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

Did you check out Mark Sisson's video? No need to force it to the point of pain. You can start out slowly and gently and increase the intensity as you get better at squatting.

I checked out the video.  Glad to see he was wearing the vibram fivefingers, those are great shoes and I love mine.

My issue isn't form or having to force myself down into a squat.  I can easily go down all the way into a full squat, but I just start to ache after a short period.  I guess I just need to get used to it.

How will I get better?  I don't really understand how I did anything "wrong", I did it according to all the many directions I've found online, here and everywhere else.  Will grinding up the meat into a fine powder improve it?  At least, will it improve the texture, so it's not like I'm chewing hard mud?

Also, I noticed the texture of US Wellness' beef lard, when in the tub, is basically like wax.  It melts just fine, but I thought it was supposed to be softer.

What is the taste/texture of good pemmican like?  Also, would there be any problem with using something like bacon fat, as long as it was from grass fed pigs and melted at a low temperature?

Here's my opinion:  Wild fruits were eaten only when in season (obviously) which was right before the start of fall/winter/general coldness.  On a raw zero carb diet, if you suddenly throw in some carbs, you'll gain weight.  That weight gain helped insulate early humans a bit in the winter, at least until it burned off.  Sugar, and sugary things such as fruits and honey, tasting as good as they do would encourage early humans to eat them, which would help them survive harsher winters.  So I think it's evolutionary, we evolved to like the taste of sugar (even if we don't crave it) for survivability reasons.  But again, that is only my opinion.

Oh, and I think I can really benefit from this natural squatting instead of sitting.  With me being in the Army, it's fairly often that I'm outdoors bored, standing around with nothing to sit on but a rock or tree stump.  I've tried squatting, but my feet, ankles, and knees just can't take it beyond literally 15 seconds.  The squatting itself doesn't hurt right away, but getting up gives me that "old man knees" feeling.  So if I just regularly squat, instead of sit, it'll get better?  My body will get used to it, even in combat boots?

Ring dips are a great exercise.  I still remember the first time I tried them; I could do 25-30 regular dips, and after 7 ring dips I dropped to the ground, amazed at how difficult and tiring they were.


As far as running goes, I think sprints, especially longer sprints like 400m and 800m are the best for us, especially from a paleo perspective.  I think it best represents the kind of running they would have done in their natural environment. 

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

served with a homemade sauce (raw butter and egg yolk).  I've started adding substantial quantities of dried herbs to this sauce over the last few days and, must say, it's absolutely delicious!!   

I'm interested in your sauce described here.  Do you just melt the butter and add raw egg yolk and then some herbs/spices?  Can you give any additional info on this?  It sounds nice, rich, and tasty.

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

Pokés are eaten a lot in Hawaii, and I fell in love with them when I was stationed there.  Fortunately it's almost entirely raw paleo, especially with a couple small tweaks.  It's also really easy to make and if you like sashimi you'll probably love this.  For people that are new to raw paleo, this is a great meal to help get used to more raw food.

ingredients:
1 big chunk of wild caught salmon
roughly 1 tablespoon of shoyu or soy sauce
roughly 1 tablespoon of olive oil
A couple fresh spinach leaves

Cut the fish into cubes or just chop-stick sized chunk and put it in a bowl.  Sprinkle the soy sauce and oil over all the fish and mix it around until it coats all the fish.  Take a handful or less of the spinach leaves and chop them up into very small pieces, and toss in with the fish and mix it all up. 

Eat, and enjoy!  Like I said, not 100% raw paleo with the olive oil and soy sauce, but it's damn close and tastes fantastic.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

My wife and I are both big health nuts, and always ready to look into the opposing-the-norm viewpoint.  So of course, we found paleo, then raw paleo.  Fortunately we both enjoy raw meat - she absolutely loves it.  We're both young (I'm 28, she's 33) and in good shape, but we want to live a long time and be healthy for all those years.  We both believe raw paleo is the way to go.

We want to go as raw paleo as possible, but with me being in the Army, I simply cannot go fully raw paleo.  If I were to do that now, then whenever I get deployed, I would be eating lots of processed foods, and I would feel like shit.  So for lack of a better term, I need to keep my body accustomed to just enough crap (or maybe just carbs) that when I have to eat Army food, I won't end up with negative side effects.  Fortunately I'm young, so that will make dietary fluctuations easier to deal with for now.  I read through Lex's log and noted that he really suffered after eating processed food for just a week, because his body was used to raw paleo.  That's kinda what I'm trying to avoid.

So what I was basically thinking of is eating at the Army dining facility for breakfast (scrambled eggs with a little ham and maybe cheese, a few pieces of bacon and some fruit, usually cantelope/honeydew/watermelon) and maybe some pemmican for lunch with an apple, then a raw chunk of grass-fed beef for dinner, maybe with a small spinach salad along with.  Some nights we have a glass or two of red wine with dinner.  When possible, we would substitute some grass-fed bison or wild game, maybe some raw fatty fish like wild-caught salmon, which I love.

My thoughts are that the small amounts of carbs in the few pieces of fruit I have for breakfast and with the apple for lunch and small salad for dinner would keep me out of ketosis, which would make it easier to switch over to a crap-filled processed diet if I had to (for example, while deployed).  And I figure there's enough salt in the 2-3 pieces of cheapo bacon to do the same thing.  However overall, I (hopefully) would still be able to reap at least most of the benefits of the raw paleo diet, as long as I could eat that way.  It's an unfortunate reality, I will simply have to eat crappy food eventually.  I just want to minimize any potential side effects, I don't want to be sick and slow at a time that my squad may be depending on me.  Am I on the right track?