Squall,
You've been eating non-paleo foods for many years, another few days won't make much difference. My recommendation? Take it one step at a time.
I started with cooked paleo with a lot of fruits and veggies, buying into the common wisdom that our early ancestors ate up to 60% of their diet from plant sources. The only thing I went cold turkey on was grains, potatoes, beans, and soy products (later I cut out all dairy expect butter). I cut this stuff out completely. I had some success but not as much as I expected.
I did more research and came to the conclusion that my intake of plant food was way to high so I started reducing that and upping the meat. Veggies and fruits were mostly raw but meat was cooked to medium rare or medium. At this stage I would often mix one pound of meat which was purchased at the local market and usually stir fried in butter or olive oil, into a small salad (maybe 2-3 cups) of lettuce, tomato, cucumber, and a bit a onion for each of two meals. I would usually have a small piece of fruit as a snack sometime during the day. This lead to further improvements in my health and I started to feel really good.
I then ran across the RVAF Forum that Geoff Purcell moderates in the Yahoo Groups. What a gold mine - not only in the community of memebers, but also in the links that Geoff maintains. It was there that I read about Steffansson and decided to try an all meat approach. About the same time I reasoned that no other animal eats it food cooked so why should we - so I started cooking my food less and less until I was eating everything raw. I also learned the importance of getting enough fat from Geoff's forum and made sure that I purchased fatty cuts of meat or ground meat with at least 20% fat.
All this time my meat was coming from the local supermarket so it was grain-fed. I knew about grass-fed meats but really didn't know the difference until I joined Geoff's forum and started doing more research. I learned that one of the primary differences between grain-fed animals and grass-fed animals was that the fat of grass-fed animals had very high content of Omega3 fatty acids. The meat I was purchasing was grain-fed so I started taking Omega3 supplements in the form of fish oil capsules. I purchased the inexpensive ones from Costco and took about 30 per day (with meals) which comes to just about one ounce of fat from this source. And, I then started researching sources for grass-fed meats.
There was also a lot of discussion on Geoff's forum about the importance of eating organ meats. I had always hated things like liver when I was growing up so this didn't excite me but I decided that I really did need to add organs meats if I expected to gain and keep good health. I purchased small amounts of brain, tripe, heart, kidney, liver, toungue, and anything else I could find. I wasn't wild about them but actually found that most were easier to eat raw than cooked. I knew I wanted to eat a variety of organs and some tasted better than others so I was tempted to eat the ones I liked over the ones I probably needed. One day I remembered that I had a meat grinder and so I started grinding the organ meats into a chunky mix of everything I could find at the local market - usually about equal weights of each - though liver made things very runny so I often used a half measure of liver.
I then started adding my organ mix to my daily meat. The organ mix tasted very strong so I started by mixing 1/4 lb of organs to 4 lbs of meat. I gradually increased this over time as I adapted to the stronger taste.
I tried a few web sources for grass-fed meats. I liked some sources better than others and finally settled on Slankers as my main supply. They also had a mix that they called Dog & Cat which was made up from all the different cuts of meats including the organ meats. I decided to try this so I ordered 20 lbs or so. My initial thought was to just eat the D&C since it had everything in it. I got it and prepared a meal. Boy was it strong tasting and I just couldn't eat it straight. I ended up using it like my organ mixture and mixed it with other meat from the local market just to be able to eat it.
My next order of grass-fed meat was 10 lbs of D&C, 40 lbs of regular ground meat, and 10 lbs suet. I mixed this at 4 parts meat to 1 part D&C and 1 part fat, by weight and it worked out great. Over the next few months I became accustomed to the taste of the D&C and found I could increase the D&C and reduce the ground muscle meat. I also tried Slankers course ground "Chili" meat and found I really liked the texture. It gave me something to chew. My current mix is 2 lbs Chili meat with 1 1/2 lbs D&C plus 3/4 lbs fat and this makes my mix 80% calories from fat and 20% from protein. I don't recommend this as I now feel the fat is a bit to high and I'll return to my 65% fat mixture in a couple of weeks when my 4 month high fat experiment is over. The lower fat mix will have 1/4 lb of added fat rather than 3/4 lb.
I also stopped taking the fish oil once I converted to all grass-fed meat. I now only take fish oil if I eat out and have a meal of normal commercial grain fed meats.
As you can see the whole adventure has been an evolutionary process. I started with a basic idea of going paleo, and then refined my diet as I learned more. However, I often found I couldn't tolerate to rapid a change (like adding too much organ meat), so I would cut back to something I could easily eat if not enjoy.
If you move to fast and hate the taste of what you are eating you won't stick with it. I recommend you start easy, take incemental steps, and adjust things along the way. You have nothing but time, and you'll find a great deal of support here on this forum.
Hope this helps,
Lex
Topic: Squall's Journal (Read 16998 times)