State of Paleo

The Paleosphere is definitely changing. As more popularity is drawn to the movement, so are more people trying to take advantage of the free audience, and then there are others who learn a little about paleo, and then give their gut feelings on topics that used to be nicely discussed. I'm pretty much thinking about PaleoHacks with this.

But, then again maybe Paleo is loosing it's newness for me. I've pretty much learned quite a bit of the backing science, and rational, on why one would choose to eat 'Paleo'.

As Paleo is entering more into the light, more crazy shit is going to happen, but I'm just going to ignore it, and do my own Paleo thing. I don't have to agree with 'Paleo' people to eat the way I do. Anyways, I don't really tell people I'm Paleo, I just say I don't eat wheat, and I hate sweet things - which just turns out to be true.

There's also some aspects of my initial reading of paleo that really isn't reflected anymore, that is the departure from the mainstream culture. I remember reading about barefoot running, and squatting to poop, and thinking that it all makes sense, and that mainstream culture is wrong, and I kind of knew it all along. You could say Paleo was just another way that I could distance myself from the mainstream, although with Paleo I've had rather nice results. I like not being mainstream.

Current status

Toned down the fats a bit, earlier I was trying to eat more, to see if it made me feel better or not. I think it made me gain some fat, or I at least stopped leaning out a bit, so I reduced my fat. To fuel my lifting I've been adding in more carbs. Right now I'm cooking a soup for my lunches which is made from a 3-4lb butternut squash, with onions, green onions, mushrooms, hot peppers (habanero, jalapeño, chili) and spices (cinnamon, nutmeg, caraway, black pepper). Also drinking 1-2oz of cranberry juice diluted in 0.5-1L of water, which supposedly helps liver function, but it's also a good way to increase my water intake.

My guess is that I'm eating somewhere around 200g carbs now, especially on WO days. Trying to stay at 200g or a little less on protein. Probably my target is 180g, but I kind of find it hard to eat less protein. Meat tastes good, and it comes in 400g packs, so two of those, and that's all the meat I can eat in a day. I want to eat meat for lunch, otherwise people might think I'm vegetarian - happened once, when I was eating 300g+ protein a day, I had a good chuckle.

Germany and Sweet Foods

I posted earlier about how everything is too damn sweet, which was drawn mostly from my US experiences, but now I often think about German cuisine, now that I live there.

For the most part, German cooking is making a trend towards all kinds of fruit additives to their food. Not additives in a way that apple juice would be added to fruit leather for sugar, but more that there is fruit added to foods just to add a sweet flavor. Sauerkraut can be found with pineapple in it, plum compotes accompany roasts, and others. Then you have salads with a little marmalade added "for sweetness", or with a drizzle of maple syrup. I suppose this is kind of common in American mainstream processed food, added sugar that is, but it seems that even more "cultured" forms of German food has this added sweetness. Which reminds me that for a curry soup, there's often fruit, like mango, added in, or oranges added to pumpkin soup.

No wonder Germany is starting to have problems with diabetes and obesity.