Thanks for the link. I'll check it out.

Doing the salt water flush today... I mixed 2 teaspoons of sea salt in 4 cups of water and added an orange and some grape fruit (I don't have lemons or limes). I'm waiting for it to get cold in the fridge; I think I'll have an easier time getting it down that way.

I am concerned I'm going to throw it up. One small taste of it had my stomach in knots for about 15 minutes. Doesn't help I'm nervous. I've been eating candied ginger on and off since I woke up a few hours ago in hopes it'll help, but I guess we'll see.

It probably won't take all 4 cups anyway, I'm guessing 2, and I can probably take my time getting it down. I'm small and have a sensitive stomach. The fact there's fruit in it will probably make the reaction happen faster also. I can't eat fruit without getting sick.

In other news, I just put in an entire onion and some mushrooms in a crock pot with a leftover ham bone. I'm going to cook the hell out of that, since I read onions and bone stock help the small intestine (which, if I do have celiac, is damaged). I'm going to do my best to stay far, far away from gluten. I don't think getting tested is worth the insane cost, considering I should keep the grains I eat to a minimum ANYway; so out with that idea. It's a good excuse to eat closer to paleo regardless.

I'd just hop into straight paleo/raw paleo, but I can't handle the transition after this mess. Maybe I really should have done it before I started school.  I'm going to mix it in with a gluten/dairy-free diet though, as if I make steak I always leave it raw in the middle and I'm going to try and use more paleo foods if I can handle nut flours.

*sigh* This is getting truly old already, and I know there are people dealing with so much worse on here. 

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Oh damn this is foul. Getting this down is going to be a real test. The salt bites right through the taste of the fruit. I'm chasing it with plain water, which gets rid of the desire to vomit mostly, but while it's in my mouth it makes me really nauseas.

Nevermind, desire to vomit is sticking around now. Yes, getting this down in half an hour is NOT going to happen unless I do want to throw up (something I haven't done for 10 years). It's been 15 minutes and I haven't even gotten 1/2 a cup down.

Yeah... this isn't going to happen. I can't get it down.  Nevermind that idea. 

Lex, I thought that with meat the body would be converting the protein to glucose like you said?

Nicola

The liver converts a percentage of protein to glucose, because a few cell types in the body require glucose to function.

Otherwise, once transitioned to zero-carb, the body is running on ketones not glucose.

When I make steak I normally do just cook the outside. All we have is hamburger, though; and I'll be ordering from Slanker's within the next week so no point is going out for steak. 

I'm still planning on doing this soon, but unexpected challenges came up that have diverted my attention and mental resources, so I haven't been ready to take it on. As a result, I've now lost a week, which means I'll probably be lenient when I try and transition since I'll be in school, instead of trying to force a quicker conversion.

Not what I was hoping for, but it happens. Have to adapt to life sometimes.

My body is telling me now more than ever, though, that I need raw animal food. I've barely been eating (this has been a recent pattern under stress), which is a combination of the stress, no motivation, and zero appetite. Grain carbs and sugars sound disgusting; vegetables and fruits sound disgusting. Both make me nauseas when I eat them. Cooked meat is somewhat unappetizing, but better than those two. However, I've been extremely down and haven't had the willpower to make myself cook.

I keep fantasizing about eating raw meat every time I walk to the fridge and stare at the contents. I would call it bizarre, but it's a good thing, so I'm not complaining. I'm wishing I'd put in the order to Slanker's, but I bloody put it off because I didn't want to deal with cleaning out the freezer for space.

I should probably just force myself to cook SOMEthing. This has been going on for days, and yet I've avoided doing so. I'm basically living off of protein bars loaded with carbs and soy protein, because they're easy. Occasionally I have a sandwich with nice sugary jelly. It's disgusting. Even my carb-addicted body knows its disgusting.

On another note, I don't know if this will ever be relevant in my diet future, but my sleep schedule has been TERRIBLE. Completely nocturnal. I wake up between 4pm and 7pm and sleep at around 8am. Today, I stayed up until about 12pm, slept until 6pm; and then slept again from maybe 8pm to 11pm. It's 1am now.

I had about a week where I was getting a consistent 8 hours of sleep and feeling great upon waking, until my mood slid down. I was also able to stay awake a lot longer, instead of getting tired after 12 hours. This is completely unusual for me. I usually require 10-12 hours of sleep to feel even close to normal. My sleep schedule was still off, waking up between 12pm and 4pm, depending on when I went to bed.

Now, I think I'm sleeping anywhere between 9 and 12 hours a night and feeling like ass when I wake up, which just slides into further ass as I stay awake.

I have no idea what's causing the shift in sleep. I've been under equally high stress, so who knows? I don't know if it'll be relevant later, but there it is.

Right. Off to force myself to cook something with animal food in it. I've practically been an accidental vegetarian, and I doubt this is improving my bad mood any. It's as bad as living off of cake and little debbies about two weeks ago. Ugh.

I thought that was really well done. I posted a topic on it a big ago, but then saw this here. 

I'm kind of worrying about this myself. My social life is getting more active, and I'm about to go on RPD (assuming I don't crack and stuff myself full of cake or something).

But as with most things--don't worry about it and people will probably just look at you funny if you're forced to mention it. The more we worry about something the more attention it draws and the more we entice someone to make a negative judgment. People smell fear and lack of confidence If you appear completely suave, like it's an everyday thing for people to eat a hunk of raw liver with their bare hands, people are less likely to mark it as "gross" and more likely to mark it as just something weird you do.

The problem is this takes a good dose of healthy self-esteem, and there's nothing more difficult to keep than self-esteem in a social situation. Especially when it involves someone you're interested in.

One thing you could tell her in a somewhat rushed situation like that (where you don't want to sit there and answer questions about your diet) is that you just don't eat anything you don't prepare yourself. If she asks you why you don't, tell her you just like knowing the source of your food.

Or... just flat out tell her you're into the raw paleolithic diet and cover your bases right there. If she asks questions, answer them as if you're not doing anything peculiar at all.

Definitely don't go on the defensive or feel shame if she disapproves. There's nothing worse than being coaxed into a "debate" or feeling self-conscious about it just because the person takes offense to your choices. They own their negative reaction; you don't have to.

Thanks for all the suggestions. Tons of thanks for the measurements, since I don't have anything to weigh things with. That'll make it easy to make sure I'm getting a decent protein/fat ratio.

I'm going to try unseasoned raw, but if I just can't do it I'll go for seasoned (salt, pepper, garlic salt, maybe chili powder), and then lightly cooked, as Lex suggested. I've been lightly cooking meat for a few months, so I'm used to that if it's necessary (although the addition of the suet could make things more difficult, depending on how I like it). I'm definitely going to pick up some Real Salt, as I suspect if I want nothing else, I'll want salt.

When the carb cravings hit, I know I'll struggle. I have some ginger candy if go truly nuts trying not to eat carbs. At least they're not loaded with preservatives or grains, and I can keep track of how much I'm eating. I could also eat spinach or bananas. I'm not big on vegetables and fruit otherwise.

I also have eggs, which I really can't stand eating raw at this point, but will hardboil or cook if I need more variety. There's some frozen salmon as well.

I just want to be over the digestive conversion phase in two weeks. There's nothing worse than having stomach upset and having to go places. The rest of the conversion I know will take quite a bit longer. If it takes cooking it some or smothering it in seasonings, I'll fall back on that.

I'm looking forward to the benefits despite the inevitable misery of carb-cravings. Especially if it gets rid of my acne. If it does nothing else, but helps that, then I'll be thrilled. 

Wow.. she looked terrible. He looked really good and his kids looked good too. Worms are a bit too much for me, though. Don't think I'll be eating any of those anytime soon.

I loved the health expert at the end. No science at all, eh?

I agree, protein I imagine. It even mentions that in the article.

I've heard Bio-Oil works very well and have started using it myself for some scars on my arms and acne scars on my face and back. I have noticed my skin feels better, but it's too early to tell if it's actually helping scar appearance on me.

It has a synthetically produced version of the preening oil ducks produce, mineral oil, and some other oils (like lavender).

What I don't like about it is the fact it has unnatural crap like coloring and the mineral oil, and I hate the smell of lavender. So that's kind of an at your own risk thing. I try to avoid using unnatural products on my skin (I now use soapnuts and baking soda exclusively), so it kind of irks me to use it for that reason, but I've heard it works much better than other over-the-counter scar treatments and have decided it's worth trying.

I subscribe to the idea that humans are not drinking animals.

I used to drink a ton of water and keep peeing all day.  Raw fruits and raw meat are superior to being forced to drink water when eating cooked food.  In my experience anyway.

I agree that when eating entirely raw humans probably don't require an extra water source very often. Possibly in drier areas we would. I, for instance, live in Colorado and the air here is incredibly dry nearly all the time. Couple that with a mostly cooked diet and I suppose what I'm drinking isn't really that much. I only drink when I'm thirsty. I did notice that when I drink perrier I pee less often than when I'm drinking the tap water.

from my own experience, as well as my research, i've concluded that what in the us is called "mineral water" is highly deleterious health-wise

Because of it's low mineral content?


Interesting how acidic perrier is, I wasn't aware of that. I still prefer it to tap, but I'm not exactly happy with that.

Little gas (CO2)      X
Acidity (PH)      5.46
 
Total Dissolved Solids (TDS)      475 mg/l
Calcium (Ca++)      147.3 mg/l
Magnesium (Mg++)      3.4 mg/l
Sodium (Na+)      9 mg/l
Potassium (K+)      0.6 mg/l
Bicarbonate (HCO3-)      390 mg/l
Chloride (Cl-)      21.5 mg/l
Sulphate (SO4--)      33 mg/l
Fluoride (F-)      0.12 mg/l
Nitrate (NO3-)      18 mg/l

Certainly useful.

I've been fascinated recently while reading about cellular respiration and carbs and fats and protein. I've been considering continuing to study biology and chemistry to understand how it relates to RPD.

But..

Like you've said, I think that focusing on all the science of it is relatively meaningless in my personal life. Logic dictates that we eat what our paleo ancestors ate, and we have a good idea of what that was. The health improvements speak for themselves, and our bodies are very capable of telling us what they need and what they don't.

I hope that someday science will unravel why RPD helps us the way it does; but I highly doubt that will be within my lifetime, and I'm only 20.

You could try eating a bunch of pumpkin seeds. They should sell them at Whole Foods, though whether they sell raw or not I don't know. They probably aren't paleo either, but they work VERY well for pushing things through when digestion isn't going too well since they're full of fiber. They help with parasites also.

You could couple that with fresh garlic, ginger, and peppers, which are all excellent for digestion issues and parasites. Peppermint oil helps with bloating and pain from gas.

Maybe that would get things back on track.

I know when I went fully paleo (not raw though), I had very similar issues. I didn't stay on it long enough (I believe it was three weeks) to see if it was just temporary and a change in intestinal flora or not. But I also had poor digestion, less bowel movements with loose ones when I did, and some bloating problems. I was eating a ton of protein and not enough fat, so maybe it's related to that.