Where to eat out during a 30-day paleo challenge (you are going to hate the answer)

You hear the question at the beginning of every paleo challenge: so... where can I eat out during the challenge? What restaurants have paleo options?

And the typical answer is: anywhere you can order meat, veggies and good fats.

I think that answer is mostly wrong.

But before you try to pin my contrarian ass to the ground and start beating me senseless, let's remember, really specifically, what the question was.

It wasn't: "Where can I best eat out and still eat paleo?" It was: "Where can I eat out and eat paleo during a 30-day challenge?"

I think those are two very different questions, because, as I have tried to explain to you pretty recently, I don't think 30-day paleo challenges are the same as everyday (mostly) paleo life.

As I told you in that prior post, the primary purpose of a 30-day paleo challenge is to detox you for a month from all the bad stuff in your diet that might be bothering you. You are recovering. Simultaneously, you are going to eat really well (paleo, no bad stuff) and then, when the challenge is over, you can start to have fun and do some delicious figuring out how to eat from there on.

If you eat out, unless you are headed to Sauvage, or some other strictly paleo restaurant that probably doesn't exist in your town, you probably are eating something that isn't paleo. Shitty industrial seed oils, gluten, etc. And if you do that during a challenge, you run the risk of reigniting the inflammation and irritation that you are trying to detox from.

In other words, you are probably helping to defeat yourself before you barely get started.

A simple analogy might help: think of your pre-challenge, non-paleo gut as an open wound. If you pour something irritating on an open wound, it won't heal well; it'll hurt, and likely get inflamed again. Your healing gut is just like that. During a paleo challenge, if you eat at a restaurant that just cooked your food in soybean oil, or canola oil, or peanut oil, or cross-contaminated your food with gluten, you may very well reignite inflammation that never fully went away. You may *think* you are just eating meat, veggies and good fat, and, because you aren't controlling the cooking process, you are actually getting a whole bunch of non-paleo/processed items that aren't on the list of ten things that you an eat during a 30-day challenge.

Again, let me emphasize that my anti-restaurant stance is only focused on the 30 days of a challenge. After that, except in the rarest cases, your gut has undergone a huge healing process, and it can take the hit of poorly-prepared restaurant food a lot better. In fact, learning where to eat and what to order is one of the truly fun parts about the post-challenge time... You know, the rest of your life.

The challenge only lasts a month. Toughen up. Prepare your own food for that month, and you will really do this challenge/detox right and learn more than you ever will by just trying to "do your best" in a restaurant where their sole goal is to feed you food that tastes good, not food that is going to allow your damaged gut to heal.

Heal that gut first. Then move on to letting other people cook for you in ways that you can't control (but can really enjoy).

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A little bit more about everything affecting everything

Currently, I am on vacation. In fact, I have been on vacation for the past week. My older son, age 22, and my wife and I headed out to Utah and Arizona to hike some weird red-colored rocks in some deep and scary canyons (and a couple that were not as deep or scary too) for eight days.

Translated to non-hiker-ese, that means that each day for the past week we have been up early, out the door to the trailhead du jour, and then outside in the bright beautiful southwestern sunshine for many hours a day. Most of my day-to-day bullshit concerns are shoved in a box that is buried many miles underground, guarded by a troll (named Bob), who only says one thing -- "Fuck you" -- to said worries when they ask to come out to play.

In other words, I am really happy. I even am already aware of a looming crisis (OK, "crisis" is extreme.... we will go with "stressor") or two that I will have to deal with upon my return.

I am not worried about those for now.

Let's just go with: I am really happy... full of clean air and sunshine, and a mood so sparkling and generally non-cynical that, if you knew me well, you might ask this guy who looks like me for ID just to be sure it's not someone else.

Interestingly, what I have poured into my gaping maw during this time has included the following items that are most definitely *not* a part of my day-to-day diet:

-- a lot of grainfed beef
-- ice cream almost every day
-- a pint of Strongbow cider almost every day (who knew the Utah state liquor store in Kanab would stock one brand of cider and that it would be my very favorite?)
-- a slice of clearly non-sourdough "sourdough" toast (once) that almost certainly contained gluten
-- peanut butter, often quite a few tablespoons, each day
--breakfast (my most recent bulletproof-coffee morning fast was the day before we flew out here)

And I feel great. If I consumed any of that stuff on a regular basis at home, I would pay for it in zits, moodiness, disrupted sleep, etc. but here, amidst the amazing de-stressed outdoor living, I have been -- with the exception of that slice of toast making me really sluggish and tired for a couple hours -- feeling *better* than usual.

So, paleo is stupid, right?

No.

But, man, if I ever needed even more proof that both "everything affects everything" *and* that the holy triumvirate of sleep, then food, then exercise is only as good as one's stress management, here it is. Again, if I ate this way at home, I would be wrecked. In fact, it would (is going to?) catch up to me here if I kept it up, but isn't it nice to know that when stress is way down and sunshine is way up, you can, to quote Nick Flynn "just disappear... to step off the map and float" every now and again?

Yes, yes it is. For now, I am just going to leave you with the view off the upstairs balcony of the place we rented. Back to the grind soon enough, but for now.... Fuck yeah.




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An ode to the old

I try to pick my gig-going carefully. Call it old age. Call it crankiness. Call it whatever you want, I really fucking hate mediocrity in music. And a mediocre live performance is especially inexcusable. While I suppose seeing a meh show at age 25 was nothing to celebrate, nowadays, another 25 years beyond that, I view it as a particularly ridiculous waste of my time.

So I pick and I choose, and I reject concerts that might very well still be good, in search of damn-near perfection.

Which brings us to yesterday, when I cast aside my skepticism and bought tickets to see two shows -- Flag and Superchunk-- in Philly within a few days of one another in September. Why? Because I know that both bands will absolutely kill it.

Superchunk.... I loved them in the early/mid '90s, kinda drifted away from them, and now am committed to finally (finally!) seeing them live oh-these-many years later. They will deliver in spades, not because I think so, but, rather, because my buddy Lance says so. Although, sadly, bassist Laura Ballance won't be along for the ride. But I have no doubt that it'll still be like this.

Flag is a Black Flag supergroup of sorts -- four former members, two of 'em trading vocals, along with Stephen Egerton of the Descendents on guitar, playing Black Flag stuff from across that band's catalog. I saw Keith Morris about ten years ago when Henry Rollins had him sing the first eight or so songs of an incendiary set of Black Flag songs performed by the Rollins Band in a charity benefit tour. He was on fire, as were Rollins and the rest of the band. I already know, based on my Descendents uber-fandom and general drummer dorkdom, that Bill Stevenson is one of my very favorite drummers, and that Stephen can fill the Greg Ginn guitar slot admirably. Chuck Dukowski has always been a monster bass player, more punk than you, and Dez Cadena? Yeah, he can stay too, because having two punk shouters is better than one, and a little extra guitar roar will be just fine, thanks.

The 'chunk will be touring a new album, so that gig won't be just an exercise in pogoing/slamming nostalgia, but the Flag show will be nothing but. And I am good with that. If a band can deliver like I expect them to, as evidenced by this and this, then I am just fine with an absence of new material.

Yeah, some of 'em (Flag) look like the ravages of time have taken more of a toll than on others (Superchunk). But for a couple nights in Philly in September, none of that will matter. The old folks will deliver. Let's go.


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A short break? Maybe?

We are headed out to Utah and Arizona to do some hiking. Will this mean silence here on the blog? Not sure. We allegedly have a wifi connection in the place we are renting, but we will see.

So... If there appears to be an inexplicable lull in my blahblahblah, this means we are: (1) having too much fun, (2) lost in a canyon somewhere reenacting that movie where the dude saws off his own arm, or (3) without wifi.

I have strong opinions against Option#2. I hope it's #1, or, better yet, I hope we are having lots of fun *and* I am simultaneously full of bloggy goodness.

Time will tell.






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A little more on eating whatever you want

Lately it seems like a lot of people in my life have been asking me a lot of questions about paleo/primal nutrition***. Some are really dialed-in/totally-on-it Level 10 sorts of inquiries about the slightest tweak to an already nearly bulletproof paleo regimen. Others are from beginners or even not-quite-there-yet folks who want to know how to get started on figuring out food.

And, while I love the Level 10 questions because those folks totally "get it," I also like the beginner stuff, because what's cooler than seeing the light bulb go on over that paleo newbie's head when it all clicks? So, today's spiel focuses on the newbies, because I was reminded, once again, how confusing it can all get.

I saw this video yesterday.




Watch it. It's great. Neghar Fonooni is one of those best-of-the-best strength/conditioning/lifestyle coaches that has it all figured out. Her website and FB pages give out top-notch advice and encouragement. And this particular video took me back to Sarah Fragoso's Paleo FX talk that I referenced just a while ago....You know, when I told you that, like Sarah Fragoso, I eat whatever I want.

But.... Remember one really important thing, paleo/primal newbies: eating whatever you want requires understanding what you really want. It's a sort of double-secret Zen trick: yes, eat whatever you want. So, grasshopper, what do you want?

When Neghar Fonooni or Sarah Fragoso tell you that they live life large, enjoy whatever they eat and move the hell on if they slip up, they mean it. But they also know *exactly* what their individual game plans are. They have, through a lot of experimentation, figured out precisely what works for them, and they adhere to that plan as they see fit (pun totally intended).

So, before you reach their lofty heights of awesome, you need to figure it all out for *yourself*. How?

I am, as I told you a couple posts ago, a big advocate of a 30-day challenge/detox as the gateway to sorting out how best to eat for you. You detox for a month by taking out all the potentially bad stuff, eat really freaking well at the same time, and then.... *Then* it all gets awesome, because that is when you get to concoct the plan from then on out. And, sure enough, that plan is going to have 1000 little detours and twists and turns. Hell, I have it pretty well dialed in, and yet I am *constantly* playing with new ideas -- be it carb backloading, skipping breakfast, partitioning carbs a particular way, whatever. It is a very cool adventure, and, yeah, it is sometimes punctuated with Ben + Jerry's.

And when I fill the tub with CoffeeCoffeeBuzzBuzzBuzz and jump in from a high-dive platform, I know exactly (ok, mostly) what I am doing and exactly (uh, ok, mostly) what it is going to do to me. I try to time the assault upon my system in a way that makes sense for me, enjoy the hell out of it and then get back on the program.

And you will figure all that out too. But you have to clean up first, feed yourself really well during the cleanup, and *then* do some figuring.... Some really delicious figuring. 3,2,1, go!




***Further proof that I have a big effing mouth, because, in reality, let's remember that I have no qualifications at all. :) I am just a dude who eats paleo/primal and loves it, and, yeah, can't shut up about it.

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Another way to cheat the reaper: slowing down the clock

You may recall that, a few months back, I reviewed the reissue of Greg Everett's book "Screaming at a Wall." In the review, I wrote that one of the most pervasive themes of the book is the notion that the author is "running out of time."

I totally identify with that concept.

If there is one thing that turning 50 did for me last year, it was to increase my sense of urgency to seize the moment and enjoy life whenever possible. That trip you want to take? Do it. Whatever that thing is that you are thinking about doing to make your life better, get on that stuff now. Life is short. And it is getting shorter.

As a friend who had just turned 50 said to me at the time, "Steve, if we are lucky, we have 30 more really good years on this planet. Then *maybe* five more after that that won't be so bad, and then it's awful from there on out." Bleak? A little, but it's more likely true than false. And that bleakness is with a healthy life that goes until 85! Reality could be much harsher.

So, the concept of time is a heavy one for me. I don't like wasting it on stupid stuff. I don't like finishing a day, a week, a month, whatever, with loose ends hanging or shit that hasn't gotten done.

What does this have to do with skipping breakfast?

Everything.

I swear to you that the whole skipping-breakfast thing -- which you can read about here as well as here -- is the most glorious gift of time that I have ever received.

Simply put, I had no idea how much time I was spending on that extra meal. Between the absence of prep, eating and cleanup, I think I am getting back at least 45 minutes a day.

Yes. At least 45 minutes. Every day.

It's huge. Add to that the mental clarity that comes in those fasted morning hours, and the amount of work that I churn out in less time, and I bet that it is more like 90 extra minutes a day on average that skipping breakfast is giving me. I am a pre-breakfast fasted king of TCB.

And I have sworn to myself that, as a general matter, I am not going to push myself to fill that extra time with bullshit. So far, I am doing pretty well with that pledge. I have done my best to *enjoy* the extra time.

Skipping breakfast is not for everyone, but, if it works for you, you may find that it isn't just a ketosis-fueled excursion into the land of extended fat-burning; it slows down the clock.

Boom.



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Why would I want to do a paleo challenge?

Our CrossFit gym is going to have a gym-wide 30-day good-health challenge coming up soon. I don't think they have come up with a name for it yet, but it is a pretty cool endeavor, encompassing not just the standard-issue paleo challenge/Whole 30, but an emphasis on stress-reduction, good sleep and smart exercise as well.

That latter stuff I covered pretty recently in this post, but the food angle of a paleo challenge is something I haven't talked about in a while.

Why in the hell would you ever want to do one of these things? I will try and answer that for you, and, maybe, give you an inkling of where your paleo challenge is intended to get you.

Let's start with what it is *not*.

There are, you may recall, ten things that are cool to eat/drink during a paleo challenge, but the goal of this challenge is *not* to mindlessly restrict you to those ten things forever.

I think it is a popular misconception that paleo is a blanket/one-size-fits-all sort of bootcamp-ish exercise. It's not. There are as many permutations to the twists and turns of paleo/primal eating as you choose to insert. Remember, I eat paleo/primal and I eat whatever I want.

But the 30 days of a paleo challenge *are* fairly restrictive, and they are that way for a good reason. The goal is to achieve three things :

1. Detox you by removing all the most common sources of gut irritation from your food. It may be that only *some* of the "no" list of grains, legumes, dairy, shitty seed oils, etc. really bothers you, but, right now, we can't be sure which are really bad for you and which aren't. So we are going to remove them all, and let you detox from whichever ones are a problem.

2. Feed you spectacularly well while you are detoxing. That list of ten things that you can eat is so loaded with animal protein, good carbs and good fats that your body will be doing figurative somersaults and leaps of joy at its nutritional density. All the while the bad stuff is being kept away, the good stuff in those ten things is going to supercharge you.

3. The most important thing of all: let you figure out how to take charge of your food and make it work best for your lifestyle for the rest of your life.

See, I think the coolest realization of paleo -- and maybe simultaneously the scariest too -- is that no one is in control of your health but you. Most of modern medicine is geared towards writing you prescriptions and sending you home to eat whatever you want while you take pills to mask symptoms. The responsibility to eat your way to good health is on you. A paleo challenge is your gateway to figuring that out.

Once your 30 days of clean food is up, your body should be in a pretty great place, simultaneously detoxed and supercharged. You *could* choose to just keep eating that way with 100% perfect compliance, but, chances are, you won't. Very few paleo challengers approach day 31 on out as perfectly as they did the challenge days. Instead, you probably will occasionally go off-road a bit. But there are reasonable ways to do that and bounce back pretty well, and there are ways to do it and end up sick and miserable. Figuring out the difference is a pretty cool thing.

An example: I *love* ice cream, and, unlike liquid dairy, it doesn't completely wreck me digestively, so, while I don't eat it often, occasionally I indulge. What I learned from the paleo challenge was, first of all, that liquid dairy is bad news for me -- whenever I try to reinsert it into my life, I get either digestive issues, major snot buildup in my sinuses, or both -- and, secondly, that if I want to eat ice cream, it works a lot better for me as a part of an otherwise-clean carb reboot, either post-workout or the night before a tough workout day. That is a very cool thing to have learned. It means I can, every so often, make a small spectacle of myself with, say, Coffee Coffee Buzz Buzz Buzz and suffer only minor consequences if I time the creamy caffeine party properly.

And you may figure out something similar with booze or cheese or whatever the non-paleo treat of your choice is. Or you may decide that a strategy like carb backloading or
skipping or delaying breakfast is the thing for you.

In fact, you probably will be able to create a pretty awesome/personalized "Shouldn't versus Don't" list.

A paleo challenge is all about empowering you with the tools to take charge of your own health. Use it that way, and, if you do, following all those rules for 30 days will have a lot more purpose, and, I hope, not seem so onerous. It's not a mindless exercise in ascetic deprivation; it's a very mindful attempt to get you to figure out what works for you for your whole life, so you can have fun *and* feel great for a really long time.







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"Everything affects everything"

Sometimes what ought to be evident from your own existence comes into a little better focus when observing someone else.

For a few weeks, I have been helping a friend from the gym with some food suggestions. She is already a paleo eater and a really good athlete, but she has some very specific goals in mind and asked me if I would take a look at her food logs in the hope that maybe I could get her past what she perceived to be a bit of a sticking point with respect to those goals.

It's been great. She is making progress toward her goals and, most importantly, is really pleased with that progress. And, even though I think she *thought* she was imposing on me to do this, in fact I am having a great time too. It's giving me a taste of pseudo nutritional-therapy work, and it's really rewarding working with someone who has a burning desire to succeed, and takes suggestions, and even criticism, well.

Best of all, for me, it is totally validating a theory that I had already been heading towards on my own, based on my own experience. The theory is not terribly profound, but it's one of those things that maybe has to wallop you upside the head before you finally "get" it. And the wallop, in my case, finally arrived while helping someone else:

Everything affects everything else.

No, I am not headed for touchy/feely/huggy "love yr neighbor and spread the good will" stuff (although that's probably all true too). I am just talking about the holy triumvirate of sleep, food and exercise.

Oh, and its related uber-lord: stress.

See, I have been pretty sure for a while that when I live clean and awesome, and sleep soundly, my mood, appetite and energy are (imagine!) clean and awesome. And when I go off-road to the country named Reduced Sleep, -- or travel to the Ice Cream Kingdom and visit its rulers, Ben and Jerry, or hop the next figurative flight to Scotland riding the wings of a jet called Whisky -- I can *feel* it the next day. And sometimes the day after.

I am not talking about the simple "duh" stuff, like digestive distress or a full-on hangover. That is all stupidly obvious. But you probably aren't going to have a hangover from one (or maybe even four) drink(s), and you may not have full-on digestive distress from a bowl of Coffee Coffee Buzz Buzz Buzz (mmmm, sigh...), but (and this, yes, is a big but that does not lie) chances are that those things are *still* messing with you.

Chances also are that you may not notice those effects unless you have, like me or my friend, cleaned up your eating to the extreme. But that doesn't mean the effects aren't there. It's just that, much like a 30-day cleanup/detox like the Whole30 (or a paleo challenge), you only get a clear view of the full picture of toxicity once you are nearly fully compliant with paleo eating.

The particular "wow" moment for me was when my friend -- who had been so perfect with her eating, per my suggestions, and was so on-track to where she wanted to be, that I was beginning to question the value of any further advice -- went a little off-road one day and enjoyed some non-paleo treats. She also didn't sleep so well that night. I gave her the expected, fairly mild speech that went something like: "We all slip up, but you get less leeway on that sort of thing because you have specific goals in mind, blahblahblah." But I also added something that I *thought* was going to be true from my own experience with sleep-dep and indulgence: I told her that the damage probably wasn't fully apparent yet. She was going to be hungry earlier than usual and more often on that "day after," and she needed to take care not to fall all the way to the bottom of the paleo hill, relying on old snacking habits, etc. Her insulin and cortisol probably took a hit from the party night. A day of detox and she should be back on track. I also told her to skip any sort of cardio/metcon work that day, and, at most, just lift heavy.

And it all came true. In fact, it even reminded her of an earlier incident involving a little less indulgence, but still an effect the day after, and, also apparently, lots of times before that where she would try to "cardio" her way out of the stress caused by a poor-food or bad-sleep day.

Your body is this amazing biochemistry experiment where, yes, everything affects everything. When you disrupt normal hormonal function with even a little party time, there is a lingering effect. And the proper response the next day is to regroup, ride the wave of not-so-awesome in a measured way, and get back to home base where you can resume the normal course of business. (And if I am not arrested by the Grammar Police for metaphor abuse based upon that last sentence, I will be a lucky man). Trying to "metcon" or "cardio" your way out of stress is a really terrible plan. Likewise, assuming that "that was yesterday; this is today," is ignoring the reality of the wild ride you took your hormones on when you went off-road. This isn't to say that you can't have fun. But there is always a price, and knowledge and understanding of that price is almost always the key to awesomeness.

Everything affects everything. There are no freebies. It's probably not all that clever, but it really is true. Or, as a wise man once said, "Buy the ticket; take the ride."






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Some links back to old stuff of mine that might be helpful to a paleo newbie

Our gym is going to embark on a 30-day paleo challenge in late May. I thought it might be helpful to anyone starting that challenge if you had a link to some articles I have written about that subject. So, here you go. At the end of the challenge, I will do another post with links to various post-challenge thoughts, which, really, is where the fun begins....

"Shouldn't" versus "Don't"

Things about paleo that (maybe) no one told you

She makes a really good point; don't get too clever with paleo before you can handle it

How to start eating paleo

Stepping outside the comfort zone with food

The only thing that ever works for me when it comes to stress management

Sleep, stress and the whole damn ball of wax

Peanut butter and paleo

Squats and deadlifts rule

80/20 paleo sounds pretty lame to me

From sweet to deranged (your choice)

30-day paleo challenges are fun, but then what?

Ten things. That's it.

How in the hell am I gonna do this? Welcome to the challenge.

Q: Can I half-ass this paleo thing? A: Maybe! (For a little while)

The snack question
Zen and the art of sleep maintenance (a.k.a. 30 days to better sleep)

30-day paleo challenges are stupid.... sometimes

And finally, back in the fall of 2011, I logged all the food that I ate during a 30-day primal challenge. Note, I was eating dairy. Remove the dairy, and you have a paleo challenge. This link is to a search on my blog for "primal eating challenge." It will take you to all those food logs plus a few other posts that happen to come up on that search.

Good luck. Have fun.


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Trust

That's Milo. He is wary of *everything* and is afraid that *everything* is about to cause his demise.

OK, not quite true.... When we adopted him eight days ago, he really was afraid of *everything*. Within an hour or so, he had learned to trust my wife to a degree that he wouldn't do what he was still doing with me a couple days later: cower and run away whenever I walked into a room. But even that got a little better each day (or more like each hour).

Today, he completely trusts the two of us. But, he is still pretty scared. Yesterday, he spent fifteen minutes at the very very end of his leash, hiding in a flower bed, when a neighbor down the road decided to stop me to talk, mid-dog-walk. On that same walk, he cowered and sat down, shaking, because a fire hydrant scared him. I took Milo to visit my adult son who goes to school in Philly. By the end of our hour with Kevin, Milo stopped cowering, as long as Kevin didn't do anything bold or outrageous, y'know like look at Milo, or stand up from a seated position.

Establishing this dog's trust and boosting his confidence that everyone in the world -- particularly every male human -- is not about to kill him is a work in progress. And it's progressing....
He has obviously had some serious trauma in his puppy past related to men. I don't even want to bother mentally constructing the scenario of the dog-fighting ring he was probably exposed to, or whatever. He pretty clearly had a rough time of it in North Carolina where he was found.

But, as Milo is learning, it gets better, and everyone does not suck.

Really, it gets better and everyone does not suck. And the ensuing analogy is pretty obvious....

You have a right to be really angry -- angrier than you have ever been -- at what happened in Boston last week. You also have a right to be on your guard, and to insist that authorities do the same, as well as prosecute and harshly punish the person(s) responsible.

But, as Milo is learning, even though trust comes slow, trust is also essential to happiness. So, yeah, be wary, but don't forget that, as Milo is also (slowly) learning, most people out there are not trying to hurt you, and most people deserve your respect. And you will be a lot happier and less hate-filled if you do. More specifically, most immigrants, or people of a particular nationality, are not the enemy. Yes, inevitably, there are a few, and we have, just this past week, seen both the fortitude of this country and the overwhelming skill of our law-enforcement agencies to come together and meet that challenge, and to learn from the past.

I am one of those non-jingoistic, non-hating patriots who simultaneously thinks both that this really is the best country in the world *and* that we always need to strive to do better. Maybe there is something that could have stopped this bombing from happening. I don't know. But what I *do* know is that law enforcement has *that* angle covered. They are amazing and are hard at work.... Just like my wife and I have it covered when it comes to making sure nothing *actually* kills Milo.

Our job, as non-law-enforcement citizens, is a lot like Milo's: recover from the trauma of the past, (re)learn the difference between appropriately on-guard and being afraid of everything, and, yeah, remember to wag your tail and lick someone's face.

It gets better. Remember that.


Go here to donate to the One Fund Boston.




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