Most days I like to consider that I eat a clean paleo diet. Or maybe I should be using the term primal since I do love me some butter and cream. I have to admit though that some of my favorite foods are duh duh duh processed!

How can this be paleo? Why don’t I feel more guilty? Because not all processed foods are created equal. Rather than cling to the dogma of “no processed foods” or “processed foods ate your baby”, let’s consider why we are warned off from them.

In my book the real reasoning behind avoiding processed foods is that “It is food someone else made that if I had made it myself, I would have done it radically different”. Would I put hydrolyzed soy protein in any of my food? How about high fructose corn syrup? Maltodextrin? MSG? No, no and no! But these things (and their Frankenstein cousins) are often hiding away in popular processed foods.

So why am I still eating hot dogs and bacon?! Because I read the ingredients and I said to myself, “Hey I would make it just like this”. I have found hot dogs that only contain grass-fed beef and spices. If you are willing to shell out the dough you can even get pastured bacon without sugar or nitrates. I compromise and get organic bacon without artificial nitrates. Though while I’m on the topic of bacon, the amount of sugar used to cure it is negligible and I have no beef with natural sources of nitrates like celery powder.

All I’m saying is rules are great for getting started, you can follow them quickly and avoid the worst health offenders. But it’s a good idea to eventually understand why they were rules and replace them some informed decision making. I’ll have better long term success using my noggin’ instead of following (and eventually ditching) “the rules”.

I may have a wee bit of a problem with “reading the internets”. I even twitter now it’s that bad…

It feels like a dirty habit and I’ve never really articulated why I bother. I have tons of better, more entertaining things to do and yet I keep coming back for more. Gnolls.org has a great article that was a tada! moment for me. THIS is why I waste hours a week reading about a way of life that I’d like to think I’m pretty knowledgeable about and quite bought into.

It’s naive to say “food is just the stuff you shove into your mouth to prevent dying”. It means more physically, emotionally and culturally. And when I jumped off the deep end, giving up pretty much everything about what I used to eat, who I would eat it with, when I’d eat it and why I would eat it… it may have left a bit of a void. So I read about other people who are like me, struggle like me and try to reclaim the sense of community that I lost.

Or maybe I’m just an emo wuss. :) Some days it’s a toss up between feeling smart or just being pretentious…

Since quitting my job 6 weeks ago, I’ve been very busy! I am developing a health tracking website since everything I have used so far has gaps that end up discouraging me from recording all the data about my health that I wish to. My ambition is to create a site that lets you track any aspect of your health, generate reports and help identity associations like “dairy gives me headaches the next day”.

It’s a huge undertaking so I plan on staying unemployed until I’m finished. Hurray for indulgent husbands!

I would love to share more but 1) I wouldn’t want to over-promise and 2) who knows my “competition” could be reading my blog. :) The plan is to have a closed beta with friends and family and then open up the beta to anyone who would like to give it a shot and provide feedback.

So wish me luck and speedy coding!

I’ve been maintaining radio silence for a while because life has been a wee bit stressful. After years of daily gut-clenching, heart attack-esq moments, I’ve decided that the best way to deal with the stress of working is… to stop working for a while. Genius!

I had tried yoga, deep breathing, bio-feedback, pretending that I didn’t care, chocolate… Well I’m done with “dealing” with stress and am taking a break for at least 6 weeks. Today is my first day as a free woman and naturally being the spastic geek that I am, I’m making spreadsheets with goals, plans and tasks for my time-off. Which hopefully isn’t as counter-productive as it sounds.

My big goal is to learn to take care of myself and figure out if I can feel good every day. Here are the steps I’m going to take to perform this miracle:

• Focus on Health: I may have been avoiding doctors for the past few months. My blood sugar has been creeping up, I’m in pain almost every day again and am back to having random unbearable days. If I lose weight while getting my shit together, that’s a plus but isn’t the main driver.
• Spend Time With Family: Right now I feel like I have so little time to myself that I occasionally resent driving out to see family or ignore my husband when I come home from work because I’m burnt out. Since I actually ENJOY hanging out with my family, now that I have tons of time I’m going see a lot more of them and hopefully be a happy “June Cleaver” when my man brings home the bacon each night.
• Meal Planning: I will hit the grocery store 1x a week with a good idea for the meals I’ll be enjoying for the next week. This should reduce unplanned eating out (which is bad for my blood sugar, waistline and wallet).
• Sourcing Better Food: Find a farm or farmer’s market where I can obtain pastured eggs, meats and fresh veggies. While I love US Wellness Meats, I’d rather support a local farm and save myself some $$$.
• Kill the Clutter: Like the ebb and flow of the tides, during the week the house backslides into filth and chaos then each weekend I make an half-assed attempt at not sucking at being a human being. It will make me feel better to get the house fully cleaned and throw/give away junk that takes up physical and mental space.
• Beef Up Nerd Skills: I love dorking around with new tech and I plan on using my time to try out all the new stuff that has come up in the years that I’ve been heads down at work. This will also give me a sense of purpose each day, preventing “pants are for suckers” syndrome.

Wish me luck!

People are fed by the Food Industry, which pays no attention to health, and are treated by the Health Industry, which pays no attention to food.

Wendel Berry

Will Eating Red Meat Kill You? Denise Minger (famous for her debunking of the China Study) clearly shows why the study isn’t worth the internet paper it’s written on.

Science, Pseudoscience, Nutritional Epidemiology, and Meat Gary Taubes discusses “scientists” in the nutrition field and their abuse of the term science.