Last week, I mentioned that I’d share a week of my food choices with my readers. Well I ate a lot of farm fresh eggs, plenty of grass fed red meat. Tons of leafy greens. Some raw nuts. Pastured pig. Some venison and salmon. Raw milk, cream and buttermilk. Some fried chicken. A helping of mashed potatoes…..etc etc You get the idea. The fried chicken I made and I can assure you it was out of this world. Spicy and crispy.  It was fried in coconut oil and I used almond flour. Took fish oil, coconut oil and plenty of post workout protein carb “smart bombs.”

Understand that there are populations full of folks who ate plenty of meat, drank lots of blood and took a lot of dairy. Check out the Maasai. These folks enjoyed healthy but hard lives with no disease of civilization to speak of.

The Intuit Indians ate nothing but meat and fat for all intents and purposes. Again no really health problems in the society across the board. Nary a fruit or vegetable cross their lips. They thrived.

Naturally, the human race is hunter/gatherers. As Jared Diamond wrote, “Agriculture is perhaps mankind’s greatest mistake.” Borne from agriculture; especially Big Ag is convenience. And convenience is killing us. Convenience means packaging and stabilizers that improve shelf life. The subtraction and/or addition of parts of the food in order to achieve that end. The ease by which we find food has taken the edge off the task. We don’t have to hunt, kill and gather. We are always sure of our next meal. We are never hungry as we never have to go without. A meal is just a microwave and package away. And packaged food is crap. At the local grocery, I count 30 different tomato based pasta sauces. Only three don’t have high fructose corn syrup as an ingredient. Your choice is that you make the sauce at home or you are limited to three jars of choice. HFCS is a triglyceride forming toxin in my opinion and is to be avoided with resolve. And it’s everywhere. So you must become a “label reader” or suffer the consequence of unhealthy blood and excess fat. Not to mention high blood pressure.

Grain is another challenge. It’s cheap to produce and listed in almost all foods. We all have a certain sensitivity to gluten; just to different degrees. Avoid wheat, avoid corn and rice. I try to stay away from oats too but that seems to be less problematic.  The first three are directly linked with the diseases of the West that I am doing all I can to help folks avoid.

Conventional wisdom would tell you otherwise but I don’t find convention to be all that wise. The USDA food pyramid could best be described as a castle built on sand. Lobbyists and special interests have profits to protect. They have little to no interest in your health. Our health system is a sickness model and not one of wellness. There is hardly a profit to be made with wellness.

So what to do?

Well, I choose to put butter on my meatballs. Because I eat from sources I can trust. I use olive oil, raw butter, ghee, coconut oil, Red Palm Oil and plenty of fat from grass fed animals, wild fish and venison. I eat little to no grain fed meat. I avoid farmed fish as well as anything from a feed lot operation. I stay away from hydrogenated oil of any kind. I eat much leafy greens. A lot of other vegetables and some fruit. I do try to limit fructose and you may want to read why here. I don’t drink soda. Diet or sweetened. I like water.

I made the switch to the Primal Blueprint in August 2009. I was 208 lbs and fairly fit. I’m now 48 years old with 8.9% body fat, down from around 15% or so. I am much stronger. Eating fat, at least the right ones from healthy sources, doesn’t fatten you up. Carbs, especially those of the processed variety, and the subsequent insulin response, cause pounds to get packed on to your frame.

I’ve had a number of clients get similar response. They’ve lost in the range of 10-40 lbs. I have personally talked to others who have lost 100 lbs in less than 1 year. If you’re current way of eating isn’t giving you the health and or results you’ve counted on, then I urge you to take a close look at the Primal Blueprint.

Most likely you will feel and look lots better and your blood laboratory results will bear witness.  Other books to consider are “Good Calories, Bad Calories,” “In Defense of Food,” and “Food Rules.”

What are your thoughts or comments?

Live and train with purpose,

Sandy Sommer RKC