Hi everybody! I’ve missed you! It’s been more than half a year since I last wrote, WOW.
There is no real excuse for this behavior and I am sorry, but I’ll try anyway.. I was pretty busy with my wedding (great event!) and I’ve changed roles in my job. Any of these two by itself wouldn’t affect the blog, but together they kept me pretty busy.
Today I’m gonna write about another change I’ve made in my life in the last six months, a lifestyle change. I promise the next post will be purely technological, about a system I’ve been developing in my free time for my wedding 🙂
In September 2021 I went to the doctor for a routine visit. The doctor sent me to do some blood tests as I haven’t done in a while. I was used to having good blood tests. Nothing to talk about there. Very much like when the teachers talk about me in front of my parents in school. “You have a great child, he is very good at this and that, keep going!”.
This time it surprised me. My cholesterol levels were off the charts (literally). They were so off the charts, the doctor advised me to talk to a dietitian. This is when I realized that never in my life I thought of what I ate. I want to say it again since this realization came when I’m 28 years old.
Never,
in my life,
I thought of what I ate.
Actually, I did think of what I ate, I always tried to eat the best and tastiest food I could. But I never stopped to think about what it contains or what it does to my body.
Armed with this thought and my blood test results, I decided to try new things. At the same time, by some kind of weird cosmic accident, a friend gave me a book named “The ancient secret”. The book tells about how people lived 10000 years ago, before the agricultural revolution. It’s a relatively short book, and it’s divided in such a way you don’t have to read it all if there are parts that less appeal to you (like a whole chapter about the anatomy of our body). I started reading it, without knowing (spoiler alert) it talked about the Paleo Diet. It talks about what kind of lifestyle people had in those times and how we are genetically the same as they are. How Cancer and Diabetes didn’t exist and people had no teeth issues. Moreover, how they found in the 1900’s a tribe that was living that way and all their tests came back perfect.
After two or three days I finished the book and I was really interested in this diet. First, because it recommends eating meat and fat cheese, what is there to hate?. Secondly, because it recommends doing sport exercises the kind I like; no long distance running or such. It appeared I found the best thing for me. The book recommends you to try the diet for 30 days, the “30 days’ challenge”. So… why not?
Before I continue I want to emphasize a few things:
- I’m not a dietitian and this is not a recommendation of what YOU should do. I’m merely telling my story. DO NOT follow this diet or any of these recommendations without speaking with someone who ACTUALLY KNOWS about it.
- There are many flavors of the Paleo Diet. I followed the Israeli one. The American one won’t allow for diery. There is also Keto Diet which is more “extreme”. The Israeli Paleo allows for fat cheese (among other changes).
- IMPORTANT, read 1 again!
The first day of the challenge I went to the grocery store and bought a lot of food according to this new diet. I knew that if I hadn’t had the food at the reach of my hand, I wouldn’t be able to follow the challenge. 30 days have passed and the challenge – wasn’t so challenging. I managed to eat according to the menu and even got to exercise twice a week (which is twice a week more than I did before). What was surprising was the extent of change my body has made. One month of not eating Carbohydrates and sugars, made me lose some belly I had. I decided to continue with this diet and after another month people couldn’t stop talking about how fast I’ve managed to lose all the extra fat. Even my neck was thinner. Now, I wasn’t really fat before I began, I had a nice round belly. But the change was so fast it was apparent how much I lost. When I started the diet I didn’t think I was going to lose weight, so I didn’t weigh myself. I can’t say exactly how much I lost, but I can say that after two months, I had to buy new jeans as the old ones were HUGE on me. Overall I think I lost between 7-10 kgs.
After two months, I finally got to meet the dietitian and talked to her about the Paleo Diet. Surprisingly she wasn’t against it, but she did send me to another round of blood tests. Two months later (we are now four months after I started the diet) I went to do the second round of blood tests. I was really hoping to see a small fix in the measurements. Partly because I was a bit worried, but more importantly, to assure myself and my friends, the diet was working and I didn’t waste 4 months ruining my body.
The results were better than expected. It didn’t make a small fix – it was completely fixed. All my measures were between the lines. 4 months eating meat, fat, cheese, bacon and such, lowered my cholesterol levels and put all my blood measures in the correct place. Of course, it has everything to do with the exercises I started doing (eating bacon by itself won’t save your life).
What I really enjoyed was that the food was good, I didn’t have to spare myself, but just added a few constraints to what I eat. I managed to find substitutes for food I really wanted to eat, and depriving myself of food I couldn’t eat was easier than I thought.
I’m now almost 8 months into the diet, I looked great at my wedding and I feel great everyday. It’s been 8 months I haven’t taken a pill for headaches (or anything else) whereas I would take one-two a month. I’m colder, I started feeling that at the second month of the diet. Cold affects me more. I guess the reason is I dropped a lot of fat that was warming me (but what do I know?). Now in the summer I can tolerate the heat a bit more than before. And again, I feel great, very energetic, and I love it.
Once again, this isn’t a recommendation of what you should do with yourself, this is only me telling my story.
I want to finish with a recipe for Creme-Brulee. Maybe one of the least Paleo things I made this last year, but nevertheless I managed to change it to be a bit more Paleo-like. More importantly, non-Paleolithic people really loved it. Hope you’ll too! If you are interested in more information about this, or want to hear about more recipes, feel free to ask!
Creme Brulee
Equipment
- 1 Burner This is partially required as the same effect can be made with the oven set to high top-only temperature. I've never did it this way so I recommend getting a burner
- 12 Creme Brulee cups Suitable for the oven!
- 1 Deep pan for the over
Ingredients
- 500 ml sweet cream
- 1/2 stick vanilla Can be replaced with a tbsp of vanilla extract
- 100 grams Sugar Replace with coconut sugar for flavor and Paleo lifestyle!
- 5 units Yolks
- 50 grams Sugar (again). For the burning! This too can be replaced with coconut sugar!
Instructions
Preparations
- Heat the oven to 200 c
- Heat the sweat cream with the vanilla on low heat and take it out before it boils
- In a separate bowl mix the eggs with the sugar (by hand!)
Exercise temperature comparison
- Pour a bit of the cream onto the eggs mix and steer
- Once the temperature of the eggs is close to the cream's, pour the rest of the cream into the eggs' mix
Pour the mix
- Pour the mix into the cups
- Insert the cups into the oven's pan
- Pour some water to the pan (outside the cups!) up to half the height of the cups
- Insert the pan to the over for ~ 15 minutes (up until the cream is solid-ish)
The twist
- Insert the cups to the freezer! Leave them there for at least 3-4 hours
Serving
- Take the cups from the freezer - no need to wait for them to defrost
- Throw some of the sugar on top of them
- Burn them using the burner to create a layer of caramel
- Enjoy!
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