Friday, July 22, 2011

food on Friday


I  started this blog with the plan to do food and recipe posts on Fridays.  I love to cook; I've always loved to cook.  But I made some dramatic changes in my eating a couple of months ago, and it's changed how I cook and think about food.  It's also left me uncertain about what to write about here on Fridays.  I'm in the middle of an experiment and I'm not sure if it's too early to talk about results.

I decided to start experimenting with my diet because I was increasingly not feeling well.  I've had migraines my entire adult life but they were becoming more frequent and more debilitating.  And more than that, I just felt sort of lousy and tired all the time.  I had these running goals, but was bowing out of training way too often because of headaches.  So I did an internet search and the paleo diet came up over and over again.  I was skeptical (the concept still does not sit entirely comfortably with me), but there were so many testimonials that I decided to try it.

So if you don't know, to follow a paleo diet you stop eating sugar, dairy, grains and legumes (eat only things that were available to paleolithic humans).  It is low carb, high protein and it seems impossible at first.  I'm still struggling with the meat--I've always had vegetarian tendencies.  But, the headaches are gone, even the monthly menstrual migraine.  I can't explain this and I have no idea if this would be true for other people, but it's been amazing for me.  

Also, I don't ache.  I assumed my achey joints were just a natural outcome of years of treeplanting and I never even questioned it.  Three days into my paleo experiment and the stiffness in my hips was gone.  It seemed kind of miraculous at the time.  It was so unexpected that it convinced me that I was doing something right.

I feel good and I suspect there's no going back.  So how do I write about food when mostly I just cook meat and vegetables as simply as possible?  I don't know.  I've always been skeptical of special diets and believed in moderation.  But here I am, anything but moderate; one of those annoying people who won't even have a bite of pizza.  So I'm not sure.  It's possible that next week there'll be a recipe for hemp pumpkin seed bars, or I'll just stop writing about food all together because, frankly, I'm a little embarrassed.

Completely unrelated, I did an interview with  BlogExpat.  Check it out.

2 comments:

  1. Uh oh. I am vegetarian and I ache all the time. It never occurred to me that it could be diet-related, but why not?

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  2. Maybe. I think it's worth trying stuff out. I'm coming to the conclusion that sugar and dairy makes me feel crappy. I don't think it used to, but I'm pretty sure it does now.

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