Paleo Snobs

Hi, I’m Viva Violence!.  I will be guest blogging about a 8 week long “Whole Life Challenge” (excessive quotations = read in the voice of Chris Farley) that I’m embarking on with a few of my friends.  I’ve dabbled in the caveman diet before.  You can read about that experience and my background for this challenge here.  Well, what is a “whole life challenge” you ask?  It’s a challenge to create a sustainable healthy lifestyle.  So for diet (note, diet means what you eat.  everyone is on a diet.  I am not restricting calories or trying to lose weight), you cut out all grains, soy, dairy, processed food, added sugar and alcohol.  For lifestyle, you exercise at least 10 minutes a day (includes active recovery for rest days), stretch/roll/mobility for at least 10 minutes a day, and take fish oil (to try to bring your Omega6:Omega3 fat intake from a normal 20+:1 down to an ideal 3:1).  

Why would you do these things?  Well, the basic answer for nutrition is that you want to eliminate the foods that are most likely to cause an allergic reaction in your body.  Other health benefits include but are not limited to: clearer skin, steady insulin and other hormone levels, lose fat, promote bone health, for a happy healthy brain etc. I think we all know that exercise and stretching are good for us, and take fish oil, again for a happy healthy brain (I have to use mine a lot). Also participate for some friendly competition (there are points awarded, random giveaways etc).
Okay, but personally why would I do this?  Two things really.  I want to run an infamous ½ marathon, pier to peak, which routes 13.1 miles from the ocean to the top of a mountain. Yes, I want to run this, and I want to do it in less than 2.5 hours (yeah, I know that’s slow for a half marathon, but did I mention the 4000 ft elevation gain?) and I want to do this run while sporting an outfit and smile like Michelle Jenneke (if you know me, you know looking good is important).

I expect a few hardships along the way:

1. I’m defending my dissertation.  This will be a nutrition cheat day.  Remember, the challenge is about sustainability, not perfection.
2. BFF visit
3. a wedding and a baby party
4. a potential move (life changing event, not like down the street or something)
5. one or three weeks of eating in the dining commons with summer interns.

Resources to make it through:

1. My WLC cohort
2. weekly potluck dinners
3. watching the olympics
4. being called fat or any caveman/dinosaur joke you can think of by team heckle.

The challenge is judged by an on your honor point system, measurements and workout performance improvement.  The overall outcome is to make a sustainable healthy life.Stay tuned for next week where I’ll post my pre-challenge pictures and performance scores and give weekly updates on fun recipes and how to cope with being healthy in an unhealthy world.  

PS: I like to know a lot of stuff. I’ve done a bunch of research and have some strong opinions about things related to this. If you have any questions, feel free to message me. vivaviolence@gmail.com

Three-day weekends RULE. I made the trek up to Fresno to see my parents for the weekend. When I pulled off the freeway, I immediately bee-lined for the farmer’s market. Fresno has one of the best farmer’s markets ever. It is the number one agricultural county in America, btw. Totes bragging. My parents met me there and we bought all sorts of things: cherries, tiny sweet strawberries, green tomatoes, cauliflower, Tuscan kale, three kinds of squash, morel mushrooms… I should have taken a picture of our bounty. I’ll get better about that.

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Imagine having a condition that effectively turns you into a teenage boy. Acne, hair in weird places, weight gain, no periods… Who needs a sex change when PCOS exists?

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This is going to be wordy, so you have been forewarned. And emotional. Because talking about this kind of bothers me, but I know its important to talk about. Prepare for a LOT of text.

I spent three years of my life feeling awful. I had joint pain, GERD, IBS, abdominal pain, to name a few. I thought that was totally normal. It all started late in 2009, when I went to a fancy steakhouse for dinner.

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The more I read out in the blogosphere, the more I find that everybody who does paleo does it in a way that suits them the best. At the beginning, this shit is hard…lets be honest with ourselves. Most people can’t quit all of the things right away. Cheese is a simple pleasure, and pizza is a simple pleasure. You know what keeps people sane? Simple pleasures…reassurance that you are still a human.

I love pizza, and I don’t love vegetables. Pizza tastes good, vegetables don’t (always). Remember a few months ago when Congress declared that pizza was a vegetable? I don’t know if that was real or not, but it was a dumb idea. I want pizza, but I know vegetables are better for me. So out of that, squash pizza boats were born. You can use cheese if you want, or not. You are the master of your own paleo universe. I did here, because I wanted pizza (duh). Kerrygold grassfed cheese (yes, the cheese is fed grass) is REALLY DELICIOUS. It is also expensive - $5.99 at my local grocery store - but I use dairy products so sparsely that one block will last me awhile.

PIZZA SQUASH BOATS

- 2-4 long summer squash
- Your favorite tomato sauce (Sorry, I don’t have a recipe to give you yet.)
- Shredded Kerrygold grass fed cheddar cheese
- Meat of your choice (I used 2 Ardelles sun dried tomato and basil chicken sausage. It’s gluten free/weird preservative free, but you could probably use some grass fed or organic (budget friendly) ground turkey/beef or whatever you want)
- 2 cloves of fresh garlic
- 1 small onion (chopped)
- olive oil

Preheat your oven to 325
Half your squashes long ways and spoon out the middle. Reserve the squash guts in a bowl and the boats to the side.
Next, prep your meat - if you buy those sausages, cut them in quarters and give them a rough chop. Reserve. Since I did this with sausages, and you might be doing it with some other kind of meat, you’re kinda on your own with seasonings.

In a sauce pan, heat the olive oil. When its hot, add the garlic and onions and sweat them. When the onions start to get translucent, add the squash guts and the meat.
When your meat is looking cooked, add in some tomato sauce (however much you want) and some cheese. Stir around so all of the things marry.

Put the squash boats on a baking tray lined with foil, and scoop your mixture into the boats. Top with more sauce if you want, and pop in the oven to bake for 20 mins. YUM.

-Tiggie

Look - I’m broke. And I know that there are many of us out there who are also financially impaired. But I’ve chosen to live my life paleo-style for my health, my weight and my happiness. My derby wife, Tiggie, and I found that there were paleo blogs that don’t exactly cater to below-poverty-level lifestyles. In fact, we were snobby about those snobs. Thus “Paleo Snobs” was born. We can do it better AND cheaper. Or at least we’ll attempt to prove it. 

We’ll be writing about paleo, fitness and roller derby and how to (or at least try to) do it all on the cheap. 

-Reno