Paleo Diet: Raw Paleo Diet and Lifestyle Forum
Raw Paleo Diet to Suit You => Omnivorous Raw Paleo Diet => Topic started by: SkinnyDevil on August 08, 2009, 07:12:14 am
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Over-simplifying, but....
Last month was very little veggie & fruit (except for 4 or 5 binges on fruit) and mostly eating meats.
This month (so far, anyway) is no meat at all and 100% raw vegan.
I'm wondering how I'll feel after 30 days. My typical diet is lots of green veggies, some fruit, lots of sashimi, and the occasional binges on red meats & such. No dairy, no eggs, no grains, blah, blah.
I'm also wondering if I can go 30 days with no meat of any kind, I usually get serious cravings.
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Over-simplifying, but....
Last month was very little veggie & fruit (except for 4 or 5 binges on fruit) and mostly eating meats.
This month (so far, anyway) is no meat at all and 100% raw vegan...
I'm wondering how I'll feel after 30 days. My typical diet is lots of green veggies, some fruit, lots of sashimi, and the occasional binges on red meats & such. .., no grains, blah, blah.
I'm also wondering if I can go 30 days with no meat of any kind, I usually get serious cravings.
It's early August now, this makes sense.
Tibetans eat white colored food or dairy in Summer, red or meat in Winter. Early Pioneers and farmers ate more vegetarian in Summer, had to eat their livestock in Winter. Bees kill the drones in Winter. Many people eat heavy food in Winter, fruit in Summer. Jewish kashrut laws specify to not eat meat with certain foods and the other way round. In Summer lots of fruit grow. In macrobiotics menus are changed according to season, small farmers do this as well. It's natural to eat less meat in Summer. Maybe you weren't asking that.
I wish you all the best with your experiment. Let us know how it goes. Thanks for sharing.
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Thanx.
Mild cravings for meats already (only 10 days in). I will probably work thru it anyway, but will resort to fish if it seems to become problematic.
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Well over half-way thru the month...no problems.
Rockin' strong.
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You don't find you have to brush your teeth any more on 100% raw vegan than on 100% raw meat and nondairy animal fat? You're skin isn't any drier or oilier? You're sleeping exactly equally?
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You don't find you have to brush your teeth any more on 100% raw vegan than on 100% raw meat and nondairy animal fat? You're skin isn't any drier or oilier? You're sleeping exactly equally?
All is the same, close as I can tell (I have a bizarre schedule, so it's sometimes hard to monitor sleep).
I suspect it's because I've eaten high-raw for so long, and raw meat longer. I suspect the real change would come if I decided to eat spaghetti or a Big Mac & a coke (hahaha!).
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Interesting. Maybe that bodes well for me being able to tolerate some fruits in the future, thanks.
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I should note, Phil, that I've never had any health problems. I don't know if that is relevant, but eating tropical fruit for a month or nothing but greens for a month has never been an issue, any more than eating mostly meat for a month.
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Wow! Did your mother eat real healthy when you were in the womb? Epigenetic effects on the fetus in the womb have become an area of increasing scientific research interest.
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I don't know - never thought to ask her.
I suspect she ate better than average, as she's never (so far as I know) been into junk foods. Of course, I'm also in my 40s - it was a different world when I was born.
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Yes, I suspect she did as well. My brother had the best early health among my siblings. My parents were poor at the time and ate a lot of wild meats like rabbit that hunters gave them. Little did they know that wild meats are the healthiest foods on earth and my brother was benefiting from them in the womb. Later, when my mother was trying to fatten the rest of us who were sickly children (probably because she was eating less wild meats and more carbs while pregnant with us), she stuffed us with cookies, pies, malted milkshakes and the like to try to fatten us and make us look "healthy." Little did she know that she was actually making the problem worse.
I've never heard of anyone, from carnivore to vegetarian, make the claim that a whole month of radical dietary change had no effect whatsoever on them--haven't you noticed any changes at all, positive or negative or indeterminate? Have you been measuring any of your health stats like Lex does?
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I don't know how radical my change is, Phil. I've eaten raw meat since I was a kid and when I cooked meat, I always ate it VERY rare. I've never liked well-done or even medium rare meats. Similarly, I've always preferred raw fruits & veggies to cooked.
I had a splurge of junk food (sodas, candy bars, etc.) when I was a kid, but it was never a daily thing.
Less than a decade ago I gave up breads and such, as well as low quality foods, and started eating primarily organic - and that is where I noticed big differences. RAW food in general made the big difference, though I notice than even if I eat some cooked food it's no big deal as long as I follow one rule:
If it can't be eaten raw, then don't eat it.
That's about the only advice I give to people who ask about my dietary habits. I tell them that even if they cook their food, simply avoid anything that HAS to be cooked to be eaten. Cuts out all sorts of crap right away!
So anyway, leaning heavy on the meats like I did last month to heavy on the fruits & veggies like this month I think only SEEMS like a radical change. But given my normal dietary habits which include both (to the exclusion of all else), it starts to seem otherwise. There have been mild changes (the bathroom calls less on a meat-heavy diet, for example), but nothing unexpected. Certainly no real difference in the facets of my daily life (workouts, sleep habits, sex drive, cognitive skills, energy levels, psychological outlook, etc.).
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You have the same rule that Ray Audette proposed in NeanderThin. It's one thing that got me to cut out the winter squashes and nightshades (the former are still basically inedible raw and the latter had to be detoxified through selection by Native Americans and others to make them edible--and some of them are still inedible, such as deadly nightshade).
Your experience has been fascinating, thanks. I have no explanation for why raw meats and animal fats should make no difference to your health over plants. For example, raw meats clean and polish my teeth whereas fruits and nuts gunk them up and quickly generate plaque. Maybe you have some additional enzyme or a larger quantity of enzyme or an extra gene that allows you to neutralize the negative dental effects of carbs?
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You have the same rule that Ray Audette proposed in NeanderThin. ... Maybe you have some additional enzyme or a larger quantity of enzyme or an extra gene that allows you to neutralize the negative dental effects of carbs?
Re: Ray Audette - I was unaware of that. What is "NeanderThin"? A diet book?
Re: Teeth - I eat lots of greens, which are not particularly high in carbs. I suspect of I ate sweet fruits for an extended period of time, I'd have some dental issues.
As an aside, I noticed relatively recently that cooked meat can stick between my teeth, requiring floss, but raw meat almost never does. I found that interesting. I noticed when I had a steak at a restaurant a few months back. They had to cook it, of course, but they did a superb job of only searing it for a few seconds. But even with it almost completely raw, the cooked portion is what caught between my teeth.
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Re: Ray Audette - I was unaware of that. What is "NeanderThin"? A diet book?
Re: Teeth - I eat lots of greens, which are not particularly high in carbs. I suspect of I ate sweet fruits for an extended period of time, I'd have some dental issues.
Yes, I wondered about greens after I had written that question. They don't have the bad dental effects that fruits and nuts seem to.
Nonhuman primates that eat a lot of greens also eat clay and other detoxicants to neutralize the toxic antinutrients in greens. Do you do anything like that? I've noticed that others here have mentioned doing that--I think GoodSamaritan was one.
Another interesting thing about meat is, even when it gets stuck in between the teeth and I don't notice it for a while, it doesn't seem to coat the actual teeth at all or cause any dental problems the way the white stuff from carbs does.
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No, I don't eat clay. I don't wash my organic lettuce, though (hahaha!) - does that count?
I don't put a lot of stock in the notion that anti-nutrients are by default a bad thing when they are in low amounts like is found in many nuts as well as most fruits & veggies. I don't eat legumes (which are full of anti-nutrients).
It's worth noting that the tannins, for example, are not harmful in low doses, and there is evidence they are helpful. They also flush right thru your system, so eating a salad at one meal and a steak at the next will have no effect on your body's ability to up-take all the nutrients in the meat. In fact, eating a salad & steak in the same meal doesn't hinder your body's ability to up-take nutrients in the meat (or the salad).
Now, eating a salad with a pile of red beans on top will cause problems in nutrient up-take, because red beans are very high (though not toxically high) in tannins. Remember, many of the anti-nutrients (like tannin, since I've been using that as an example) require HIGH doses before they really interfere with nutrient absorption.
That said, remember also that tannin (continuing the above example) is a metal chelator, so they are actually helpful when you need to get rid of metals in your system, and also reduces inflammation in the GI tract, kills infection in the body, and protects the kidneys.
Other anti-nutrients, like phytic acid, are present in food I don't eat very often (and are in low quantities). But again, their toxicity rests on dosage, and most foods don't have excess amounts. The anti-nutrient effect is often balanced by a positive effect (like those mentioned above for tannins).
Nature, in my view, won't steer you wrong.
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Good one. ;D Well, I guess nature is steering us in different directions, ;) which is OK, though I do envy your ability to tolerate high levels of plant foods. I get cramps when I eat relatively small amounts of plant food, which are alleviated by either raw meat or potassium supplements. I got the cramps again after I drank some red wine recently. I have a feeling that the plant foods--especially the carby ones like fruits and the wine--are somehow having an antinutrient effect on the potassium in my system. It's surprising to me, because many plant foods are high in potassium. Apparently my body is not good at absorbing the potassium in plants. For example, high-potassium bananas have never worked to alleviate my cramps.
When I learned that not just grains and legumes, but all plants, contain antinutrients (they have to in order to protect themselves from insects and other predators), I figured that the lower levels of antinutrients in fruits, nuts and veggies would not affect me negatively. It's been very disappointing to find that that doesn't seem to be the case for me. I guess I must be especially sensitive to the antinutrients and sugars in them. High sensitivity to carbs runs in both sides of my family, which has manifested as insulin resistance, type II diabetes, peripheral neuropathy, type I diabetes, carb addiction (aka "junk food junkyism"), alcoholism, arthritis, etc.
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Ouch!
Yeah, I'd definitely limit the plant-based intake, then.
How do you do on greens? Are you normally zero carb? If not, what is the primary source of your carbs, and how much plant food do you normally eat?
Only a few days to go...then I'm having some sashimi and a STEAK!!!
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While plant-foods contain some antinutrients(most though nowhere near as high as grains), it should be noted that an alternative view of such substances is that they are "phytonutrients" which boost the body's health in various ways. For example, much of the beneficial effect of herbs in herbal medicine is directly due to such phytonutrients. In short, they may well be unhelpful in large quantities, but very useful in smaller amounts.
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Still going strong. Workouts have been intense and I'm feeling great (though the legs are a bit sore today after running 550 stairs up and 550 stairs down yesterday!).
Only a few days to go....
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What phytonutrients do you you recommend?
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What phytonutrients do you you recommend?
There are so many:-
http://blog.worldvillage.com/health/phytonutrients_in_preventing_cancer.html
My own preference is for herbs like garlic or cayenne pepper, as I've found them, especially the latter, to be very helpful in the past.
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Or you could just eat salads (lots of greens) along with your meats.
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Or you could just eat salads (lots of greens) along with your meats.
I heard greens eaten with meat retards the digestion of the meat. Something about pH differences.
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I've never had problems with it, but I can't speak for others' experience.
Last day.
Tomorrow - sashimi!!!
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BOOM!
31 days down. Today: Oysters...and more!
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Are you going to do another experiment? I'd be interested to see how you did for a month zero carb.
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I'll have to read up on zero carb.
If so, I'll probably do a week on, then a week off...then 2 weeks on, 2 weeks off. The I'll try a month.
Gotta see in small steps how my body reacts to zero carb since I've never done that.
Any recommended reading?
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I'll have to read up on zero carb.
If so, I'll probably do a week on, then a week off...then 2 weeks on, 2 weeks off. The I'll try a month.
Gotta see in small steps how my body reacts to zero carb since I've never done that.
Any recommended reading?
Well, there's Stefansson's books "not by bread alone" and the expanded version "the fat of the land". They're hard to get hold of as they're out of print and very expensive but I think Charles on the ZC(cooked) forum has printed 1 of Stefansson's books.
Realistically speaking, 1 week is too short to see much difference with goign zc(except for a loss of physical prformance and possibly some sluggishness). In my own case, the negative effects from a RZC diet only started to reraly snowball from around the 3rd week, with some initial effects after 2 weeks..
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I'll have to read up on zero carb.
If so, I'll probably do a week on, then a week off...then 2 weeks on, 2 weeks off. The I'll try a month.
Gotta see in small steps how my body reacts to zero carb since I've never done that.
Any recommended reading?
Lex Rooker's journal and posts
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If so, I'll probably do a week on, then a week off...then 2 weeks on, 2 weeks off. The I'll try a month.
Interesting approach. Maybe I'll try that, sounds doable. Only question is, how much carbs on the "off" times?
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I thought you were already zero carb. No?
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I thought you were already zero carb. No?
On the contrary. I've gone zero carb for half a week at a time, never put the effort into it to get over the hump. Usually I start to find eating meat becomes less appetizing at that point, and sometimes I'll get a head ache or something. Once during bjj I got really dizzy. All par for the course I've heard as you deplete glycogen and aren't consuming carbs, but I just didn't feel like dealing with it.
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Ahhhh...I stand corrected.
Got a good suggested reading for zero-carb?
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I still say Lex Rooker's writings are the best I've seen yet on ZC/carnivore. The hyperlipid guy, the PaNu doctor and Stefansson provide some valuable input, but they make some major mistakes like underestimating the harmful consequences of dairy for many people or the value of the raw aspect of RPD (although the PaNu doctor just sears his meats lightly).
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My wife and I did a little experiment this last week.
After doing a 'hardcore' meat-only diet for over four months we were getting some candy cravings. Its the end of summer now and I said 'screw it, just go and get an ice-cream if you want one that bad.. you only live once' So we went out and treated ourselves to an ice-cream.. No big deal..
Sugar is a terrible drug. One taste and its all you can think about. So over the next few days we had mabye 4 scoops of ice-cream and some (quality) chocolate.
Observations..
(a) Your mouth feels like crap
(b) Your stomach feels like crap
(c) Your mood changes (less calm)
(d) I got my 'itch' back (not bad, but i notice because i havent had it in months)
(e) Your heart feels like crap
(f) You feel dirty, I bathe like every few weeks, after eating crap i felt so grody from i guess my body sweating out all that poison
(g) a few other small things i cant remember.
Ok, so my family is having turkey dinner and i go 'shit, im trashing myself why not have turkey dinner'
So i grab myself a plate of cooked turkey, a potato, cranberry sauce and whatever else was there (skipped the beans and veggies)
Observations...
(a) I put this cooked turkey in my mouth and just start laughing.. 'Oh my god, i cant believe people actually EAT this stuff!' haha. cranberry sauce and gravy? you're god damn right you need that stuff just to be able to swallow that DRY DRY DRY meat.
(b) You get so full and your stomach bloats and I go 'ah yes, i remember this sensation.. its the sensation of being full after a meal... I do not like this sensation.
(c) A few hours later im not feeling all that great and a migrane develops.. I used to get migranes a lot and havent had one in such a long time. I never knew really what they were from, i always figured overheating or breathing in smoke/chemical smells but now i wonder if they were also food related.
(d) It just sits in your stomach doing nothing.. I wake up at like 4am and throw it up.
Final experiment we decide to eat what 6 months ago we would have called a 'Healthy Meal'. I cook up some quinoa and some of my fresh picked garden tomatoes, zucchini, some other stuff out of my garden that i cant remmeber and a cob of local corn. I cook this up and have it for dinner.
Observations...
(a) your stomach bloats
(b) It sat in our stomach for what seemed like close to 12 hours.
(c) It messes up your internal sausages and makes you constipated
(d) You crap some of it out undigested
(e) Your shit stinks
(f) You fart and burp
(g) You just plain do not feel as good as you do when eating a meat diet. Id say we felt only 65% as good as we usually do just eating meat.
This is what both my wife and I experienced, the same symptoms from eating. She has thyroid/adrenal problems and I was perfectly healthy with no problems when we started a carnivorous diet.
We're pretty much done with anything that isnt meat after these experiments. We feel that anything that isnt meat truly is 'starvation food' because we sure as shit arent eating it again unless we're starving haha.
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Your experience sounds very similar to mine. Some other people here have been able to tolerate significant levels of plant foods without reported negative symptoms. For whatever reasons, I don't seem to be able to tolerate more than a tiny occasional portion of plant foods, with some causing more severe problems than others.
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I never believed that I had a problem with porridge untill I stopped eating it for a while, then went back to it with an honest approach to how i felt... I miss you tasty sugary hot breakfast!!! haha
edit: I guess my point was that I think that everyone is the same.. Different tolerances are just that, tolerances. I can tolerate breathing in drywall dust better than my wife.. so ill just breath in a little.. haha
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Interesting.
I'm fine on plant foods and a little meat, but I've tried a few days on a lot of meat and only a bit of plant food, and it's not working as well (may be a bad choice of plant foods, though). After I read up a bit more, I'll do an "official" experiment of low or zero carb for about a week and see how that goes.
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I transitioned to mostly meats through the Primal Diet and drinking tons of raw milk shakes with eggs and honey. Quite delicious, but it make me feel bogged down after. There is nothing, I repeat nothing at all, that digests for me as easily as raw meat and fat. I can eat 1000 calories of it and feel light as if I hadn't eaten at all. A 1000 calorie raw milk shake, or 1000 calories of fruit, would make my stomach feel full, probably cause it would be, from the water content of the shake/fruit and fiber content of the fruit.
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Cool.
I've not had milk for a LONG time. I had some raw cheese a year or two ago, but didn;t care for it. Doesn't look like AJ's Primal Diet is going to be functional for me.
I've done more experimenting as of late, but I still crave tropical fruits and all manner of veggies as much as I crave meats. I manage to be very low carb - for the past week I've eaten a ton of veggies & meats, but all the veggies are low carb - but I still function best when I mix it up quite a bit.
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... There is nothing, I repeat nothing at all, that digests for me as easily as raw meat and fat. I can eat 1000 calories of it and feel light as if I hadn't eaten at all. A 1000 calorie raw milk shake, or 1000 calories of fruit, would make my stomach feel full, probably cause it would be, from the water content of the shake/fruit and fiber content of the fruit.
Exactly my experience as well. I can eat over 2 lbs. of raw meat and suet with water at a sitting and not have a heavy or bloated stomach. I can run afterwards without getting reflux or indigestion.
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Interesting.
I'm fine on plant foods and a little meat, but I've tried a few days on a lot of meat and only a bit of plant food, and it's not working as well (may be a bad choice of plant foods, though). After I read up a bit more, I'll do an "official" experiment of low or zero carb for about a week and see how that goes.
One common characteristic I mentioned a while back was that because the body required totally different enzymes/bacteria etc. to go on a ZC diet, there were invariably multiple issues/side-effects frequently reported from digesting plants after doing ZC(or very low VLC) for ages. I've heard the same sort of thing applies to semi- or full vegans/fruitarians, that when they suddenly switch to a low-carb diet, they find it difficult to digest mostly meat-meals after years of mainly eating plant foods.
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I've not had milk for a LONG time. I had some raw cheese a year or two ago, but didn;t care for it. Doesn't look like AJ's Primal Diet is going to be functional for me.
On occasion I've thrown up after drinking raw milk. That has never happened to me after drinking homemade kefir though, nor after eating cultured raw grassfed butter. Also I find AV's recipes of adding raw egg for the lecithin to tolerate the milk fats helps even more. Is it just milk for you Skinny Devil, or is it all dairy?
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Hi, RawZi.
Milk, cheese, eggs...I just don;t have a taste for it. I've been adding some raw egg lately and do OK with just one a day, but I had 2 the other day and it didn't sit well.
I keep going back to big salads (lots of greens), tropical fruits, raw fish, and shots of red meat.
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Hi :) David, good morning!
We're each different. The only way I can tolerate tropical fruit is in small quantity, and then mixed in a bowl with butter, honey and egg. I'm very happy to have found these 3 RAF foods. Previously I could not tolerate any tropical fruit. I couldn't tolerate them when I was semi cooked paleo either.
I haven't eaten much eggs lately. No taste for them. I did feel better when I was eating more eggs though. I will probably work the larger quantity back into my diet. Before I was RAF I tried egg Rocky style, and I could not get it to my throat.
RawZi
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Hahahaha! "Rocky style" - that's great!
I used to do that when I was a kid!