Introduction to the Paleo lifestyle

Everything in this blog is a summary of my views, so i’ll define what should be standard nomenclature through my view-tinted glasses. My idea of a paleo lifestyle is living a life that closely replicates what we may assume was the norm for human beings before the advent of agriculture. A quick disclaimer, a lot of my working knowledge of this lifestyle comes from Mark Sisson and Chris Kresser.

For those of you who have heard about a paleo lifestyle but being in India, find it difficult to adopt, I hope this blog offers solutions to the most common pitfalls we as Indians encounter when making this transition.

Since this blog is not aimed at explaining what a paleo lifestyle is, or giving step by step guidelines on how these work, i strongly recommend picking up Mark Sisson’s book ‘The Primal Blueprint’, or for those more interested in ‘window’-shopping a read of his blog http://www.marksdailyapple.com should suffice.

Personally, how i have gone about this is use Mark’s philosophies as the skeleton/framework  for my lifestyle over which I’ve tacked diet advice from Chris Kresser, strength training advice from Mark Rippentoe and Dr. Doug McGuff, and a lot of trial and error on my part. It’s a mostly uphill ride, but the path is lovely, and the view from the top – life changing.

Fruit Fallacies

An apple a day may well keep the doctor away, if you ensure that the one apple accounts for your entire carbohydrate consumption that day. However, one has to remember that typically, fruit is 1) seasonal, and 2) evolutionarily speaking, not very abundant. 

Fruit is something a lot of people getting into the Paleo lifestyle misintepret as being ‘real’ food and in line with most paleo tenets. Don’t even get me started on the saturated fat-phobes, who tuck into a bowlful of mixed fruit, convincing themselves they’re having a healthy snack, while their waistlines increase and metabolic &  gastric processes get progressively messed up.

Two reasons why this thinking does not tie in with a paleo viewpoint. Fruit is rich in fructose and sugars, so it should seem intuitive to avoid these (Read up on fructose in any paleo blog, or listen to Doug McGuff speak on this).  Many people however, assume fruits are healthy as they’re packed with essential minerals, vitamins and trace elements. However, ensuring to eat varied bits of animal protein – bones for soup, liver for minerals, fatty cuts etc,  you could get significantly more nutrients you would in consuming the sugary, carb rich fruit.

The second thing to remember is paleolithic fruits look nothing like today’s cultivated, selectively bred sugar bags called fruit. Also most forms of wildlife would have had access to fruit well in advance of a human forager, so the concept of freely available fruits in a paleolithic scenario is, in my opinion, incorrect.

I would recommend eating seasonal, locally sourced fruit if you absolutely need to have fruit in your diet. Else, stick to fresh meat.

Strength training

If we were to imagine life as a paleolithic hunter-gatherer, we would guess having to move heavy objects featured prominently in the lifestyle. Turning over stones and logs to get to the fauna underneath, or picking up stones overhead to threaten, ward off adversaries. There’s more, Carrying a fresh kill or a scavenged carcass to safety, also climbing a tree to get to food, or at worst avoid becoming food, numerous possibilities that we needn’t envision in our relatively sheltered lives in a metro. Strength training is key to a paleo lifestyle.

Now there are two things to note – such strength training must have been infrequent, and possibly intense. And I’m sure none of it involved jogging at a constant pace. I can imagine a mad dash to escape predators or catch prey. So that pretty much rules out cardio in a paleolithic lifestyle, a fact I’m sure very few people will complain about. In my opinion, cardio is for rodents. In cages.

How strength training works is you perform exercises that target muscle groups, not just individual muscle – for example, favour compound movements such as barbell squats, shoulder and bench presses, pull ups and chin ups, even the standard push-up. The trick is to work out at an intensity that creates an adaptive response in your body, which ensures you get stronger every time. Two differing but equally effective techniques can be found in Mark Rippetoe’s ‘Starting Strength’ series, and Doug McGuff’s Body by science. I would recommend either of these books over any trainer at most of the gyms here. I work out at Golds, and I’m personally more comfortable with the instructions I’ve got in these books than with the trainers there.

Ideally you should pick both these up, and create a schedule that works best for you. My workout incorporates a bit of Doug McGuff’s technique over a primarily starting strength workout. Personally, i feel Starting Strength has more pure paleo elements in it. It’s also far harder to follow, and i really recommend you get Mark Rippetoe’s training videos as well.

My workouts are once a week, or maybe twice, depends on my recovery period of the response. Not more than an hour each session, I always perform squats and vary the upper body exercises each session. Rather than bulk up, I’ve gained only two kilos since i began, and funnily enough, dropped two inches around the waist. For those who are interested in the science behind the workouts, Dr, Doug McGuff is the person to go to. He clearly explains why a paleo diet is the one that makes the most sense metabolically.

While these two workouts may seem incompatible, I don’t think they are, as I’ve found a way to bring them together, and with a little more research, I’m sure you can too.

And in case you’re still leery of lifting weights, you can make do entirely with body-weight exercises – Push-ups (numerous variations), free squats (repeated to failure), lunges, pull ups and planks. Oh and it’s essential you sprint, at least once a week – a flat out 20 – 30 second sprint, like if you didn’t – you would get eaten.

Cooking oils

Well, i would begin by suggesting you clear your kitchen of all grain/seed based oils. Why? Since they’re potentially harmful, and a far poorer substitute for cooking or deep frying than my current choices – Animal/poultry fat, Ghee, butter and my all-time favourite, coconut oil. Why would I choose such shocking alternatives to ‘good’ sunflower or canola oil? Well, while i’m convinced, I doubt I can explain it as well as Chris Kresser would, so for the science and nutrition behind these choices, you can find all you need on chriskresser.com.

With coconut oil, i’ve stuck to parachute brand, the one that says ‘pure cocnut oil’ (make sure you don’t use the hair oil derivatives). I’ve seen a lot of positive and negative comments on this brand on the web, and still haven’t made up my mind about this brand. I looked up alternatives and found some extremely expensive versions in the more upmarket retail outlets, which i don’t believe are worth it. There seems to be a more acceptable brand – meritVCO, but the ordering process on the net is a bit fiddly and i’ve not gotten down to purchase this yet. With coconut oil, i eat a few spoonfuls every day, in addition to cooking most dishes with this. Fantastic for south indian and Indian western coast cuisine, coconut oil also provides interesting flavours when used in a North Indian as well as Western context. I’ll eventually post recipes that should help you get started with this.

Ghee and butter – it’s simple. As much as possible I try and get it sourced from a local dairy and avoid the pasteurized and processed versions typically found in most supermarket shelves. If you don’t have ready access to local dairies and farms, don’t be afraid to buy in bulk. Homemade butter has lasted a month and more in the refrigerator without spoiling. Switch to ghee for most of your cooking if the smell of coconut oil doesn’t agree with you.

Next comes animal and poultry fat. In the case of poultry i render oil from chicken fat and skin, but i’m not sure this is always the healthiest (it ranks way up there in the taste bracket, though). I’ve heard duck fat is a very good frying /cooking medium, but i haven’t been able to source it yet. Pork fat is delicious, and i usually get this as a byproduct of frying bacon. If there’s not much, then i’ll probably fry eggs in the remaining oil. If a lot of fat renders, i typically store this to use in later cooking.

Finally, beef fat. You can buy this directly from a butcher, and render it to get the fat. When cool though, this turns into the consistency of granular butter. I’ve deep fried sweet potatoes in this , and they taste absolutely divine. However, unless you blot the fried items well, the fat eventually turns greasy on the particular food item, and gets to the ‘roof-of-the-mouth sticking’ consistency.

To summarize, i would recommend coconut oil and ghee for daily use, and save animal fats for deep frying.

Moving constantly

A key tenet of paleo living is the emphasis on constant low intensity activity. This should be one of the easiest aspects of the lifestyle to incorporate, yet a vast majority don’t. We have compartmentalized activitiy, forcing them  into strict time-frames. A clear example is the person who walks for an hour every morning, and then takes a rickshaw or a car right up to their workplace, or while shopping, likely to flag a taxi or rick to get from one street to another. Even if we work in a corporate environment, we can find ways to incorporate a level of constant activity in our schedules. I avoid sitting in a chair for more than half an hour at a time. And i get up, prowl about a bit for five  minutes or so, then get back to my workstation. I don’t think supervisors or managers are that uptight that they would score this against you.

Another thing you could try is lunch – these days most of us work in corporate parks, housing a dozen institutes in campuses that span acres, and these are fantastic places for a walk. Get your lunch mates to join you for a stroll sometime in the afternoon, it’s usually okay to take an hour or so for lunch, so don’t waste it dawdling over food at your canteen or workstations. Unless you work next to an arterial road, you should pretty much be able to walk anywhere in most cities in India, and yes that includes Mumbai.

Here’s something that i do during my strolls in the morning (at my residence, it’s far easier to indulge in this particular activity), I grab a tennis-cricket ball, for those of you who may not know what this is, it’s a harder version of a tennis ball. As I walk, I bounce it off the terrain, making short sprints to catch it, or throwing it up real high and catch it. One, it breaks the monotony of a walk (I never walk with music, in my opinion it’s like blindfolding yourself and walking), and two, it gives my brain something a lot more meaningful to do than waste time in meandering thoughts.

There are plenty of ways to make these walks (or periods of low intensity activity) engaging, and you’re only limited by your imagination. Ask a friend along, bring a flying disc, walk/run your dog, etc.  I hope my suggestions help, but ideally you should find something you could customize more adequately to your particular situation.

Oh ah – i strongly recommend investing in a pair of Vibrams or Skele-toes

Meat, lovely red meat

As you probably know – fresh meat is among the key pillars of this lifestyle. I’m not sure the meat we get at our local butcher is grass-fed or grain fed. I know hay forms a large part of livestock feed here, so i’m hoping the meat tends towards the equivalent of grass-fed pastured meat. Red meat can be found in most places save in states where being a non-vegetarian is frowned upon. Oh, incidentally, mutton here is rarely that, it’s typically goat meat.

For those of you who are used to buying meat from the retail outlets, a trip to one of these market stalls can border on the terrifying, however, there is absolutely no comparing meat sourced fresh from a slaughter  and the more convenient, less hideous packaged meats. Goat meat is quite expensive here, averaging Rs. 400 – Rs. 490 a kilo. I typically buy four to five kilos of meat every weekend, separated into five or so packs. The guidelines for buying goat are given below.

The cuts i prefer are the ribs and chest pieces. Loaded with tender fat, these are delicious in my opinion. However, they tend to make gravies and curries oily, so for a liquid curry, I would prefer the more meaty ‘nalli’ or leg pieces. Ribs are ideal for biriyani or if you have the time, a nice grill. The red meat though – consisting of shoulder, shanks, rib, and neck muscles – is packed with flavour and a great deal of fat. While the fat doesn’t worry me, most of our dishes call for a degree of pressure cooking. The problem is, this renders the fat, and typically coats the meat with a form of greasy oil that solidifies if cooled to even room temperature. This coats the roof of the mouth, and can be quite a pain to clear from dishes. I would recommend using this meat trimmed of all external fat in dishes that do not have much oil in them, but a lot of lime and vinegar (think goan cuisine).

Important to any paleo diet, is consumption of organ meat. Before you imagine a failed musician eating his musical instrument, think liver, heart and tongue. It’s highly unlikely you will find these in a retail outlet, but you can easily pick these up at the butchers. Liver cooks quicker than the meat, while the tongue and heart take longer. And finally, shank bones (mutton/goat shops sell it for Rs. 200 a kilo) and/or trotters (paya). Absolutely essential to have these boiled into a rich gelatinous soup with bits of marrow floating around. Have a potful of this over the week, probably as a late evening beverage (a little salt and pepper for flavour of course).

In case why you’re wondering why i haven’t mentioned pork, it’s only because i believe that this meat deserves it’s own post for both positive and negative reasons