Anybody Paleo?

[moremuscle]

Wow - I like the smell in this kitchen -
Thank you very much for keeping this wonderful kitchen open.
There is nothing like hot soup on a cold fall morning!!

I have quit the paleo diet.............

NAH, JUST KIDDING
I don't even consider quitting the diet.
It is literally a life saver for me. I don't know how else to do it anymore. Joanna, you know, I have almost forgotten how weird I am but yes, we are a bit weird, aren't we! The way I look at it is I would much rather be weird and healthy than have my MC symptoms back. No thank you to the latter. Been there, done that.

I have been in Denmark to visit my relatives in September. The boys, Benjamin and Noah, traveled with me. We had a wonderful time there and thoroughly enjoyed seeing something different and being around our Danish family, hearing them speak the language etc. We bought fresh caught flounders from some fisher men right off the boat, took them home and cooked them. The boys loved it. We also bought fresh smoked herring on the harbor where they had a smoke house - the herring was still warm from the smokery when we sat down on a pallet outside and unwrapped and ate it finger food style. To my amazement the boys loved the taste and wanted more - the way they usually react to candy!
Do you think smoked fish is paleo?

I ran a 1/2 Marathon while visiting Denmark - the Hans Christian Andersen 1/2 Marathon for Women on September 17. My sisters and brother, their spouses and kids plus my mother all came to cheer on me. It was a great experience to hear my name called out (pronounced in Danish) as I ran to the finish line.
I was in the middle of a training program for a local 1/2 Marathon while I was in Denmark and felt well enough prepared to take it on. I ran it in 1 hour, 53 minutes and 44 seconds which was a personal record by approximately 8 minutes. I felt very good about that!
On October 14 I ran the Governor's Cup 1/2 Marathon in Columbia, SC - the race we had been training for. My time was 1 hour, 51 minutes, and 6 seconds. I had a great day!! I ran it with many of my training partners and we just made each other go fast............

I have a wonderful time with my running. In fact it is running my life right now (weird again)
I am training for a Full Marathon now. The training is pretty tough and I am now running 50+ miles per week; the last long run we did was Saturday; I ran 23 miles including warm-up and cool-down. The race is on Kiawah Island, SC December 9. I still have time to improve on my pace. My goal is to finish in under 4 hours - that would qualify me to run the Boston Marathon in 2008. I am right on target with my training - I am trying hard to train smart from now on so I wont have to deal with an injury. So far so good!

You may wonder how I eat/drink during my Marathon training.
I have been experimenting a little. Most runners carb load prior to long runs and they also eat lots of refined carbs post-run. I have stayed away from that eating style and stayed true to my paleo diet. The thing is, that I tend to function very well on the paleo diet - my intestines stay quiet my entire body/mind system feels good on the diet. Why mess with something that works?
But after the completion of our 1/2M training the Full M training has taken a turn to even more weekly mileage and even longer weekly long runs and all of that added stress is taking a toll on my body - I have been feeling very tired. So I recently decided to try adding a little more refined carbs to my diet on the day before a long run - I added rice pasta (Tinkyada). I felt very good during the long run the day after and I feel I am recovering well too. In addition I added a little Maple Syrup to my 2/3 water, 1/3 orange juice home made sports drink that I sip during the workout. The drink tasted wonderful and I didn't lack energy for a 23 mile run on that drink. NO trouble with the bowels at all. It is truly amazing to me how well I can run and how well my intestines usually work during these runs. Remember, I am 46 years old and I have never run before - it has only been a little over a year ago since I started running more than 10-15 miles per week. I am completely in awe and I feel like a very very lucky woman - I am very happy!!

I have no reason to abandon the paleo diet - it works wonders for me.
I am only tweeking it a little because training for a marathon is no small task to take on and I feel I need to be smart about my training diet. I need to be able to go to work and take care of other things between my training runs - can't do that if I am too tired or burned out.

When I added Maple Syrup to my drink last week (that was the first time I ever tried it) my thoughts went straight to you guys - you have taught me so much about how to do my diet and been a huge inspiration in terms of trying foods/products that I would otherwise not even had thought of. So thank you for mentioning Maple Syrup in the past - it's a lovely tasting product - and mind you, I don't need much of it to taste the sweetness since I don't otherwise use any sugar.

Do you think Maple Syrup is paleo?

Love,
Karen

[tex]

Hi Karen,

Wow! You're amazing! I'll bet you really impressed your family with your performance in that Half Marathon. You're getting better and better with your running, and you're doing it in such a short amount of time.

To answer your questions: Sure, I don't think there's any question that smoked fish is a paleo food. Smoking, and drying in the sun, were probably the only two ways that the paleo people had to preserve meat, unless they happened to be close to a source of salt.

Maple trees have been growing in Eastern Asia, and North America, for over 5 million years, so even though they probably weren't accessible to most paleo people, (due to location), they were available in parts of the world. Homo Erectus first walked upright about 1.8 million years ago, so the trees were there several million years before then. I would think that there's a good chance that ancient people living in areas where sugar maples grew, eventually figured out how to extract the sap and use it, even if they never figured out how to boil the sap to make syrup, back in those days. The point is, it was there, and it was available, so I would say that maple syrup would qualify as a paleo food, even though it may not be listed in most paleo diets.

The foods that clearly don't qualify as paleo are the ones that didn't exist back in those days, such as wheat, corn, and rice.

It's good to see you back.

Love,
Tex

[harvest_table]

Hi Karen,

I was just thinking about you this weekend as I was watching the tellie coverage of the NYC marathon. Since your DX with MC you certainly have found a diet that has kept your symptoms at bay and improved your quality of life and you have gone on to physically reach for the stars and push your limits, it's incredible.

I'm not running marathons but I must say that my DX forced me to look at my diet ( at 50) for answers which has also greatly improved my quality of life

Joanna, you know, I have almost forgotten how weird I am but yes, we are a bit weird, aren't we! The way I look at it is I would much rather be weird and healthy than have my MC symptoms back. No thank you to the latter. Been there, done that.

Our diet is healthy so I wonder sometimes about our weirdness....I don't know about you or others but I would say I'm not in remission. IOW, I'm comfortable and symptom free in my diet but wish to test myself from time to time with things like small amounts of dairy and organic processed foods which just don't sit well with me. So, I'm often looking over my shoulder after a new food experiement, which in turn makes me sort of paranoid and weird. When I eat whole fresh foods I'm always safe.

I agree with Wayne, smoked fish is okay, and maple syrup or honey is called for as a subsitute for brown sugar in the paleo diet.

Thanks for checking in- great to hear from you.

Love,
Joanna
PS-BE SURE YOU ALL VOTE.

[Polly]

YAY! Karen dropped in!

Great to see you here and to hear your incredibly inspiring story. You are amazing. To think that just a short time ago the MC had forced you to practically stop running all together. And now look at you!! Marathons!
And your times keep improving! I was interested to see how you are learning to modify your diet a bit to be able to get enough fuel to burn on those long runs. If nothing else, we cavedwellers learn to be eclectic and creative about diet.

I am just so proud of you that I could burst! You have definitely left me behind in the dust - I am still just running my 3 miles every other day. But I have never felt better.

I am just about 100% paleo now too, and there is no question that my genes require me to eat that way to be at my best. I agree with Wayne and Joanna that smoked fish and maple sugar/syrup are likely paleo.

Please drop by as much as you can. We sure do miss you. And good luck with the running!

Love,

Polly

[starfire]

Karen, I do believe astounding would not be too much to describe you. It is almost unbelieveable what you have accomplished in such a short period of time.

Love, Shirley