Geekfit

Paleo Brownies

Aaron — Tue, 19 Mar 2013 04:43:23 +0000

I will come out and say it, I love chocolate and the darker the better! This brownie recipe is extremely chocolaty and is sure to satisfy the most demanding chocolate cravings. As an added bonus, it is gluten and dairy free. I got the inspiration for this recipe over at Elana Pantry, which is chock full of good baking recipes (She uses a bit more sugar and tend to favor oils that are a bit higher in omega 6 than I would recommend). I will be adding a few pictures as soon as I get enough time to whip up a batch of these bad boys

Ingredients

16 oz jar of almond butter, creamy
3 eggs
1/2 cup honey
1 Tbsp vanilla extract
1/2 cup cacao powder
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp backing soda
1 cup dark chocolate chip or chunks (I prefer at least 60% dark chocolate)
1/2 cup walnuts (can be omitted if you have a nut allergy)

Instructions

Combine almond butter, vanilla, eggs, and honey in a large bowl
Blend in cacao powder, cinnamon, salt and baking soda
Add dark chocolate and walnuts
Grease a baking pan with grass fed butter or coconut oil and pour the batter into the dish
Bake at 325 degrees for about 25 minutes (varies depending on oven, and size/material of your pan. Larger pans, and/or metal pans will cook the brownies faster)

If the brownies come out a little crumbly you cooked them a bit too long.

Feel free to add in more/different nuts to the mix. Non-sweetened shredded coconut is also good for a little more texture and slight coconut flavor. Let me know if you like the brownies, or have something to add.

Enjoy!

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Paleo Banana Bread

Aaron — Wed, 26 Dec 2012 01:06:30 +0000

Gluten Free Banana Bread… Yum!!

I have fond memories of fresh banana bread growing up. As a kid I would always look forward to whenever my mom or grandma would make it for me. Just thinking of the combined aromas of bananas, cinnamon and vanilla slowly wafting though the house makes me hungry. After I made the switch to a gluten free diet I would still have the occasional slice of Banana bread as a guilty cheat. Now I no longer have to cheat, and I have been enjoying this tasty recipe in the comfort of my own home.

This take on banana bread will have you salivating! It is paleo friendly and is gluten free, dairy free, soy free, and is made without any added sugar. To top it off, it is delicious! The original recipe was found over at Civilizecavemancooking and you can check out that site for a bunch of paleo recipes. I made a few modifications that I think produce a slightly superior loaf, but everybody’s tastes are different.

Ingredients

4-5 bananas, yellow or brown both work fine
4 eggs
1/2 cup almond butter
5 tablespoons butter, melted (can substitute coconut oil)
1/2 cup coconut flour
1 tablespoon cinnamon
2 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon vanilla
pinch of sea salt
handful of walnuts

Instructions

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit
Combine your bananas, eggs, and nut butter, and grass-fed butter in a blender, food processor, or mixing bowl and mix well (if using a mixing bowl you need a good hand-mixer)
Once all of your ingredients are blended, add in your coconut flour, cinnamon, baking powder, vanilla, walnuts, and sea salt and mix well
Grease a 9×5 glass or metal pan loaf pan with a fat of your choice (I used butter). If you use a metal pan it will probably bake in 45 minutes
Pour in your batter and spread it evenly throughout
Place in your preheated oven and bake for around 50-60 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean
Remove from oven and flip your bread out onto a cooling rack or just leave in the pan.
Let cool for 15-20 minutes. You can eat it right out of the oven, but the texture is more like regular banana bread if you let it cool a bit before eating
Slice and serve. It is divine with a bit of butter on top!!

I find that I prefer the texture of the bread if I use a larger pan and make a thinner loaf – make sure you reduce the cooking time if you a larger pan though! It can come out a little custardy sometimes if you use a deeper dish and don’t cook it long enough

Hope you enjoyed this recipe as much as I did. Feel free to post any changes or comments to the recipe below.

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GeekFit in the Redmond Reporter

Aaron — Thu, 20 Dec 2012 07:26:46 +0000

Geekfit was recently featured in the Redmond Reporter. A hearty thanks to Lauren Becherer for the great write up!

Quicker workouts, less time in the gym, and barely breaking a sweat — that all sounds great, but could this approach really lead to results? A few geeky guys are proving that yes, it can.

At GeekFit, a Redmond-based personal training studio located in Overlake Business Park, a non-traditional method to working out is breaking all the rules that conventional wisdom has set about exercise. GeekFit workouts take a “less is more” and “work smarter, not harder” approach to workouts. The trainers recommend one intense-yet-short session per week so that time in the gym is as beneficial as possible.

Opened in October 2010, GeekFit was co-founded by Chris Tremonte and Lowell Meyer. The two Microsoft co-workers were part of a Healthy Solutions group with a few other nutrition enthusiasts. They researched cutting-edge exercise regimes and nutritional information that lead them to the GeekFit philosophy. A group of 15 to 20 co-workers began working out together and the co-founders soon decided to get their own space.

“The GeekFit program is designed to fit into your life without becoming a hobby,” Tremonte said. “It’s fun and effective but you don’t need to come in five times a week to benefit. This is a really high-return, low-risk, low-time commitment way of working out.”

The GeekFit workout revolves around slow, smooth muscle movements on five different exercise machines. The individual aims to continue these controlled repetitions for 80-120 seconds and hold for as long as possible before releasing the weight. Most clients do the same workout, but adjustments to the level of difficulty and movements on each machine are made to cater to different body types and health goals.

“We want people to feel like they’re getting a lot out of it and to understand what they’re doing and why,” Tremonte said. “I think the easiest way to stick with an exercise program is to know that it’s working and to feel that it’s working, so if we can give them something that’s working it’s much easier to stick with.”

Fayyaz Poonawala has been working out at GeekFit for nearly two years. His old weight-loss regime involved multiple sets and high reps followed by cardio. He found that longer and increased exercise did not help his health goals and required too much time.

“I was seeing a lot of benefit within two or three weeks of doing (the GeekFit) program, and if you see the time spent on it versus the benefit, it’s a huge timesaver,” he said.

Poonawala has been able to stay healthy and enjoy outdoor activities because of less time spent in the gym.

“In terms of my glucose levels, cholesterol, doing GeekFit and nothing else has kept all that the same, so I was able to save around two hours a week and still maintain the same health without having to change other variables,” he said.

Poonawala now leaves the gym feeling rejuvenated and energized. “It helps my sense of well being,” he said. “When I come out of a workout, I feel a good solid burn and that I had a very strenuous workout. I feel happy that it’s only a short period of time and the benefits are longer lasting.”

The GeekFit guys also have a nutritional philosophy to pair with their high-intensity workouts. They advocate for a paleo/primal diet that focuses on eating foods that people have been eating since caveman times. This diet suggests that our bodies may not be adapted to refined and processed foods, so we should eat foods in which our bodies are well-adapted — more animal fats, meats, vegetables, and less grains, sugars and other modern introductions into the food supply.

“Most people put in some significant amount of effort to try to be healthy and those who see themselves as society’s vision of unhealthy is not because they’re not trying, it’s because they’re doing the wrong stuff,” Tremonte said. “If we can get them to do the right stuff and direct just a fraction of the effort they’re putting in now into a smarter program, they’re going to have much better results.”

Co-owner Aaron Schmidt comes from a nutrition background and found that there are better ways to improve health than the “eat less exercise more” routine that is so ingrained in people’s minds. He used to be a gym junkie and switched to the GeekFit program after his old workouts plateaued. Schmidt now spends about 20 minutes a week rather than four hours in the gym, and has never felt stronger.

“We found a way of exercising that we think is superior and more efficient, which we want to share with people,” he said. “I feel great when our clients feel great. That’s the whole reason why we do it, to help people out.”

Schmidt said that they want to provide a comfortable environment for clients who may be intimidated by traditional gyms. All workouts are one-on-one with enthusiastic trainers who are clearly passionate about the subject.

“We all have a different background and bring the benefits of having discovered this and not being fully taught from the ground up,” he said. “We bring a different perspective to the gym from what we learn elsewhere and translate that to personal training, and have a critical eye for what’s really necessary versus what’s conventional wisdom that doesn’t work.”Poonawala recommends GeekFit to anyone who is skeptical of the shorter workout approach — he guarantees anyone will feel a burn.

“It’s good pain,” he said.

Tremonte feels fantastic when he sees clients succeed, especially when it’s someone who’s struggled with their weight, or never had much interest in exercise. He said that so many people try to improve their health but are just doing it the wrong way, and that they should not feel weak for failing to stick with a program that won’t work.

“Our vision is the more people we impact here, the more this kind of new gospel of nutrition and exercise can get out there and eventually we can be part of positive social change,” Tremonte said. “If we get enough people onto a program that works, I think we can change the world.”

Stay tuned for the first-ever GeekFit Fest on Jan. 7, 2013 that will include an open house, lectures, food, music and more.

Thanks Lauren for the great write up! Here is the original article.

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GeekFit Fest!

Chris — Thu, 20 Dec 2012 07:04:35 +0000

On Monday, January 7, please join us for our first-ever GeekFit Fest, at GeekFit, from 4:30-6:30pm.

GeekFit Fest will be a celebration of our GeekFitters’ accomplishments over the past year, and an opportunity to introduce GeekFit to additional friends and family.

Featuring…

delicious BBQ brisket and pork shoulder, with appropriate side dishes, provided by GeekFit
homebrew beer from our friends and family
short yet entertaining and informative mini-lectures about nutrition and exercise
prizes and giveaways
an opportunity to mingle with the other awesome folks who work out with us

It will be almost as awesome as Chuck Norris riding a unicorn!

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Buying Grass-Fed local Meats

Aaron — Tue, 11 Dec 2012 16:58:38 +0000

Exercise is great (and no, I am not just saying that because I co-own this place), and it is a vital component to achieving optimum health. However, eating a good diet is even more important. As such, I want to share with you a few great places to pick up some choice local meats.

I believe, and I am not alone, that grass-fed, locally raised meat is a superior product. It is better for you, better for the environment, and a much more sustainable product. To top it off, it makes me very glad to support tI hings such as CAFOs, and other forms of industrialized meat production (chicken/pork industries) as little as possible. I prefer that my dollars go to local farmers that practice more sustainable farming.

Unfortunately, grass-fed meat can be a very expensive buy at the market (not to mention is usually only found in select markets). To make the whole endeavor much easier on the pocketbook I recommend buying the meat in bulk, directly from the farmer. By cutting out the middle man you can save from $5-10 / lb (sometimes more!). The great thing about buying in bulk is that all of your meat comes from one healthy animal! For cows, you can usually buy the whole thing, 1/2 cow, or even a 1/4 cow. Smaller animals tend to be sold whole, although each farm will have its own practices and often will sell smaller portions at higher prices.

Depending on your family’s meat consumption you will want to buy more or less of each animal. You can often get advice from the farmer as to how much you can expect from each cut, and how long that might last you. This is a great purchase to go in with a few family members and/or friends as you can sometimes get a better rate if you agree to purchase a larger cut of the animal. If you have no idea how much of the animal you want I would probably go for the smallest chunk

Pricing for beef usually ranges around $3-5/lb. *Note* you will be paying for the hanging weight, not the final processed cuts of meat you will be getting fro the butcher. The meat is usually aged 7-14 days, for flavor, and expect to lose about 20% of total weight. You will also probably lose another 20% in the butchering process. You will probably have to pay a slaughter fee, and the butcher for their time in processing you order. One of the coolest parts of ordering a animal in bulk is that you get to specify how it is processed. You can opt to get more steaks, grind, or roasts if you prefer one cut over the other and specify how thick you want your steaks cut. Pretty cool! All in all, you usually pay a few bucks more per pound than is advertised, but it is still very worth it.

You will need to have a large freezer to store all this meat. It is very unlikely you can store your newly acquired meat in your regular fridge. I recommend purchasing a separate smaller top-loading freezer for smaller families. I have a 4.0 cubic foot model and it can take a 1/4 cow with plenty of extra room for other goodies

A great website to learn more about the farms in your area and what kind of meat they offer is Eatwild.com. Remember, these are small farms and as such can sell out their products very early in the season. If you are thinking about buying a cow you better plan ahead! You can also learn where to find various game animals, eggs and dairy there too. Bonus!

Markets that often carry local grass fed meats (smaller quantities) in/around the Seattle area:

Seattle’s most popular public market, Pikes Place

Whole Foods
Metropolitan market
Co-op markets
Farmers markets
Butcher shops (ex. Bill the Butcher)

This is my second year purchasing a 1/4 cow and it definitely won’t be the last. If you have any questions please let me know in the comments.

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Chocolate Milk

admin — Tue, 20 Nov 2012 21:27:47 +0000

Hey All,

I just wanted to shed some light on the large “Hebrew National” cooler that has started hanging out in the entryway. It is part of a new project/offering we are starting here at GeekFit called, “Chocolate Milk for Charity.” What’s that? piqued your curiosity? Why yes, I will be happy to tell you more.

The cooler is going to be filled with chocolate milk, or possibly some kind of dairy-free deliciousness if there is demand for it. We are going to be selling them for suggested donation of $2, with all profits going to a local charity. This is going to be self-serve and on the honor system, because someone as awesome as you wouldn’t steal from charity… would you? nah, I didn’t think so. So basically, there will be a little cash box next to the cooler where you will place your money and you can then take your chocolate milk. If you don’t have cash one week, just try to bring it the next week – we are not trying to be sticklers here just raise a little money for an awesome charity while providing a delicious beverage for after your workouts

The charity we are supporting: ????? (TBD)

Ok, to sum it up

your job:

put money in container
take your delicious beverage
enjoy!

Our job:

use the money to keep the cooler stocked
donate the remaining funds to charity

Simple enough right? If anyone has any ideas as to an awesome local charity that we can support be sure to tell us.

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Microsoft Stayfit Reimbursement

admin — Tue, 20 Nov 2012 05:12:06 +0000

This year, Microsoft Benefits is offering a new StayFit Reimbursement option. You must select it during Open Enrollment, before Nov 30th.

The up-to-$800 reimbursement option is mutually exclusive from the gym membership options and from the old $200 StayFit Credit. The old credit was just automatically added to your paycheck whereas the new, bigger reimbursement will require you to submit receipts to the reimbursement processor, ADP. You can also fill out a web form describing the expense in lieu of providing a paper reciept.

You can read more detailed information from Microsoft HR about this program at http://MsStayFit.com.

We are also happy to answer your questions via email at info@GeekFit.us.

If you’ve never tried GeekFit, well come on over and check us out! We’re only a hop, a skip and a jump away from Main Campus & West Campus. You can try your first four sessions for a special price of $100+tax. Our regular price is then $160/month for solos or $128/person/month for couples or friends who work out together. The StayFit reimbursement will cover 5-6 months of private weekly personal training sessions, depending on whether you work out solo or with a friend/spouse. What a bargain!

Here are a few awesome reasons why you should pick the GeekFit (and the Reimbursement) over your other StayFit options:

Results: The GeekFit protocol is incredibly effective and it is also much easier to stick with than other more time-consuming and less convenient options.

Convenience: Easy parking, no traffic jams, no labyrinthine hallways

Privacy: Your GeekFit workout takes place in a private room with just you and your trainer, not on the open gym floor in front of a bunch of strangers.

Time Efficiency: Real results in one twenty-minute session per week. No need to change clothes before and after — you won’t break a sweat!

Cost: GeekFit is much less expensive than other personal training options. Our short sessions are less expensive than hour-long sessions and you only need one per week instead of two or three with The Other Guys.

Accountability: An appointment with a GeekFit trainer is harder to postpone or blow off than an abstract plan/goal to hit the gym along after work.

Safety: Our strength training protocol was designed to minimize risk of injury. It has been used with elderly patients to conserve or even increase bone and muscle mass and to improve quality of life. Every workout is closely supervised by one of our trainers, ensuring that you maintain good form.

Geekiness: We’re constantly reading up on the science behind exercise and nutrition. We’re always looking for ways to be even more effective. Let us be your Fitness Geeks, so that you can spend your time geeking out on your own passions.

Again, feel free to direct any questions to us at info@geekfit.us. You can also email that alias to set up your first workout session. We offer a Four Session Starter Pack that gets you four private workouts for $100+tax. This gives you the opportunity to see how well our program works for you, before deciding whether to continue at our regular rates of $160/month (solo) or $128/person/month (couples or friends).

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An alternative and simple weight loss approach

Lowell — Sun, 28 Aug 2011 23:36:34 +0000

[Lowell: another personal blog post from May, 2009]

Okay, so my last post (Wellness and Weight Loss Approach One-Pager) was an attempt to boil things down into 4 simple rules. Okay, well… mostly simple rules. #3 can be a bit hard to pin down, as it requires some research into what traditional/real foods actually are, and which are effectively myths (Modern wheat bread? Grocery store tofu? Not so much). It’s an approach that requires some learning and changing of your philosophy and approach to food, and that can be difficult.

If you want the simplest, easiest, bare-bones approach, with only 1 rule… here it is:

Don’t eat carbs. None. Zero carbs.

Okay, so that sounds pretty drastic. You can probably get away with 20 grams a day, or 30… but if you’re looking for an approach with an incredibly high chance of success, zero is best.

But wait! Isn’t 0 grams of carb incredibly unsafe? Unnatural? Dangerous?

No. Not at all. First off, in terms of safety, your body needs very little carb on a daily basis to get by. Carb is purely fuel. So is fat. Fat is also used for cell membranes and lots of other building blocks and molecules. Protein is mainly building blocks, muscles, etc. Carbs exist for one reason: to be burned as energy. But fat serves that purpose equally well (in most ways better). Only nervous tissue and a few other small cell types really need carbs for fuel, but all of those cells can do at least as well running on ketones, which your body will produce from fats if you don’t eat carbs. Your body can also convert some protein to glucose via glucogenesis. So when you don’t eat carbs, your body happily switches over to burning fat only, supplemented with ketones and a tiny amount of converted glucose from protein. They’re totally unnecessary.

But isn’t ketosis dangerous? Nope. There are a ton of mistruths out there regarding ketosis. All the high quality evidence I can find is that it’s completely safe for the long-term, and actually has some benefits for heart tissue (which runs more efficiently on ketones than carbs). I haven’t pulled all the references together here, but this is a good one to follow up on yourself if you’re skeptical or want to know more.

But aren’t carbs pretty much the largest portion of a healthy or traditional diet? Hardly. They’ve only been the largest macronutrient group in recent history (which is, of course, the problem). And if you go back before agriculture took hold (a blink in evolutionary time), carbs were an inconsistent food source. Fruits and vegetables were available only in season, and all the refined grains and other plant products we have today weren’t available. Prior to human involvement, most plants were largely inedible to all but herbivores, with specialized digestive tracts to handle grasses and plants. So what was readily available? Meat. And dairy. And eggs. But especially meat. Animals were plentiful, humans were less common, and both were around year-round. So humans grew up (evolutionarily speaking) on a very high fat and high protein diet.

So then let’s look at how and why this approach is effective (referencing my 4 rules from the last post):

With 0 carbs, there is no insulin response… so no insulin spike, and a total reversal of insulin resistance, as quickly as can be accomplished. With regards to insulin and insulin resistance, this approach is even better than my general approach—though you can certainly combine them.
Chronicly high insulin levels and insulin spikes are by far the largest factor in weight gain for most people, and removing that from the picture is very often enough to result in the vast majority of weight loss. No insulin means that your adipose fat tissue is no longer predisposed to store energy… and your endocrine system can kick in and regulate things properly. Which it will do by quickly releasing that stored up energy and burning off the fat.
Other factors (micronutrients, enzymes, vitamins, minerals, etc) are certainly important to long-term wellness, and can be related to weight loss, but for most they aren’t the major culprit for obesity, and aren’t the main cure. They’re highly important for long-term wellness, however, so I recommend paying attention to them… but if you want a quick and healthy way to lose weight, 0 carbs is phenomenal.

How effective is this? Well, me, my brother, and several (at least 3 I can remember at the moment) of our male friends tried this and all lost 3-4 pounds a week, for many weeks. 20, 30, 40 pounds… as much as there was weight to lose, and most of it at the 3-4 pound rate (towards the end it slows down, as you have less fat left to burn). It was lost consistently. And safely. Without hunger or forced exercise (two guys didn’t exercise at all, some did a little, I did a lot). I do know a couple people for whom this didn’t work—I believe in those cases that insulin resistance wasn’t the major issue (or wasn’t the only major issue), and that other less generally common bottlenecks were causing problems and preventing the endocrine system from self-regulating fat levels appropriately. I’ll talk about some of those possible bottlenecks in my next post, if all goes as planned.

For one friend of mine, all they did was cut refined carbs, sugars, and starches completely out of their diet. No counting carbs at all, no special exercise program. Non-starchy veggies were fine. Even some berries here and there. And he lost 3 pounds a week. Some people may be more resistant, and need to cut carbs farther… which is why most of us went the distance and cut all carbs from all sources. And lost 4 pounds a week.

Other recommendations for this (not rules, just suggestions):

Eat when you are hungry.
Stop when you are full.
Saturated fat and dietary cholesterol are good, and shouldn’t be avoided… so meat, eggs, cheese… all good!
Whatever other parts of the 4 rules from my previous post you can include—the more traditional the food, the better.

What could be simpler? 0 carbs. Pretty easy to follow. If it has carbs, don’t eat it. If it doesn’t, go to town.

And does this need to be maintained long-term? Well, you can if you want to. But no. However—and this is a huge however—you cannot go back to your old diet. That was the problem in the first place. This is what so many Atkins dieters get wrong. A short term approach to weight loss is only good for the short term. You have to couple it with long term change in order to see long term results.

So what does losing weight by cutting all (or most) carbs teach us? Carbs are the primary problem for most people. So while you don’t have to stay at 0 carbs after you’ve lost all your weight, you certainly shouldn’t go back to the 200+ grams of carbs you used to eat. This is where I’ll refer you to my previous post, and my 4 rules. At a minimum, you need to minimize insulin spikes and keep overall carbs levels within reason. You can’t eat as much as you used to, but you can eat more than you did while you were losing weight. How much? It varies… but it’s easy to experiment to find out, and if you put a couple pounds on… well, you know how to lose that quickly now, don’t you?

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Paleo/Primal Summary

Lowell — Sun, 28 Aug 2011 23:35:12 +0000

The paleo (or primal) hypothesis is that the longer humans have been exposed to something the more likely they are to be well adapted to it and tolerate it. It’s a basic part of natural selection. It doesn’t prove anything is harmful or healthy, but it provides an excellent starting point, and generates good default answers that end up surprisingly accurate when tested across various fields of science and medicine. In the absence of other data, the paleo/primal approach is the safest and most accurate.

Applying the paleo/primal approach to food is simple: the more traditional the better—100 years old is good, 1000 great, and 10,000 or 100,000 excellent. There are certain fundamental guidelines to following a paleo/primal approach:

Eat a diet that is as consistent with primal/paleo conditions as possible, unless there is evidence that non-primal/paleo foods are safe (the default is that they are not)
Avoid refined products as much as possible, especially starchy or sugary products
Avoid refined, industrial, or non-traditional fats
1. This includes plant oils and fats that cannot be traditionally produced in a pre-industrial society… seed oils, nut oils, grain oils…
Avoid grains
Try and avoid things that were originally primal/paleo, but have been heavily modified via agriculture/breeding/human selection and find ancestral/traditional versions
1. Example: modern corn has changed hugely in just the last 50-250 years… starch content has quadrupled in 250 years, vitamins and minerals have been cut by more than half… compared to the corn humans could find for 99% of our history, modern corn is basically candy.
2. Same goes for modern American whole milk from large-scale Holstein cow farms… they’ve been bred for high-volume milk production, but nutrient density has suffered greatly

So what do you actually eat? #1 is the only one above that isn’t an ‘avoid’ statement. That’s largely because my advice isn’t telling anyone what to do—it’s about understanding what’s bad for you and knowing what not to do. I don’t like having a one-size-fits-all set of things people should eat or do, and it’s inconsistent with human culture and experience—there are a huge number of human groups eating very different (but completely primal/paleo) diets who are all healthy, and you don’t have to copy any of them.

That being said… I can definitely provide some general guidelines of what to eat, consistent with the above:

The more natural and traditional the better… the hunter-gatherer test is always a good one.
Mostly fat (by calories, not volume or mass). Seriously. Without sugar and starch you just cannot get enough calories to meet your daily needs without eating most of your calories from fat. In Indian culture, this was accomplished primarily via butter, cream, milk, cheese, coconut, and perhaps eggs (I’m less sure of the last one). Broths and sauces and soups.
1. And, with the exception of coconut and palm oil/fat, and to some degree olive oil, the fat needs to come from an animal source. For Indians: dairy fat. There is a reason why Indian culture holds cows in such high regard—their dairy products are the cornerstone of a healthy Indian diet. Dairy cows are indeed unbelievably important and valuable to humans.
A good amount of protein—though this will basically happen automatically… “high protein” diets are somewhat nonsensical, since you can’t really burn protein for significant amounts of energy. Low protein is very bad, however, since you’ll starve your body of amino acids. So just make sure you get enough…
Very low sugar, very low starch (ancient potatoes and starchy tubers were far less starchy than modern ones, much like modern corn, and higher in nutrients as well)
Herbs, spices, flavors—all great stuff, the thing variety is made from.

The end result will likely be 5-25% carbohydrates by calories, but, depending on how you do it, it can still appear to still be mostly vegetables. That’s because veggies are very low calorie—nutrient dense, but low sugar and low starch. If you have a cobb salad (mmm, delicious!) almost all the calories are from the egg, cheese, oil in the dressing, and bacon (well, if you have it with bacon). Salads may be mostly veggies, but the fat dominates in the calorie totals, which is absolutely a good thing. Anyhow, I make this point here to emphasize why I don’t start by describing my diet as a low-carb diet. It ends up almost always being a low-carb diet… but I find that’s the wrong way to look at it. You don’t start there, you end up there.

Also, this is all pretty consistent with the PaNu guidelines I like to point people to.

The explanation of why for each of these guidelines is, of course, a much longer article. However, let’s take a very short attempt at summarizing some of the key examples…

Indian culture has an amazing culinary history, with a diet primarily based on (depending on where in the country you are) dairy and cream, coconut, and tons of amazing spices. Lots of great veggie dishes for nutrients and flavor. Wonderful food. The modern Indian diet has changed hugely in the last 20 years, 50 years, 100 years… even if you compare 100 years ago to 500 or 2000 years ago you will see huge changes. The same issues arise here as in other cultures—the arrival of flour and sugar, and introduction of agriculture resulted in increases in disease prevalence, decrease in height, decrease in bone density, and general reduction in nutrition. Agriculture had political and economic benefits, however, and allowed the building of great civilizations due to the ability to grow and store much larger quantities of food. But for individual people, it was a step backwards in health. Industrial processing (processed oils, food byproducts, frankenfoods, HFCS, refined everything, etc) has taken that one step further in reducing individual health for societal gain (economic, political, etc). As a group we win, but as individuals we lose.

Looking at agriculture or industry, I’m not saying that all things from either are unhealthy. But, on the whole, they reduced health outcomes. And when you look at the data it starts to become clear which aspects of each are harmless (or healthy) and which are not. And it’s very consistent with the primal/paleo default principle. In almost every case, the new things that became possible that were novel in terms of human consumption or experience were harmful, and those that were consistent with previous selective pressures were very well tolerated and healthy. Like what, you say? In terms of agriculture, growing things you could find as a hunter gatherer in the wild—but doing so in a garden with predictability—would be the healthy and well tolerated things; using agriculture to grow and produce foods that pre-agricultural man could not find, process and consume would be the unhealthy things. Specifics? Many herbs and spices, leaves (spinach, lettuce) and similar natural vegetables have been around forever, and are completely harmless if they’re grown in a garden, or found in a forest. On the other hand, grains are completely a product of agriculture. You can’t eat wheat if you find it wandering in a field, you’ll get indigestion and it will leach minerals, in a raw form. It requires large scale agricultural production and processing (malting, or heat and cooking, removal of the seed/bran via milling or crushing, etc) to make it edible. But even though it’s edible, it’s a completely new experience for us as a species… and the evidence is that this new environmental factor has been a major selective force through all kinds of negative health responses.

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Pasteurization: Friend or Foe?

Lowell — Sun, 28 Aug 2011 23:33:35 +0000

[Lowell: here is one from my personal blog in April, 2009]

Hint: the answer may surprise you.

When pasteurization was developed and instituted widely in the 1920s, tuberculosis, infant GI diseases, fevers, and all sorts of other illnesses were common—many stemming from poor production and transport processes, or poor animal nutrition. There were many opportunities for contamination, and transporting raw goods to market introduced even more chances for exposure. Pasteurization was a blessing, and made up for all the shortcomings—it killed off all the nasties and left milk (and cheese, and etc) that was safe to consume.

Times have changed. We no longer need to treat the symptoms, as we can effectively treat the problem. Decades of research and study have advanced human knowledge of how these diseases work, and we can attack the problem at every point. Stainless steel tanks, milking machines, refrigerated trucks, strict government inspections and regulation, and a host of other informed methods make pasteurization absolutely unnecessary, and largely overkill… literally.

Pasteurization is, at a molecular level, the equivalent of a nuclear weapon. It kills indiscriminately. You can mitigate the effects somewhat via slow/low pasteurization methods (120 degrees for a long time, rather than 160 for a short time), but in the end they’re all like carpet bombing your food. The harmful bacteria are killed off, certainly, but the good bacteria go with them, and damage is done to the nutrients in the food. Proteins and fats are altered, and the healthful qualities of the food are irrevocably altered.

Steps are taken to try and make up for this. Vitamins A and D are added back in to milk in order to make up for the original vitamins which have been wiped out. But the type added back in is not the same as the original, they are far less effective and offer less benefit compared to the original forms of the vitamins. And attempts are made to remedy only a few of the most obvious deficiencies, the remainder are left as-is with the damage and lack of nutrition intact; for example, vitamins C, B12 and B6 are also damaged, but rarely are those added back, and even if they were the synthetic replacements would be insufficient.

Raw products such as milk sour naturally, while pasteurized products go rancid and putrid—they have none of the natural qualities that allow them to age gracefully and prevent harmful agents from moving in. Because all the positive qualities and bacteria are gone, the nasties can move right back in with no competition at all and go wild.

Raw products have a higher quality bar and therefore you’re getting a better quality product. Due to the safety net of pasteurization, inspection and quality bars for dairy herds are far lower if the milk is to be pasteurized. So you get lower quality milk that has been pasteurized, which can even include milk from sick animals… it’s no longer infected, but you have the end breakdown of those lower quality raw materials.

Humans consumed dairy products for thousands of years before pasteurization came along. It became necessary due to the conditions at the time—dairy farms had to either be in the city to avoid long transport, and live next to sewage treatment and other industrial facilities, or off in the country, and products had to be transported long distances to get to customers. And as these problems grew worse and cities grew bigger, dairy products became less and less safe. Pasteurization solved a short-term problem until other better solutions could be developed.

Today’s raw products are incredibly safe, and incredibly nutritious (and delicious!). There are very few cases of illness from eating raw products, and the few cases have been reported far out of proportion with the real rates.

Cailyn and I will still eat pasteurized products when absolutely necessary—they’re not poison by any means if consumed occasionally. But I’m firmly convinced that when consumed regularly they’re bad for your health. We’ve switched over 100% to original, unpasteurized products. In many cases, I will opt for nothing rather than a pasteurized product.

So look for raw whole milk (never 2% or skim… without the fat many of the nutrients cannot be used by the body, and the fat is the good stuff anyhow—see my other posts or pages for more on macronutrient balance), raw cream, raw milk butter (cultured butter, not sweet cream butter like most modern butters), and raw milk cheeses. Another benefit: when you get raw dairy products, you’re far more likely to get grass-fed and pasture-raised products, which have far greater nutritional qualities than grain fed or lot-raised animals. Anyhow, avoid the other stuff… it’s best treated like it’s been nuked… which in a way, it has.

Beyond your local Whole Foods Market or other grocery stores, look for raw dairy products at farmers markets or directly from the producer. For more locations, check here:

http://realmilk.com/where.html

For more, please read:

Nourishing Traditions (see Sources page above)
http://realmilk.com/rawvpasteur.html
http://realmilk.com/whichchoose.html
http://realmilk.com/abstractsmilk.html
http://realmilk.com/what.html

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