey folks. It has been a while since I have updated the site so apologies. We are still very much Paleo and still dip in and out of the Autoimmune Protocol. After getting back on the autoimmune horse after a while I realised how much we had come to rely on eggs and a few other foods that were not 100% legit.

We have had a somewhat tumultuous year as well. We had the death of a close family member after an accident that was tough on my wife. I also run a digital marketing company in Birmingham (UK) called Bowler Hat and that is growing but with family issues the stress of a growing business is not always helpful. My wife also runs an audio and video conversion service so balancing the life, stress, grief and work has been a challenge this last twelve months.

Paleo has been good to us but after the last year some MS symptoms had started to creep back in and we felt it was time to tighten up our Paleo belts and eliminate some foods we felt may not be helping. What this means in practice for us is the removal of eggs, chocolate (nnnoooo!!), nuts, nut flours and peppers. We had loosened up enough to have the odd Thai take away but again that has had to go.

Elimination Diet

I often see various diets criticised for one reason or another. Vegan, Paleo, SCD, GAPS, Ketogenic, Low Carb – it seems no one diet is optimal all the time and this is completely correct. Certain diets should almost be viewed as tools to be used for specific situations and even Paleo is really a template that needs to be customised for the individual. It is possible to be a vegetarian and only eat highly processed white bread and chocolate bars and that is certainly not good for you so we must be sensible and move beyond these simple labels.

For us the basic Paleo template provides a good starting point: no grains, no legumes, no vegetable oils, healthy meat, good fats, tons of fish and a truckload of varied fruit and vegetables.

For those of us that have to go a step further to ease autoimmune conditions the elimination of nightshades, nuts and eggs takes many of the Paleo staples off the table. We have found through a process of elimination that Emma must also avoid coffee and dark chocolate. Not cool but not a lot we can do. We took it out for a while, brought them back in and an instant hike in symptoms. We just have to get over that and move forwards.

Supplements

Supplements are another one of those things that tend to polarise people but I have a fairly practical mentality with regards to supplements. Firstly, I would rather get everything we need from food. Omega 3 being the obvious example and we try to have sardines and mackerel for lunch most days. These tins of sardines in olive or brine go well with a salad for lunch. Job done. We do take multivitamins now and again but not all the time and we supplement Vitamin D and Probiotics. On the probiotic front I try to vary them and we use Bio Kult, AOR Probiotic 3, Primal Defence, Primal Defence Ultra and Prescript Assist. These should cover off the organisms we are sadly lacking and then we compliment that with home made fermented vegetables.

Our Approach

I briefly touched on labels and I do tend to call this an autoimmune Paleo approach but it is really a mish mash of lots of things. We look at the Wahls Paleo diet and Dr. Perlmutter diets for nutrient guidelines to support the brain and mitochondrial function. We try and be ketogenic every now and again and eat a lot of good fats and coconut oil. We eliminate typical problem foods (nuts, nightshades etc) beyond the usual Paleo guidelines but we also experiment with other foods that we suspect are problematic. It is very personalised as I believe it has to be to work.

Going green

We also have a daily green smoothie. In reality this happens about three times a week but I mean for it to be daily. In this we have frozen berries, nutritional yeast for B vitamins, kelp + spirulina for iodine and amino acids. This is then fleshed out whatever fruit and greens I have to hand: kale, spinach, lettuce etc. Some kind of fat for good measure as well with usually coconut cream or avocado filling that gap. This is very much inspired by the Wahls protocol smoothies with the goal of brain health and filling in a few common nutritional gaps.

Progress

So we are back at it. We have been for about three weeks now and Emma is already seeing improvements. Less fatigue. One specific bit of numbness and weakness is improving. Emma still runs around 5 miles most days to put this in perspective but this one bit of numbness is a good marker. When we clean up that gets better.

More to come

I am going to log our progress here over the next few months and intend to keep doing so. In part to share our experience in that it may help others and in part as an exercise to help me journal everything. I have some great UK style autoimmune recipes I have been working on with last nights battered prawns being the first up in the next few days.

As ever if we can help drop a comment.

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Fermentation is popular with both the Paleo and Weston A. Price communities, whether it be sauerkraut or kimchi the benefits of probiotics, in our ever more sanitised world, is more important than ever. Kombucha, for those of you who don’t know, is a fermented drink made from sweet tea; it has many reported health benefits, including boosting metabolism & digestion – it also tastes great, a bit like cider, and has a very nice natural fizz.

Unfortunately kombucha isn’t very popular in the UK so don’t go looking for it in your local supermarket, although you may be able to find it in health shops if you are lucky. The best bet is to look for it online but it can be quite expensive, especially if you are paying for delivery on top. The other option, and by far the cheapest, is to make it yourself for just a few pence per litre.

Almost all of the ingredients can be found relatively easily, the one thing that you may have to hunt for is the live culture or scoby that is essential to making kombucha. Scoby is an acronym for ‘Symbiotic Culture Of Bacteria and Yeast’, it is also referred to as a mushroom or mother; it is disk shaped and usually white, although it will darken with age. This is what ‘eats’ the sugar in the sweet tea & creates the carbon dioxide that gives the drink it’s fizz. Scobys can be purchased online, for example from happykombucha.co.uk, or they are quite often given away by fellow fermenters – this is because with each batch of kombucha a new scoby is created, with the original scoby also being preserved for future use – it is, therefore, easy for an avid fermenter to build up quite a collection of scobys which they will be happy to pass on.

Once you have your scoby, you will need organic white sugar, organic tea (black, green, white, etc, but avoid teas with added oils, such as Earl Grey, as they will not work), mineral or filtered water and some kombucha (bought or from a previous batch) or vinegar. Organic sugar and tea is available from most supermarkets and isn’t expensive – it’s important to use organic as the scoby may be harmed by toxin residue from pesticides in non-organic varieties. Likewise the fluoride in standard tap water may also harm the scoby so mineral water or (brita) filtered water is essential – if you have access to natural, non-fluridated, high mineral content water that would be perfect. Finally the scoby needs a slightly acidic environment in which to live so the addition of either kombucha  or vinegar (white distilled if possible but definitely not raw vinegar as that would interfere with the scoby) is needed, use approximately 10% of the volume of the sweet tea you are using, i.e. 100ml of kombucha or vinegar for every litre of sweet tea. Apparently the first batch made using vinegar may not be the most palletable, if this is the case use this only as starter, subsequent batches will be much better tasting.

So here are the step-by-step instructions on how to make kombucha:

Here is a freshly fermented batch of kombucha, I use some of this as the starter for my next batch, notice the white, newly formed scoby on top:

Next, the scoby is removed, ready to be reused, I usually separate the new scoby from the old one if they are stuck together, but that is personal preference:

Keep the scoby and some of the kombucha in a plastic container as you prepare the new batch:

Now you can fill up your bottles with the remaining kombucha – passing it through a sieve if necessary, use only plastic, wooden or stainless steel utensils:

Once bottled, store in a warm place, out of direct sunlight, to ‘second ferment’ (behind a fridge or a high kitchen shelf would be good choices), this is when the kombucha will become fizzy. Even though the scoby has been removed, fermentation will continue, fill the bottle right to the top as this will help increase the fizziness. It’s also useful to label the bottles, record what type of tea you used and how long the fermentation lasted – this will be useful when deciding what works best for you. When you are ready to drink the kombucha put it in the fridge for a few hours to chill, try not to leave it in the fridge too much in advance of drinking it as this will reduce the fizziness.

Here is some sweet tea that I pre-prepared, make this at least 8 hours before you need it so it has time to cool to room temperature, but not too long that it could spoil. For every 2 pints of water use 1/4 cup of sugar and 2 – 3 tea bags. Remember that the sugar is for the scoby to feed off, do not be tempted to use less as it won’t work, the finished kombucha will not contain much sugar. Kombucha should ferment for a minimum of 7 days and up to 1 month, the longer the kombucha is left the more sugar is consumed and the more ‘vinegary’ the taste so be prepared to experiment until you are happy with the balance of flavours.

Clean out your fermenting vessel using warm soapy water, avoid anti-bacterial detergent if possible, and fill it with sweetened tea. Use glass if possible as glazed vessels (even sauerkraut crock pots) may conain lead which could be dangerous when making kombucha. Next, add the previously reserved kombucha and stir.

Next we add the scoby, clean side up, it may float on the top or sink to the bottom, either is fine! Then place a clean paper towel or some clean thin cloth over the top of the bottle and secure it with an elastic band.

You can now leave your kombucha in a warm place, out of direct sunlight, to ferment. Over the course of the fermentation the tea may become cloudy – this is fine! You may also see brown stringy pieces coming from the scoby, this is also fine, in fact it is a sign that the scoby is healthy and doing it’s job. Towards the end of the fermentation you will also probably see air bubbles under the newly formed scoby.

The only time you need to worry is if the scoby has any black marks or spots on it or if the kombucha smells off – this could mean that a foreign particle has somehow infected the drink. Also be aware of the potential for cross contamination, do not place fermenting kombucha near a rubbish bin or other fermenting items such as kefir or sauerkraut. There really is no reason why you shouldn’t be enjoying this healthy and tasty drink all year round for very little cost. Please leave me your kombucha making tips below or feel free to ask any questions you may have.

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One of the most difficult aspects, for most of us, when following the paleo diet is finding the quality ingredients needed to prepare a nutritious paleo meal. Most supermarkets really don’t cut it; they are the size of an aircraft hanger but once you’ve ignored the breakfast cereals, bread, fruit juices, additive-laced tinned and jarred produce the sugary junk and packets of who-knows-what, you’re not left with much – maybe some Kerrygold butter, New Zealand lamb and a few organic fruits and vegetables if you’re lucky – you certainly won’t find lard made from pastured pigs, grass-fed organ meats, unpasteurised dairy & kombucha!

Thankfully, the Internet has opened up other avenues, with local farms & small artisan producers selling great produce directly to the customer, as well as more specialised online mega stores catering for some of the less mainstream foods which are popular amongst real-food-eaters. Great as online shopping is there are a couple of downsides; firstly: delivery can be expensive – especially for heavy packages; and secondly: waiting two to three days for your items to arrive can sometimes be impractical.

After some recent searching I found the website of the Real Food Company in Alsager, just north of Stoke-on-Trent. A REAL shop, selling REAL food – catering for followers of paleo, SCD and Weston A Price, vegetarians and anyone who cares about good quality produce! Being only about an hour’s journey from where I live in Birmingham I just had to pay them a visit, and it was definitely worth it. Firstly, Alsager is a beautiful little town and is worth the visit on it’s own, the surrounding area is also perfect for a fantastic day out and a picnic. We combined our journey with a visit to a nearby National Trust park.

As for the Real Food Company itself, it has a very interesting history, started by husband & wife team Carol & Nick back in 1990 as a means of getting easier access to good quality food for themselves and their young daughter Silvie. They sold only vegetarian foods up until ten years ago when they came across the work of Weston A. Price and rethought their philosophy on food and nutrition. They still cater for vegetarians but now also sell nutrient dense animal-based foods which are promoted by the Weston A. Price foundation and paleo followers alike. They have also built up a great team who work alongside them; both Emma and Jess helped us so much on our visit – giving us so much advice and help that we couldn’t thank them enough!

I have to say I was amazed by the range of products that they sell; some made by independent artisans and local suppliers, right through to foods from more well-know brands such as Biona. There is so much to choose from; a well packed freezer full of grass-fed stock bones, organ meats, fish & fantastic steaks; organic fruits and vegetables; locally-produced raw dairy (cream, butter, cheese and goats milk), kombucha, pastured eggs, fermented foods, raw chocolate & honey, teas of all varieties, organic spices and a whole range of cupboard essentials! They also act as a hub for kombucha scoby & kefir grain sharing – if they have been recently donated live cultures they will happily pass them on, upon request, at no charge! For me the highlight was being able to get some raw cream & butter – especially a new type of raw butter they have only just started selling that is mixed with seaweed for added iodine, totally delicious when melted on some steamed broccoli!

Apart from food there is also a selection of natural personal hygiene & cleaning products for sale. This is something I have recently become very interested in after discovering just how toxic some off-the-shelf products can be. I picked up a jar of shaving gel made from hemp oil, which I am very impressed with and some Rhassoul powder (Moroccan clay) which is a fantastic skin & hair cleaning product with detoxifying properties that has been used in the Middle East for centuries.

What impresses me most about the Real Food Company is their total passion and commitment to what they do and the hard work they have put in over many years to build up a network of suppliers, both large & small, who share their ethos. Hopefully, one day, every town will have at least one shop like like the Real Food Company, one selling real food, just as nature intended – free of toxins and extraneous processing that degrade quality for the sake of extending shelf-life.

For contact, see below:

48 & 50 Sandbach Road South

ALSAGER

Cheshire

ST7 2LP

01270 873322

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Hey folks, this week we have a guest post from Karen Maidment who is running UK Paleo and Primal cookery workshops. So, if you guys want to get some help making the switch to Primal or Paleo then Karen is the lady to help you get there. 

It’s a Paleo, Primal Thing

Paleo and Primal are two styles of eating that basically mean; Food as Mother Nature Intended! In my Meals That Heal cook book and cookery workshops all our recipes are naturally grain, dairy, soy, nut, seed and processed sugar free. Why? Because these foods are often challenging for the digestive system to breakdown and use, and can create mass inflammation in the body, meaning pain, weight gain, mood swings, low sex drive and disease processes.

Now excluding these foods doesn’t mean a hungry tummy or a boring repertoire of meals. It simply means getting creative and back in tune with the best of Mother Nature’s ingredients.

Following a Paleo or Primal style of eating simply means:

• Enjoying fresh seasonal veggies

• Sourcing organic wild meats, poultry and fish

• Utilising saturated animal fats, coconut oil and organic oils

Put them all together in beautiful, lovingly combined recipes and viola you have a Paleo / Primal diet.

Take this quick easy no grain bread recipe for instance; these flat breads are awesome slathered with organic ghee and raw honey or piled high with my Liver Loathers Pate (Meals That Heal recipe) and seasonal salad leaves. You can even use as an accompaniment to a home cooked curry or a dairy free pizza!

Sweet Potato Flat Bread Recipe

Ingredients make 2

• 1 egg
• 2T organic coconut flour, sifted
• 3T organic sweet potato, cooked and mashed
• ½ t organic gluten free baking powder
• ½ t sea salt

1. Preheat your oven to 170°C

2. Place all of your ingredients except the flour into a bowl and whisk using an electric whisk until smooth.

3. Sift the coconut flour in and whisk again.

4. Line a baking tray with parchment paper and divide the mixture into 2 even sized portions, spread out thinly using the back of a spoon into rounds about a ¼ inch think.

5. Pop into the oven and bake for 12-15 minutes, then carefully flip over and bake for 5 more minutes. Your flatbreads should be cooked through and crispy but not like cardboard!

6. Cool completely before using.

Recipe by Karen Maidment author of Meals That Heal, founder of EndIBSNaturally.com

If you want to learn to cook Paleo, Primal foods without the stress, come and join me on one of my forthcoming Meals That Heal Cookery Workshops or grab a copy of my cook book. (Details on both can be found via www.purebodybalanceshop.co.uk )

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If you have spent any time at all in the Paleo / Primal ecosystem you have likely come across the term Chronic Cardio along with a general dislike of everything cardio. Whether it is Robb Wolf, Mark Sisson or another one of the Paleo stalwarts it would seem the dislike of cardio is well established.

This is seemingly with good reason as too much cardio does not fit into the health and longevity bias that we all have in the ancestral health movement. But, this poses the question: what if you like running, swimming, biking or some other cardio heavy sport? Is it possible to enjoy your sport without negative health implications?

Running yourself into an early grave?

The science is pretty clear on this and pushing yourself for over an hour at a time is not doing you any favours. Sustained bouts of cardio at 60 minutes plus where your heart rate is at 80% or more will increase inflammation in the body, mess with the immune system, raise cortisol (which messes with your sleep, hence recovery), increase oxidation in the body (not good if you’re eating bad fats or even too much omega 3) and it will even prevent the body taking energy from fat!

Running yourself fit or running yourself fat?

Run, Walk and Lift

If your focus is purely health and fitness and you have no specific training goals then exercise really can be pretty simple: run, walk and do some kind of strength work.

You need to to do plenty of really low intensity stuff like walking so walk the dog, walk to work, take the stairs, walk to the shops, get of the bus a stop earlier, go for a walk at lunch time – whatever you do just walk and try to get 30 mins or so in a day.

You also need to stay strong and do some age and fitness level appropriate strength work. Whether that is a simple bodyweight workout, some weight machines at your local gym or ideally a structured lifting program like Starting Strength just do it two to three times a week and be consistent.

Beyond that, you will want some high intensity work to really get your heart pumping but the great thing is, this needs to be a short, sharp shock rather than any painful, sustained process. Think doing some sprints in a tabata protocol (4 mins total – 20 second sprint, 10 second total rest x 8).If you want to really push things take this up to around 12 minutes with three individual tabata sprints with a 60 second rest between sets – but remember the magic dose here is around the 12 minute mark so don’t overdo it!

But, what if you like to run?

This clever exercise thing is all fine and dandy but what if you like to run? I like to run. My wife likes to run. Before the spectre of Multiple Sclerosis entered our lives and we dived into the Paleo / Primal / Ancestral Health Movement we were training for the Edinburgh Marathon (which we completed). As it goes, 4 years later and being in better health than ever (no drugs) my wife is now training to do the London Marathon for an MS Charity so it’s safe to say, she really likes to run.

So, what to do? Obviously, having an autoimmune disease and the increased oxidative damage, inflammation and everything else which goes with this is not good. I originally set out with the idea of looking at using HIIT (High Intensity Interval Training) and approaches like Crossfit Endurance (CFE) to train with less total time spent running  (hence inflamed . The goal was to try and find a way to devise a training plan that utilised short bouts of high intensity exercise to cut down on the overall time spent exercising. I dug into Crossfit Endurance thinking that was the answer but it seems to require a really solid grounding in Crossfit and really, neither of us have that so as time went on, we ended up following a traditional training program.

Crossfit itself is also not without problems and whilst these brutal metcons (metabolic conditioning) have benefits, there are many voices now talking on the problems with the ‘sport of fitness’. The general gist seems to be how the focus on doing things for time, the lack correct form for many exercises and pushing yourself so hard for 30 minutes (remember that 12 minute sweet spot I mentioned earlier) is just not helping and we are back in the same problem zone as Chronic Cardio (ChronicMetCon?).

Racing without running

So, I figure, I like two things about running most

1. I like to get out to nature and my runs were always in the park – I miss that
2. I enjoy the events themselves

Well, the first one can easily be traded for walks with my family, no problem but replacing the actual events themselves is not so easy. I enjoy the community aspect of the events and whilst I am not trying to compete, I do enjoy taking part and that is somewhat lacking from my time spent in my dingy gym lifting heavy weights.

So, I figure I need to go back to the drawing board and try to produce a program that is inspired by HIIT & Crossfit Endurance yet does not have such strict requirements. A program that allows me to train for a short cardio event like a 10k but without having to spend hours pounding the street. I also have to test this on myself first as my wife is in the last six weeks of a marathon program so it needs to work kind of fast.

In simple terms we this is an attempt at designing some kind of High Intensity Interval Cardio Training (HIICT – not as catchy as HIIT but it will have to do) that can be used to train for events.

Smart Cardio

So, looking at Crossfit endurance it would seem you do the main site Crossfit WODs and the Crossfit endurance workouts that are specific to your sport.

The explanation from the CFE site is that an athlete will perform around six workouts per week with two of these being sport specific. We are only concerned with running here so we will work on say three running workouts to supplement an existing strength program (3 times weekly).

• 1 x short intervals (100m – 200m)
• 1 x medium to long intervals (200m – 800m)
• 1 x sprints / hill runs (alternate weeks)

As best as I can tell from the CFE site this template applies to everything from a 5k to a 100 km ultramarathon so there is some flexibility in the durations of the short and long intervals.

So, I also do a Starting Strength style linear progression weightlifting program that is getting kind of challenging now three times a week so this has to fit around that. This also replaces the standard Crossfit workouts for me in the template with something a little more measured and goal orientated (which is not kicking my ass so much).

10k Training Plan

To test this out I have signed up for a local cross country. It is a fairly tough race, 10k, hilly as hell and populated with lots of the cardio crowd. It is a run I have never managed to break 50 minutes on even when I trained a fair bit of cardio (albeit, never for speed). Recently I have done little to no running, maybe once a week for 3 miles max and many weeks I have not got out at all. I do get the odd tabata in although it is mainly on the punchbag so I have no kind of great base that will skew the results. That said, I do eat and sleep a whole lot better so… swings and roundabouts but certainly, I have not been doing any running.

Most people, myself included have no easy way to gauge distance so rather than doing based on time rather than distance. You can pick up a simple interval timer piece of software for your smartphone and I really like one called Impetus which you can get for Apple and Android. Alternatively, you can pick up a cheap interval timer online.

I have three weeks as of writing this so my plan is as follows:

Week 1

Week 2

Week 3

The road ahead

So, I have a plan, that is somewhat inspired by the running part of Crossfit endurance. I have tweaked it a little to be time rather than distance specified for now to make it more accessible for people.

I have not done this run for two years and have done little actual running in that time period so if I can come close to, or even beat my previous record of just over 50 minutes I will be pretty damn pleased with myself.

I also have  a very short amount of time to train so the four workouts + a tabata (4 mins) each week may be a bit much, but time will tell if we can further simplify this without adding further Crossfit style metcons as simplicity is our goal here.

Going further

I will follow up this post in three weeks with my experience here and to see if this is worthy of further experimentation. This is very much a beginner template for shorter distance but should things go to plan I have a 16km run in a few months and a 21km one before the end of the year so I will test this approach out with a 4 week plan for the 16km and a four week plan for the 21km.

Also, back in my crazy, pre paleo, running days I made apromise to wife, father and partner in crime on this site that we would run the New York Marathon in 2015 – if this goes to plan, I would certainly like to develop a plan and leading-up-to -the-plan plan that we could use to train for that event without beating ourselves up to much. I will be pushing 40 as will my wife and my father will be 65 so we could certainly all do without the chronic cardio so… watch this space.

Questions & Feedback?

I am no expert on Crossfit programming so would appreciate any feedback and if you have any questions, fire way. I will update this with my training log as well as I get stuck in.

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There is a tendency amongst folks, be that scientists, fitness people or just your everyday folks like you and me to find a single solution to a given problem and fat loss and body composition fall firmly into that category.

Some will tell us it is too many calories, too many carbs, not enough activity, not enough exercise – but what is the reality?

Can we hang all of our big, fat modern ills on one of these evils or is the reality, in this instance, a little more complex? Can we devise a single kind of food to avoid, exercise or even pill to take that will solve our problems once and for all?

Darkness and Sleep

In the book Lights Out the authors present the idea that when we don’t sleep in synch with seasonal light exposure (that is more in winter, less in summer) we end up out of sync with our environment and stuck in virtual summer and this is a bad thing. In summer our bodies are anticipating the coming winter and scarcity of food supply and we therefore crave carbs and calories to build up a good padding of body fat to help keep us warm and sustain us through months of scarce food, darkness and inactivity. The problem is, since we lit up the world with electricity and lightbulbs we are telling our bodies it is always summer and we never enter a period of short days, limited light exposure and most important scarcity.

Good Calories, Bad Calories, Too Many Calories

In Good Calories Bad Calories Gary Taubes looks at the current dogma that fat is bad, carbohydrates are good and to be healthy we just need to exercise more and effectively dismisses these claims. Things were already problematic before the low fat, high carb advice was pushed on us but since then, despite eating less fat and more carbs than ever before, obesity and diabetes are killing us in some scary numbers and we now have an epidemic of obese six year olds! The book goes on to argue how it is the wrong kind of calories and not so much the number that is causing us the problems and the sugars and refined carbohydrates that are at the root of our problems.

Marathon Man

Alternatively, it could be that we just don’t do as much as we used to and we are a nation (globe) of people sitting around on our big, padded bottoms eating boxes of sugary donuts and swilling it down with high sugar drinks. Or, on the flipside, we do too much exercise, we run marathons and pound treadmills and fuel all of this with yet more sugar.

Stressed Eric

Could it all be down to the stress of our modern lives? Working too long, for too little. Not enough time with the family. Too much pressure for too long. Do we ever get to unwind? Mortgages  kids, recessions, property booms, dot com busts – it’s a pretty nasty world out there and these stresses are constant factors running day in and day out. Compare this to what we know about our ancestors and modern hunter gatherer lifestyles – they had it both tougher and easier than we do. They had stress, for sure, I imagine hunting and killing your food could be pretty hairy, but at the same time, they had a whole lot of leisure time so their punctuated high stress periods are not well aligned with the constant, insidious pressures that we face (Robb Wolf covers this really well in the Cortisol chapter in the Paleo Solution book).

If you can’t take the heat…

We really do have things pretty nice recently and 90% of homes in the UK have central heating and there are not many of us who work outside and when we do, we have some fancy schmancy modern togs to keep us fully insulated (and we probably have some evolutionary fat padding under those new fangled clothes to round things (us) out).

In essence, we don’t really get cold any longer for any extended period of time so it’s no surprise that we now have a bunch of folks who are claiming that cold exposure is the fat loss secret we have been missing all along – could it be that simple? Get a bit cold and burn off some more calories?

Wheat, meat and sowing the seed (soils)

Of course, we could not look at what is making us fat, or at least ill, without considering wheat and seed oils. Seed oils in particular are a relatively new menace only introduced into our diet in the mid 1900’s and as our consumption of these oils increased, and saturated fat consumption decreased, heart disease was soaring – now, you don’t have to a rocket scientist to see the obvious problem with the recommendation to replace saturated fat with seed oils here. Oh and wheat, modern wheat at least – if you are working towards diabetes, heart disease, celiac, rheumatoid arthritis or even dementia then this modern, genetically modified monster is a friend else…

The Melting Pot

So, with so many potential issues, so many things that may be making us fat, which one of these delightful candidates fits (fats) the bill? Well, in my mind, there is no single issue, all of these issues contribute to our problems and the best way to review this is to look at our recent and not so recent history, use that evolutionary perspective and look at just when things started to go wrong and just what the changes in our environment where at that time.

There are some great statistics early on in Lights Out that detail how in 1910 the average adult got around 9 to 10 hours of sleep a night but now the average adult is lucky to get more than seven hours a night. That’s around 700 to 1000 hours of lost sleep a year and it would seem that sleep loss is a cumulative problem – miss an hour seven nights in a row and you may as well have just missed an entire night.

We also work more, relax and socialise less, exercise (badly) more and consume a whole lot more entertainment through our TV’s, computers and smart phones. And, it would seem, we are getting ill. We are at least getting fat, and illness and fatness are best buddies don’t ya’ know?

Eureka Moment

We don’t have one single problem here, we have many, many interconnected problems that all revolve around our modern world and the many stresses we have introduced. All of our ‘science’ and advice has got us nowhere, literally, as many of us are now too fat to really do much (or soon will be).

Lights Out talks about how we are designed to roll with the seasons and feast and frolic in the summer whilst the light allows and fast, famine and sleep a whole bunch more in the winter whilst there is little in the way of carbohydrates to sustain us. We should fatten up some during summer, but only for around five months a year and then we sleep when it gets cold and dark earlier.

If we look at the last 100 years or so then we have a pretty solid timeline:

1920 we lit the world up with the lightbulb (light), we started living in better and more well constructed houses (heat), we consume ever more and more sugar, more processed foods, better light bulbs, we got busier, worked more, had less leisure time. In the 1950’s we were told that saturated fat made us fat and ill so we started eating more seed oils and more, low fat processed food, and we got fatter and more ill than ever before. We now work even harder and in the last 15 years we have moved to a 24/7 environment where any day, at any time, a sugary, high calorie processed snack, served in a warm, well lit venue is only a short drive away. We drive everywhere, we eat rubbish, we are bathed in near constant light, we have no respect for the  seasons, we don’t get enough sleep and we keep ourselves warm all the time – no wonder we are broken.

In a book called Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers the Author makes the point that wild animals do not suffer from the stress related illnesses that plague modern humans. Likewise, in Lights Out the point is made that in nature, no animals get cancer. But some animals get cancer – the ones that live with us, that bath in our artifical light and eat the processed foods we give them.

The Evolutionary Template

So, the opening of this article looks at how we try to simplify things, and often, that should be the right way to arrive at a solid, uncomplicated answer that is based on few, if any assumptions but when it comes to finding a single problem driving our health and weight issues then we can’t hang our hat on any one issue be that wheat, meat, sleep, sugar, stress or exercise. But, we can look backwards, we can devise a simple answer to this problem and that is to simplify our lives and live in a way that our genes were designed for:

• Turn the lights off earlier and try to roll with the seasons a little more &
• Get more sleep, ideally 9 hours a night and in a pitch black room
• Eat real food – organic, seasonal fruit and veg + wild caught fish and grass fed animals
• Get more low intensity exercise – think walking the dog and hiking
• Get outside more, even when it is cold!
• Get more sunlight and don’t slaver yourself in sun block at every opportunity – we need some sun!
• Do some strength based exercise along with some high intensity interval work but don’t go crazy
• Manage stress – meditate, do some yoga, go to the park, whatever, just get some downtime
• Work less – put yourself first, examine your life and look for ways to do less

Ultimately, try to look backwards and live a more natural life that would imitate the lives of our modern and not so modern ancestors. Sleep, less artificial lights, real food, family, friends, get off Facebook  get off this Blog, go and light a fire, cuddle up next to your wife and kids and tell a story – evolution sculpted us to put on weight, it also built us to lose it again when the time was right so live more naturally and you will be fitter, leaner and your health will thank you for it.

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I was chatting to someone, who works for a medical company, about the Paleo diet, we’d talked in the past about what constitues being Paleo & he had a general understanding of the principles. He mentioned that he’d had chance to speak to an endochrinologist who worked for the same company as he does & had asked his opinion of the Paleo diet. The endochrinologist hadn’t heard of the Paleo diet per se but his recommendations for what he thought constitued a healthy meal was a piece of meat the size of your fist with plenty of vegetables and a small portion of carbs, not a million miles from what most Paleo folks would eat on a fairly regular basis, of course there was no mention of dietary fats, grains, legumes or dairy. The conversation then continued along the lines of “but the trouble with fad diets is…………..” at which point a figurative light bulb went off in my head. How ironic, I thought, that the person I was talking to & his endocrinologist colleague both viewed Paleo as a fad diet.

Well let’s have a look facts for a minute – the Paleo diet is what the genus homo has subsisted on for over 2 million years. Our forebears lived off what they had close at hand, obviously geography dictated variations, for example fruits & vegetables would vary between the tropics & colder more northerly climes but the diet would’ve comprised of meat, fish, fruit, vegetables with some nuts, seeds & eggs, all based on the season. The agricultural revolution happened very recently, around 10,000 years ago, and the massive explosion in the consumption of refined carbohydrates, processed foods & massively increased sugar intake has happened in only the last 100 – 150 years.

It’s certainly no coincidence that the decline in health that we have seen in recent years is inversely proportional to the increased consumption of processed foods, which is, in turn, leading to a strain on health services and a miserable existence for those people suffering from the consequences. Framed in this context Paleo is not a “fad diet” but an efficient fuelling system that has enabled us to thrive and evolve into who we are today, the real “fad diet” is the the over-processed, sugar rich diet which is, sadly, all too common today.

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Barbecue season has finally arrived, admitedly it’s late and it probably won’t last too long, but that’s all the more reason to take advantage of it while we can. There’s no doubt that the smell of fresh meat being cooked over hot coals excites us like almost no other type of cooking, food is usually hidden in the oven, casserole pot or slow cooker as it cooks, but on a barbeque the full glory of our food can be seen as it transitions from raw, all the way through to it’s succulent, cooked best!

With all the attention being paid to the meat it’s nice to have your side dishes prepared in advance so you can forget about them once the guests start to arrive. Coleslaw is a really simple and tasty side dish, but equally simple and tasty is rootslaw – the same as coleslaw but using root vegetables, such as celeriac and swede. The addition of lemon juice and mint to the dressing really lifts what are usually quite dull vegetables to a surprising level of freshness!

If like me you don’t like weighing and measuring every single ingredient in a recipe, this will be right up your street. Certain types of cooking require precision, such as baking, but sometimes it’s better to just use your own judgement. For that reason I am giving only approximate measurements:

The vegetables:
Half a swede
Half a celeriac
A couple of carotts
A few spring onions
A bunch of mint

The dressing:
Half a lemon
A couple of desert spoons of creme fraiche
A glug of cider vinegar
A splash of olive oil
Salt & perrpe to taste

Firstly peel your root vegetables and grate them – if you’re lucky enough to have a food processor with a grating attachment this should only take a few minutes, otherwise the old fashioned manual grater will have to do! Next, finely slice the spring onions, chop the mint and add to the vegetables. Now add a good glug of cider vinegar and mix well. I find the slaw has more of a zing if the vinegar is added at this stage rather than being mixed into the dressing – be generous but if there is any vinegar standing in the bottom of the bowl after it has been mixed, tip it away.

Next, to the dressing – in a small mixing bowl add a couple of desert spoons of creme fraiche, the juice of half a lemon, a splash of olive oil and mix – it should be the consistency of single cream – so add more creme fraiche if too loose or more olive oil if too thick – then add salt and pepper as per your preference. Finally add the dressing to vegetables, mix thoroughly and serve!

The ingredients!

Peel and grate the root vegetables.

Add the spring onions, mint and cider vinegar

Combine the dressing ingredients.

Add the dressing to the vegetables and serve.

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I wish I could be super-organised in the mornings and get up as soon as the alarm sounds, but that rarely happens for me. Usually I’m racing against the clock and subsequently looking for a quick but nutritious breakfast before I leave the flat; let’s be honest, the one thing (and probably the only thing) that breakfast cereals have going for them is their convenience and speed, but certainly not their nutritional value! Recently I’ve been too reliant upon eggs for breakfast so I have resolved to be a bit more creative with my morning cooking whilst still keeping within the tight time constraints that most of us are limited by.

So today’s breakfast paired the classic combination of bacon & avocado! I don’t know exactly why these two work together so well, maybe it’s that opposites attract; creamy, soft avocado set against crisp, salty bacon but it certainly works for me. The recipe is as simple as it gets; firstly fry off your bacon, I just let the bacon cook in it’s own fat, turning it occasionally until it is nice and crispy. Then arrange some washed little gem lettuce leaves on a plate and place the cooked bacon on top. Finally, arrange some sliced avocado on that and finish it off with a few sliced spring onions. All finished in a matter of minutes & truly delicious, I only wish I had some fermented ketchup in the fridge to finish it off – I think that will be my next job! If you have any quick-and-easy Paleo breakfast recipes please let me know in the comments section below. Happy eating!

Crispy bacon on lettuce, I can’t think of a much better sight!

It get’s better with avocado & spring onions on top, it’s just missing some fermented ketchup though.

Another lettuce leaf makes the whole thing so much easier to eat.

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Whilst the basic Paleo diet has some good simple rules at it’s core when you dig deeper and start to personalise the diet to suit your individual needs then things can become a little complicated. Whether you are looking to do an elimination diet to test for problems that may be contributing to a leaky gut and impacting an autoimmune disease or whether you just want to reintroduce some other more Primal style foods like good quality dairy then there is one other aspect that is oft overlooked – food quality.

What is Food Quality?

Right here, this is where it gets complicated and this is where the simple black and white of no grains, legumes or dairy falls flat on it’s lean, muscular paleo behind. Food quality is where we find that even within individual foods items and types there are many different shades of quality – some going from awful to okay to great.

Lets take milk for example. Now, milk does not suit me or my wife but if you tollerate it and can find a good source of high quality milk then it may be something you can reintroduce. But, just what constitutes quality when we are talking about milk? What makes some milks bad, others okay and others pretty impressive if you can tollerate them?

A Qualitative Assessment of Dairy Products

Milk, in it’s raw and natural form is loaded with good bacteria, probiotics and lots of healthy fats. Unfortunately, by the time it hits your table it has been pasteurised to extend shelf life which kills all the bacteria. These bacteria also do another job which is to produce lactase which helps digest lactose which is one common problem people have with milk. It has probably also had the quality fat removed or some of it at least and is likely stored in plastic bottles. It does not stop there though and the milk you may be giving to your children probably comes from grain fed cattle which is far, far from their natural diet of grass and subsequently has an impact on the quality of the milk itself.

At the other end of the spectrum we have full fat raw milk – a healthy (for those that can tollerate it), high fat product loaded with beneficial gut bacteria.

Good? Bad? Don’t know?

Well, obviously, we start with the golden rules of Paleo which is to go grain, legumes and dairy free and we do this for at least a month. If you are just starting out it makes sense to make this a low carb affair and stick with just lean meats, vegetables and healthy fats (extra virgin olive oil, fat from grass fed meat & virgin organic coconut oil). If you have a leaky gut or an autoimmune issue you should look to modify things further and remove nightshades (potatoes, tomatoes, peppers, aubergines and any derivatives like chilli spices) along with nuts, seeds and eggs.

Then, when you have got this all dialled in for a few months, we can start to look at the quality of the food we eat. Can you tollerate butter? Yeah? Great, but make sure it is organic and from grass fed animals (check out Yeo Valley products in the UK). Are you eating lean cuts of supermarket meat? Well, can you afford any truly organic grass fed meat? Cheaper cuts maybe? Well, work them in as well.

Are you eating fish? Supermarket salmon is all farmed and is not the best but supermarket frozen salmon is usually half the price and is wild caught so has less overall fat and more of the good fats due to it’s natural diet (and did not live in some awful infested pit with about a million other salmon and all their byproducts (poop).

Like eggs? Are your eggs from grain fed battery hens or from true organic, free range animals that are free to eat a more natural diet and possibly supplemented to increase the omega 3 content of the eggs?

Believe it or not, the health of the animal that either made or became your food has a huge bearing on the health of the food itself and all these foods can be unhealthy and healthy all depending on the status of the animal itself before it gave up or became your food.

Optimise your food

Chances are you could make improvements across the board and fortunately, to simplify this process, for UK folks at least there is a great site called Natural Food Finder. This site has a list of all of the different grades of foods in a given category, check out the dairy page for starters and that has an avoid, average, good and best category for all products along with actual brands and suppliers so you can use this as real actionable information to improve your shopping.

The site is not paleo, so use with caution but the information it does have on meat, dairy and even fermented foods along with what you can get and where you can get it from is invaluable. They even have maps for local organic farms so you can see what is available in your local area and pop down to the local farm shop and see what it is you will be getting.

http://www.naturalfoodfinder.co.uk/

So, take a look, would love to hear your thoughts and let me know how you get on in the comments and if you know anyone who probably is not eating as well as they could or who would benefit from this information, please share the article and if you can click the big red Google+1 button it gets us some love from Google and helps us get the word out.

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