So, um, hey guys. It’s been awhile. What may have happened in the intervening year, you ask? Well, several things. I moved and had a baby, for starters. I also completely abandoned paleo for multiple reasons, including morning sickness, stress, and burnout on food in general. I really wasn’t doing well on paleo near the end of it (around the time I wrote the shrimpy new year post back in Jan 2010) and the time off this past year has given me space to sit back and think about why it wasn’t working for me and how I think I can improve it.
In short, I was “faileo” dieting. It had become about what I was excluding instead of what I was including and after 4 years of that my health was suffering. I’ve made myself a list of things that I think will vastly improve my version of the paleo diet, which I’ll share with y’all partly in hopes it may help others and partly for my own reference. A lot of the old recipes on this site are probably more faileo than paleo, but I’m gonna leave them all up anyway in case someone finds them useful/tasty/whatever. So here are the guidelines for my new and improved ancient diet (har har):
1. Eat less meat. Shocking. My old recipes you’ll see call for around 1/2 lb per person, and I’ve since found that this is WAY too much protein for me. I feel way better when I slash that in half.
2. Make the meat I eat fattier. Less chicken breast + olive oil, more fatty beef roasts.
3. Make a concerted effort to eat offal, including bones.
4. Make a concerted effort to eat seafood, including shellfish, roe, and seaweed.
5. Eat at least some meat/seafood raw.
6. Choose animal fats over plant fats whenever possible. I may keep butter around…even though it’s dairy I think it’s a better option than olive oil, which I previously used by the bucketful.
7. Eat more carbs, choosing tubers and squashes over fruit.
8. Severely limit nuts/seeds.
9. Add in herbal infusions like the nettle infusion that I posted about a million years ago and never kept up with. Tons of nutrients in that stuff.
10. Add in some fermented foods.
11. No “paleo” baked goods.
So I’ll be back in January with recipes and pictures just like before. Anything in particular that people would like to see?
SOURCE: Caveman Food – Read entire story here.
