Primal eating?

[theriviera]

Over the weekend I read this book:
http://www.amazon.com/Primal-Blueprint-Reprogram-effortless-boundless/dp/0982207786/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1328556045&sr=8-1

I think I get the gist - no grains, lots of protein, healthy fats, and veggies.

My questions are:

Who here follows this way of eating?
What do you eat for breakfast? I like eggs but think I would get sick of them every day.
What do you snack on?
Do you find it adaptable when you are out to eat or at someone's house?
Are there any tips to "succeed" with this way of eating? Any pitfalls that I should watch out for?


I have about 10 lbs to lose and I want to commit to this fully for at least the next 30 days before we go on vacation.

thanks!

[rin]

I don't follow this, but have a couple of friends who do. From what I can tell, for breakfast they seem to do a lot of eggs, sausages, and smoothies.

Snacks seem to involve lots of nuts, fruit, jerky, and hardboiled eggs.

One of my friends seems to give herself a break from it when she eats out/over at someone's house, since I know she's been on it for a while but she'll often eat things that aren't on the diet when she's at a restaurant or a party. Not sure if that's because she just found it too hard to follow out & about, or if she likes having the break, or why exactly though.

HTH! Sorry I can't give any actual BTDT but figured I'd at least share what I did know.

[echoesofspring]

We've been doing this somewhat halfheartedly for a while, and even cooked a recipe from the blog (marks daily apple) last night. But DH just finished reading Gary Taubes book "Why we(you?) get fat", it's an interesting read from he's told me, and we've committed to each other to do it more seriously for the next 30 days or so. DH is doing a diet Taubes recommends, but it's essentially primal. We've done other low carbs diets before, mostly SB, but after reading Taubes book DH wants to do an as close to no carbs as he can. I'm not sure that's all that possible, but I'll support him if it will make him healthier, and I'm fed up with the extra weight I'm carrying around.

So breakfast, lazy breakfast for me is scrambled or hard boiled eggs and two clementines. DH skips the clementines. If we've been to costco recently and picked up some turkey sausages we might have a couple of those. Before our blender broke DH would sometimes make smoothies. Last week I made a egg casserole of turkey sausage, swiss chard and spinach and a bit of ricotta, it made the mornings quick.

Snacks are nuts and fruit, but not too much of either. I think you can do dairy, we do a cheese stick or two. V8 juice. Baby carrots. Sliced up red pepers, or celery.Plain greek yogurt with fruit, we've just started buying the full fat version for DS, and it's intense, it's like eating sour cream, you seriously only need a couple tablespoons.

As far as going out, my plan of attack is usually to load of up on veggies, and then some protein. But we do splurge on occasion, although I get the sense that DH is less likely to do that now.

Having done low carb on and off for a while here's what I can tell you from my experience:

- when you first start you will feel horrible, especially if you've been eating a lot of carbs. They call this the carb flu, I had it last week and it sucked. I feel so hungry and low energy even though I feel like I've eaten a ton of calories. Don't worry about the calories, just stick with the foods and it will get better. I ate much much less on Sunday and today and feel much, much better. Usually I would be really hungry at this point and I'm just a little hungry, not really bothered by it.

- For me, this way of eating is only successful if I plan ahead, especially prepping lunch and snacks. I spend $$$ at the grocery store yesterday in the produce department. Prepped lunch for the week (grilled a bunch of stuff) and dinner for tonight last night, sliced up peppers,etc. I would have done another breakfast casserole but I ran out of time. If I don't prep I get hungry and I can't deal and I end up eating too many nuts or cheese sticks and not feeling well, and then I fall off the diet with something like a brownie, etc. Even though these diets claim it's the sugars not the fats that will get you healthwise, I still am not fond of overdoing it on the meat, etc. So I'm more successful if eating veggies is a easy as eating already cooked meat. I think about it much the same way I did when I briefly did WW, have lots and lots of 0 point foods. HTH

[echoesofspring]

one thing I forgot the mention is to make sure each meal has a little bit of fat in it. This philosophy isn't unique to the primal dieters, but I think they emphasize it more b/c of their anti nonfat/lowfat products stance.

Here's a couple links I should put in above:

Gary Taubes (NYT science writer)
http://garytaubes.com

Primal blog:
http://www.marksdailyapple.com

[theriviera]

Thanks for all of the detailed info!!!

You are right, I feel like I have the carb "flu" today!! great way of putting it.

Breakfast:
2 cups of coffee (each with 1/2 tsp of sugar and hazelnut creamer...know i need to cut this)
1/2 banana
3 scrambled eggs with salsa (homemade)

Snack:
Clementine
Apple
trail mix (trader joe's omega 3)

Lunch:
salad with mixed greens, broccoli, mushrooms, chicken, a few kidney beans, red bell pepper, cucumber, a bit of cheddar, balsamic vinegar, olive oil

lots of water

is there any interest in doing a support for primal eaters thread? maybe we can make this one into it.

[theriviera]

this looks really good:

http://theprimaljunkfoodie.blogspot.com/2011/09/bruschetta-chicken.html

[echoesofspring]

http://theprimaljunkfoodie.blogspot....a-chicken.html

Yum! I did a slow cooker recipe today for short ribs, but I didn't realize until this evening that I was actually making a 'sauce' recipe. I pulled the ribs out instead of shredding them into the sauce and we poured the sauce over braised cauliflower. It was really good but I was just wondering what I was going to do with the rest of the sauce. DH gets sooooo tired of chik breast, but I bet he would enjoy this!


is there any interest in doing a support for primal eaters thread?

I'd be game - I'm trying to lose about the same amount of weight this month.

It sounds like you had a really good first day! I did pretty good today, although I did have some lentil chips and dark chocolate mid afternoon. I had to work on that, maybe some tea instead or something. But I didn't eat a mid morning snack like I usually do, and I think it caught up with me. But overall the last 2 days I've eaten a lot less food than I usually do, and I'm not nearly as hungry as I was just last week. So I'm optimistic!