Paleo Diet: Raw Paleo Diet and Lifestyle Forum

Members' Journals => Journals => Topic started by: eveheart on April 24, 2011, 05:06:57 am

Title: eveheart's Journal
Post by: eveheart on April 24, 2011, 05:06:57 am
I read Aajonus' first book last weekend and made a decision to eat RPD for two weeks. The next day, last Monday, after about one day of eating raw, a co-worker noticed that I looked better. Yes, I've been visibly ill and noticeably declining for a few years. I have every reason to be well, a happy home life, a satisfying career; yet I had been waking up with morbid thoughts, wondering when I'd need a wheelchair and a personal attendant.

Aajonus' negative attitude toward medical science matches mine. I'm sure I could buy a scary diagnosis and a bleak prognosis. Then, I could consent to medical treatment and let the doctors document my decline. I have a good health insurance policy.

This is the end of week one. Thursday, another co-worker noticed that I had been losing weight. I replied that I had eliminated all processed food from my diet. I'd estimate that I am about 200 pounds overweight, and I can see that I don't look so bloated. I can also see that my mobility and range-of-motion has improved. My joints still ache, but there has been enough improvement so that I threw out the ibuprophen that I took several times a day.

I've been helped by reading posts on this forum. At first, I didn't know what to read besides Aajonus. Now, I've read Cordain, Wai, and Burger. In the past, I've been familiar with the raw-vegan writers, as well as the juicists, the non-juicists, the fruit-eaters, and too many others. I know all sides of the eating-disorder literature, too. All this reading and knowing has made me cynical, but not closed-minded. I know for sure that I do not tolerate grains and dairy, therefore, RPD makes sense.

One area of confusion that I share with many posters is what to eat, if anything, besides raw meats. The gurus add to this confusion by quibbling among themselves over what are the true nutritional needs of mankind.

I have decided to resolve my confusion with caveperson thinking. So, when confronted with a non-meat food choice, I ask myself, "What would a caveperson do?" For example, if I saw a squirrel nibbling the seeds in a field of ripe grasses, I'd try one and spit it out. Thereafter, I'd invent the game Spit the Seed. I wouldn't gather, winnow, and make a pilaf!

Another confusion-buster is availability, including seasonality. This is a better guide, IMO, that eating what a guru says to eat and fussing because I can't get it locally. I am not a cookbook cook. I prefer to buy what is available and then fix a meal from what I buy. I'll keep reading this forum and adapt my food preparation to the ideas that sound good.

Haunted by the question, "How do I know this (RPD) is IT?" I hear the answer, "Don't be a silly, this is not IT, and there is no IT!" Improvement does not require omniscient perfection. I will grow, learn, correct, refine and change my mind.

Then there's the relationship question, my intimate relationship with food. Breaking up with Fast Food was easy; I said good-bye and got a restraining order. But when I told my beloved Kimchi that I needed a few weeks to think this over, he went into shock. I can hear him in the refrigerator, sobbing, "You said you would love me forever." In my paleaeolithicity, had I stumbled on wild fermentation, or not? I'll decide later.

My rebellion this week has been over the loss of convenience by not freezing food. Providence has been symbolized by having a freezer full of meats and a pantry full of grains and legumes. I'll have to re-think this one, and probably put IF (intermittant fasting) into the picture. This is an eating-disorder thought: "What if I get hungry and I can't instantly satisfy my hunger?" Ironic - I was dying from eating, and now I'm worried that I'll "die" if I feel a little hungry.

I'm glad this forum has a section for my journal. Writing this morning has been very helpful.
Title: Re: eveheart's Journal
Post by: laterade on April 24, 2011, 12:00:08 pm
Welcome eveheart!
Glad to hear you have made the decision to take matters into your own hands.

Re Kimchi... I love it and eat it as much as possible. It's good stuff, great stuff if you make it yourself.
Wild Fermentation by Sandor Katz is a great book.
Title: Re: eveheart's Journal
Post by: eveheart on April 24, 2011, 12:16:37 pm
Wild Fermentation by Sandor Katz is a great book.

I'm a Sandor-kraut fan! I do all my own fermenting - fruits and veggies. It was in Wild Fermentation that I first heard about high meats. Indirectly, that's how I ended up here.
Title: Re: eveheart's Journal
Post by: Josh on April 24, 2011, 06:00:29 pm
I'd invent the game Spit the Seed. I wouldn't gather, winnow, and make a pilaf!

LOL sounds like you're on the right track. Good luck.
Title: Re: eveheart's Journal
Post by: eveheart on May 02, 2011, 02:05:57 am
My second complete week of raw paleo... with three "restaurant" compromises (eggs that fell into the hot springs and got hard-boiled, potatoes that got too close to the fire and got baked, and boiled shrimp that accidently fell into a bowl of cocktail sauce). My diet consists of raw beef and lamb muscle meats, lamb kidneys, scallops, oysters, tuna, eggs, citrus fruit, avocado, berries, papaya, banana, walnuts, kimchi, and coconut. I drink moderate amounts of water. I can feel my body healing.

HOW LONG WILL I DO THIS? At the onset, I said I'd try RPD for two weeks. Looking forward, I will commit to the whole month of May. In the back of my mind, I hear a faint forever.

KITCHEN. If RPD prevails, my kitchen is too modern. It has too many appliances and gadgets, and mostly the wrong ones. My daughter has already taken most of the pots and pans to her kitchen. I've been tempted to buy a meat grinder, but I've held back because I think I can find a stone implement to do what I need - or maybe a better knife for meats. Also, I need to chew, and I believe chewing will be a part of healing.

FOOD CRAVINGS. None! For my whole life, I've been plagued by food obsessions and cravings. I have labeled myself an emotional eater. That's not happening now. I estimate that I'm eating one-third to one-half the food I ate before.

SIMPLICITY. RPD seems comforting, simple, and uncomplicated. I like it.
Title: Re: eveheart's Journal
Post by: eveheart on May 09, 2011, 06:33:02 am
This, my third week, was full of good news and had a little bad news.

GOOD NEWS: INSTINCTO! For years, I've felt like I had no sense of my own satiety. My commitment to RPD comes from a sense that I've been eating myself into an early grave. This week, I have noticed that I seem to be hungry for particular foods, tastes, and smells - and none of my hunger drives me to fast food (hooray!). I eat with less relish, but enjoys my food more, and this seems to be proper.

MORE GOOD NEWS: My daughter says I look like I've lost about 30 pounds. Paleolithic man did not get weighed, and neither shall I. My hips do not hurt when I walk or stand. I feel like I'm standing straighter. My shoulders feel freer, and I have no doubt that they will heal and function fully without restriction, by and by.

GOAT SHARES: I bought goat shares for 2 quarts per week of raw goat-milk kefir from a farm that is 11 miles from my house. California law lets me buy this raw animal milk if I swear I will only give it to my pets, so I have decided to be a cat. I hope I don't confuse the archeologists.

BAD NEWS: DETOX :(  I am having detox symptoms that feel like a hangover. I ate cooked Japanese yams to slow down the detox. Of course, detox is not truly bad news - it leads to a good healing. :)

I like reading this forum. The post about the healing from Crohn's disease was encouraging, because it took a long time. I think it will take me some years to be well. I don't know what I have, disease-wise, because I won't buy a diagnosis from an American doctor, but I am not well. Whatever disease-name can be found, cleaning and nourishing the body should achieve the repair. When I read AV's book, I strongly identified with the title (We Want to Live). All of you have been good role models, and your posts offer me lots of good advice and encouragement.
Title: Re: eveheart's Journal
Post by: TylerDurden on May 09, 2011, 06:56:14 am
Just make sure re the raw dairy. If the "detox" occurs only during times when you drink raw dairy, then it isn't detox but allergy. A simple elimination diet for a few weeks, on and then off, should determine this.
Title: Re: eveheart's Journal
Post by: Ioanna on May 09, 2011, 08:08:49 am
eveheart, glad you're here!  that's going to help so much that your daughter is so supportive! :)
Title: Re: eveheart's Journal
Post by: eveheart on May 09, 2011, 08:20:34 am
Ioanna: Thanks for your encouragement. I live in a converted garage behind my daughter's house. It was her look of concern that helped me decide that I'd better do some serious improvement. She never nagged me, but I could see the worry in her eyes.

TD: You answered my unasked question: am I detoxing or reacting badly to dairy? My other big questions are: Am I carnivore or omnivore? And if omnivore, how much carbs? Plenty of time and good guidance, thanks.
Title: Re: eveheart's Journal
Post by: eveheart on May 15, 2011, 10:19:47 am
Week Four!!! My daughter and I were hanging out the other afternoon, and she started staring at my face. After a moment, she said, "Mom, you look completely different here," and she pointed under my eyes. I was looking for a picture to post showing how baggy my eyes were, but I've been so camera shy that I don't have any pictures of me for the past 2 years.

Then she asked me to get weighed on her scale because she wanted verification of what she was seeing. I was melting away. A month ago, I was too heavy for a standard bathroom scale, but I got on the scale. I figured, if I broke it, I'd buy her a new one. This was last Thursday - 3 1/2 weeks raw paleo - and I had lost 40 pounds, according to her bathroom scale.

Friends, do you realize what this means to me? At the very best, I figured I could lost a pound a week at my age on a typical diet. I could never stick to a diet anyway. It just wasn't worth it. I originally tried RPD to try to stop the pain in my joints that I thought was from grains/dairy.

I went to a chiropractor this morning. On his professional scale, I've lost 48 pounds since my last weight in January, when I went to get my handicapped parking placard renewed. A co-worker recently mentioned how convenient it was that I could get handicapped parking. Honestly, I'd prefer to be able to walk from the far end of the parking lot. Now, I think that's going to happen.
Title: Re: eveheart's Journal
Post by: eveheart on May 16, 2011, 09:27:57 am
This afternoon, my daughter said, "You know, Mom?... I don't think of you as an invalid any more!"

I'm really getting around well. I even went to a farmer's market this morning. It was quite a bit more walking than I'm used to, and I handled it just fine. No pain, no limping, and I went to another store afterwards instead of going straight home to recover.

The other good news is that my daughter and her family has decided to "go paleo!" Not raw, but I'm still counting my blessings. My son-in-law's doctor recommended this way of eating (imagine that!) because of his multiple health issues.
Title: Re: eveheart's Journal
Post by: eveheart on May 23, 2011, 04:56:00 am
Another week gone by, and I am so thoroughly pleased by how I feel and look that I've decided to stop counting weeks. I started out with a two-week commitment, then I decided to stick it out for the month of May. Now, I cannot imagine going back to what I used to eat.

Curiosity got the best of me, as far as weighing myself goes, so I stepped on the scale this morning to find another 6 pounds gone this past week. Any other diet would have me worrying that I'm losing weight too fast, but not this one. The biochemistry makes sense, in that I'm not overloading with foods that create a high insulin output, therefore I'm not in fat-storage mode all the time. I also enjoy feeling clear-headed and alert.

I'm also enjoying regularity for the first time in decades. I can't believe how much misery I had, all because of not being able to digest cooked foods. Believe me, I tried everything! With a RPD, everything was normal (regular) by the end of the first week, and it has stayed that way. <<happy dancin'!!!!>>
Title: Re: eveheart's Journal
Post by: eveheart on June 01, 2011, 11:46:18 am
I'm definitely past RPD infancy and well into my adolescence. Eating raw chicken was my rite of passage. I have a "relationship" with a butcher who wants to please me and hopes we can have a LTR.  ;)

I'm walking better, partly due to weight loss. But I also notice that I'm not dead tired all the time. Whereas I used to rush home after work and fall into bed for a 1 - 3 hour nap, then watch a movie, then go back to sleep, now I shop on the way home, visit with my granddaughter, clean the house, do little projects, and generally live my life.

My last social eating occasion was a few weeks ago. I had cooked fish and vegetables. I felt sluggish and was constipated for several days. I have another eating occasion coming up next week - a graduation celebration dinner at a steakhouse. Someone else is paying for the meal. Well, not JUST someone... my ex-husband is paying. I've already starting thinking ahead so I can order what I really want to eat, and not order what I want him to pay for. Funny how the subconscious mind seems to have its own agenda. :)
Title: Re: eveheart's Journal
Post by: eveheart on June 05, 2011, 02:49:21 pm
RPD is making a different woman out of me. Last week, I was reveling in the idea that I had found me a butcher, and this week I have TWO butchers. One butcher couldn't satisfy my needs. Both of them have lamb and goat, but from one I get grass-fed beef marrow bones, from the other I get lamb's liver. I daydream of turning my refrigerator into a meat locker, with hooks hanging from the wire shelves.

I'm comfortable with letting people know that I'm eating everything raw, but I feel very awkward when it comes to eating raw meat in front of people. My daughter has seen me eating sliced fish, chicken, and liver with a knife and fork. But when I chow down on something that requires a lot of chewing to get at it, I've been self-conscious. That means that I'm eating lunch alone instead of with my co-workers. I'll get over it and take my lunch to work this week.

I've continued to lose weight effortlessly. Joint pains are diminishing noticeably day by day, giving me a better range-of-motion. I'm really glad I have the support of this forum.
Title: Re: eveheart's Journal
Post by: Amris on June 05, 2011, 08:45:37 pm
I know how you feel. I'm quite worried about my husband finding out I'm eating raw meat, lol. He's already seen me try other diets and fail repeatedly with them. This is just going to be one more in a long succession to him.

Although, he can't complain too much because I have helped him get his blood sugar numbers down significantly and kept him off of injected insulin.

It's awesome that you're ready to let coworkers know. I think that's a HUGE step!!
Title: Re: eveheart's Journal
Post by: laterade on June 05, 2011, 10:55:08 pm
...I think that's a HUGE step!!
Most definitely.. Choose wisely, this will scare a few people.
Title: Re: eveheart's Journal
Post by: eveheart on June 05, 2011, 11:19:55 pm
Choose wisely, this will scare a few people.

I agree.

I'm not the type to talk about "my diet" and other personal stuff. In contrast, about two-thirds of our staff is on some sort of weight-loss diet (without visible results), so they want to know what I'm doing. Most people who ask get the "I'm eating all natural/unprocessed food" explanation. The religious people get the "I'm obeying my higher power" explanation (which is true for me).

The ones I eat with? I call everything sashimi (even chicken and liver slices), and that I'm not buying the cafeteria food because it is cooked.

Title: Re: eveheart's Journal
Post by: eveheart on June 11, 2011, 02:19:37 pm
My Butcher Saga continues, and the plot thickens. The grass-fed Marrow Man told me that he's got too many knuckles, and his boss won't let him order more bones until they're gone. Geesh, ya'd think he'd just leave 'em out for the coyotes! I think my new Marrow Man will be Marin Sun Farms CSA, because they have a drop-off once a month a few mile from my house.

My lamb Liver Dude can't give me a straight story about the grass-fed issue because he's at a Pakistani Halal market, and grass-fed isn't his concern. Also, there might be a slight language barrier, since my Urdu is not up to par. Marin Sun Farms can get me lamb liver, but I'm not sure I'd like it frozen. I guess the answer to that is: good health is more important than the pleasures of the table.

I'm looking at some health improvements, such as relief of hip pain, but I'm wondering about how to accelerate some other improvements. My worst problem is pain in both shoulders, which a sports rehab doctor says is from unstable joints and muscles in my shoulder not being strong enough. I try to do the simple exercises he gives me, but I'm struggling with pain and "clicking" inside the shoulder sockets. I'm eating all RVAF. Any dietary advice?

Title: Re: eveheart's Journal
Post by: eveheart on June 13, 2011, 09:12:12 am
Raw egg. I've always enjoyed raw egg yolk, but the white has been another thing altogether. Since I've been reading this forum and eating RPD, I've been on the lookout for negative attitudes about particular raw foods, and then deliberately eaten them. First I did raw red meat, then raw organ meats, raw marrow, then raw chicken. Today I did raw egg Rocky-style... and survived. The white was the least-palatable texture I have ever sipped, but I found the taste interesting - salty with a sweet aftertaste.

I'm going to conclude that raw egg white is my least favorite food.
Title: Re: eveheart's Journal
Post by: Ioanna on June 13, 2011, 10:13:13 am
I'm going to conclude that raw egg white is my least favorite food.

lol!

i'm really impressed!! it took me over a year to try organ meats, and just yesterday i finally tried chicken. 

i don't know about shoulders, but maybe there is an exercise (an isometric?) that you can start with that will not cause pain and clicking, but still begin to strengthen?

i dislocated my knee cap several years ago, and i have to keep up with exercises or i will start having discomfort in a couple weeks.  as soon as i start working out again the ache goes completely away. i'll always be using weights in some capacity, keeps me free from (re)injury.
Title: Re: eveheart's Journal
Post by: eveheart on June 13, 2011, 11:25:38 am
Thanks for your admiration, Ioanna, but before you decide that you have been slow, I have to confess that I have always been adventurous about eating new foods. I never flinch when I watch Andrew Zimmern. My children are like this, too. When I spoke to my son, the mountain man, last week, we discussed what sort of grubs would make a tasty meal.

As for my shoulders, I injured one about 5 years ago, but the other one seemed to start hurting without any obvious injury. I want to improve my overall health to address the predisposition to having discomfort in this area, and in my joints in general (hips, knees). Eliminating grains and dairy gave me almost instant relief in my hips and knees. There are other things I want to experiment with by including or eliminating them, like nuts, citrus.

There are spiritual factors which I pay attention to, too. For example, feeling discomfort when I raise my arms (= give praise) or reach out to shake someone's hand (= greet and welcome) are symbolic of thought patterns that require healing. To me, that's where the real healing will take place.
Title: Re: eveheart's Journal
Post by: eveheart on July 05, 2011, 12:22:57 pm
Haven't written much in my journal lately because everything seems so routine and normal lately. Oh, I did dump my two butchers for another butcher. This new butcher has everything I need in one place, and he doesn't get weird over special orders. He gets one grass-fed carcass/week, and the femurs are mine. His prices are better than WF, too. I have an order coming in from Marin Sun Farms in a few weeks, and that will be my back-up source for marrow and fats.

I continue to lose weight effortlessly. I went to visit some old friends this weekend, and one of them said I look 20 years younger. I feel younger, too.

I have been contemplating starting a workout to rehabilitate my shoulders. They have been called "unstable" by a few chiropractors and physical therapists, but these healers have not been very helpful when it comes to treatment. I have a lot of resistance to starting out, even though I think it would be a wise thing to do. I realize that there are a lot of fit people in this forum. Any suggestions or encouragement will be appreciated.
Title: Re: eveheart's Journal
Post by: Max on July 05, 2011, 12:36:39 pm
Great Job Eveheart!

I seems you have really taken to this lifestyle change with gusto!  For me it is more of a daily struggle, that is why I go on this forum so much.  It keeps me honest.

I am curious what a daily menu might look like for you?

Lastly, in regards to rehab, chiro's, and shoulders, I have heard good things about this book: The Egoscue Method of Health Through Motion.  I am planning on buying a copy and seeing if it can help with my chronic pain.

http://www.amazon.com/Egoscue-Method-Health-Through-Motion/dp/0060924306

Keep up the good work ;D
Title: Re: eveheart's Journal
Post by: eveheart on July 05, 2011, 01:03:51 pm
Thanks for the book suggestion. I put it in my Amazon.com cart.

My gusto comes from pure desperation. I was scared that I'd end up in a wheelchair. Lots of my friends are retiring on disability. I don't see myself this way. Compared to some other desperate measures, such as juicing, fasting, raw vegan, etc., RVAF is very simple. RZC might have some benefit for me, but the risk that I couldn't stick to it makes me stay away from it right now.

I don't eat anything fancy - right now I have marrow bones, lamb, ground beef, and high beef in the fridge. My veggies are all my own fermented vegetables (cabbage, kimchi, cauliflower). I have some avocados, bananas and watermelon. Also some fertile eggs, walnuts and honey. In case of "emergency," I have some frozen tuna, squid, and scallops.

I have fruit for breakfast, eaten while I drive to work. Lunch and dinner are raw meat with avocado and fermented veggies. I am out of liver until the next time I shop, but I have it several times per week.

This forum has been a rich source of ideas. I don't think I could have figured out what to do just by reading the books. I need real people, not gurus.
Title: Re: eveheart's Journal
Post by: eveheart on July 09, 2011, 11:11:19 pm
While I was waiting for my Egoscue book from Amazon, I got the book Pain Free by Pete Egoscue from the public library. This book makes so much sense to me. Egoscue takes a postural approach to healing. In my case, taking this approach is a no-brainer. I limp, and everything feels out of whack, even though I have no history of trauma. Other people my age dismiss these symptoms and say that they are "getting old."

As I was looking at more Egoscue information, I found out that they have a clinic 2 miles from my house. I had a consultation last night. The consultant had me do a set of postural exercises. By the end of the second exercise, I stopped limping. I got a set of exercises to do this week, and I'm going back next week. I don't think I have the knowledge of the body's bio-mechanics to figure this out by myself.
Title: Re: eveheart's Journal
Post by: eveheart on July 18, 2011, 11:30:31 am
There is so much good advice here in this forum!

I'm still doing my Egoscue Method exercises, with steady progress. I'm not claiming a miracle cure, but in 2 weeks I've had such an increase in range-of-motion and reduction in pain that I just finished sweeping and mopping my apartment, whereas a few weeks ago, I could barely brush my own hair.

I'm 99+% RVAF, with a weight loss of 60 pounds since April. I take my lunch to work and eat in the staff lounge, where my food is generally referred to as "steak tartare" if it's red meat, or "sashimi" if it's fish. Mostly, nobody takes notice.

I've been following the discussion about sungazing, and I decided to start it tonight. I was going to go out at sunrise, but it is usually cloudy that time of day. I followed a link here that led me to a page that listed a Yahoo group sungazingtheHRMmethod. When I joined, they sent me a Sungazing Manual that was very interesting and informative.

I'm continuing to see two butchers. At home, I eat organ meats and slightly high beef or lamb. I don't cut up the meat and put it in jars. I just store it between two plates so it doesn't dry out, and turn it over every day so each side gets aired out. When it's "aged to perfection" in just less than a week, I eat it. I feel better when I eat slightly high meat, which is when it has a slight slime on the surface.
Title: Re: eveheart's Journal
Post by: eveheart on July 22, 2011, 09:28:52 am
I've been prompted to make some changes to my food so as to eat less fruit, and that has led to me thinking, "How much of what should I be eating each day."

Truth is, I don't even know how many calories I should be eating, much less how much of each type of food to use to make up this intake. I like three meals per day. Before, I was eating fruit for breakfast, meat/avocado/fermented veggies for lunch, and meat or liver with fermented veggies, egg yolk and beef marrow for dinner. Sometimes a fruit smoothie for a snack. Also, I like homemade coconut butter as a snack. I bought suet, and I have to clue how much or when to eat it.

I've lost weight eating RVAF without any plan at all, but I suddenly feel chagrined because I'm looking for a diet plan when I don't need one. OTOH, I have so many sources of fat in the house, so I wonder when to fit them all in.

How does anybody "balance" all these options? Or was all that fruit really okay in the first place?
Title: Re: eveheart's Journal
Post by: ys on July 22, 2011, 11:16:22 am
i don't have any plans.  when i get hungry i open refrigerator and get what i feel like at the moment meat or fruit or even potatoes(cooked).  and i don't count calories or bother to weigh it, when i feel i'm getting full i stop.  the key is to spend least amount of time thinking about food.
Title: Re: eveheart's Journal
Post by: eveheart on July 22, 2011, 01:50:52 pm
i don't have any plans... the key is to spend least amount of time thinking about food.

That would work if I were at home all day, and if the food somehow got itself into the refrigerator without any planning on my part. What I am really asking, I suppose, is what I should put into my refrigerator and lunchbox. I've been buying some fats through a CSA, with monthly drop-offs. Again, it would help to know how much to order, based on how much fat I plan to consume daily.

Another thing: I want to start noticing what foods make me feel great, and what foods bog me down. What I'm mostly unclear about is foods that are fats.
Title: Re: eveheart's Journal
Post by: ys on July 23, 2011, 12:43:21 am
Quote
Another thing: I want to start noticing what foods make me feel great, and what foods bog me down. What I'm mostly unclear about is foods that are fats.

no one can answer that question for you.  you have to try different things for yourself to see weat kind of food and in what amounts makes you feel better.  i suggest read Lex's journal, he specifically suggests to introduce small changes one at a time and keep those changes for a while.  making change every few weeks or so may not be effective.

as far as what to put in the refrigerator/freezer?  mostly animals, grass-fed or wild, preferably head to toe.  every week i take chunks of animal parts(meat and organs) and chop them into small packs (maybe 3/4-1lb, never measured it).  that's what I take to work and maybe one-two fruits as a snack.  if meat looks lean i add some fat to it.  when at home i may eat the same thing or if i feel like it fry me some eggs or have potato salad.  i think my body recovered to the point where cooked paleo foods do not give me any negatives.  raw is still my staple but now i don't mind cooked once in a while.
Title: Re: eveheart's Journal
Post by: KD on July 23, 2011, 01:46:45 am
my diet has more or less remained a 'diet' for years and yet that is what allows for exactly what ys, lex and others talk about. that kind of health transparency where doing what you do has such little element/anxiety/mark in your daily functioning other than allowing you to feel good. Ideally this means being able to shift in change in responding to environment...lack of food you like..fit in socially etc...IMHO anyway but more or less stay true to that 'diet'.

This is a tough one because of course this was only when it was working well..at other points 'diets' were definitely more of a burden or suspension of disbelief. Sometimes it was indeed the 'wrong diet' other-times it was sticking it out through various necessary transitions and hardships. It really is hard to say. Certainly if I just ate what I felt like..it would be fairly different and one could extrapolate that things would go alot differently if not poorly. At this point I can indeed tell when I do enough of the things that goes against my ideal..or whatever (even amongst 'health' food) and how that alters how I feel and perform.

of course the questions you are asking remain to some degree. how much of this is optimal?..what would happen if I ate more of this less of that? etc...but these arn't particularly pressing..sort of intellectual musings.

I put alot of stock in physical/noticeable changes and of course you can't see these over a short period in one self....so one can usually only look to how certain things are panning out in nature...and since nature is moderated by human fowl and obstructions this is more accurately seen in other people. Usually I'm asking myself: OOOK is this thing really giving this kind of 'edge' (even over other people eating crap) that makes jumping through those health hoops even worthwhile?... perhaps I'm overcritical sometimes.

I guess it gets confusing. Normally because this is a discussion based forum I think its important to discuss the realities of what kind of things/changes MIGHT be important for people to follow given their position. For others they might seemingly do well on a variety of things that arn't deep fried. It does seem to me as well that people sweat the small stuff while marginalizing things that actually are important..freaking out over salt or 2 oz of vodka..when eating in ways that by many accounts go against healing. Still one can't discount what may be necessary diet or otherwise...at least for others....to progress.

It sounds like you reason well and pay attention to things. all the other 'desires' in the last few posts sounds plenty logical and obtainable and likely will happen to some degree in the future.

But I would say it is better to stick to one particular program (with some slips/'cheats') rather than just eat whatever every day that is supposedly raw and healthy. This in my book would be 'dieting' or eating with a particular philosophy that has some kind of variety within it. or I guess the experimental consistency of no variety..:)

Title: Re: eveheart's Journal
Post by: eveheart on July 31, 2011, 08:02:48 pm
In the olden days, I always had a lot of rice and beans in the pantry. I got to looking around my kitchen and realized that I have very little food stored for a rainy day. So, I made one of Lex's $10 Jerky Dryers, which nowadays cost $14.00, including the shop light. My first batch was small, using beef sirloin steak that I had lying around, and no seasoning. I just ate some for breakfast, and it was perfect. I prefer unseasoned food, so I do not plan to use seasonings. My daughter, OTOH, is going to make batches of various recipes, so I'll sample some of hers.

I've cut way back on carbs. Before, I was eating all-fruit for breakfast. Now, I'm having a quick few chunks of meat. There has been no dramatic effect, but the result is okay.

I asked my butcher about brains. He says that beef brains were banned because of mad-cow disease. Is this true? (I'm in California.) He's asking his supplier about getting lamb brains.
Title: Re: eveheart's Journal
Post by: eveheart on August 04, 2011, 06:39:45 am
SUCCESS with two batches of beef jerky - plain and very lightly seasoned (vinegar, lime juice, ground pepper). Next up: tallow. After that: pemmican. Then, I'll feel better about emergency preparedness.

I work in an office with a staff of people who share the same germs, if you catch my meaning. Since I have been raw paleo, I have not experienced any of the cold symptoms - until last week. Last week, we had two staff dinners in which I ate cooked paleo. A day or so later, I started to feel a sore throat and body aches. After two days of my regular raw paleo foods, I feel fine. My conclusion is that eating right is powerful medicine. (I don't claim that this is an original thought, I'm just rejoicing in the simplicity.)

I talked to the manager of MY butcher department about brains. The answer was "Yes" he can get some!

Another thing I want to try is raw shrimp. I can get many kinds of shrimp, such as farmed, wild, domestic (US), imported, frozen, and previously frozen. I'm not in shrimp country, so I don't think I can get really fresh shrimp. I'm a little squeamish about shrimp, so I want to know I'm getting the right kind. Is there a right kind? Opinions are welcome.
Title: Re: eveheart's Journal
Post by: magnetic on August 06, 2011, 12:47:31 am
I asked my butcher about brains. He says that beef brains were banned because of mad-cow disease. Is this true? (I'm in California.) He's asking his supplier about getting lamb brains.

Beef brains are not banned, but it is a common misconception among butchers (and even USDA inspectors).

This is from the UDSA website (http://www.fsis.usda.gov/Fact_Sheets/Slaughter_Inspection_101/index.asp (http://www.fsis.usda.gov/Fact_Sheets/Slaughter_Inspection_101/index.asp)):

# Livestock slaughter and processing establishments must maintain written procedures for removing, segregating and disposing of specified risk materials (SRMs) so they do not enter the food supply.

# SRMs are high-risk tissues that pose the greatest risk of containing the agent associated with bovine spongiform encephalopathy (also known as BSE or "mad cow disease").

# Some examples of SRMs are the brain, skull, eyes, trigeminal ganglia, spinal cord, vertebral column, and dorsal root ganglia of cattle 30 months of age and older; the tonsils of all cattle; and the distal ileum of all cattle.

If the cattle are under 30 months of age (according to the USDA, which has certain guidelines for determining this), then the brain is considered suitable for human consumption and can be sold.

See this thread:

http://www.rawpaleodietforum.com/carnivorous-zero-carb-approach/braaaaains/ (http://www.rawpaleodietforum.com/carnivorous-zero-carb-approach/braaaaains/)
Title: Re: eveheart's Journal
Post by: eveheart on August 07, 2011, 05:05:06 am
Thanks for the info, Magnetic. I talked to the manager of the butcher shop, and he had better information, too. He can order grass-fed beef brains from his supplier. I know I'll like them.

He had a nice chunk of achilles tendon today, and some marrow bones. He sells me marrow bones for $1.39/pound, compared with $3.99/pound at WF. That's why I love my butcher! It took me a few months of going to every little market in the area before I found this one. The meat department gets its meat whole and cuts everything up each morning, or to order. The market is located in a very nice neighborhood, which is why I am getting such good customer service.

I had success with my first small batch of pemmican. I dried the beef with my Lex-style jerky dryer, rendered the fat from suet, and TA-DA!!! I think it's a good idea to have an emergency stash of the right kind of food in case anything disrupts the distribution of food into the city.
Title: Re: eveheart's Journal
Post by: magnetic on August 07, 2011, 06:53:45 am
He had a nice chunk of achilles tendon today, and some marrow bones. He sells me marrow bones for $1.39/pound, compared with $3.99/pound at WF. That's why I love my butcher! It took me a few months of going to every little market in the area before I found this one. The meat department gets its meat whole and cuts everything up each morning, or to order. The market is located in a very nice neighborhood, which is why I am getting such good customer service.

I am jealous, I gave up trying to find a good butcher around here. Maybe I gave up too soon?
Title: Re: eveheart's Journal
Post by: eveheart on August 07, 2011, 07:28:24 am
Maybe I gave up too soon?

I live in a large city near San Francisco. Finding grass-fed beef wasn't a problem so much as finding a butcher who was willing to order the parts I want. I have Whole Foods nearby, but they couldn't order items that weren't on their order sheet. My back-up places are Mexican or halal markets, which carry lamb and goat, but not grass-fed beef. Also, I can order monthly from Marin Sun Farms, a CSA that does drop-shipments nearby.

Your local area may offer less choices, so I won't say that you gave up too soon. Just keep your eyes and ears open... ya never know!
Title: Re: eveheart's Journal
Post by: eveheart on August 15, 2011, 04:32:12 am
If there are stages of going raw paleo, then I'm in the stage of confusion, which I define as the passage between reading everything on the topic and deciding what is right for me. Since I cannot follow every path, I'd better find my own.

I am resolved to eat raw animal foods, primarily beef and lamb, including offal. This has been working well for 5 months, and I have no regrets.

My uncertainty is about FATS and CARBS: how much and what kind? I've mentioned this before in my journal, but I am still undecided.

My fats choices are: beef/lamb fat, coconut cream, avocado, walnuts, beef/bison marrow, egg yolks. All these taste agreeable to me.

My carb choices are honey, fresh fruits or fermented vegetables, such as homemade sauerkraut.

I tried 100% animal food for a week, and I felt sad that I couldn't eat berries or watermelon. I'm indifferent to vegetables, but I often take them in my lunch so that my co-workers can see that I'm eating vegetables. (LOL, they do not care, and they can see that what I am eating is restoring my health.)

Honey is one of my big debates because AV mentioned honey a lot. I don't use it in recipes, and I'm not sure if I need it or not. It is nice for a sweet treat, though.

I'm not asking for advice - KD and ys gave me good advice (below) that applies well. I'm just writing this to acknowledge that my emotions are looking for instant results and perfect answers and telling me that I am confused if I don't have them. As I re-read what I have written today, I realize that I am developing a good philosophy, what KD called 'dieting' or eating with a particular philosophy that has some kind of variety within it.

Okay, so maybe I'm not as confused as I thought I was.
Title: Re: eveheart's Journal
Post by: magnetic on August 15, 2011, 09:27:33 am
I still have cravings for carb foods, mainly fruit and dairy, and I am not committed to my current way of eating. Right now it is an experiment. It is the experiment I am committed to. I overloaded my body in the past with so much grains, sugar and vegetable oils, I need to eat raw zero carb. But I am unsure if I will eat this way for any extended period of time. Right now it is working, the experiment is going very well, as far as health and well-being. After awhile I may make some changes, or I may forget that this started as an experiment, and I may not want to eat anything but raw animal foods.

Everyone seems to face the fat/carb conundrum at some point. I am still dealing with this issue, if I weren't I would be set on raw zero carb and wouldn't think about it any more. At some point I may tire of my experiment, or I may feel that I have healed enough to allow raw dairy or raw fruit into my diet. When that time comes, though, I am going to do it in a controlled fashion, such as introducing just one kind of food and see how I do. It is kind of the opposite of those allergy elimination tests. I know I do well on beef, so I would try beef + heavy cream, for instance. Heavy cream is low in carbohydrates and high in fat, as is butter. I have grass-fed sources for these. Or if I were to introduce fruit, I would find a high-brix fruit, just one kind, and add that, eating a small amount each day, but otherwise only eating beef. This is my current approach, at least.
Title: Re: eveheart's Journal
Post by: eveheart on August 29, 2011, 01:01:18 am
WARNING! I have procured and ingested grass-fed beef brains! Henceforth, my journal will demonstrate at once an enhanced intellectual content and an irrepressibly brilliant wit.

My big news of late is that I have found more economical cuts of meat. I had been buying grass-fed beef in the $11/pound range, but I find that I enjoy the $5 - $6 cuts even more. I'm learning about the cuts by watching butchers break down beef carcasses on youtube, and by watching my own butcher break down lamb carcasses. One of these days, I will learn butchering - probably not to do it myself (it's not an urban hobby for an old lady who lives in a studio apartment), but certainly to learn more about the parts of the animal I am eating.

Well, that's all I'll say for now... gotta go eat some more brains!
Title: Re: eveheart's Journal
Post by: Inger on August 29, 2011, 02:43:59 am
I am so jealous right now.
I have only eaten brains once in my life, last fall, my moms Sheep that we slaughtered. I ate the whole brain alone, raw. It was delicious.
I got great energy and focus from it! Now I miss it terribly. I asked at the market if they could sell me some lambsbrain, but they told me it is "problem-waste" in Finland. They would never sell it to me. So sad. But I will not give up, and search further!

Inger
Title: Re: eveheart's Journal
Post by: eveheart on August 29, 2011, 03:02:43 am
I am so jealous right now.
I have only eaten brains once in my life, last fall, my moms Sheep that we slaughtered. I ate the whole brain alone, raw. It was delicious.
I got great energy and focus from it! Now I miss it terribly. I asked at the market if they could sell me some lambsbrain, but they told me it is "problem-waste" in Finland. They would never sell it to me. So sad. But I will not give up, and search further!

Inger

That's how it is here, too. I've asked dozens of butchers for 6 months now. They all "check on it" and say yes, but this is the first time I've actually gotten an order of brains.
Title: Re: eveheart's Journal
Post by: eveheart on September 22, 2011, 12:39:11 pm
I have a ten-day vacation coming up, and I'm wondering what to do. Egg yolk liver cleanse comes to mind. I'm open to suggestions for a good ten-day regimen.
Title: Re: eveheart's Journal
Post by: eveheart on October 16, 2011, 05:44:55 am
I'm looking for someone local to share an animal - lamb, probably, but I don't really know what I'm doing yet. I don't even know if I can manage a carcass in a small kitchen, but I have to try. It makes so much sense, and I'm sure it's not that hard to learn and adapt. The main advantage would be getting the whole animal, all the parts.

I didn't post this in Personals because I need more advice before I actually carry it out. If I can find someone who knows what they're doing, either in my area or via online advice, it might be easier. I'm in San Jose, south of San Francisco. There is so much suitable food around here, if only I find out what I'm doing.
Title: Re: eveheart's Journal
Post by: Ioanna on October 16, 2011, 11:19:15 am
have you tried the brains yet? i have not found a source for them near me, so i have yet to experience.

10 days... i bet GS would have a good idea! my ideas are more along the lines of packing in as much activity as i possibly can, lol... friends, yoga, swim, hike, sun... 
Title: Re: eveheart's Journal
Post by: zeno on October 16, 2011, 11:23:14 am
I'm looking for someone local to share an animal - lamb, probably, but I don't really know what I'm doing yet.

Eveheart, I live in Reno, Nevada, which is 4 hours away (quite close, relatively speaking). If you feel it would be beneficial to meet or if is something I can do to assist you, please let me know.

Just so you know, I plan on buying an animal soon, too. There is lamb and goat available here in Nevada.
Title: Re: eveheart's Journal
Post by: eveheart on October 16, 2011, 01:50:28 pm
have you tried the brains yet? i have not found a source for them near me, so i have yet to experience.

I got 5# of beef brains. They're okay, not my favorite, but they're no problem to eat. It was a big hassle to get them, though, so I won't try to buy them from the market again.

Quote
10 days... i bet GS would have a good idea! my ideas are more along the lines of packing in as much activity as i possibly can, lol... friends, yoga, swim, hike, sun...

I've got one more vacation day left. I did a 4-day egg yolk cleanse, but it was uneventful. GS did give me some good ideas - one of which was a general cleansing. I tried a product called Colosan, and I did a watermelon day. It was the watermelon that cleaned me out good - "do not try this on a work day!"

I also tried a Korean bathhouse. I liked it even more than getting a massage. Basically, it's a hot tub  followed by a 40-minute scrub down by an old Korean lady with scrubbing mittens. A lot of dead skin gets rubbed off. Nobody there spoke English, except the scrub-lady could say front, back, side, and tip.  :D The only Korean I know is how to say "thank you."

It was a nice, relaxing vacation. Oh, and I ate raw meat every day!!
Title: Re: eveheart's Journal
Post by: eveheart on October 16, 2011, 02:10:18 pm
Eveheart, I live in Reno, Nevada, which is 4 hours away (quite close, relatively speaking). If you feel it would be beneficial to meet or if is something I can do to assist you, please let me know.

Just so you know, I plan on buying an animal soon, too. There is lamb and goat available here in Nevada.

Reno is a bit farther than I was thinking, but tell me more. I want to get to the point that I can prepare my own food. There's a lot I need to learn about the meat I've been eating. Are you going to slaughter the animal yourself? Butcher it? I want to learn where all the glands are, and generally know more about what's what besides what I've learned from Youtube videos and posters about the cuts of meat.
Title: Re: eveheart's Journal
Post by: zeno on October 16, 2011, 10:17:59 pm
Yes, I'm going to slaughter, skin, gut, and butcher the animal myself. I'm more than willing to do it with you--kind of like a butcher class.

If we bought two animals we could go through the process side-by-side.
Title: Re: eveheart's Journal
Post by: eveheart on October 23, 2011, 01:09:11 pm
I read all the new posts here every day, so, in response to recent talk about mussels, I ran over to the good seafood market and bought some. They are goo-oo-ood, and so much easier to open than oysters. I got oysters, too, while I was there.

I have decided to ease myself into getting a whole lamb by buying an uncut loin and a leg. I'm experimenting with aging and storage in my refrigerator, with an eye to getting a dedicated meat refrigerator.

The loin of lamb has a pair of tan glands along the spine, about 3/4" - 2 cm long. Taste is okay. Wonder what it is.

I think I'm falling in love with one of the butchers at the market. Yeah, I know, I'm too old for him. But, he knows everything about meat. "Hi, honey, I'm home, and I brought you an adrenal gland...." <sigh>
Title: Re: eveheart's Journal
Post by: Inger on October 23, 2011, 03:21:36 pm

I think I'm falling in love with one of the butchers at the market. Yeah, I know, I'm too old for him. But, he knows everything about meat. "Hi, honey, I'm home, and I brought you an adrenal gland...." <sigh>
If that is not enough to fall in love with a man, I dunno what is.. huh. :-*
I feel with you.  ;)

Inger
Title: Re: eveheart's Journal
Post by: eveheart on November 08, 2011, 07:54:28 pm
I've been here for just over 6 months now. I had looked forward to this mini-milestone as a victory, but as it turns out, I'm at a low point. There are several components to this lowness:

Social obstacles - Seasonal blues? All the holiday parties are scheduled. I'm bringing dessert to the Thanksgiving party, and we're not talking about fruit. I've already been slipping by eating cooked meats in the employee cafeteria. I don't want the cooked food, but I do want the company of the co-workers who eat there. The Christmas party will be steakhouse food. Cooked. I'm going to eat that!

Macronutrient indecision - I read Nora Gedgaudas's Primal Body, Primal Mind, and it set me in a VLC-higher fat direction. I was fine for a week, but then I felt antsy. I'm not sure if that meant I was adjusting, or if it meant that it was all wrong for me. When I read the book, it sounded to right... but anything can sound right when it's printed down, even fruitarianism, and many other diets that were unsustainable in my past experience. When I try to follow someone else's bright ideas, I lose my own sense of instinct.

Not losing weight lately - my weight has been stable (not losing) for about 2 months now. Not a good sign. Strangely enough, the problem began when I bought my own scale to get weighed on, instead of going to my daughter's house and using hers. With a history of eating disorder, I think I'm obsessing about weight loss too much. Eating disorders can play games with one's thinking that triggers bad eating behaviors. I might have to get rid of the scale.

I caught a cold! I thought I'd never get sick again. I'm blaming occasional cooked food for my lowered resistance. Or maybe I just got the bug that was going around the office.

It's winter - I don't like the colder weather and the rainy season. I've been reading the thread about this on our forum, and I know that I'm designed for warmth, even though I've adapted with heaters and sweaters.

Sorry to sound so down. Gotta shake this lowness, or use it as a springboard for a new season of RPD'ing.
Title: Re: eveheart's Journal
Post by: Dorothy on November 10, 2011, 06:17:31 am
Hi Eve. We've been doing a bunch of research re vit D and it seems to be no coincidence that people get colds more in the winter and get depressed then too. Less sun = less vit D. You might not be able to change the holiday things, but I thought I'd suggest perhaps looking into supplementation and seeing what that does.

Cherimoya suggested vit d in my thread asking for help for my husband. So far this is the first October/November (fingers crossed) where he hasn't gotten a flu or cold that I can remember.

In that thread I posted some links by a doctor that we thought were fabulous and extremely informative on the subject.

I sure hope you feel better!
Title: Re: eveheart's Journal
Post by: eveheart on November 10, 2011, 08:20:34 am
Ever notice how ya hear about a good idea more than once? A friend's doctor gave her vit D for stiff shoulders, so I started using it about 3 weeks ago with immediate results in my shoulders. I've been doing shoulder physical therapy for years with minimal results, but within the first week of d-3 I noticed marked improvement. I also switched to eating lunch outdoors in the sun, instead of in the lunchroom, and it feels good to be outside on nice winter-ish days. I don't have much of a head for research articles, but I love anecdotal evidence, especially when the benefits accrue to me.

The cold was mild. I work in a swampish environment. I don't catch colds as often as others do, and mine heal up quickly.
Title: Re: eveheart's Journal
Post by: Dorothy on November 11, 2011, 04:43:52 am
Swampish -sounds ominous!  :)

How much are you taking? Cherimoya suggested 5000 and that sounded way scary with a fat soluble vitamin until our research revealed to doctors recommending that amount. He was on 1000 before without the results.
Title: Re: eveheart's Journal
Post by: cherimoya_kid on November 11, 2011, 12:12:58 pm
\

\ I'm bringing dessert to the Thanksgiving party, and we're not talking about fruit. I've already been slipping by eating cooked meats in the employee cafeteria. I don't want the cooked food, but I do want the company of the co-workers who eat there. The Christmas party will be steakhouse food. Cooked. I'm going to eat that!



I usually recommend eating a good-sized raw meal right before a social gathering .  That way, you can just eat small amounts of the cooked food, and your hunger will still be satisfied.

As far as not losing weight, here are some general good suggestions:

1. Don't eat within 3 hours of bedtime, and eat most of your food at lunch.  breakfast/dinner should be smaller.

2. Do some moderate walking after you eat.

3. Just get moving. Housework is excellent exercise, if it's too cold to go walking.  You can also go walk at the mall, Walmart, or even the YWCA.

4.Make sure you're getting enough fat.  Eat your fat at the beginning of the meal.  It satisfies you, so you'll eat less food at the meal.

 
Title: Re: eveheart's Journal
Post by: eveheart on December 02, 2011, 10:37:39 am
I was all mopey for a few months because I couldn't figure out how many carbs were best for me. Possibilities dawned on me as I read Nora Gedgaudas's Primal Body, Primal Mind, because I could relate to her description of the symptoms of leptin intolerance. I wanted to learn more, so I read Byron Richards's Managing Leptin. I don't have much of a head for biology, so I have read Managing Leptin four times, and it's beginning to make sense.

Richards explains the intricacies of the body's leptin cycle, and how it relates to many other hormone cycles. The good thing is that, even if I don't understand the science of hormones, I can follow the suggestions. His Five Rules are: never eat after dinner (as CK suggests, above), eat three meals a day, do not eat large meals, eat a breakfast containing protein, and reduce the amount of carbohydrates you eat. He suggests using a scale to determine the body's morning vs. evening weight fluctuation as a reaction to carbs. The object of his suggestions is to manage hormone levels, minimize inflammation, and let the body have some efficient fat-burning periods at peak times during the day and night.

Richards also gives good suggestions about how to get the body into shape gradually, when even a small amount of exercise is a challenge, which is where I am now.

Managing Leptin is not about raw paleo eating, but it applies to when to eat and how to balance the ratio of macronutrients, given that the body has been out of whack for a long time.

And now for my butcher update: one by one, the butchers at my market are coming out of the closet and admitting that they eat all sorts of raw meat. I remember in the sixties trying to decide which Beatle I was going to marry. I'm starting to have crushes on some of the butchers - a different one each week. Not the really young ones; I haven't lost my sense of social propriety. It's the way they deftly wield a knife and sell me grass-fed beef at grain-fed prices.
Title: Re: eveheart's Journal
Post by: eveheart on December 03, 2011, 01:49:01 pm
One side effect I've noticed from reading Mastering Leptin by Byron Richards is that my mind is racing on about food supplements. Richards is in the food supplement business, and his book makes a good case for taking a whole sh**pile of supplements. They all sound like excellent magic bullets which could help me lose weight faster, sleep more soundly, and leap tall buildings in a single bound.

To counteract this mental frenzy, I have resolved to live without food supplements until the end of December. That will leave me free from supplement obsession now, and allow me to change my mind if need be. More important: I will be able to evaluate my progress with the Five Rules.
Title: Re: eveheart's Journal
Post by: eveheart on December 03, 2011, 11:33:14 pm
Last night, I slept successfully through the night. My disrupted sleep pattern for years has been to wake up fully around 1 pm and stay wide awake for 1 - 3 hours.

True, one night's experience does not evidence make, but as for journalling, I'm reporting about what I did so I don't forget it. Mastering Leptin recommends having enough carbs for dinner to help the brain and liver "make it" through the night. Yesterday day, my meals were breakfast (liver-coconut), lunch (beef-fat-sauerkraut), and dinner (beef-egg yolks-coconut water-honey).

This is an example of why I do not want to take supplements before I experience the effects of Richards's Five Rules in and of themselves.

On another note, after a week of following the Five Rules, I no longer have the appearance of facial bloating that is the worst sign of imbalance. True, my whole body is bloated when that happens, but the effects on my face are scary. Bloating makes me look 20 years older.
Title: Re: eveheart's Journal
Post by: eveheart on December 04, 2011, 04:53:41 am
Live dungeness crab - YIKES!

I live in dungeness crab territory, and the season is now. I never thought of eating carb raw before RPD. Got one today, along with some awesome oysters (same winter season). I'm good at killing them, but this kill didn't go well, so I'm feeling a little bit cruel.

After I dispatched the crab, I tried to eat it, but it was too galvanic to eat right away, so I followed some advice I read in this forum and put it aside until tomorrow so it can relax. From the little bite I had, I'm sure I can eat it.

When I looked at all the innards, I couldn't distinguish the organs from the goo, so I'll have to study a crab anatomy chart before I try my next one.
Title: Re: eveheart's Journal
Post by: Adora on December 04, 2011, 08:44:25 am
Re supplements
I have tried mastering lepton 5 rules for 1 week and I'm doing well without supplements. I always slept well, but I over ate. I'm satisfied on so much less that I've been forcing myself to eat fruit when I don't want it to prevent blood sugar crash. Thank you for posting this. My daughter is starting it tonight b/c she can't sleep either. She eats cooked paleo, and she is going to do melatonin with it. I told her to try 1. Week. She is at the end of her rope, so thank you again for sharing. It sounds promising.
Title: Re: eveheart's Journal
Post by: eveheart on December 04, 2011, 10:07:37 am
Adora, I toyed with the idea of buying melatonin, but then I re-read the part about eating carbs with dinner and tried that first, since melatonin should be something that is released as part of the balanced cycle. Richards does say that all this balancing takes time, so I was surprised to have noticed a lot of improvement so soon.

I'm sticking to 100% raw paleo because I have had such dramatic positive results so far. For example, Richards includes all sorts of grains when he talks about carbs, but I know grains are not good for me. When it comes to meat, raw has been very agreeable, so I don't want to change that, either. Sometimes when I change too many things at once, I can't tell what's working and what's not working, and I end up with an overly complicated system that overwhelms me.
Title: Re: eveheart's Journal
Post by: Adora on December 05, 2011, 10:09:38 pm
Eveheart -

    I agree too many things at once isn't healing, it is confusing. I prefer simple too. I panicked with the melatonin. My daughter hasn't had good rest in too long and I wanted a pill to produce fast results. She definitely seemed better yesterday. She has followed the Leptin program (for 2 days), but she's eating cooked paleo. She has enjoyed raw fish, scallops, dairy, steak, and venison. She like eggs in milk, and she eats most of her food very rare.
      I haven't been preparing raw for her lately b/c she's been grumpy w/o sleep and I don't want her to start a teenage lack of sleep/rebel against mom's suggestions. She was quite motivated last night after 1 night of improvement. So, I think she will come to me as she feels better wanting more raw foods that I'm eating. I've been asking her to stop having big meals before bed for a year or so, but she insisted it didn't bother her. Poor kid, she's really suffering now. Thanks for your journal entries here they are making the whole experiment/process more fun.
     I'm doing better too. My blood sugar's are perfect in the morning now, and I feel totally stable w/o snacking between meals. I think I started last Monday so maybe 5 day's of Mastering Leptin I feel stable, but also in flux. I sense that my body is changing daily, but that homeostasis is well maintained.
Title: Re: eveheart's Journal
Post by: Adora on December 06, 2011, 01:05:02 am
Eve heart - Ivy just texted me that she is felling better, and slept better than the last night. so we will probably keep up the melatonin for this week, but cut back to 1.5mg from 3 Friday night and see how she does. I doubt that 3mg for 5night is going to hurt her and I don't want to take anything away when she is improving during the school week, but we will talk on it tonight.
Title: Re: eveheart's Journal
Post by: eveheart on December 06, 2011, 03:11:00 am
I'm glad to hear of your progress here and on your journal. Optimizing your blood sugar levels is such a major improvement. The consequences will last your whole life.

I haven't been preparing raw for her lately b/c she's been grumpy w/o sleep and I don't want her to start a teenage lack of sleep/rebel against mom's suggestions.

My daughter is 30 and a mother herself, but I still have to be careful that I don't trigger her teenage rebellion, which I learned means meddling mother. My rule is that I mention good ideas once and never use the word should.

My daughter eats cooked paleo with high-quality foods and is doing well. She also started the Five Rules. She has lost a ton of belly fat and doesn't have habitual post-nasal drip. We don't use dairy at all because of hereditary milk intolerance.

Best wishes.
Title: Re: eveheart's Journal
Post by: cherimoya_kid on December 06, 2011, 03:55:52 am
Eveheart -

    I agree too many things at once isn't healing, it is confusing. I prefer simple too. I panicked with the melatonin. My daughter hasn't had good rest in too long and I wanted a pill to produce fast results.

Vitamin D really improves the quality and length of my sleep.  I take the Now brand softgels.
Title: Re: eveheart's Journal
Post by: eveheart on February 26, 2012, 02:26:50 pm
I spent a recent vacation visiting ranches and farms that are featured on eatwild.com. Knowing where to find good food and understanding the distribution system really helps to keep the cost low and the quality high.

First, I visited some poultry farms with non-scratch-fed chickens. Visiting let me verify that the chickens really do have room to forage for their meals. They all slaughter their chickens on-site, and one I liked best has same-day unfrozen chickens. At nightfall, they freeze the day's carcasses, so it's possible to call ahead and get unfrozen chicken on a regular basis. Their eggs are similar - unwashed and unrefrigerated on the day they are laid, then washed and put in cartons in the fridge in the evening.

I didn't visit grassfed beef ranches - nothing to visit there, because in my area they are just ranch cooperatives. They truck their cattle to large USDA-approved slaughterhouses, then the carcasses go to distributors, then to markets, then to me. If I need a special order that my butcher cannot order, I can special-request the item directly through the cooperative that my butcher uses, the co-op gives the order to the slaughterhouse, and I let my butcher know it is coming.

I went to two bison ranches and emailed a third ranch. So far, there is no way I can get unfrozen bison, so I'm sticking to buying frozen bison marrow bones in bulk and bison heart, which thaws out okay IMO.

If anybody here wants to know what I want for my next birthday, it's a bison hide rug for only about $1200 USD. Honestly, J/K... I live in a studio apartment, I don't have a large enough floor for the thing, but it's so-o-o-o luxurious! No, wait! If you DO want to buy it for me, get me a house with a large floor area in front of the rustic stone fireplace to go with the rug. The rest of the house can be modest, but there needs to be another larger house on the property for my daughter's family. Also, get another rug for her house so she doesn't steal my rug, like she steals my aged grassfed beef.
Title: Re: eveheart's Journal
Post by: van on February 26, 2012, 03:36:00 pm
you can get unfrozen bison at 888- 295-6332,, hopefully I got the number right.  it's North Star Bison. 
Title: Re: eveheart's Journal
Post by: eveheart on February 27, 2012, 03:57:26 am
I've looked at North Star Bison -  they're prices are good, even with shipping, which has to be FedEx. BUT, FedEx delivers while we are at work, and they won't leave packages, even if there are explicit instructions where to leave them, so I have to pass over North Star Bison.
Title: Re: eveheart's Journal
Post by: van on February 27, 2012, 06:08:52 am
really,  I think you can arrange with Fed X to do that??   But why not at work,  maybe too much of hassle for them.  How about a neighbor or a friends house?  Did you ask Mary if there's a way for Fed X to drop?   There's also fed x pick up places too,, maybe one's handy for you. 
Title: Re: eveheart's Journal
Post by: Adora on February 27, 2012, 11:00:38 am
Eve you should call Mary, she fixed it with Fed Ex to drop it on my porch.
Title: Re: eveheart's Journal
Post by: eveheart on February 27, 2012, 11:17:08 am
Okay, you convinced me to give it a try next time. My past experience with FedEx is that the driver ignores special instructions, which in my case is "leave it behind the unlocked gate ten feet past the front door" (specific enough?). For the love of bison, I'll take another chance with FedEx.
Title: Re: eveheart's Journal
Post by: intrigued on May 15, 2012, 10:36:34 pm
Hey, I've been looking through fermenting vegetables.  I'm wondering if you have any quick and easy recipes or resources to point me to on how you do it.  I want to try some banana peppers, maybe some pickles, sauerkraut, and definitely some kimchi, if I can find the stuff to do it.  I thought I stumbled on a thread a while ago that had some great info, but I can't seem to find it anymore.  Sorry for the intrusion on your journal!
Title: Re: eveheart's Journal
Post by: eveheart on May 16, 2012, 09:53:39 am
I ferment foods because I like the flavor.

My good kimchi instructions come from Sandor Ellix Katz, AKA Sandorkraut, and from Maangchi.com. I mostly make plain ol' kimchi with napa cabbage and very little pepper! If a typical recipe calls for a cup of pepper flakes, I use a tablespoonful, and that tastes plenty hot to me. Also, if a recipe calls for something like 500 tons of cabbage, I use one head of cabbage and scale everything back.

I also make high (fermented) beef, following the directions on this forum.

The important thing with fermentation is to follow the process. The recipe can vary with each fermenter and each batch.
Title: Re: eveheart's Journal
Post by: eveheart on January 03, 2013, 03:35:20 am
I've been avoiding writing in my journal until I answered a few questions for myself. Here are the three main questions:
The answer to "how much carbs" is "almost none." A "high carb" meal can contain about 5 carbs without producing painful symptoms such as brain fog or joint pain. I limit myself to fermented vegetables or seaweed and stay well in the right range. I completely avoid grains, legumes, starchy vegetables - instant poison. Nora Gedgaudas in Primal Body, Primal Mind really set me straight on how poisoned I was by eating grains and using grain-ish products. I'm past fooling around on this issue.

The second question is answered by the first: very low carb intake is right for me now. My last social eating situation was the Christmas party at work. I opted for baked salmon and cooked green beans and ate plenty of butter with my meal. No harm done. I learned this the hard way at a business luncheon where I ate fruit salad instead of cooked meat and bounced out of ketosis. It takes me a long time to convert back to ketosis, and in the meantime, I suffer horrible exhaustion and cravings. I don't want to learn the same lesson again.

The third question is not fully answered yet. I started medical treatment for hypothyroidism last spring after some unsuccessful attempts at RPD cures. My TSH was 128 (it should be in the low single digits). I supplement with synthetic T4 and my TSH is now 4. In a few days, I will be starting something a little more controversial, and I'll write about it another time. I'm not a fan of western medicine and its narrow system of treating the symptoms but not the cause, but I am aware that all my maladies are autoimmune issues.
Title: Re: eveheart's Journal
Post by: cherimoya_kid on January 03, 2013, 08:33:39 am
Have you tried vitamin D supplements, Eveheart?  they are usually good for autoimmune problems. Also getting plenty of sunlight is good, too.
Title: Re: eveheart's Journal
Post by: eveheart on January 03, 2013, 11:55:14 am
Have you tried vitamin D supplements, Eveheart?  they are usually good for autoimmune problems. Also getting plenty of sunlight is good, too.

I had the doctor check my Vitamin D level. It's not at all deficient. Perhaps it's the sunny California sun. I tried various treatments (food supplements, TCM, Ayurveda, etc.), but I couldn't make a dent in the range of problems I have, most of them without formal diagnosis. My primary doctor is the internet. Not always wise, but my health-plan doctors do not please me at all.

RPD alone has eliminated joint pain, psoriasis, gingivitis, chronic indigestion, high cholesterol, high blood pressure. Other paleo-related improvements are rebuilding of the arches in my feet (I switched from arch supports to "barefoot" or "minimalist" shoes). My next step is to take care of other problems, now that I'm not poisoning myself with toxins from food.
Title: Re: eveheart's Journal
Post by: cherimoya_kid on January 03, 2013, 12:36:23 pm
I had the doctor check my Vitamin D level. It's not at all deficient. Perhaps it's the sunny California sun. I tried various treatments (food supplements, TCM, Ayurveda, etc.), but I couldn't make a dent in the range of problems I have, most of them without formal diagnosis. My primary doctor is the internet. Not always wise, but my health-plan doctors do not please me at all.

RPD alone has eliminated joint pain, psoriasis, gingivitis, chronic indigestion, high cholesterol, high blood pressure. Other paleo-related improvements are rebuilding of the arches in my feet (I switched from arch supports to "barefoot" or "minimalist" shoes). My next step is to take care of other problems, now that I'm not poisoning myself with toxins from food.

What exactly was your vitamin D level?  It should be 30 at minimum, and really more like 45.
Title: Re: eveheart's Journal
Post by: Inger on January 03, 2013, 04:42:09 pm
I like your approach Eveheart!
I too use wisely picked (!) cooked animal foods rather than fruit. In winter at least. I never eat cooked "dishes" though.. but like you did, salmon with beans - gives me no major issues. Fruit makes me bloat and it takes time to get used to them. And I am so picky with fruit I would eat only wild fruits/berries or such. Not what you get at social gatherings.

Autoimmune stuff is complicated.. I bet you have ditched eggs, nuts and dairy? Because they are a no go if autoimmune issues... The diet gets quite strict but I guess you have no issues with it as you are looking for healing 100%. :)

Have you added seaweeds and seafoods in larger amounts Eveheart? They are antiinflammatory to a great degree! Cold is too, so if you do some cold adaption it would help the inflammation a lot! Same with earthing.
I guess you know about the light management/limiting fake lights too to get a great sleep, and not eating late helps a lot too. Good sleep is the most important thing for healing.

You are so right about having internet to your doctor..lol I do the same. I use doctors now only for testing/bloodwork and emergency and such.
Title: Re: eveheart's Journal
Post by: eveheart on January 04, 2013, 02:14:26 am
Have you added seaweeds and seafoods in larger amounts Eveheart? They are antiinflammatory to a great degree! Cold is too, so if you do some cold adaption it would help the inflammation a lot! Same with earthing.
I guess you know about the light management/limiting fake lights too to get a great sleep, and not eating late helps a lot too. Good sleep is the most important thing for healing.

In a day, I eat about 150 g of beef and 150 g of fish or seafood, plus tons of fat and a few mouthfuls of fermented veggies and seaweed. I live in a great oyster area, and I can get really good ones. I never eat nuts anymore because they are very irritating, no matter how well I chew them.

It has taken me a lot of soul-searching to get over the emotion of loss (deprivation), but it got easier when I focused on how delicious my food is, and easier still when I keep in mind how good I feel compared to before RPD.
Title: Re: eveheart's Journal
Post by: eveheart on January 08, 2013, 04:47:25 am
Elsewhere in this forum, I have contributed to discussions of very-low carb diets, living in ketosis, etc. My personal experience has been informed by several authors. Here is what Stephen Phinney and Jeff Volek say in The Art and Science of Low Carbohydrate Living: An Expert Guide to Making the Life-Saving Benefits of Carbohydrate Restriction Sustainable and Enjoyable

Quote
We like to promote moderation and a balanced lifestyle for many good reasons. ... But when we carry that over to diet, ‘balance’ is too often arbitrarily translated into eating relatively equal proportions of macronutrients from a variety of foods. Whereas this may work for many people, we have tried to make the case in this book that a subset of people (particularly those with insulin resistance) manifest themselves as having varying degrees of carbohydrate intolerance. [Emphasis mine.] Within this subgroup, some may remain healthy and functional by consuming 100 grams per day of carbohydrate, whereas others need to restrict this macronutrient down to 30 or 40 grams per day.... We don’t bat a therapeutic eyelash when we restrict gluten if a person has Celiac disease, or restrict lactose (milk sugar) in a person with lactose intolerance. Also consider the perspective of our pre-agricultural ancestors who consumed relatively little carbohydrate for hundreds of thousands of years before modern agriculture practices became dominant. And even into relatively modern times, the highly evolved hunting cultures of the Inuit and North American Bison People or the herding culture of the Masai offer testimony to the ability of humans to thrive in the virtual absence of concentrated dietary carbohydrates.

Carbohydrate as an Essential Nutrient Class A root concept of dietary need is ‘essentiality’. If no single component within a macronutrient class is essential to human well-being or function, then it is hard to argue in favor of a need for that macronutrient. And if we take that macronutrient away from the diets of individuals or whole cultures and they continue to thrive for a year or for millennia, case closed. -(pp. 47-48)
.

That's me, an obviously carbohydrate intolerant person. When they told me to eat more carbohydrates and less fat, I followed, doubling my body weight over the years. So now, when I learn that carbohydrates are the culprit, it is not that hard to adhere to an ultra low carb diet.

A friend of mine at work, talking about accountability and ownership, uses the phrase, "Pay me now or pay me later." It takes only a few days (like, a week or two) to convert to ketosis (pay me now). The up-side is feeling energetic, thinking clearly, sleeping well, waking up easily. My autoimmune conditions, like arthritis, vanish quickly. The flip side is grogginess sluggishness, achiness, water retention, obesity (pay me later).

We will always repeat pleasure and avoid pain. Sometimes what we think is pleasure turns out to be pain. It pays to think deeply and make the distinction.

I was moaning to a friend the other day about my deep regret over not being healthy, even when I knew about things like low-carb (Atkins) my whole adult life. She reminded me that everything past was as it needed to be. True that.
Title: Re: eveheart's Journal
Post by: eveheart on March 29, 2013, 12:01:38 pm
Finally, I ordered from North Star Bison. I know, it took me a while to do this, but I had it to the last straw with my ex-butcher. Yes, my darling butcher and I had to break up. He changed grassfed supplier from Humboldt Grassfed Beef (in California) to another company, promising the same great meat at lower prices. What was that last straw? The new company doesn't sell offal!

Next, I tried another small market that put a few things on their order for me - pastured lamb liver, beef tongue, stuff like that. That order didn't come in for three weeks in a row, so I moved on to market #3 and ordered the same items. Again, nothing arrived, and the meat manager said he could have gotten the lamb liver, but he figured that I wanted everything all at once. Seriously? when a shopper can't get one item on their shopping list, does that mean they don't eat all week?

So that's what it took for me to order from North Star Bison. I got 4 eye of round roasts, 1 hump roast, 1 tongue, a bunch of marrow bone$ (desperate!), 2 lamb livers, and 1 each of thymus, pancreas, adrenals, and thyroid. The FedEx delivery worked out just fine. With my practice of hanging and aging meat, I foresee this as a 1-month supply of food. I can buy seafood locally.

I really like the way my refrigerator looks with all my bison in it!
Title: Re: eveheart's Journal
Post by: jessica on March 29, 2013, 09:01:15 pm
eveheart why do you say "marrow bones(desperate)"  marrow is so tasty and super calorific, there aren't a lot of nutritional studies on it but from what I gather how the marrow actually works, there is no doubt in my mind its one of the more nutritious parts of the animal.

sorry you got the run around from your butcher! i work at a natural foods co-op right now and even with that IN they wont source me pastured pork belly(omg its amazing!)  I am noticing a lot of farms harvest spring beef and hoping to contact a few so that I may get some pancreas and other odd bits when they send em to the butcher......good haul eve!
Title: Re: eveheart's Journal
Post by: ys on March 29, 2013, 10:26:55 pm
North Star is very expensive in my opinion.
I used them a few times but not anymore.  I get carcase quarters from Amish and butcher it myself. $3/lb delivered.

Be careful with adrenals.  Every time I tried them they give me very painful stomach for 2-3 hours.  Yuri reported the same thing.  I think all of those small glands are not worth the price.  They are so tiny.  Maybe except pancreas.
Title: Re: eveheart's Journal
Post by: eveheart on March 29, 2013, 10:45:21 pm
eveheart why do you say "marrow bones(desperate)"  marrow is so tasty and super calorific, there aren't a lot of nutritional studies on it but from what I gather how the marrow actually works, there is no doubt in my mind its one of the more nutritious parts of the animal.

I eat marrow every day, but I've been unable to get it lately - these small, independent  butchers get 1/2 animal a week and a lot of people "fight" over the femur and humerus. North Star Bison charges $7.99/pound, and IMO this was the only overpriced item in my cart. I think it must be a supply-and-demand thing.

North Star is very expensive in my opinion.
I used them a few times but not anymore.  I get carcase quarters from Amish and butcher it myself. $3/lb delivered.

Be careful with adrenals.  Every time I tried them they give me very painful stomach for 2-3 hours.  Yuri reported the same thing.  I think all of those small glands are not worth the price.  They are so tiny.  Maybe except pancreas.


Price is a "location" thing. So is butchering. If I were to get a quarter from the Amish and ship it to California, it would exceed $3/lb delivered. Then, I'd have to hang it from the curtain rod and butcher it in my one-room studio, or maybe on my tiny porch. LOL

Seriously, they raise bison here in California, but the animals are slaughtered, cut, shrink-wrapped, and frozen in facilities that do not offer retail purchases.

I don't chow down on glands. Their size is a hint that a small snip will do.
Title: Re: eveheart's Journal
Post by: Adora on April 26, 2013, 09:34:54 am
I ate adrenals with kidney and suet together in a meal, and I was ok, but I didn't feel better, and it was one of my least favorite meals, maybe with greens, and I ate 1 adrenal at a time. 
Title: Re: eveheart's Journal
Post by: eveheart on May 28, 2013, 02:21:25 am
I just completed a week-long driving vacation around California. I packed a cooler with the necessities:
-old shoe made with beef muscle and lamb liver http://www.rawpaleodietforum.com/display-your-culinary-creations/old-shoe-(beef)/msg99061/#msg99061 (http://www.rawpaleodietforum.com/display-your-culinary-creations/old-shoe-(beef)/msg99061/#msg99061)
-fermented vegetables
-fermented vegetable juice
-marrow bones
-coconut oil
-coconut chunks
-seaweed
-avocados

My planning philosophy was that, if I had enough fat with me, I would be just fine. That was a good strategy. The cooler might not have been necessary, but I was traveling in a very hot desert area, and I didn't know how the food would react to the high heat.

For one meal, I took my children out to a restaurant and ate cooked sea foods. A few other meals were sashimi from restaurants along the way. I attended a conference that included sandwiches for lunch, but I had my own raw lunch packed and "donated" my sandwiches and cookies to a friend.

I have another trip planned at the end of the summer, this time by plane, to a wedding, and with a friend. I'm not sure how I'll plan that one, but I anticipate that I'll be eating more cooked food then.
Title: Re: eveheart's Journal
Post by: bookittyrun on May 28, 2013, 12:44:47 pm
eveheart...  fascinating.  i wish i read this journal earlier.  it seems many of us on the forum start off rpd with the same / similar concerns, and eventually we find what works best for us... not what "plan" sells the most product, or books (phooey on those mainstream food gimmicks).  your journey with rpd shows you're an amazing person, i will keep tabs on your progress from time to time...

...just don't allow your affinity for butchers, convince you to pursue any guy wielding a knife!     ;)

if you don't mind, i'd like to pass the link to your journal, off to a friend...  i think they might benefit from some of what's contained here...

Title: Re: eveheart's Journal
Post by: eveheart on August 09, 2014, 09:06:29 am
I've frequently wondered when I'd have something to post in my long-neglected journal. Today I finally got my first whole, slaughtered-to-order lamb.

Last year, I decided to buy a whole lamb from Nature's Bounty http://www.nbmeats.com/ (http://www.nbmeats.com/) near Vacaville, California, two hours from my home. However, at the time I was getting really great beef from a local butcher, and I visited Nature's Bounty once but never made the drive for a lamb.

In February, a local slaughterhouse was shut down, and finding good beef was impossible. Yesterday, I called Nature's Bounty and ordered my lamb. Today, my son picked up the slaughtered, chilled, and quartered lamb on his way here, and we spent about an hour cutting it up into pieces to hang in the fridge. I kept nibbling as we cut, and I can honestly say that this was the best meat I've ever eaten. We cut off the shanks and neck and gave them to my daughter's family for their crockpot. My hanging pieces are the shoulders, legs, four sections of ribs, and loins. I also have the liver, kidneys, brain, lungs, cheeks, fat, marrow, etc.

I think I'll get a lamb every month (in season) from Nature's Bounty. I have visited other sheep ranchers listed on EatWild.com, and NB is the most accommodating in terms of cutting (or not cutting) to order. Most ranches sell their meats cut into the popular steaks and roasts, individually plastic-wrapped, and frozen, with an emphasis on trimming away all the fat.

Special thanks to Sabertooth for his journal and videos. My son (the hunter) never opened a skull to get the brain out neatly, and I was able to tell him how to do it.
Title: Re: eveheart's Journal
Post by: eveheart on July 06, 2015, 07:46:56 am
A good find in the San Francisco Bay area: EGGS!!!

These pastured eggs come from a ranch near Chico, California. This egg rancher delivers wholesale to elite Bay area markets on the weekend and will add retail stops at $9/dozen (minimum 2 dozen). Although not as good as eggs that I might raise myself, I think they are way better than any I have seen at local farmers' markets and equal to what I can find if I drive for a few hours to buy them myself.

He also sells chicken, turkey eggs, and cooked Chinese-style foods. He can get pasture-raised lamb and beef from his neighboring ranchers.

He can be emailed at kfchickenfarmer (at) aol (dot) com, or on facebook https://www.facebook.com/kfchickenfarmer.wan (https://www.facebook.com/kfchickenfarmer.wan).
Title: Re: eveheart's Journal
Post by: eveheart on July 08, 2016, 04:23:10 am
Insects! They've been on my raw bucket list for years now. In my own non-scientific mind, crab = spider and shrimp = grubs (larvae), so I've balked about trying insects because of my mental block about raw shrimp and crab. However, I've recently decided to overcome this blockage with insects.

My underlying reason to learn to eat insects is that I think insects would be a perfect survival food for any future SHTF. Survivalist city folks mostly think about food storage, so they seal up 55-gallon drums filled with dehydrated foods. The flaw in their thinking is that there will be a second STHF, when they run out of their stockpiled rations. Insects are a logical option in many scenarios, if one only learns the insect-scavenging and insect-rearing options that would work in one's climate.

I started thinking that scavenging would make sense - there are supposedly insects all over the place - so I went out one morning to scoop up a fingertip-ful of aphids from the rose bushes. Murphy's Law: the one time I go to eat them, the aphids were absent. Then, I looked around and found some tiny larvae munching on a rotting orange, but they were the tiniest pinhead size, so I looked some more - under rocks, in the top layer of dirt. Nothing! I even remember thinking, "It's June, and I haven't seen a single June bug this month!" I couldn't find a single insect in my entire 25' x 25' urban backyard! I came back in the house, found a small fly on the wall, grabbed and caught him, and SQUISH! I finally ate my first live insect!

What followed was some obsessive research about collecting and raising insects, and I decided to incorporated a small black soldier fly larvae (BSFL) farm as a combination composting/insect-rearing project in my backyard. The project yielded its first tiny crop today. I put a few prepupal larvae in a bowl, added some water to rinse off their tiny bodies, and ate them with a crunch. My judgment is that, one-at-a-time, they are flavorless. My mouth felt no perceivable wiggling in the moment before I bit down. There is a little chewing involved with the exoskeleton, but that part could be swallowed without chewing - I was merely exploring the texture as I chewed it. As an insanely good source of protein, these would definitely make a great food for every day or for a quick-crop survival protein. I plan to eat as many larvae and I collect from my composting farm. I believe that the taste is so unobjectionable that my whole family would be willing to eat bugs when the shtf.

About rinsing before eating, I wonder whether if I would receive any probiotic value if I eat a bit of the compost's bacteria that clings to the bsfl's body.

My next insect will be the ant. Drop a crumb of ant-food in the center of a bowl of a spoon, leave the spoon on the patio, eat the ants that gather on the spoon. After that: termites collected in my homemade termite collection apparatus. Maybe, after a while with bugs, raw shrimp and raw crab will deserve another try.

My insect selection is good for my climate, all three of these insects are native in my region. Witchetty grubs sound more gourmet, but I don't have any Witchetty bushes handy.

And, here's how I overcame the "wiggly" fear factor with live bugs: Imagine that the SHTF. I think, "There's no more food in the markets. Agribusiness is gone. No trucks are on the roads. Bandits have stolen anything worth eating. I'm hungry." Another victory for Mind over Matter!
Title: Re: eveheart's Journal
Post by: TylerDurden on July 08, 2016, 05:08:25 am
I'm rather  impressed. Way back at the start of going rawpalaeo, I thought of eating raw insects. So I foolishly bought some insect grubs(mealworms?) from a local pet-food-store. They didn't seem to taste of anything, really,  but my urge to puke was too great for me.Even if I find just a few fly-eggs laid on my meats, I suddenly find that the meat no longer tastes as good to me. I am well aware that this is purely psychological and a bit foolish since I have no issues with eating "high-meat". Well, perhaps an enforced  week of starvation might encourage me to try again...
Title: Re: eveheart's Journal
Post by: eveheart on July 08, 2016, 05:29:39 am
House-fly larvae are different, in that they exude a ton of ammonia-y urine, a gag-inducer for me, too. Some of our members relish that flavor, but it's way down at the bottom of my raw bucket list.

The beauty of BSFL is the mature fly itself - short life-span, doesn't eat or bite... just mates and dies - so you don't have any nuisance flies around the operation. Plus, the larvae crawl out of the compost as they are about to pupate, on a little ramp that you set up, so they are "self-harvesting."

The compost part is an urban homestead project I'm doing with my granddaughters. It's cool for kids - they can see the insects' cycle from egg, to larvae, to pupae, to adult. They can see the composting cycle really well, better than worm composting. The residue from the bsfl is quickly ready to be tossed in the worm pile for further decomposition.

This would be a cool business, too. You get paid as a commercial composting service, and the fly larvae product has high value as a livestock feed and fish meal ingredient. Unlike tropical crickets and grasshoppers, these flies thrive in more temperate climates. BSFL can also be fed with animal poop and the insects fed back to the livestock.
Title: Re: eveheart's Journal
Post by: Projectile Vomit on July 08, 2016, 05:39:02 am
Rainbow Mealworms and Crickets (http://www.rainbowmealworms.net) is a great place to buy live insects from, based on what I've read. I haven't ordered from them yet, but probably will. The idea of raising hornworms as a food source is appealing, as they eat live vegetation and I can taylor their diet to how nutrient dense I'd like them to be.
Title: Re: eveheart's Journal
Post by: eveheart on July 08, 2016, 05:49:44 am
Wow! I just read about hornworms on that website. I'd love to grab a leaf full of their eggs from a tomato plant and see if I could incubate and raise them on non-nightshade vegetable matter.
Title: Re: eveheart's Journal
Post by: van on July 09, 2016, 10:49:05 pm
A good find in the San Francisco Bay area: EGGS!!!

These pastured eggs come from a ranch near Chico, California. This egg rancher delivers wholesale to elite Bay area markets on the weekend and will add retail stops at $9/dozen (minimum 2 dozen). Although not as good as eggs that I might raise myself, I think they are way better than any I have seen at local farmers' markets and equal to what I can find if I drive for a few hours to buy them myself.

He also sells chicken, turkey eggs, and cooked Chinese-style foods. He can get pasture-raised lamb and beef from his neighboring ranchers.

He can be emailed at kfchickenfarmer (at) aol (dot) com, or on facebook https://www.facebook.com/kfchickenfarmer.wan (https://www.facebook.com/kfchickenfarmer.wan).
 
 Eveheart, I'm believing eggs to be the least paleo of all animal products.. and it's because ( especially from Chico ) that Ca. doesn't have enough rain to support greens and bugs year round.  Even with green food and bugs, chickens unless on an incredible pasture will still eat 90 percent of their food being corn and soy.  Ducks can go as low as fifty percent, and geese can get all their food from grass.  So basically eggs are like eating cattle that have only been in feed lots.  I've had my own chickens and ducks years previous and had elaborate irrigated pastures and sprouted all their grains to about six inches tall in flats,, a lot of work, but the eggs were like gold to me. 
  I think it's easy to forget just what chickens are eating, and to be mislead by the words organic and pasture raised.  My guess if you saw the chicken yard that the Chico eggs come from, and you saw the dry dirt, chicken poop and feathers, and watched what the chickens were actually consuming you might feel differently.  But then maybe I'm just being too neurotic. 
Title: Re: eveheart's Journal
Post by: eveheart on July 10, 2016, 01:25:03 am
I'm with you on eggs, Van. Even when I buy the "best" eggs in California, I always have mental question marks about some of the things I see at the property. For example, Tara Firma farms had the most correct look, with hens pecking at the edges of a forested area; the mental question mark was that the number of hens I saw couldn't have produced all the eggs I saw for sale in their store. Maybe they had lots of hens at lots of forest edges, or maybe their main egg operation is cooperatively farmed in many locations that are not as ideal as the ones they show.

The Chico egg rancher was a little interesting. I found his ad on craigslist posted under a Santa Cruz mountain location. His eggs were above average, in my opinion - truly fresh, yolks to die for, and fertile. For the next order, I asked the rancher where he was in the SC mountains, and he said he came down from Chico. His story: he was a Sacramento restaurateur who wanted to get out of the city and knew there was a need for superb eggs in the restaurant industry, so he bought some land and went into business. I still thought his eggs were excellent, but I was uncomfortable that there was no ranch to visit. Another question mark: an egg rancher who has to fill market orders is going to be more concerned with yield than with feed quality. Also, placing an order was a little hit-or-miss, so I stopped ordering from him. (The other part of his operation was producing commercial quantities of some Asian slow-cooked bbq meats that are sold in restaurants and delicatessens.)

The best eggs I've had in California came from an organic vegetable grower in the Salinas Valley. He had his hens pecking on his vast no-pesticide vegetable rows - plenty of grubs and worms there. You brought your own egg cartons. First come, first serve for his modest supply of eggs. No eggs in winter, as nature intended.

I think that egg mislabeling is a US phenomenon, driven by our appetite for cheap, year-round eggs. We do that with all other food production, so why should hens have it better? Abundant food at low prices is our number one demand, which kind of makes sense when you consider that we have a 300,000,000 mouths to feed. I'd hate to have roving hoards of my starving neighbors loot my lamb when Costco runs out of food to sell.

The bottom line: I don't buy eggs often, and when I do, I accept their imperfections in the name of Urban Paleo, where everything is a compromise.
Title: Re: eveheart's Journal
Post by: Projectile Vomit on July 10, 2016, 03:31:39 am
Great points regarding egg quality. Good eggs are tough to find. As with beef and other meats, the problem is the commercialization of egg production. A chicken can get 100 percent of its food from most landscapes if there are few enough chickens foraging on a large enough area (and predators are kept at bay). The problem emerges when a producer wants to make money selling eggs. Then you need more chickens to produce more eggs, and larger numbers of chickens can quickly overtax land and their foraged diet needs to be supplemented with commercial feeds. Ducks are better at foraging in temperate climates as they're from here (chickens are originally tropical birds), and geese are better still. If I took up the raising of fowl, I'd probably go for ducks over chickens. There is a producer of duck eggs here in northern Vermont who feeds very little grain (less than 25 percent of his ducks' total daily calories) during the summer months. The eggs are amazing. He's only able to bring about 4 dozen to the farmers market each weekend though, and they're generally sold out within 30 minutes of the market opening. I managed to get 1.5 dozen eggs this morning, but next time I might be too late.
Title: Re: eveheart's Journal
Post by: eveheart on July 23, 2016, 12:21:32 am
MAGGOTS!

(Oops, I mean: HOUSEFLY LARVAE!)

Because I live in an vast city (3rd largest city in California) that relies on trucking to supply it's food, I've been wondering about survival food. What would I eat if the trucks stopped rolling? What could I store that would exempt me from having all my sealed barrels of emergency rations stolen by strong-armed bandits?

First, I thought about sheep, goats, and chickens, but those animals are not food-for-tomorrow, and I really don't think I can raise happy livestock on my 400 square foot backyard (the size of a 2-car garage). Even black soldier fly larvae (bsfl) take three weeks to reach their tummy-filling size.

I set up a bsfl "farm" anyway. With the native bsf population, I got some bsfl growing in the bin, but I realized that this is too slow a process for emergency food. However, as luck would have it, houseflies found my bin and provided me with fistfuls of larvae in a day or three. For days, I eyed those wigglies with disgust, but as I contemplated the ease of attracting flies (and their rapid reproduction), my mouth started watering.

I know I'm not the first on this forum to eat fly larvae. Some members report eating chunks of maggot-infested meat with great relish. That enjoyment level may be in my future, but for now, I'm settling for eating them frozen. The freezing kills them, and that makes all the difference to dissipate my yuck factor.

The first two frozen larvae made me feel queasy. I reasoned that this queasiness was all in my head - such a tiny amount of anything wouldn't make me feel sick to my stomach - so I ate some more. From their frozen state, I dusted off some of the clinging compost dirt. The bite was a creamy POP! that I found enjoyable. The taste is negligible.

I'll keep my bsfl bin going, fwiw, and I'm adding red wigglers in a regular compost bin. (My city sells discount compost bins and offers free classes on composting with red wigglers.) But my main experiment is going to be with fly maggots. I'm going to quantify my experiments to find out how much "production" I need to feed a family. I will "fly-proof" my composting with screens so I don't get such a strong maggot smell all over the yard and grow my maggots in jars. I think a tray of about a dozen 1-quart mason jars with a little bait in each jar will do it. My goal: sustain a family on a "ranch" the size of a garage. Maggots and flaxseed sprouts should do the trick. I'll post pics one of these days.