Get ready to buy lots of Paleo cookbooks!

So, you made the switch to paleo. You’ve replaced your old cookbooks with great new ones like Practical Paleo and Make it Paleo and cleaned out the pantry. You’ve read all the books, and you know you’d win any argument with a naysayer, based on your newly found knowledge. Bye bye, SAD (Standard American Diet), Hello, health and longevity! In your dreams you’ve already written your success story for publication on Paleo Lifestyle Magazine or Mark’s Daily Apple, of course with great Before and After pictures attached. And yes, secretly you know you may annoy some of your friends and family with all the great information on why paleo is the way to go, and why you will live longer than them.

Eating a paleo “diet” (let’s call it lifestyle from here on out, shall we?) should be easy enough, right? You simply stop eating all grains, legumes, and refined sugar and stick with meats, vegetables, fruits, and nuts and seeds. By now it is basic knowledge that the center aisles of the grocery store carry highly advertised, colorful “health foods”, while vegetables and meats quietly sit on their shelves in the corner. You also know, that the little stickers on your apples and tomatoes reveal whether they were raised conventionally or are organic (anything that starts with a 9 is organic). But there is so much more to know and to remember after you make the switch. Yes, in theory, going “back to the roots” is easy enough, but how exactly do you survive in a largely non-paleo environment? Where do you shop? How much time can you afford to spend in the kitchen? And how can you get your family to take over some of the responsibility? What do you do when you have to travel, go to a party, eat at a restaurant? Suddenly, you are entirely overwhelmed with the task at hand and, quite frankly, a little bit annoyed. So, let’s cover the basics right here in this article.

Where do you shop?

Get ready for lots of coconut oil!

How do you afford this lifestyle, when all the foods you are used to are frowned upon, and you should stick with grassfed meat and organic produce? This stuff is expensive after all. First off, start buying in bulk if you can. Places like US Wellness Meats and Tropical Traditions offer discounts and free shipping pretty much all the time. For things like blanched almond flour, check out Honeyville for their discounts on the 25lbs bags. Can’t use it all up yourself? Freeze it or share with a friend. If you have the possibility, buy a share of a cow or pig and freeze them.

For fruits and vegetables Costco is a great place to shop. Costco is continuously adding more organic produce, and I’ve even seen some grassfed meat there on occasion. Be aware of what is there, and if you can, load up and what you can. It will save you money in the long run, even if you end up spending more today. Other great places for organic food products are Trader Joe’s and Whole Foods. For spices, herbs, and teas, check out Mountain Rose Herbs, and if you’re into culturing your own foods, visit Cultures for Health for all your culturing needs. And of course, don’t forget your local farmers’ market. You’ll feel great about supporting your local farms, and you  might even run into a farmer who is willing to sell you some good quality meat for a good price.

How can I cut my time in the kitchen?

You don’t have to be in the kitchen forever to make great meals like this!

Going paleo means you will stop buying convenience foods at the grocery stores. Gone are the days when you grabbed that box of cookies, the ready to cook fish sticks and pizza. You’ve read the labels and are appalled at the list of difficult to pronounce ingredients. From now on you’re doing it yourself. And quickly you realize you’re spending about three times as much time in the kitchen every week. Cooking every meal, preparing every snack, it can be a daunting task. But it doesn’t have to, if you follow this list of simple instructions.

• Always shop with a shopping list, and buy everything you need for the whole week, and try to shop on the same day every week. It will create a routine, and we all are creatures of habit.
• After your shopping trip, plan out your meals for the week, then chop vegetables and keep them in airtight containers in the fridge. While busy on your vegetable, you can toss some chicken or burgers on the stove or grill and precook them for lunches throughout the week. Do the same for hard boiled eggs.
• Use one day a week to prepare and bake paleo snacks. You can bake muffins, brownies, granola bars, all in a row, usually at around the same temperature. If you double up a recipe, you can freeze some of the snacks and keep the other half out for eating.
• If you are really super organized, plan out lunches for work or school and have them ready to go for the week as well.
• Don’t have time for cooking during the week? Make Sunday your cooking day. You can cook seven meals, freeze or chill them, and eat when ready.
• Use that slow cooker! Toss in all ingredients in the morning, cook for 8 to 10 hours, done!
• Cook with leftovers in mind. If you cook too much, you’ll be able to enjoy your leftovers for breakfast or lunch the next day.

How do I get my family involved?

If you have been the person in charge of cooking, you’ll want to enlist your family for help. Most kids love to help cooking, some even like to take over an entire meal. They like it even better when they get to have a say during meal planning. Check out your paleo cookbooks or recipe sharing websites like FastPaleo.com for thousands of great recipes, or let them browse on their own and bookmark their favorites. You’ll be happy because all recipes are paleo approved, and they’ll realize that paleo is not going to kill them after all. Just watch out for those treats. Don’t want to let those get out of hand. Moderation is key.

Eat together! This may seem like a no-brainer to some, but the truth is, the art of enjoying a meal together as a family is no longer performed in many American households. Too much to do, too little time, cellphones and tablets everywhere. Can you make time for your family to have just one meal together every day, or even every other day? Enjoying a meal, talking about it, discussing concerns of each family member will make all the difference!

What to eat at your best friend’s party?

If it’s not a potluck that you can bring a paleo treat to, there are a couple of things you can do. First of all, eat at home before leaving for the party. You’ll be less hungry and less tempted to go for non-paleo treats. Secondly, unless you are a regular party-goer, why not make this one party your non-paleo day, if you can stomach it? Have that piece of cake, the potato chips, and the cocktail, then go home and get back on track. The purpose of paleo is to live a healthy life most of the time. It does not mean, you have to visualize a STOP sign on every non-paleo food.

If you don’t want to treat yourself, then don’t. I have yet to meet a group of people who is focused on what I eat during a party. People are way too busy with their own food to notice that you’re sticking with carrots and dip.

I’m traveling! What do I eat?

Going on a long trip to Europe, or just on a long trip in the car and just don’t know what to eat? This is easy! Remember earlier in the article, I recommended precooking? It comes in handy when you have to leave. Precooked and precut foods are excellent snacks for on the road or in the air. Great snacks for on the road include:

beef jerky, hard boiled eggs, precooked chicken, burgers, avocados, carrots, celery, almond butter, dried fruit, homemade cookies, trail mix, granola bars, almond butter, jars of apple sauce… The list is endless, and you will never have to touch any convenience food from the gas station or the yummy airplane food.

Eating out… can I still do it?

Well, yes, you can. Again, no need to visualize that STOP sign! But if you want to stick as closely to paleo as possible, you can go out prepared. Go for Thai food… There are usually gluten free options available. Before leaving for a restaurant, see if they have a menu online, check it for gluten free menu items. Call ahead and ask if they carry a gluten free menu. And if you really feel like it, ask your server for their book of ingredients. Trust me, they all have them. Make it very clear that you have to stay gluten free, dairy free. Most servers are very aware of people’s health issues and will be happy to work with you in any way they can. Worst case scenario, you find yourself in a dive in Podunk, Timbuktu, order a burger without the bun, sub vegetables for fries, and enjoy! Remember to live a little now and then!

Be happy!

Remember, with all of this information, to be happy. Your health and wellness depend on so much more than just your diet. Stressing out over every meal and every snack will ultimately lead to resentment on your part and on the part of your family, too. You don’t have to cook elaborate meals every day. With a little bit of planning, you will be able to enjoy this lifestyle to the fullest! And so will the people around you.  

Her blog and writing are her passion, and she loves to be a part of the growing paleo movement.

I was in a physical therapy session (for therapy not related to endurance sports) and I overheard the conversations of multiple other patients with the same story: “I got injured training for the upcoming half-marathon. I was running 8 miles a day before the injury happened.” It’s a common story in the endurance community. Endurance athletes (EA’s) think that if X is good, X+Y must be better. They train themselves into injury, weight gain and sometimes, complete exhaustion. Even I pay for the sins of my former 6-day a week running habit, and I was running a modest 3 miles a day.

The popularity of marathon and triathlon is currently increasing annually and most, if not all, of the increase is due to participation of non-elite athletes. There is a way to train in a safer, less time-consuming manner for both marathon and triathlon. AND, you can do these events while sticking to your Paleo diet. This works well for challenging distances such as half-marathons and Olympic triathlons.

NOTE: If you are going to pursue a full marathon, Ironman, Half-IM, or any other endurance event that will last significantly beyond 2 hours, you might ask yourself why before committing. These types of events require a different level of commitment and a health sacrifice that I believe should be reserved for elite athletes.

In Part I of my endurance training series, I’ll discuss how to train.

• Plan ahead. Give yourself a minimum of 8 to 12 weeks to train. You might need a swim lesson, a bike set-up or time to break in new running shoes.
• If you happen to be the self-motivated type, train alone or break away from the group. Not only are most EA’s following a “traditional” style of training, you won’t make any progress if you are keeping pace with someone slower than you.
• Focus on your weaknesses. For most multi-sport EA’s, swimming is the biggest weakness. If you are limited on time, you should prioritize by training your weakness every week. 
• Warm up and do mobility. Don’t forget to warm-up pre-workout and stretch / do mobility after workouts. A good tip is this: the shorter the workout, the longer the warm-up needed.
• There is NO NEED to double up on workouts in one day. Unless you are going to the Crossfit Games, there is no need to do Crossfit and endurance training in the same day. Plan your endurance workouts around your other activities and prioritize in order of importance when needed. If you are doing 2 workouts a day, you are missing the point of this type of training. Note for multi-sport EA’s: You can do the occasional brick during the training period only if time allows. A brick gets EA’s acclimated to combining at least 2 of the events in a triathlon. I would suggest keeping the brick short. There is no need to do a full race during training.
• Train in your race environment as much as possible. An open water swim is scary and far more challenging than a pool swim, especially if there’s a current. Biking or running hills is harder than biking or running flat road. Weather extremes (hot, cold, rain) can make for a miserable day.
• Don’t build or follow a training plan around junk miles. I’m a big fan of shorter distance, intense interval programs like Crossfit Endurance. Do a time trial at the beginning of your training period (e.g., 5k or 800m swim) and focus the rest of your training time on intervals of varying length and intensity (see below for examples of these). You’ll get to see the result of your “no-junk-miles” training when you get to the race.
• When doing intervals, the key is REST! This means rest between sets and rest between workouts. You should NOT be working at a max effort every day. Part of the reasons you are doing intervals is to avoid injury.

Here are a few examples of intervals to work into your training:

Short intervals – These are the most intense intervals, working anaerobically and will leave you wiped out after just a short distance or a little bit of time. Train these NO MORE than 1 – 2 times a week (not on consecutive days):

• Tabata run or swim (20 seconds effort, 10 seconds rest x 8 rounds)
• 50m run or swim, rest the time it took to complete x as many rounds as possible until form and/or pace can not be sustained
• ½ mile sprint on bike, 1 mile easy pedaling x 6 – 8

Long intervals – These are trained aerobically, generally at 80% intensity, which is faster than race pace. Train these 3 – 5 days a week:

• 200m run or swim, rest the time it took to complete x 5 – 10 rounds
• 400m run or swim, rest HALF the time it took to complete x 4 – 8
• Run 1 mile, rest 4 minutes, run 800m, rest 3 minutes, run 400m, rest 2 minutes, run 200m
• 5k run, 5 minutes of running, 2 minutes of walking until you have covered the total distance
• Bike up a decent grade hill, coast down hill x 8 (depending on hill size, this could fall under a short interval)

An EA with a solid endurance base can follow a schedule of 2 – 3 workouts per week. New EA’s needing to build a base should try to do 2 workouts per week in their weakness and at least 1 workout per week in the other disciplines.

Just about anything goes with intervals, so be creative in your design, or check out these resources for more interval workout ideas:

• www.crossfitendurance.com
• www.usatriathlon.org (under training)

Kelly Lamb is a Crossfit Level 1 coach and American Council on Fitness certified personal trainer. Kelly also holds certifications in Crossfit Endurance, Crossfit Kettlebell and Spinning.  You can find Kelly at www.fitnesskelly.com and her Paleo recipe website at www.cookingkelly.com.

Could you please give a little background for people who might be unfamiliar with your story?

I started out in the restaurant business, owning small cafes in Seattle. Little by little I became disilliusioned with the food I could find and decided to try growing food myself.

It seems much of your professional life has centered around food. What do you think brought you down this path?

I grew up without a lot of great food, so I can’t say that it came from my family. If anything it was a reaction to the poor quality, processed food of the 1970s.

Are you an anomaly or is it really possible for an average person to have a successful farm that doesn’t require hundreds or thousands of acres?

That is a challenging question. By successful I believe you mean financially successful. Small farms are financially very difficult. There is very little economies of scale and the price of land near cities is extremely high.

I would say that homestead farms — where one or both ‘farmers’ has a paying job as well and the goal is just to feed the family — those are very possible. I have huge hope for many more homestead farms.

Can someone do this on an even smaller scale, say, in their quarter-acre back yard?

I think on a small city lot anyone can grow part of their food and enjoy it tremendously. Livestock are difficult but vegetables and perhaps chickens for sure.

What one piece of advice would you give to someone who wants to follow in your footsteps?

I would say that avoiding debt if it is at all possible is the best financial advice for starting a small farm. Easier said than done, however.

For other advice I would recommend trying all kinds of activities: beekeeping, chickens, goats, cows, flowers and so on. Then over time — sometimes a very short time — you will
find what suits you the best and what suits your land the best. Everyone need to pair down to just one or two specialties. That process is exciting and unpredictable.

What is the best way for us non-farmers to support our small, local farms and farmers?

The easiest way to support small farms is simply to buy local products, especially at the local farmers markets. In addition I would say, learn to appreciate that the higher price is the result of higher costs.

It is challenging to grow local, high quality food and then have people complain about the price. We are all just trying to make a living. The price is fair for a high quality healthy product. Enjoy it!

(Disclosure: This post contains links to an affiliate program, for which I receive a few cents if you make purchases.  I am disclosing this in accordance with the FTC’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”)

Welcome to our weekly column of Paleo Recipes that will keep you on the right track while tapping into your culinary skills to create dishes that even the non-paleo folks in your life will crave!

Balsamic Berries

Check out this amazing recipe from Kristen Silverman of It’s A Lifestyle!

Ingredients:

• 1/3 cup balsamic vinegar
• 2 Tbsp honey
• 3 pints berries of choice
• 1 bay leaf
• Pinch of sea salt

Make:

1. In a pot, add balsamic vinegar, honey, bay leaf, and salt and bring to a boil.
2. Remove from heat, discard the bay leaf, and let the mixture rest.
3. Clean and cut your berries of choice into smaller pieces.
4. Place berries into a bowl and drizzle with syrup.
5. Toss around gently and plate.