My Son's Food Diary

My youngest son's homework this week was to keep 
a food diary for the week. 

If you are interested in how to feed your kids on a paleo diet in the 21st century, or what to feed them for breakfast instead of cereal or toast, then this will make interesting reading.

Check out his blog anyway - I think it's pretty cute. - it kept him busy over the summer.

My kids are part of the reason I like to bake paleo cakes and donuts and waffles and pancakes - I have had 41 years of eating cakes and donuts and waffles and pancakes and while I know they are not the best thing for my kids, I know they feel they are missing out on things their friends have. By making them paleo alternatives, it keeps them on board.

To be honest, I've been really surprised how quickly they adapted to the paleo life and how they are even beginning to think about healthier choices when it is down to them to choose. They were asked to pick a take-away the other day - they are allowed to make their own choices when out of the house or when we eat at a restaurant or have a take-away - and my eldest chose Indian because he figured it was the easiest take-away to eat with paleo choices!

Any way, this is what I fed my kids last week - I hope you find it interesting.

STOP!

Just stumbled across several blogs of women desperate to lose weight and doing ALL the wrong things to try to achieve their goals.

I have something to say about this.

There are some hard and fast facts that need to be acknowledged.

First: its ALL about nutrition.  ALL!

You are never, ever in a million years going to burn enough calories on the cross trainer, treadmill or bike to continue eating as you are and lose weight.  Fact.

Secondly: Get off the cardio.  Now.

I repeat: you are never, ever in a million years going to burn enough calories on the cross trainer, treadmill or bike to continue eating as you are and lose weight.  Fact.

So what do you need to do?

You need to retrain, re-educate and re-boot yourself.  This is SO much easier than it sounds and it never, ever involves dieting, going hungry, feeling guilty or counting points or calories.

You need to take back the control yourself and you do this by:

Taking control of your nutrition.  You cannot continue eating the same things you have always eaten and expect a change.

Getting off the cardio and lifting weights.

You are NEVER going to bulk up as a woman unless you eat A LOT of protein and train hard every day for hours.  Literally.  If you feel you are not getting longer, leaner muscles from doing weights, then you arent lifting heavy enough and you are still eating wrong. Fact.

So

• Eat clean to get lean!
• Get off the cross trainers - they will do you NO favours!
• And pick up some weights!

It really is that simple - 

but if you want more information on this, have a look at September's Special Offer!

WOD

Trouble finding time for exercise? No excuses! Try this for a quick but knackering workout.

You can do this workout without weights or a gym but if you want to up the intensity, you can add weights. If you don't have weights, you can up the intensity by increasing the work time and decreasing the rest time.

All exercises are done for 20 seconds with a 20 second rest between.
Begin by doing three sets of everything, as you get stronger and fitter or if you are already pretty fit, go with 4 or 5 sets of each exercise.

1.    Mountain climbers

2.    Press ups (on your knees if you can't do 20 seconds of proper ones with good form) (up the intensity by doing decline, diamond or stability ball press ups)

3.    Table chin ups

4.    Squats (add weights to up the intensity)

5.    Crunches

Whole body workout in 5 exercise done in around 10-15 minutes!

I reckon anyone can find 10 minutes out of 1440, 

3 times a week!

Shades of Grey

No, not that sort!

You can clean up your nutrition without going to the lengths we have gone to.  If Paleo doesn't float your boat, it's still easy enough to clean up your act by cutting sugar and limiting starchy carbs, especially later on in the day.

Limit anything that has an ingredients list and you're on your way to eating clean!

You also don't have to train every day to get results.  Over the summer holidays, it wasn't possible for me to get to the gym at all and I find it really hard to motivate myself in the garage so my workouts were a little pathetic and definitely half-hearted.  I didn't push myself as hard as I normally do but what I did do was still heavy (heavy for me!).

However, after 6 weeks of having done very little in the gym, I had lost no muscle tone and could do more chin ups than I could at the beginning of the summer!

Of course, it depends entirely on what your goals are and where you are starting from but it certainly doesn't take every day pounding the streets or hitting the gym to get good muscle tone.

The most important thing is nutrition.  

If you eat clean, you're going to look lean.  

Simple as that.  Sure, lifting weights is going to make that easier - you'll have a higher muscle to fat ratio which will burn calories so much more easily than a high fat to muscle ratio and it will tone those muscles giving you definition but you aren't going to see the results of your work until you cut your body fat percentage, which you are only going to do with nutrition.

So while you have to lift heavy and you have to lift regularly, it doesn't have to be every day, which is good news if you find it hard to make time for a workout.  Pick one or two times a week and make the time you can give count!

It's not all or nothing, there are shades of grey between!

Krish xx

It's not just about nutrition!

So I've sorted out our nutrition.  We all sleep well, we don't stay up late.  I'm a sun-lover but make sure we don't burn.  I lift heavy weights; all that's left is to add in a little more play and...cardio.

I'm not a massive fan of cardio.  I find even ten minutes on the cross trainer to be way too much and I do not understand the people who pound away for ages on the treadmill when the sun is shining outside!

I have run.  I ran 10k but I do not like to run.  I like that I am able to run or that I have been for a run but I don't really like the actual running art.  I don't think think it's a particularly natural pass time for a mammal to run for a prolonged period of time.  When I say this, I am generally greeted with - ah, but what about wolves? They run all day!  Well, wolves do jog for around 8-10 hours a day at around 5 mph.  But as they can also reach speeds of around 30-35 mph in short bursts, it is clear that 5mph is pretty slow for a wolf - perhaps the equivalent of a walk to us bipeds...

Any way, I don't like long runs and I have read that running longer than 45 minutes actually increases the release of cortisol which enables the body to conserve fat stores more efficiently.  This is generally counter-productive.

So in order to up my cardio levels without running for prolonged periods or getting on the mind-numbing and ineffective cross trainer, I like to warm up on the rower at the gym - a great all over body workout and alternate my gym workouts with short half hour cross-training-type runs.  These involve gentle jogging interspersed with short sprints, a quick set of pressups or pull ups or jumps up and off a bench as I pass.

So that's me sorted, what about the kids?

Well, we are lucky enough to live in a really beautiful part of the world and so we try to take full advantage of what's on offer around us!

What do you do to add primal to your day?

Having fun on Pirate Granddad's boat!

Splashing with the fish at
Sheffield Park

What do we do when we see stairs?
RUN UP THEM!

Playing 40-40 in Nightingale
Woods

Swimming at Pells Pool in Lewes

Enjoying a paleo snack outside

Hanging like monkeys at Wakehurst place

Making obstacle courses on the field
Next to School

Discovering new walks near Uckfield

Charging about at Wilderness Woods

Having fun in Wilderness Woods

Lifting heavy in the garage

Getting primal in Brighton

Checking out Lewes Castle

Playing by the sea in Brighton

Going for walks in the Ashdown Forest

Or just climbing up the door frame!

Or splashing in puddles!

Why We Chose Paleo

I think that the reason my husband and I chose paleo is not necessarily the same reason a lot of people choose to eat paleo.  So here are the reasons why, personally, I think everyone would benefit from this way of eating.

1       The first reason I was attracted to paleo wasn't because the paleo advocates allege our ancestors didn't eat grains.  From what I can gather, it is a hard task to deduce exactly what Paleolithic man did and didn't eat.   This, to me is irrelevant.  My attraction to paleo is because I like the avoidance of all things processed.  It appeals to me that the food we eat has had as little done to it as possible.  That's it.

If you stick to meat, fish, eggs, vegetables, fruit, nuts and seeds, there is nothing in that list that is going to mess with you or make you fat.  It's all undeniably good stuff!  And it stops me having to think about it.

I'm not a big fan of cooking.  Actually, I'm not a big fan of thinking about cooking.  I'm the sort of person who looks in the fridge and knows there's a meal there but cannot for the life of me come up with one.  By limiting my choices so much, it's actually made meal times a lot easier to plan!

2       The second reason for my attraction to paleo is the removal of sugar from the list of acceptable foods.  I have always thought sugar should be avoided, ever since my children were babies. Mainly from my eldest son's clear hyper reaction to sugar and subsequent lows. I have always tended to choose foods for them that were low in sugar.  It is clear to me that sugar is the biggest reason people are overweight and feel lethargic.  It is hidden in so many processed foods that you wouldn't expect - cooked chicken breasts, cereals you would add sugar to, pasta sauces, pizza toppings, low fat yoghurts and so many of the foods you imagine to be health foods!  By limiting our food to meat, fish, eggs, vegetables, fruit, seeds and nuts we avoid all added sugar!  We still have some fruit and we sweeten some things with honey but these sugars don't give you the same sudden blood glucose spikes that processed sugars do and they aren't mixed with the dreaded trans fats that processed sugars tend to be.

3       The third reason I like paleo is the lack of starchy carbohydrates.  It's nothing to do with our ancestors not eating grains and our bodies not being able to digest it properly; this may or may not be true but my reason for being happy to give up grains and other starchy carbs like potatoes and rice is that I find it really helps control my blood glucose levels.  I know this to be true because I feel, think and behave differently without starchy carbs.

I no longer crave sugary foods.  I no longer crave bread, pastry, cakes or pasta and I don't get the roller coaster of sugar highs and lows that I used to.  Since cutting starchy carbs, I no longer have the sorts of meltdowns at my kids that make me worry social services were listening!  I can also cope with feeling slightly hungry much better than I did before.  Being hungry now, between meals for example doesn't give me that panicky feelings it used to and I don't get half as grouchy as I used to.  Don't get me wrong, II'm far from a perfect mother; I still yell at my kids - just not as much and not to the same extent as I used to.  I so wish I had discovered this way of eating when they were younger - it would have saved a lot of guilt and a lot of tears - theirs and mine!

I don't get sleepy around 2 o'clock like I used to.  getting out of bed in the mornings is less of a chore and I don't feel so tired in the evenings as I used to.

And it isn't just me!  My kids are better on it.  They are less grouchy in the mornings than they used to be and they have adjusted to the paleo way really well.  My daughter recently went to a birthday party and ate loads of junk.  She came home from the party feeling sick.  My friend's reaction to this was to wonder what I was doing to my kids that they couldn't eat 'normal' food any more without feeling sick.  My reaction to her was: what is in these 'normal' foods that makes my kids feel sick!

Byron Skinny Burger with avocado

After a recent meal out at Byron Burgers in Covent Garden (highly recommended as you can eat paleo there!) my kids had a milkshake and burger buns - the agreement is they choose what to eat out of the home and I choose what they eat in the home - and after the meal, they were rolling around on the benches, half asleep after a sugar rush from the milkshake and carbs and the following insulin-induced crash!

I am eternally thankful to my own mother for bringing me up without any food hang-ups and I am conscious of doing the same for my own kids.  So we talk about what we are eating and why a lot and we let them decide what they eat when we are out so that they still have some control.  I don't want them to leave home and go mental with McDonalds and sweets so they aren't banned, we just don't have them in the house or for their packed lunches.  My youngest two do very well at self-regulating - my eldest needs a little more guidance and discussion over how he makes his choices but we do discuss this and he is free to make his own choices.

Coconut cream instead of yoghurt

4       I am also happy to have given up dairy.  I think I'm quite in tune with my body.  I'm one of those people who makes adjustments based on what I ate at my last meal or snack without really thinking.  I tend to eat the foods I crave as the foods I crave are rarely junk, especially after giving up the junk!  And I have never liked cheese.  I have never liked milk.  I ate a lot of cottage cheese after we began getting fit and healthy because it is a good source of protein but I never liked it.  I at a lot of Greek yoghurt as well for the protein and healthy fat.  The only thing that made it nice was the fruit I had with it.  So I am glad to be finally listening to my body and giving that up and I think it may be what has made the biggest difference to how good I feel!

5       The final reason for loving the paleo way is that it isn't just about what you eat; it's about how you approach life; it's about getting out more, exercising and having fun.  It's about doing the best you can with what you're given in order to enjoy what's available - after all, we only have one life!  It's so extraordinary that any of us are here at all, I want to make the very best of it I can!

So I have no idea what our ancestors ate, I just know how well I feel, how much energy I have and how clearly I can think in comparison to 18 months ago and I know that by cutting all the crap from my family's nutrition, I cannot possibly be doing anything but good for them!  This is why I love paleo!



Krish x