Blogs to Check Out

These are some of the blogs that I follow for food, Paleo, and entertainment purposes:

Nom Nom Paleo is awesome. Great photos and recipes. She likes mushrooms and always seems to have well-balanced meals. If you have an iPad, check out her recently created iPad app. Also, if you've got a lot of kitchen toys (WAY more than me), you should look at her recipes. She has some super cool gadgets.

If you want an entertaining and humorous read with LOTS of wonderful dessert recipes, check out Juli on PaleOMG. She's in the process of pulling together a cookbook of her recipes. Some of her entrées look questionable for my tastes (though I'm sure you may think the same of my recipes).

I also read Mark's Daily Apple when I want to learn more about Paleo and other health and fitness topics. He posts every day... like a boss! And each weekend he provides links to various different topics. Great about answering questions and really helpful about analyzing recent research publications, such as this one about gluten sensitivity.

Robb Wolf was my first insight into the world of Paleo. I read his book, The Paleo Solution, when I first decided to start doing Paleo. He tries to provide facts and is not solely trying to win you over to the side of Paleo. He wants you, the reader, to be healthy. He wants to help people and he's convincing. Give his blog a shot.

Bill and Hayley of The Food Lovers Kitchen was also a blog/source of recipe ideas when I was starting out. They've got some good explanations on what is and isn't Paleo. They've created a new Android/iPhone app that is awesome for meal planning and grocery lists. You can search for certain foods or mealtimes, and put them on a meal plan for the week. It has the ingredients and directions available, and also produces a grocery list for you. Hard to get better than that!

I don't visit this one as frequently, but I do think you should check it out: The Clothes Make the Girl. Melissa Joulwan helped form the Texas Rollergirls in Austin, TX. Roller derby. How cool is that? I enjoy reading her blog for her sense of humor and her good job of tracking food when she does Whole 30 (like she's been doing lately).

If you're looking for some delicious and well-presented food ideas, look no further than Morsels and Mouthfuls. One of my friends back in Atlanta prepares excellent-looking and -tasting meals and I'm super jealous of his dinner plates. I like my food and I think it tastes good, but his presentations are restaurant-worthy.

10 to 15 days?

This morning as I relaxed in bed I continued my reading of The Paleo Solution by Robb Wolf. What I read today was somewhat eye-opening. Chapter 6 lists the following problems that can be associated with leaky guy and autoimmune response:

1. Infertility
2. Type I diabetes
3. Multiple sclerosis
4. Rheumatoid Arthritis
5. Lupus
6. Vitiligo (loss of pigment in your skin)
7. Narcolepsy
8. Schizophrenia
9. Autism
10. Depression
11. Huntington's
12. Non-Hodgkin's lymphoma
13. Hypothyroidism (the thyroid gland does not make enough thyroid hormone)
14. Porphyria (manifests as neurological complications or skin problems)

Yikes. I haven't done the research myself, but if even any of this is true, then dear lord, I'm worried.

Also, on page 96 of the book, he encourages you (a.k.a. me, the reader) to reintroduce the foods that are on the "Do not eat" list after 30 to 60 days of following the Paleo diet. This experiment is to see how you feel after eating the "bad" foods again. But this is where I got the disappoining news...

"You only need to be exposed to things like gluten once every ten to fifteen days to keep the gut damaged."

This means that cutting back on gluten doesn't help. And it means that every time I potentially slip up and eat something on the "Do not eat" list (like the beer I had yesterday), it will take another 10 to 15 days for my body to heal itself again. In the words of Scooby Doo: "Ruh roh!"

Note to self: DON'T SLIP UP!