Day 15 - Snacks & Dairy
When I was eating a standard American diet (SAD), I was hungry all the time. So, I was constantly snacking. Usually carby crap.
But now that my diet is focused around Paleo / Primal or a Primal version of Keto I don’t get crazy hungry between meals.
If I get hungry in the afternoon I’ll grab a handful of macadamia nuts or some almonds.
Or maybe a few olives and some cheese or a small piece of prosciutto, salami or bacon.
Some almond butter and some unsweetened flaked coconut will also work.
Foods that have both protein and fat will provide hunger relief and they won’t put you on the insulin roller coaster.
The good news is that because of my current diet, there are a lot of days that I’ll eat my breakfast around noon (an omelet or a scrambled eggs with veggies and maybe some goat cheese, a half of an avocado, maybe a couple of pieces of bacon and some kimchi or some kraut) and I’m not hungry again until 6 or 7 PM when I’ll have dinner.
Nuts are a go-to snack for a lot of folks, but you have to be aware of a couple of things. It wasn’t that many years ago that if you wanted an almond (or any other nut), that you had shell them in order to eat them.
It certainly impacted how many nuts you ate. Now, you can buy a 2-pound bag of shelled almonds from Costco (or whatever size Trader Joe’s sells) and you can inhale a cup without even thinking about it.
The problem with that is that you just consumed more calories than you would have gotten from a 12-ounce sirloin steak that was topped with an ounce of bleu cheese.
The cup of almonds has 824 calories and the steak and bleu cheese have 784 calories.
This isn’t about being calorie phobic, it’s about making conscious food choices. So just get familiar with what a quarter of a cup of almonds or pecans looks like.
Let’s talk about dairy for a minute.
As I described in an earlier email about the difference between the Paleo and Primal diets, Paleo encourages you to avoid dairy and Primal suggests that if you can handle dairy without it bothering you feel free to consume it in moderation in as natural a form as possible.
In other words, full fat and unpasteurized if you can get it from a reliable source and if not unpasteurized at least opt for full-fat dairy from grass-fed animals.
My wife is one of those people that cow’s milk dairy upsets her stomach. She’s okay with goat’s milk or sheep’s milk, but she needs to steer clear of cow’s milk. So, we’ll use goat’s and sheep’s milk cheese and goat’s milk butter.
We don’t usually buy raw milk, but we always by full-fat dairy and grass-fed when it’s available.
I’ll still buy Kerrygold Grass Fed Butter for things that I’m cooking that my wife won’t be eating and I’ll buy cow’s milk yogurt for me and goat’s milk yogurt for my wife.
I rarely ever cook with cream or milk, I almost always use full-fat coconut milk for curries and sauces.
So, my dairy is full fat cheese, yogurt, and butter.
This is one that you’re really going to have to determine if it works for you or not. If you have ongoing sinus or allergy issues, I’d suggest giving up dairy during the challenge and see if those issues don’t resolve or improve.
If you’ll follow the recommendations in the challenge you’ll get off of the carb/insulin roller coaster and you won’t have to be grazing on carbs all day.
If you do get hungry and it doesn’t pass in just a few minutes grab some real food that’s got protein and fat in it like cheese, almonds, sausage and that should tide you over.
Today’s assignment with food is to pay attention to your hunger today and to play with it a little bit. Don’t eat when you first get hungry, have a glass of water and maybe go for a walk. I’ve started doing intermittent fasting where I don’t eat before 11 a.m. most mornings and I’ve noticed that I’ll be starving when I first wake up, but that usually goes away after a few minutes and then I’m fine until 11:00 or after.
For movement, in addition to your walk, do mini workouts throughout the day of planks, wall sits, floor bridges and jumping jacks.
And as always – nail your sleep.
