My Enduring Love of Books (and a few that changed my life!)
I was five years old when my mother taught me to read. She was fearless enough to teach me at home before homeschooling was an almost-mainstream industry, and her proactive interest in my education helped me become the person I am today. From kindergarten to high school, I was able to digest information and learn life’s necessary subjects (and sometimes not so necessary, I still haven’t used algebra outside of school) at my own pace. When I understood something well, I had the option of blasting through several days’ worth of assignments in an afternoon, freeing up space for later in the week. If a subject was more of a challenge, there were no rigid timetables pushing us to close the books before my comprehension was complete.
It wasn’t my intent to turn this entry into a homeschooling bugle, but I’m proud of the way I learned the fundamentals before college. And I say all of the above to say this: books have always been a huge part of my life. As I said, I learned to read at age five, starting easy with large-print, small-word selections out of a children’s Bible. By age seven, I was cracking open and devouring books written in print much too small for my young eyes, and I have a feeling that it was this early and insatiable appetite for the written word that left me as blind as a bat in the present day without corrective lenses.
On principle, all books were and are created equal to me. Some are of course written better than others, but I’ll give most any written work a chance before I pass judgment on it. Except for Twilight. I would need a very large cash incentive to read Twilight. (Is that joke already too dated? What pop culture phenomenon do people love to hate right now? I spent the summer in India and I’m out of the snark loop.) With this and similar exceptions, I grew up reading fiction and non-fiction with equal interest. The ghostwritten Hardy Boys series of detective stories was the first series to grab me by the imagination and hang on tight. While my peers in the early and mid-nineties were trading Pokemon cards in an effort to “collect ‘em all,” I could be found sprawled across the living room floor trying to read ‘em all. As I grew a little older, I traced Frank and Joe Hardy’s literary ancestry back through time to a small sitting room at 221B Baker Street, and my love of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories began long before Robert Downey, Jr. and Benedict Cumberbatch made them mainstream again. But I loved more than just detective novels...
Well-wrought fiction might have been my first love, but I also read non-fiction books in large numbers. Growing up, one of my favorite things to do on a slow day was to pull a volume of the encyclopedia off of the shelf and read articles at random. The feel and smell of the old volumes are still fresh in my mind. One more plus to homeschooling was the time I had after regular subjects for self-directed study of any topics I found interesting. I was always drawn most strongly to a smattering of famous or colorful historic figures like Teddy Roosevelt and Stonewall Jackson, or to oddball topics like the Loch Ness Monster and Bigfoot, but there was rarely a day that went by when I wasn’t learning something new about something. My present love of non-fiction is almost stronger than my love of pure fiction, manifesting itself in near-mania for books (and now also blogs) about apologetics, cinema history, travel, martial arts, kinesiology, body chemistry and more.
The joy of reading and self-directed study always felt impinged by my college studies, which monopolized my time to the exclusion of most activities I found enjoyable. The year in which I failed to finish a single book from beginning to end ranks as one of the most miserable periods of my life thus far, and was reflected in my attitude at the time. If anything made me resent college, it was that my personal “college experience” was not one of learning as much as it was the memorization and parroting of data for its own sake. I resorted to purchasing audiobooks on iTunes in a last-ditch effort to get a book fix during my lengthy, twice-daily commutes between home and the campus.
Since my graduation in the early summer, I have not had assignments every night or needed to get up before the sun every morning to finish whatever assignments I could not complete the previous evening. That is to say, I haven’t had to; now, I have the beautiful freedom to do so because I simply want to get up early and read or write for a few hours while the house is quiet and I can savor the taste of the coffee as the sun rises outside my window. The freedom is, well, freeing. Much like I stockpile one or two gourmet candy bars every week in anticipation of my Saturday cheat day (life is too short for Hershey's), the last semester of school saw me on eBay and Craigslist stocking up on used, five-dollar hardbacks of Ernest Hemingway, John Steinbeck and more of my favorite writers. Much like the promise of a weekend treat, I eagerly resuming my old reading habits.
Now, to bring this runaway mine cart back to the hill station where I originally intended it to arrive.
As books regained their place as a natural part of daily life, I read a few that hit me between the eyes with their depth and the authors’ powerful perceptions. But there were more still that didn’t settle for a mere blow to the head--a few lowered their aim by about eighteen inches and struck to the heart. The kind of books that burrowed into my soul and refused to leave. It seems a shame to keep them to myself, and I wanted to provide a list of them and the impact they made on my heart and mind.
The Primal Blueprint, by Mark Sisson
"In fact, carbohydrates are not required in the human diet for survival the way fat and protein are." - Mark Sisson
I list this book first because it helped me to better enjoy the others. A little over a year ago, I was on the fast-track toward clinical obesity. I was fifty pounds overweight, I had asthma and a bizarre butt-to-calf ratio that made finding jeans a quest for rare and exotic species of trouser. It became clear to me that my situation had gone beyond the “lay off desserts for a while” phase and warranted a serious change in lifestyle.
Oh no, here Steven goes again. I thought he dropped the whole paleo thing. Please, God, not another rant about wheat...
Enter Mark Sisson and The Primal Blueprint.
Mark Sisson is a former Olympic marathoner who fought an uphill battle against IBS and other uncomfortable problems for most of his career. After injuries forced him out of the marathoning game, he returned to his first love of nutritional science and researched in earnest to find out what makes the human body work most optimally. Mark’s blog, Mark's Daily Apple, and later his book, are the sum total of everything he has learned and put into practice. Not only has he not had IBS in years, but at age 59, he looks better (and performs better athletically) than most thirty year-olds. Sisson’s material outlines the differences between the diet and lifestyle by which early mankind sustained itself until the agricultural revolution and the rise of domesticated wheat and cereal grains as the staves of life for earth’s oldest empires. The science is sound, and the presentation is so relatable that even a right-brainer like me can understand it. By following Mark’s guidelines for a lifestyle of habitual, healthy exercise and a grain-free diet rich in animal protein, vegetables and fruit, I didn’t just “lose a few pounds,” I lost fifty pounds and haven’t felt a single allergy or asthmatic wheeze in over a year.
Sisson’s book remains one of the seminal works published in the field of “ancestral health,” and by reading his book and blog I was introduced to other stanchions of a rapidly-growing movement of individuals willing to take the non-conventional route back to health and human potential.
Since first reading Sisson, my opinions on diet have evolved. It worked so well for me that in my enthusiasm I was often impatient with people who stuck to the tired conventional wisdom that saturated fat was inherently unhealthy (it isn’t) and that whole grains were healthy (they’re not). My attitude has finally softened, and I even allow myself the luxury of one day a week “off” to have some ice cream or nachos. Or both. But the principles of The Primal Blueprint remain true, and based on Mark Sisson’s advice, I feel better and look better than I ever have in my life.
The Gnoll Credo, by J. Stanton
“If you can’t eat it, wear it, wield it, or carry it, leave it behind.” - The Gnoll Credo
The Gnoll Credo is a book of philosophy wrapped in a thin veneer of fictional prose. Another prominent figure in the field of ancestral health and nutrition, though slightly less well-known than the likes of Mark Sisson or Robb Wolf, J. Stanton’s work hints at a personal conviction that quality supersedes quantity. Stanton doesn’t write often, but when he does, his online articles are flawlessly composed, with obsessively cited sources to back up every conclusion. Stanton is an interesting figure as a person also, taking great care to never reveal his face in any of his more personal stories or adventure logs. I have exchanged emails with Stanton on several occasions, and he never fails to be an engaging, friendly and willing dispenser of excellent advice and information.
So, what is The Gnoll Credo about? It’s about us. It’s about our priorities and how we have them completely wrong in the backwards arrangement that we accept as daily, modern life. Stanton introduces a “primitive” race called gnolls (humanoid hyenas) within the context of other accepted fantasy elements, and one gnoll in particular is befriended by a university researcher who, by venturing to the edge of civilization to learn about gnolls, is instead given insight into his own species through the observations of a gnoll named Gryka.
I read the book in a couple of sittings, and the ending left me experiencing a moment of clarity that I usually only have after a stint in India. Through The Gnoll Credo’s spare prose, I gained a fresh insight into the ridiculousness and over-complications of many accepted facts of everyday life in pampered, American culture. The Gnoll Credo is about practical pragmatism, about removing distractions and questioning accepted notions to see if life might not be better without them. The book’s take on life was monumental.
A Tale of Three Kings, by Gene Edwards
It might seem odd that my love of Christian apologetics runs parallel to my extreme interest in a branch of nutritional science usually given in an evolutionary context, but it does. Gene Edwards was introduced to me by some Sunday school teachers at my church when I was twelve or thirteen, and even then his words were so meaningful that I returned to his books ten years later.
A Tale of Three Kings uses three examples from scripture as the models for leadership within the Church. Saul, David and Absalom are all presented as archetypes that continue to be seen in the Church today. Saul was an unbroken leader, willful and disobedient, but nonetheless anointed by God for a purpose. Less than perfect leader though he was, Saul’s ultimate purpose as a leader was to be God’s instrument for breaking David. David typifies a broken leader--an individual whom God allows to experience pain, heartbreak and exile until no more selfishness or personal insecurity remains. What is left is an empty vessel.
Edwards’ expounding of the breaking down process was revelatory to me. It explained much of what I have seen in the church, and what I continue to observe among individuals. Even his description of David’s early life, before Saul’s wrongful accusations and his own exile, was a moving description of solitude being a tool of God’s in order to draw us closer to him and his leading.
The youngest son of any family bears two distinctions: He is considered to be both spoiled and uninformed. Usually little is expected of him. Inevitably, he displays fewer characteristics of leadership than the other children in the family. As a child, he never leads. He only follows, for he has no one younger on whom to practice leadership.
So it is today. And so it was three thousand years ago in a village called Bethlehem, in a family of eight boys. The first seven sons of Jesse worked near their father’s farm. The youngest was sent on treks into the mountains to graze the family’s small flock of sheep.
On those pastoral jaunts, this youngest son always carried two things: a sling and a small, guitarlike instrument. Spare time for a sheepherder is abundant on rich mountain plateaus where sheep can graze for days in one sequestered meadow. But as time passed and days became weeks, the young man became very lonely. The feeling of friendlessness that always roamed inside him was magnified. He often cried. He also played his harp a great deal. He had a good voice, so he often sang. When these activities failed to comfort him, he gathered up a pile of stones and, one by one, swung them at a distant tree with something akin to fury.
When one rock pile was depleted, he would walk to the blistered tree, reassemble his rocks, and designate another leafy enemy at yet a farther distance.
He engaged in many such solitary battles.
This shepherd-singer-slinger also loved his Lord. At night, when all the sheep lay sleeping and he sat staring at the dying fire, he would strum upon his harp and break into quiet song. He sang the ancient hymns of his forefathers’ faith. While he sang he wept, and while weeping he often broke out in abandoned praise—until mountains in distant places lifted up his praise and tears and passed them on to higher mountains, until they eventually reached the ears of God.
I first digested this book as an audiobook during one of my pre-dawn drives to school. The opening chapters had me shedding tears into my coffee before the sun even rose. I realize that my reaction to A Tale of Three Kings might be different than someone else’s, based on my own experiences, but I nonetheless recommend it as a beautiful and insightful look into examples of how God has worked before, and how he might similarly be working in your own life.
The Prisoner in the Third Cell, by Gene Edwards
John the Baptist did everything “right” by the standards of any human observer. He lived an ascetic life of prayer, fasting and self-deprivation so that there would be as little as possible standing between his heart and the leading of God. He baptized Jesus Christ. He stood up for the moral rightness that Israel needed and did not have in its king. And for his pains, he was imprisoned and beheaded. John sent his disciples to ask Jesus if He was the Messiah or if John should wait for another, which hints at the doubt that even he experienced while imprisoned. Jesus gave an answer in the eleventh chapter of Matthew, but verse seven specifies that Christ did not call John the “greatest of men born of women” until after John’s disciples had left his presence. John therefore never even knew how highly Jesus regarded his service.
We have the benefit of perspective in a survey of John the Baptist’s life. This perspective, expanded by scriptural context and two-thousand years of objective distance from the furor that surrounded John’s well-publicized arrest and execution, is a luxury which we do not have in our own lives. But the same principles apply to our own lives as they did in John’s. There was a purpose to John’s existence, though he never knew it while he was alive. He felt punished for his service, but Christ proclaimed him as one of the greatest men who ever lived.
Just...read this book.
The Four-Hour Workweek, by Timothy Ferriss
“The commonsense rules of the ‘real world’ are a fragile collection of socially reinforced illusions.” - Timothy Ferriss
"Many years ago," Gaspar said, taking out a copy of Moravia's The Adolescents and thumbing it as he spoke, "I had a library of books, oh, thousands of books -- never could bear to toss one out, not even the bad ones -- and when folks would come to the house to visit they'd look around at all the nooks and crannies stuffed with books; and if they were the sort of folks who don't snuggle with books, they'd always ask the same dumb question."
He waited a moment for a response and when none was forthcoming (the sound of china cups on sink tile), he said, "Guess what the question was."From the kitchen, without much interest: "No idea.""They'd always ask it with the kind of voice people use in the presence of large sculptures in museums. They'd ask me, 'Have you read all these books?'" He waited again, but Billy Kinetta was not playing the game. "Well, young fella, after a while the same dumb question gets asked a million times, you get sorta snappish about it. And it came to annoy me more than a little bit. Till I finally figured out the right answer.
"And you know what that answer was? Go ahead, take a guess."Billy appeared in the kitchenette doorway. "I suppose you told them you'd read a lot of them but not all of them."Gaspar waved the guess away with a flapping hand. "Now what good would that have done? They wouldn't know they'd asked a dumb question, but I didn't want to insult them, either. So when they'd ask if I'd read all those books, I'd say, 'Hell, no. Who wants a library full of books you've already read?'"
Paleo no more! (Pt. II)
Quick follow-up to last week's catharsis. First, a clarification:
Lest there by any misunderstandings, my feelings about what is healthy and what is unhealthy remain unchanged. What has changed is my approach to life and my relationships with other people.
I would like to share a quote from C. S. Lewis. It comes from Mere Christianity, a book which I think everyone, Christian and non-Christian alike, should read before trying to express an opinion on Christianity with anything like authority. I have Mere Christianity on my iPhone as an audiobook, and I listened to it last week while driving to Daphne, Alabama to pick up a BOSU ball that I bought for a record-setting low price on Craigslist. After spending last year frivolously haranguing people for consuming everything from gluten to seed oils, this passage came like a punch to the face when I heard it over the speaker:
One of the marks of a certain type of bad man is that he cannot give up a thing himself without wanting every one else to give it up. That is not the Christian way. An individual Christian may see fit to give up all sorts of things for special reasons--marriage, or meat, or beer, or the cinema; but the moment he starts saying the things are bad in themselves, or looking down his nose at other people who do use them, he has taken the wrong turning.
As previously stated, I lost track of my original goal, which was to lose weight, and wasted seven months being a pedant and a food nazi. In my defense, my experience and research allowed me to help several friends lose a dramatic amount of weight in a short amount of time, but I have come to the conclusion that I could have helped many more people if I had been less vindictive and more relaxed in my approach. I denied indulgences to myself, and in the spirit of misery loving company, I wanted everyone else to do the same thing.
Which brings me to the fun part...
I want to burn through the last bit of body fat that is hiding my abs. As such, I'm giving the Slow-Carb Diet (SCD) a try. Followed to the letter, it is billed as a sure-fire method to reach sub-12% bodyfat. Based on my prior experience and a year of personal study on the subject, the science looks sound. Nothing else has worked so far in my goal to eliminate stubborn fat, so I have nothing to lose by giving it a shot. In addition to a specific exercise protocol (in my case, kettlebell swings and a couple of unique core exercises), the SCD eliminates dairy, sugar, starch and fruit from daily intake for six days. The seventh day, however, is a dedicated cheat day, also known as "reverse Lent." Anything goes. The purposes behind devoting 12-24 hours to eating any and all "forbidden foods" are both biological and psychological:
- Physically, "planned overfeeding" spikes the metabolism and actually results in a net fat loss over the following 48 hours. Doing this once every five to seven days after strictly adhering to the rules of the diet is important to keep the metabolism from falling into a rhythm and downshifting.
- Psychologically, it is healthy to take a day to enjoy all your favorite foods. The routine of "just a little bit" of fruit/sugar and dairy every day over the course of a week, always left me with the nagging fear that my sugar and starch consumption was growing insidiously each week, and I find that my mind is much more at ease on the new schedule.
My first cheat day was truly a personal coup. For the past year, I was so caught up in the fantasy of living a "perfectly healthy" lifestyle that I neglected to enjoy some of the foods that make life...well, fun. The prescribed system of reserving any and all treats (even fruit) for consumption only once a week makes them even more special. After eating a steady diet of vegetables, lentils and animal protein for six days, the shock and awe of tasting something sweet really blew me away.
Unlike most people, my cheat days do not and will not include wheat products like pizza, pasta or pastries. Gluten gives me cramps, and I've learned a little too much about the other properties of wheat for me to ever incorporate it back into my lifestyle. However, I made up for this by having some ice cream quite a bit of ice cream. I used Sunday as my day to sample some green tea ice cream at a local sushi restaurant after lunch, and at the end of the day, I made myself an enormous sundae.
Do you want to know how long it's been since I made or ate a sundae?
A year.
I used to be "the sundae guy" at my house, dipping up masterpieces every Friday night. Then I became "the health guy" and stopped. For my return to form, I made sure my first sundae was a good one: dipping up vanilla ice cream onto a bed of shredded coconut and covering it with chocolate chips, Heath bar crumbles and chocolate sauce. After not tasting such a concoction for a year, the experience was transcendent.
For yuks and giggles, I logged everything I ate on my cheat day, and if you want to see proof that I still no how to have a good time, you can see the full set here.
If all you want are the visual CliffsNotes, enjoy these "best of" photos:
As either Mark Twain or Oscar Wilde (I can't find a consensus on the source) famously said:
Everything in moderation, including moderation.
I understand that now. For whatever it's worth, I can do full compliance with a whole foods, paleolithic diet. But without a "day of rest" here and there, my social life and quality of life in general go down the drain.
Sunday was fun. But, as prescribed, I turned a one-eighty on Monday morning and went back to my regularly-scheduled diet of meat, eggs, lentils and vegetables. This "clean" diet, which leaves my blood sugar comfortably level, will continue unbroken until next Sunday, at which time I will partake once more in the fun stuff. Ben and Jerry's, anyone?
Paleo no more!
A brief interlude from my India recap. I'm editing photos like crazy to get them ready for the blog, but I wanted to get this entry off my chest before going any further with the travelogues.
Backstory:
A little over a year ago, I was about 230 pounds. The stress of college and multiple moves exploited all of my weaknesses for food, especially "comfort" foods like pasta and sweets. And I had no sense of portion control. Lasagna in the house? Two bricks please. M&Ms? I would fill a soup bowl full of them after every lunch. By my senior year of college, at the less than remarkable height of 5' 10", my neck and my chin were becoming a little too similar. It was time for a change.
Several factors pushed me toward a decision to reverse the unhealthy trend and lose some weight:
First, I had practiced karate for five years. It was getting harder and harder to keep up. And my uniform size had gone up; a tangible reminder that my gut had expanded considerably. I was teaching kids how to be healthy, but I wasn't living it out. I felt like a hypocrite (I was).
As a further kick in the pants, a very specific quote from a teacher inspired me to action. While on a school trip, I heard that the professor leading the trip had lost forty pounds. One of my classmates asked him if he had more energy, and his reply stuck with me. "Um, YES I have more energy. My kid weighs forty pounds, it was like carrying him on my back all the time."
In that same year, I made my first mission trip to India. There, I saw real poverty and want for the first time in my life. Long story short, after I arrived home, my lifestyle of excess felt very ill-deserved. I knew that if I was going to make any enduring improvements to my health and body, it would require just that: long-term lifestyle modification.
I began with a series of incremental changes in late June of 2011. First, I stopped drinking soda, limiting myself to one or two per month when I would order a frozen Coke at a movie theater. Second, I cultivated self control over my portion sizes. I also quit partaking in massive desserts after every meal, and when I did have dessert, it was a glass of Ovaltine. For fitness, I started swimming once or twice a week, in addition to my usual regimen of karate and kickboxing. These common sense changes were easy, and startlingly effective. The weight came off fast, and the success drove me to make more changes. Like a skateboarder on a smooth grade, I had momentum, and I wanted to increase it.
By September, I had drastically reduced my carbohydrate and grain intake, and I had lost forty pounds. I didn't eat chips or potatoes any more, my rice intake was limited to sushi on the weekends, and I only ate grain products when I had my weekly Subway veggie delite or a baked dessert on a special occasion. With so much already cut out of my diet, the extremist in my decided to make one more change.
I had read Mark Sisson's The Primal Blueprint, and I knew the strong case against grain products. Gluten, gliadin, empty carbs, systemic inflammation--there was a laundry list of grievances to be laid at the feet of wheat, and I was finally ready to accept them and act accordingly. The Primal Blueprint advocates a return to "ancestral health," a diet based on whole foods (meat, fish, fowl, vegetables, fruit, nuts, seeds), no legumes and absolutely zero grain products.
I went completely grainless as a thirty-day experiment, going a month entirely without bread, pasta or flour-based desserts.
The results? I lost ten more pounds and made it through October without encountering my yearly seasonal allergies.
I was sold. T'was a primal life for me! Mine became a life sans wheat products, legumes and most forms of sugar. I based my diet on animal protein, healthy fats, an absolutely irresponsible quantity of vegetables, some fruit and dark chocolate (90% cacao content or higher) as an indulgence. Then I drifted toward a more hardcore, strict paleo point of view, cutting back on dairy and sourcing grass-fed meats. None of these things were wrong in and of themselves, but in pursuing this lifestyle, I made a huge mistake.
Today.
Originally, I just wanted to lose some weight to look and feel better. But I turned my diet into an obsession. I made being "the healthy guy" my identity instead of just something I did. I became a food nazi to the point where people apologized to me for eating sandwiches in my presence, without my having spoken at all. I gloried in what I perceived as enlightenment and superiority. While everyone around me continued to eat their "healthy whole grains," they were sick all winter and I wasn't. While others yo-yoed up and down the scale on their low fat diets and bemoaned inevitable weight gain over the holidays, I lost another ten pounds over my Christmas break.
All the while, I expected some kind of social return on my obsession. I don't know what I expected. Applause? A mass conversion of Pop-Tart-popping college students into svelte Crossfitters? I don't know what kind of castle in the air kept me going, but it never materialized. And now, the whole experience has left me hollow.
Over a year later, I'm fifty-something pounds lighter and look a lot better in a tshirt, but I still don't have a six-pack. I don't have the bodyfat percentage I desire. But far worse than these cosmetic details, I realized the other day that I have severely alienated people. I made them uncomfortable with my constant yapping about how all their favorite foods were going to kill them. I lost track of my original goal. Instead of sticking to my original plan of getting in good shape, I drifted into pedantry and demagoguery.
Lately, several things have brought me back down to earth.
First, I started to notice how many headlines get recycled on Mark's Daily Apple. The information is always sound, and MDA is one of the best searchable resources on the web for good nutrition information, but after a year of reading every article, it is apparent to me that there is only so much information that Mark or any other guru can give for the first time, and beyond that, any and all articles will be declarations of theory confirmation with the end goal of selling more books. Speaking of the "paleo blogosphere," it has turned into a nasty place. As the "paleo movement" becomes less of an underground health movement and more of an established faction among the various fitness dynasties, all the blogs look increasingly alike, and I think the authors are aware of this fact. They all have the same interviews, they all have ebooks for sale, and the in-fighting and pettiness gets ridiculous. As a community, I never sense support as much as judgment from the paleo crowd if my beef isn't grass-fed or my vegetables organic.
Second, I feel like sports nutrition is not taught properly by most paleo writers. Caught up in the fervor of "defying conventional wisdom," preaching the doctrines of intermittent fasting and "eating fat to lose fat," the importance of protein is neglected. Eating healthy, natural fats is the best way to lose weight (I'm walking proof of this), but for muscle maintenance, protein should be the highest priority. It wasn't until I read Timothy Ferriss' book The Four-Hour Body that I was made aware of the full importance of protein--not just as a catalyst for building muscle mass, but for cutting fat instead of just losing weight. My personal experiments in intermittent fasting suddenly felt like monumental wastes of time, because it hit me like a ton of bricks that when I was fasting sixteen hours a day to increase insulin sensitivity and production of human growth hormone, I wasn't eating enough protein during my "eating window" to obtain the results I desired.
Coming back to my food nazism, my burgeoning epiphany of my relationship ineptitude was further hammered home by J. Stanton's article "Why Are We Here, And What Are We Looking For? Food Associations And The Pitfalls Of The Search For Novelty," which ranks as one of my favorite pieces of writing that I have ever read on the internet. As he always does, Stanton put the attitudes within the paleo movement into their proper context in his article, and recognized the fact that eating for health in a serious way, ala the paleo lifestyle, is very hard psychologically. In the US, we grow up with PB&Js, Snickers bars and birthday cakes, and in breaking ties with these familiar foods we don't just give up the taste, we give up the feelings attached to them. Stanton's article helped me to be totally honest with myself about the effects of my lifestyle on my relationships with other people. Who was I trying to kid when I insist that Lindt's gourmet, 99% cacao bar is superior to a Butterfinger? They are both delicious, simply in different ways to different people.
For those of you who were hoping to see a total recant of my principles and a video of me gnawing on a French loaf, I'm sorry to disappoint you, because despite my new attitude and grievances with the paleo blog culture, I still agree wholeheartedly with the tenets of paleo nutrition. But I have some modifications to make in my own life. I used my most recent trip to India to test my body's responses to different foods, and the results were interesting:
- A plate of noodles, given to me by a host who was under the impression that Americans live on pasta and french fries, confirmed my suspicions that I have a gluten sensitivity. It was the first time I had eaten any wheat product in almost a year, and within minutes of eating what I was given out of politeness, I experienced harsh stomach cramps and diarrhea. Gluten problems are real, even if you don't have celiac.
- For weight loss and weight management, there is no such thing as a "safe starch." When consumed on a daily basis, rice and potatoes will increase your waistline as much as any other starch or grain. I gained a lot of weight eating a rice-based Indian diet for the first few weeks of the trip, and it was very uncomfortable.
- Natural fats and proteins are STILL the best fuel for the human body. For the above reason (and others, see below) I requested my last host to cook me nothing but eggs and vegetables while I stayed with him. Most of the photos in this entry are of the delicious egg scrambles he cooked for me. On that meal plan, I lost four weeks of rice weight inside of four days. My host even commented on the visible change in my appearance. I might add that my food was cooked in ghee (clarified butter), and I was always given huge portions--my record was fourteen whole eggs in one day. I don't recommend that as an everyday practice, but nevertheless the weight still fell off quickly and my muscle tone reappeared. It is confirmed: low fat diets are, and always will be, the hard and unnatural route to weight loss.
- Counter to what many paleo talking heads will spout, legumes are not all bad. To avoid rice, I would sometimes fill my bowl with dal (boiled and seasoned lentils or mung beans) instead. In the primal/paleo world, legumes are often vilified along with wheat as a source of lectins and phytates, which, long story short, can contribute to leaky gut syndrome (feces leaking into the bloodstream) after long-term consumption. However, in my more recent readings, I have learned that an overnight soak kills 97% of the anti-nutrients in lentils. That is acceptable.
- Industrially processed vegetable oils are legitimately harmful. For reasons of cost and availability, most Indian homes cook their food in mustard oil, palmseed oil or soybean oil. These oils are filled with extremely high volumes of Omega-6 fatty acids. When your body's ratio of n-6/n-3 are out of balance, the result is interior inflammation, which I felt in spades due to the amount of oil used in most authentic curries. I will save you the graphic details, but sufficed to say that my nightly "green apple quickstep" was yet another reason I went on a recovery diet of eggs and veg (boiled in water or cooked in clarified butter instead of oil) late in the trip.
- The occasional indulgence will not destroy health or weight maintenance. On one occasion in India, I consumed somewhere between twenty-four and thirty ounces of sweet lassi (a yogurt drink) combined with fruit juice and chopped banana, inside of an hour. Contrary to my old fears [paranoia], I did not balloon back to an unhealthy weight. I'm not saying this was the healthiest thing to do, but at the time, my Indian host and I felt compelled to judge the merits of several competing lassi vendors.
So where does this leave me? Well, my opinions about what makes up a truly healthy diet remain largely unmoved. I still believe that some foods are best not consumed by humans (modern wheat, most forms of dairy, anything from McDonalds), but after a year of making myself miserable about it, I have decided to resign my position as the community food nazi. The following list represents my new paradigm, which, like everything else, is subject to change with new data:
- I will never budge on the subject of wheat. I saw a shirt once that said "the road to hell is paved with gluten," and I agree wholeheartedly. Some research has speculated that as many as a third of Americans are gluten sensitive, but are so used to the symptoms (sinus inflammation, IBS, etcetera) that they never even consider possible dietary causes. On a broader level, I also I firmly believe that wheat and the concomitant bread and snack food industries are responsible for the epidemic of heart disease and diabetes in America. Read any label, and the only praise you will find for "healthy whole grain" products is the fiber content. Fiber can be obtained through vegetables, along with many other vitamins and nutrients absent in wheat. Balanced against the problems of gluten, I maintain that there is literally no need for grains in the human diet.
- I am incorporating legumes back into my diet, albeit judiciously. Lentils are kind to blood sugar levels and an effective way of filling out meals while reducing grocery costs. And with some some of my recent, post-India stomach trauma, I needed the extra fiber to restore some regularity to my GI tract. On a more recreational and positive note, cashews are back in the mix, too. I had the chance to eat fresh, raw, locallyg-grown cashews in India...I had forgotten how good those little buggers are!
- Systemized intermittent fasting, ala Leangains, is overrated, and the way most people talk about it right now, it has become a fad for most people. Unless you are already well-muscled and sub-12% bodyfat (sub-20% for women), I believe that the visible results are marginal at best. Spontaneous meal-skipping, for weight loss or to aid in cell autophagy, on the other hand, is something I think is healthy to do once or twice a week.
- There is only so much nutrition you can get from whole foods. Supplementation is important. Omega-3 (fish oil, flaxseed oil), vitamin D and acidophilus are all supplements which I take daily now.
- Protein is the new king. Yes, a tall smoothie of coconut milk, nuts and berries is paleo-approved, filling and healthy, but it is not the ideal lunch when you want to cut the last five pounds of fat and build new muscle, which is my goal. I don't believe in counting calories, but I believe firmly in macronutrient ratios.
- I will no longer call myself a devotee of the "paleo diet." I have developed a strong dislike for the groupthink and the tendency toward confirmation bias and anecdotal arguments. The very definition of "paleo" as a set of dietary guidelines has yet to be standardized, but every Grok and Grokette with a blog seems to think that his or her personal definition is the universal standard. The arguments that arise out of the lack of mutually-understood terms are hilarious in the insipidity. In the end, it doesn't matter if "paleo" means high-carb, moderate carb, low carb or ketogenic, the argument of "well, I don't think ancient man would have eaten ____" is always used too often and too lightly.
For the first time in my life, I am going to follow a structured diet. I mentioned The Four-Hour Body earlier in this entry, and I am intrigued by the "Slow Carb Diet." The whole first chapter on the subject is available to read for free, but what I like the most about it is that it brings me back to my original reason for changing my diet in the first place. I wanted to cut fat and build muscle. In my zeal to be perceived as a holistic know-it-all, I drifted away from that stated goal, and as such I never reached it. It's time to return to my original purpose. The Slow Carb Diet is designed out of sound nutritional principles, solid data, and is specifically designed not just for weight loss, but for reducing body fat and maintaing muscle.
The SCD approach includes a weekly "cheat day" for reasons of metabolism and social well-being. I originally had mixed feelings about cheat days. The old me always considered "cheating" to be a sign of weakness and inability to make lasting changes, but lately I realized that my monk-like consistency made me a social pariah in most arenas. Taking one day off from dietary restriction not only prevents metabolic downshifting, but it gives the individual a day to be "normal" again. Even one of my favorite paleo fitness blogs (one of few that is truly well-adjusted in its presentation of information) advocates cheat days wholeheartedly. John Romaniello, one of the most stacked fitness coaches I've ever seen, has written extensively about using planned cheat meals effectively. Good enough for me. For my own first designated cheat day, I plan to indulge heavily in sushi, Nikki's Coconut Butter and perhaps a big cup of chai or creamy turmeric tea for a nightcap. I'm looking forward to it.
So there you have it. If you are one of the people whom I harangued in the past year for what you ate, I apologize. It wasn't my place. I changed my lifestyle at a time when I had little control over anything else in my life, and I allowed myself to be consumed by the idea of controlling both my own diet and that of others. I will not pontificate any more. If asked, I will be glad to share my experience and help other people improve their lifestyle, because I do have good advice to offer on the subject.
But!
Unless or until that happens, I am no longer the "paleo" or "primal" guy. I'm just Steven, and I eat a certain way.
And I really, really love breakfast food.
