Primal Journey Part 5: The Primal Blueprint

November 2010

When I left off, I was reading The Primal Blueprint on the way back from visiting family for Christmas.

I’d like to say I immediately started to eat primal when I got home, but I had leftover Chinese takeout that I couldn’t pass up!!  The next day I started eating primal, I went shopping, made a list of recipes to try, etc.  The first week I felt great, and could immediately tell this was something I could follow for a long time.

I took my time adopting the primal lifestyle, but each week I would get more and more committed to it.  I started doing the primal blueprint fitness and can honestly say it is the only workout that has ever worked for me.  I despise gyms, so being able to do functional workouts in my own home is key.

After doing the primal blueprint for a while I started to wonder why my allergies were not improving.  At times they were actually worse.  On Sundays and Mondays they almost floor me, preventing me from doing anything, and sometimes making me miss work.

My sister, who has always had similar allergy problems to me, went for a scratch and blood test to check for allergies.  She found that her food allergies that were the worst included: baker’s yeast, brewer’s yeast, tomatoes, most tree nuts, garlic, and some others.  I scheduled myself to go get tested for these same things, but in the mean time I did some self experimentation.  I don’t believe I have most of the same allergies; however the one that stuck out the most was the brewer’s yeast.

I’m in my twenties, and however childish it might be, for my friend’s and I alcohol is still a big part of our lives on the weekends.  When I switched to primal, I looked up different drinks.  I realized that beer would be the easiest for me to stick to and really didn’t have that many carbs if I went with a light beer.  So I primarily started drinking bud light on the weekends.

When my sister told me of her allergies, things immediately started to click.  I went one weekend without beer and my allergies were fine after that.  It still continues to amaze me how every thing we put into our bodies can affect us in so many different ways.

I would still have bad weekends, where I would go out with friends, eat poorly, and feel bad in the morning.  But I started to realize the worst offenders and mostly avoid them.

Towards the end of fall, my allergies waned.  At this point, my weight loss started to plateau.  Without the seasonal allergies being worsened by certain foods, I added back in dairy, beer and more cheating on the weekends. (aka Chinese food and pizza) Wonder why my stomach was hurting again and my weight loss had stopped?  Weird.

I went home for Thanksgiving and did not eat primal for most of the trip.  I splurged from beginning to end.  The last night before I was to go home, I started to fully feel the affects of my splurging.  I had leg pain, shoulder pain, was exhausted and felt incredibly ill.

The day of my flight home, I was scheduled to have an appointment with a naturopath (electro acupuncture) to attempt to narrow down my food allergies.  The list is long, but in an attempt to summarize, here are the things I was told to avoid:

• Gluten
• Wheat
• Corn
• Soy
• Vinegar
• Milk

I realize that the methods used to determine this list are highly contested however, this list, confirmed through my personal experimentation, has helped me go fully primal/paleo and improve my life even further.

October 2011

This story is part of a series documenting my success in changing my life through diet changes and personal discoveries.  Check out the other sections:

            Primal Journey Part 1: High school
            Primal Journey Part 2: College
            Primal Journey Part 3: The first job
            Primal Journey Part 4: The second job
            Primal Journey Part 5: The Primal Blueprint
            Primal Journey Part 6: Harmony

Roth or Traditional 401(k)?

After I decided on a plan to increase my retirement contributions until they are maxed, I needed to decide where to put those contributions.  Previously, I was contributing 6% to my 401(k) as that achieved me the maximum matching from the company.  My original thought was just to up this to 8%, however my company recently started offering a Roth 401(k).

I had the sense that many people preferred the Roth 401(k) but I didn’t really know why.

It turns out there are a lot of people who will argue for either one as there are different advantages and disadvantages.  But for my purposes, it really boils down to comparing your current situation to your future with a little guesswork thrown in.

When you contribute to a traditional 401(k) you will pay the taxes when you withdraw from the account.  When you contribute to a Roth 401(k) you will pay the taxes when you deposit into the account.

Therefore, the general viewpoint is that if you believe your tax rate will be higher in retirement (which I do) the Roth is ideal.  I am young, plan on aggressively saving for retirement and therefore plan on having as much yearly to live on as I do now, if not more.  I also believe tax rates for my current tax bracket will go up in the next 30-40 years as they traditionally go up over time.

If you have less time before retirement, believe you will have less yearly to spend on or believe that tax rates will go down, a traditional 401(k) is probably the better choice.

Primal Cooking Showdown Extravaganza! – January (Theme: Living Large)

Was that title excessively exciting?  Good that was the idea!  J and I decided to have a cooking challenge at the beginning of every month, starting in January.

We will have a theme for the meals, one person cooks each night (not two meals in one day), and there is a prize for the winner.  J got me a couple cookbooks devoted to primal/gluten-free eating and there are many types of sweets in the books.

Even after we adapt the recipes to be more primal and fit my list of allergens[KRR13] , they are still not incredibly healthy. So we made the prize for the contest that the loser has to make one of the sweets from the cookbook.  This way we get a prize and get to treat ourselves with something sweet once a month.


Primal Nerd’s Meal

New Year’s Eve I kicked off the contest by making bacon-wrapped filet mignon topped with a béarnaise sauce, prosciutto-wrapped asparagus and braised cabbage and parsnips.  I have no shame in saying it was phenomenal because it was one of the best things I’ve ever eaten.  At the end of it, I told J I wanted to have sex with my steak. (too far?)

Obviously the steak was an easy 10 points.  While J and I both LOVED the béarnaise sauce, I lost a point because I had to send her to the store to get butter mid cooking (oops).  The asparagus lost a couple points because while delicious, it didn’t compare to the other two in flavor and was slightly overcooked making the prosciutto dried out.  The braised cabbage and parsnips were decent, but we threw them out of the competition because J was only going to have 3 things to grade.

Score:  Steak (10), béarnaise sauce (9), asparagus (7), average (8.66)


J’s Meal

New Year’s Day J added her contribution to the challenge: 5 smaller sized lobsters, baked snap peas and baked peppers and tomatoes.  I give J credit here for coming up with a delicious meal given the state she was in New Year’s Day (see here for reference).

Again the main course was an easy 10, she cooked the lobsters well and they were great.  The peppers & tomatoes were really good, but we couldn’t score them the same as the béarnaise sauce.  J fought for an 8 on the snap peas to tie the score, I wasn’t a huge fan and wanted to give them a 6 but agreed to give her a bonus point for cooking while hungover!

Score: Lobster (10), peppers & tomatoes (8), snap peas (7), average (8.33)


So my meal won!  Which means I should be getting some primal donuts made for me soon, awesome!  This one really wasn’t fair as I made freaking filet mignon.  Our next challenge is going to be a meal under $10 and I’m already admitting defeat on that one.

Primal Journey Part 4: The second job

April 2010

New job, new city, new acquaintances, better influences, new me!!

Columbus has been on the top 25 fattest cities in the US list for a while. They seem to have every restaurant ever created and as such, eating out is the norm there. Both at work and at home, I was constantly tempted to eat unhealthy.

In CT, it was a different story. Work was hiring tons of new engineers, all young, infatuated with working out and eating healthy. I moved into a house with 3 friends that were my age, who had the same ideas. I figured it was only a matter of time until I was back to my high school weight…

I quickly realized influences weren’t my only problem. I went back to eating CW healthy like I did in high school, but I didn’t have much luck. I might’ve dropped down to 275 at my lowest point, but I would gain it back on the weekends. I still had my problems with weight training at the gym, and never really felt any better.

I should mention at this time that for most of my life I would wake up on most days feeling sick, sometimes I could blame seasonal allergies, but most days I just didn’t feel well. I often considered that I might have a terminal illness because I just couldn’t explain the symptoms away. I think most people thought I was often faking it, and I would come up with other excuses to not hang out with my friends, or go to work, so they wouldn’t always think I was using sickness as an excuse.

This continued in CT but got worse, I think I wasn’t used to the types of pollen in the air and my allergies were just worsened greatly.

My mother has always been my greatest supporter. At the same time, always with the best intentions, she has been, at times, my greatest critic. She has always been a healthy person and has always tried to update me on all the health news she reads about. She is constantly reading magazines, blogs, going to the gym, and passing all this information on to me, in the hopes that I would lose weight and get into shape. I often took this harshly and got defensive, only realizing very recently that she only wanted for me to feel better and truly enjoy life.

Around Christmas time in 2010, my mom called me before my trip home and was incredibly excited to tell me about this new diet book she had (not the first time this has happened). I listened with a grain of salt, but promised to give it consideration. She gave me The Primal Blueprint, and The Primal Blueprint Cookbook.

On the plane ride home, I opened the primal blueprint, and didn’t close it until we landed. Everything made so much sense, and I loved the CW that had let me down in every single stage of my life being pushed aside on every page. If you’re thinking CW didn’t let me down when I lost weight in high school, then you fail to fully understand the internal issues I have had all of my life, more on that later.

I can honestly say, without a doubt, that getting those books was the single best Christmas gift I will ever receive in my entire life. Reading through the Primal Blueprint on the way home started a chain of events that has led me to be the happiest I’ve ever been and I have faith that it will lead to a long, healthy, happy life.

November 2010

This story is part of a series documenting my success in changing my life through diet changes and personal discoveries. Check out the other sections:

           Primal Journey Part 1: High school
           Primal Journey Part 2: College
           Primal Journey Part 3: The first job
           Primal Journey Part 4: The second job
           Primal Journey Part 5: The Primal Blueprint
           Primal Journey Part 6: Harmony

Meal: Bacon-Wrapped Filet Mignon topped with Béarnaise Sauce and Prosciutto-Wrapped Asparagus

I wanted to provide something a little different on this blog, and one of my ideas is to present entire meals instead of just recipes.  A lot of times when I cook, I will go and gather 3-4 recipes to combine and try to make them all at one time.  When I do that I tend to jump from recipe to recipe, not always in the appropriate order, which tends to have an adverse effect on the quality of the food.

The idea here is that I've combined recipes, laid out a shopping list the way I write mine (by grocery store section), listed all of the prep work, and provided the steps to cook everything at once.

This first meal was one of the best things I’ve ever cooked and was my entry into J and my first ever Primal Cooking Showdown Extravaganza (Details on that to come later). The individual recipes are given below:

Recipes:

• Bacon-Wrapped Filet Mignon
• Béarnaise Sauce 
• Prosciutto-Wrapped Asparagus 

Shopping List:

Vegetables

• 1 T minced onions
• 12-16 asparagus spears

Meat

• 2 servings of beef tenderloin (filet mignon) between 6 and 8 oz. each
• 4 slices bacon
• 3 oz pkg of thinly sliced prosciutto

Misc Middle Aisles

• Extra virgin olive oil
• 1/4 c apple cider vinegar
• 1/4 c dry white wine

Spices

• Salt
• Pepper
• 1/2 T dried tarragon
• 2 T dried parsley

Dairy Section

• 3 egg yolks
• 2 T cold butter
• 1/2 c melted butter

Prep Work:

1. Set out 3 oz pkg of thinly sliced prosciutto to take off the chill (easier to seperate slices)
2. Set out the steaks and let them come up to room temp
3. Combine vinegar, wine, onions, tarragon, 1/8 t salt and 1/8 t pepper in a bowl
4. Put 2 T dried parsley in a prep bowl
5. Separate 3 egg yolks into a bowl (Easiest method is to get two bowls, crack the egg then over one bowl transfer the yolk from one half of the shell to the other until all off the egg white falls into the bowl, then put the yolk into the other bowl)
6. Cut two pieces of cold butter, 1 T each
7. Pat steaks with salt and pepper on both sides.
8. Wash and trim 12-16 asparagus spears (lightly try to break the ends, the bad part will snap off)
9. Line a baking sheet with foil and brush foil with 1 Tbsp olive oil
10. Wrap each asparagus spear with a slice of prosciutto and place on foil turning once to coat top with oil
11. Salt and pepper asparagus lightly
12. Melt 1/2 cup of butter in a bowl

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees
2. Pour extra virgin olive oil into a large skillet so it completely coats the bottom. 
3. Heat on medium high
4. Microwave vinegar mixture on high for 4-5 mins, the liquid will reduce greatly
5. Once large skillet starts to smoke, then add the steaks. 
6. Cover and sear for about 3-4 minutes.
7. In a food processor, beat the egg yolks until thick
8. Turn beef over and sear the other side for another 3-4 minutes
9. Pour the vinegar mixture through a strainer into the food processor
10. Remove steaks from pan and cover with foil. Let sit for a few minutes
11. Beat vinegar mixture & egg yolks until mixed, then pour into a sauce pan
12. Add one T of cold butter
13. Place pan over low heat to thicken egg yolks using wire whisk to beat
14. Wrap 2 slices of bacon around each steak, and secure the bacon to itself with a toothpick.
15. Line a baking sheet with the foil from the steaks and wipe a little oil on the bottom to prevent the steaks from sticking
16. Place asparagus pan on bottom rack of oven, set timer for 15 mins
17. If you want your steak medium well, place the steak in now (on top rack of oven) and bake for 5 mins past the asparagus timer. For medium, put the steak in now and bake same time as asparagus. For medium rare, wait about 3 minutes and then put the steak in. Adjust times to your liking but I cook them about 12 minutes (for around 6 oz.) to achieve medium-rare
18. When egg yolks are thick, remove from the heat and whisk in the other tablespoon of butter
19. Beating this mixture with a whisk, pour in the melted butter slowly
20. Add parsley and stir
21. Serve warm, not hot
22. Hint: If butter is added too fast, mixture may separate. If this happens, add a very small amount of vinegar at a time and beat with wire whisk.
23. The asparagus should be done but still slightly crisp
24. Let the steak sit for 5 minutes after taking it out
25. Pour béarnaise on the steak, serve with asparagus, and enjoy!