The winner of the Primal Blueprint Cookbook is Caroline Bull! Caroline, send me an email with your address and I’ll ask the good people at Mark’s Daily Apple to send your cookbook out.

I also decided to choose another winner to receive a free bracelet courtesy of Synergy Beads. I love these bracelets and my entire family (even the kids) wears them. In addition to being beautifully made, the CEO of Synergy Beads is a personal friend who puts an incredible amount of personal care and consideration into each and every bracelet. I can’t recommend this product highly enough. The winner of a free Synergy bracelet is Neva! Neva, take a look at the Synergy Beads site and send me an email with your choice of bracelet.

Thanks again to everyone who participated. I got some awesome ideas and will be posting some more recipes soon.

Incidentally, my pizza crust recipe was posted on Mark’s Daily Apple yesterday. If I make it as far as the voting and if any of my readers sees fit to vote for me, I will be most grateful! I’d love to see what this whole Sous Vide Supreme thing is all about!

Okay, so I said I was going to have a giveaway and here it is.

The prize: Mark Sisson’s The Primal Blueprint Cookbook

To enter to win this fabulous prize, complete the following tasks:

1. Like This Primal Life on Facebook Be sure you use this link so that you are liking the PAGE, not joining the GROUP (which was a mistake and will probably be deleted eventually).
2. Then, leave a comment on this post telling me what recipe you’d most like to see on This Primal Life. Perhaps you’d like to see a primal version of a favorite non-primal dish, or maybe you’d just like to eat more shrimp and are looking for shrimp recipes. Feel free to be as vague or specific as you like. Mainly I’m just looking for ideas.

The deadline is Tuesday, September 28 at midnight EST.

I will pick 1 qualifying entry at random (probably name chosen from paper bag method).

By the way, have I mentioned I am officially in nursing school now? I have been taking prerequisites for three years in preparation of this current one. Now I actually do clinical coursework in hospitals, which, incidentally, is fascinating. Mostly, since this is my first semester at this, I just follow a real nurse around and ask questions. On Tuesday, though, a nice woman offered to allow the student nurse (me) to give her injection. I wouldn’t say it went great, but I’m learning.

Working in the hospital is also a constant reminder of why one would want to make their health a priority.  People, being a patient in the hospital S-U-C-K-S.  And though many hospital patients find themselves there through no fault of their own, there’s a good number who might have prevented their current circumstances.

Since this is my blog and I can, I am going to take advantage of the opportunity to debunk a few myths about nursing in general.

Myth #1: The doctor’s are the bosses of the nurses.
I will admit I used to think this.  Well, this is not how it works. At all. The doctors have their own bosses and the nurses do, too. Nursing is a totally separate profession and the physicians and nurses are supposed to collaborate to provide the best care possible.  Physicians make medical diagnoses and nurses make ‘nursing diagnoses’ (bet you never heard of those, huh?) and develop care plans for patients based on these diagnoses.

Myth #2: The nurses have to follow the orders of the doctors.
Again, seems like it would be true but actually is not. One of the most important jobs of a nurse is to act as an advocate for the patient and their ‘last line of defense’ against errors or poor judgment. So, if a physician orders a medication or treatment that a nurse believe is harmful to a patient, the nurse does not and should not do it and speaks up.

Myth #3: Good nurses are sympathetic, motherly types who like to fetch ice chips.
Actually, the fact is that if you truly don’t care about other people, nursing probably isn’t for you. However, the field of nursing is much more broad than most people realize. For example, you can become a nurse and never even do clinical work, if you don’t like it.  The profession has been changing dramatically for quite a while.  Unfortunately, nurses are still mainly portrayed in TV shows and movies as dewy-eyed doctor-helpers or sadistic shot-givers.  :sigh:

Now that we’ve got that sorted out, I’ll also mention that this 12 month nursing program I’m in is a killer. Turns out it’s the 4th best BSN program in the country!  There’s not lots of extra time for fun free-time projects and finishing the cookbook by next Saturday is a total impossibility. However, I feel bad about holding on to the pizza crust recipe when I said I would publish it by the end of the month. So I’ve decided to make the pizza crust on camera this weekend and enter it in the Primal Blueprint recipe video contest! I’ll post it when it’s done.

Releasing my inner Grok

In case you haven’t heard, this year’s Primal Challenge is going to begin on September 7, the day after Labor Day.  It looks like this year’s challenge is going to be better than ever.

For those of you who weren’t around for the challenge last year, here’s how it worked.  In addition to encouraging individuals to make a personal commitment to the primal lifestyle for 30 days, Mark would post a new contest on his blog every day.   The easier contests only required you to do something like leave a comment or friend him on Facebook.  Other contests required more work – like making a recipe video or writing an essay.  Each contest had a prize with a primal theme, some bigger than others of course.  I was a finalist in both the fitness and recipe video contests last year but didn’t win.  Mark did send me a t-shirt, though, which I thought was kind of cool.

Mark plans to focus this year’s contest on “aligning your lifestyle behaviors with each of the 10 Primal Blueprint Laws.”  Maybe they talk like this all the time at the Sisson household, but I always chuckle a little when I hear ‘The 10 Primal Blueprint Laws” because it sounds like some sort of kooky religion.  Until, of course, you find out what the “laws” actually are.   Need a refresher?  Here you go:

1. Eat lots of animals, insects and plants.

2. Move around a lot at a slow pace.

3. Lift heavy things.

4. Run really fast every once in a while.

5. Get lots of sleep.

6. Play.

7. Get some sunlight every day.

8. Avoid trauma.

9. Avoid poisonous things.

10. Use your mind.

(Question: why are insects specifically mentioned in the first law?  Are they not animals?)

As cooler weather moves in and we settle into new routines, it is a wonderful time to focus awareness on the diet and lifestyle choices that you want to include in your life this coming year.  Use the challenge as an opportunity to set in place a well-practiced consistency that will allow you to avoid the binge and restrict drama that accompanies the holiday season and new year.

If you are new or new-ish to The Primal Blueprint, there are a lot of resources these days to help you get going.  Mark has even put together a fancy Primal Blueprint Essentials Kit which walks you through your first 30 days step-by-step.  People generally lose 4-8 pounds of body fat in their first 30 days, but in my experience huge changes in energy levels and an increased sense of well-being come in just a week or two.

For those of you more experienced with the The Primal Blueprint, the annual challenge is a fun way to revisit the fundamental principals.  In typing out the Primal Blueprint Laws just now, I see that I really haven’t put made play a priority in my life.  I happen to be recovering from a sprained ankle at the moment, but I need to do some thinking about how I can make active play a regular part of my life.  Also, for me, if I’m not paying attention, my diet tends to slip back into something that may be more convenient but less healthy.  I intend to use this month as a chance to focus on being more consistent.  I also look forward to the inspiring transformation stories that always emerge during this time.  Mostly though, I want to win the cow!!

In the spirit of the challenge, I’ll be having a few giveaways here at This Primal Life in the coming month.  Check back for a chance to win some free stuff.

So what about you?  Whether you are new to primal or have been at this a while, are you planning to participate in the challenge this year?  Which of the Primal Blueprint Laws, if any, do you plan to focus on?

There are two things you may not know about me.  The first is that I enjoy eating large quantities.  I don’t know how I developed this inclination, but there it is.  I distinctly remember the day I was able to eat entire can of Spaghetti-O’s, just like my big brother.  I was so proud.  I once asked my husband if he had ever dated a woman who could eat more than me.  He responded with a nervous look but I eventually got him to admit that he hadn’t.  Luckily, I eat a lot vegetables or I’d probably be getting lap band surgery by now.  As I’ve gotten older I’ve had to tone things down somewhat, but I’ll always be a big eater at heart.

The other thing is that, like the hot-blooded American I am, pizza is one of my favorite foods.  Despite the countless hours of my life I’ve spent learning about and working with ingredients and cuisines of all kinds, I still have the same favorite foods as your typical 3^rd grader.   Oh well.

Now that you know these things about me, you should also be aware that it has been my mission for well over a year now to come up with what I consider to be an ideal primal pizza crust.  The problem with most primal or paleo pizza crusts that I have tested is that they are either so heavy and caloric that you can only eat a slice or two (I’m thinking your typical almond flour crusts or ‘meatzas’), or they are unreliable and floppy.  I’ve heard good things about cauliflower crusts but truth be told I‘ve never been able to make that work.

In order to qualify as ideal in my mind, a crust must meet all of the following requirements:

1)   The pizza crust must not be overwhelmingly caloric.

2)   There must be no mistaking the crust for a frittata!

3)   The crust must stand firm, allowing you to easily enjoy the pizza with hands, not fork.

4)   The crust must be relatively easy to make.

5)   The crust must, at the very least, have a neutral flavor that does not interfere with the ‘pizza experience’.

Well, I’ve done it.  My primal pizza crust not only meets all of my ideal criteria but it is only 330 calories per serving, allowing plenty of ‘room’ for your favorite toppings.  A serving can be half of a large pizza (see photo) or, if you prefer, an entire individual pizza.  Further, I’ve managed this without using any weird ingredients or complicated techniques.  You can easily throw this crust together on a busy weeknight.

Sorry for the teaser but I am waiting until September to share the recipe in the new cookbook.  I’m just so happy to have finally accomplished this that I couldn’t wait to share the news.   I know you guys will come up with all sorts of excellent additions and modifications so I am looking forward to that, too!

It’s six in the morning and I’ve just started the coffee. Today is the day of our big trip. The whole crew will be returning to my birthplace, Portland, Oregon and then the coast. This will be the girls’ first plane trip and, subsequently, my first plane trip with them. Until now I’d have preferred chewing tinfoil to sitting next to my kids on an airplane for any length of time. “Family vacation” seemed a bit like an oxymoron. Since they are almost 5 now I am starting to wonder if I’m being unreasonable. I must admit, however, that I am still not overjoyed at the prospect of spending nearly 6 hours trying to conceal their true nature (loud-talking, squirmy, dramatic, chaos-making) from the other passengers. I can only hope that some other sorry soul has a loud infant or hyperactive toddler that will steal the attention away from whatever inappropriate thing my kids are doing. It is times like these that I feel I didn’t adequately appreciate my 20’s. There was nothing to do on the plane but read a book and gaze out the window as I indulged in my own self-important thoughts. I didn’t have to worry about someone else getting bored, did not need to accompany anyone to the bathroom, anticipate their levels of hunger and thirst, be constantly available as a human pillow.

On the other hand, I get to share in their excitement and enthusiasm as we board this strange machine that can take us higher than the clouds.

As if simply making it through the day was not enough, I have set a goal for myself. I am determined not to waste a bunch of our vacation money buying snacks and little things at the airport. This is a weakness of mine. Once I go into vacation mode, money has no meaning. I only care about satisfying my immediate desires. I cannot guarantee that certain celebrity tabloid magazines will not be purchased, but I AM packing all the food we will need for the entire journey. We are leaving our home at 12:30pm EST and arriving at our destination hotel at about 8pm PST. That’s 11 hours of transit time and at least 1 meal and 1 snack each. Unfortunately I do not have time to prepare any of my cool green sandwich bread. Here’s what I got:

Celery with almond butter
Almond butter packets, for those who like it straight
Roast beef from the deli
Mozzarella cheese sticks
Clementines
Carrot and red pepper sticks
Boiled eggs
Cashews
Erythritol (just in case I need a coffee)

primal travel snack food

Nothing fancy here. Mainly these are items still remaining in our fridge or pantry, not even special things I bought for the trip. Wish I had some clever magic plane food recipe to share but the fact is that most of the time we just eat regular stuff. However, I would love to hear about YOUR magic plane food recipe or even just more ideas about portable primal snacks. In 2 weeks time we will be making another of these journeys and by that time I may need all the help I can get!

Note:  I am posting this a little after-the-fact as we are already on our vacation and enjoying the Oregon coast.  I had no way of knowing this at the time but we would have been in a desperate mess had I not packed all this food.  We were supposed to change planes in Denver but the airport closed due to a thunderstorm.  After circling the airport for an hour or so, we were instructed to land in Cheyenne instead.  Meanwhile, the Denver airport opens again but we can’t fly back because there’s a control panel that’s not working properly.  We also can’t get off the plane in Cheyenne because Frontier has no ground crew there.  Eventually, after some insane amount of time, they wheel some stairs over and we are allowed off the plane.  We ended up paying for a taxi to take us back to Denver where we crashed out at a hotel at about 3am.  The plane staff kept handing out cookies but there was no real food to be found either on the plane or in the middle of the night at the Cheyenne ‘airport’ so we would have been stuck feeding the kids Doritos for dinner. My initial calculation of 11 hours transit time tuned into nearly 24. On the bright side, the kids were amazingly calm and cooperative throughout the entire ordeal perhaps figuring this was all just par for course. We got $800 worth of vouchers from Frontier so we’re already planning our next trip….

A photo from my lazy summer

Hi there.  As some of you have noticed, this blog has been sitting here, neglected, for about 9 months.  I don’t have a very good explanation – no family crises or sudden deaths.  I appreciate all of the emails I have received and I apologize if I didn’t get back to you.  I feel guilty about the kind and generous emails I never responded to.  Please know that I did mean to.

When I started this blog I didn’t realize how time consuming it would be to develop recipes, photograph them and write posts.   Although I still love to create and test primal recipes, I began to want to spend my time doing other things.  I joined the wellness center in my town and started to crank up the weight training.  I’ve been dabbling in vipassana mediation, French cooking, photorealistic painting techniques, vegetable gardening, yogurt-making, etc….  I’ve also been trying to appreciate this last bit of time I have to just hang out with my kids all day.  Until now I have been taking prerequisites for a 12-month intensive nursing program which starts in September.  Although the girls won’t start kindergarten for another year I see this coming year as the beginning of the end as our family transitions into a new phase.

Anyway, despite the fact that I am about to embark on what is probably going to be one of the busiest years of my life, I’ve suddenly got the urge to begin blogging again.  My hope is that by putting aside my perfectionist tendencies I will be able to make more frequent posts.  In addition to original recipes I may include more newsy stuff, product reviews, more experiments with other people’s recipes, and more recipes that aren’t 100% primal but pretty close (like this killer soufflé I made not too long ago).

The most exciting news, however, is that with nearly a year of primal cooking without blogging behind me, I’ve decided to release a primal cookbook.  I’ve received a number of emails requesting a cookbook.  Since most of you already know how to throw a hunk of meat in the oven or on the grill and serve it up with some veggies, my focus has been to create a collection of recipes that recreates or improves upon everyday classics you may be missing like lasagna and pizza, includes lots of those elusive baked goods, and offers recipes and suggestions for each meal, including breakfast and snacks.   I want each recipe to be innovative, special and most importantly useful.  No Denver omelettes, or how-to-cook-a-hamburger recipes.   The cookbook will be in ebook format and will be available in September.  More information will come as I get the details ironed down.

See you soon.  It’s good to be back!

Ten things I learned in Costa Rica:

1.    It is very hard to eat primal if you are relying on traditional Costa Rican food for sustenance.   The national dish is Gallo y Pinto (rice and beans).  Although the small, casual Costa Rican cafes tended to have meat on the menu, they mainly serve up a lot of sandwiches and other bready fare.
2.    It is easy to walk around in the rainforest for hours and never see an animal bigger than an insect.   But you won’t care because it’s worth it just to check out the incredibly huge moss and vine laden trees.
3.    There are a lot of wealthy American and even wealthier European, young twenty-somethings hanging around on the beaches down there getting stoned.  It seems that entire towns, complete with yoga studios and sushi, have evolved to cater to their trust funds.  Over time, some of these kids have presumably been cut off from financial support back home.  They have rubbed their stringy strands into dreadlocks and moved in.  Either out of financial necessity or else a deeply repressed sense of work ethic they have learned to weave friendship bracelets that they sell at impromptu ‘artisan markets’.
4.    It is possible for a leaf to grow the size of a large dog.
5.    I can no longer tolerate very cheap hotels.  Maybe some kind of switch gets turned off when you hit 30 or own a house of your own because back in college I used to do very well in hostels.  Now I really want my own bathroom and for there not to be any strange hairs on the sheets.
6.    Costa Rican coffee is incredible!  We had some truly amazing cups of coffee while we were there.  Disappointingly, however, if you buy some and take it home and make it in your own coffee maker it just tastes like regular coffee.
7.    Costa Rican women tend to be overweight.  Not any more than your average American but since the fashion there seems to be low rider jeans with tight- fitting shirts it was easy to notice.  In all honesty, I found this devil-may-care attitude towards rolls of abdominal flab sort of refreshing.
8.    In some parts of the world, monkeys really do swing impishly around bus stops and outdoor cafes eating bananas.
9.    While plane fare to Costa Rica is pretty reasonable, it is otherwise not extra-special cheap to be there.  Just something to think about if you ever plan to visit.  It was easy to spend $2 for a cup of coffee and $25 for a meal.
10.    A zip-line canopy tour is not really about exploring the rainforest canopy.  Instead,  it is all about the adrenaline rush that comes from flying through the air strapped to a metal cable.  I highly recommend it!

Various photos from the two places we visited outside of San Jose - Montezuma and Monteverde. Clockwise from lower left: me on a zip line, beach, suspension bridge, walking along the beach in my Vibrams, Dave and I sunburnt on a bus.

Before I started eating primal, I used to sit down with my cookbooks on the weekend and plan out each meal for the upcoming week.  I would make a detailed grocery list that included every ingredient I didn’t already have.  Then I set out on a mission to buy everything I needed as cheaply as possible.  In retrospect the meals seem disjointed.  They were not only disconnected from each other but totally irrelevant to the season: chicken enchiladas on Monday, stir-fry on Tuesday, spaghetti on Wednesday, etc…  Furthermore, it was exhausting!  I mean, some Sundays I just didn’t feel like spending hours planning meals and buying food.  Then, despite all my preparations, at some point in the week the inevitable happened: take out.  Chicken ceasar salad night would be pushed to some indefinite future date so we could collapse on the couch with a pizza after the kids were in bed.  Come Saturday I’d throw out a crisper full of rotting vegetables and start the whole crazy cycle all over again.

I’m doing a lot of things differently these days.  Obviously, vegetables are the foundation of my diet and I don’t include grains and starchy vegetables in my usual fare.  But aside from (although perhaps as a result of) these dietary changes, my entire approach to daily cooking and meal planning has changed.

First of all, I make it a point to buy and enjoy quality foods.  Americans spend proportionally less of their income on food than any other industrialized nation.  Since the money we spend on groceries is one of the most flexible portions of our monthly expenses, we naturally appreciate the idea of getting a bargain on food.  Unfortunately, coupons and store discounts are oriented towards the sale of processed food ‘products’.   And, as you might have heard lately, the meat from your average supermarket is of questionable quality.  I know most people just aren’t used to thinking about it this way, but it does seem a little strange that we would care so little about the substances we are literally putting inside of our bodies throughout the day.  I think this comes from a lack of understanding about the impact eating real food has on your health.  I’d rather live in a smaller house, drive a cheaper car, and forego a lot of comforts before I’d resort to feeding myself whatever is on sale that week at Kroger.  Oddly, I don’t spend that much more on food now than I used to.  This is mainly because I buy less and don’t waste as much.  I also stock up on good quality protein when I see an opportunity.

Second, when you pay $6 or more for a pound of beef, or get the red peppers yourself from an organic farm just outside of town, dumping a jar of Ragu Light Parmesan Alfredo Cheese Creations Sauce all over it just doesn’t seem right, even if you do have a coupon.  So, I end up making my meals from scratch, and an alfredo cheese sauce creation, under normal circumstances, is more trouble than it’s worth.  Instead of fussing with lots of different recipes, our meals tend to be simple, and focused on a few great-tasting components.  Steak, fish, shrimp with whatever vegetables we received that week from our CSA, some butter, some salt and pepper, a spice or herb, a simple sauce or pesto.  It’s good, it’s simple, and it never gets old because it is limitless in possibilities.  Eff you, Ragu.

Finally, I don’t do big weekend grocery shopping trips every week because if I want to do something else on Sunday afternoon, I’m not setting our family up for a week of drive-throughs and pizza delivery.  Luckily for us, our freezer currently contains 20lbs of ground moose and even more halibut that Dave’s parents killed and butchered themselves and sent us from Alaska.  But even in the absence of such a windfall, there’s usually some meat in the freezer.  For 5 months of the year, I get a lot of produce from our CSA farm share.  If we’ve got a pound of moose, a head of cabbage, and a few staples on hand, we can have a pretty good dinner.

In summary, here’s a rundown of how my old routine compares to my new approach:

Then: I wasted a lot of weekend time that could have been spent on more interesting activities.
Now: I go to the supermarket irregularly and less frequently and make quick trips to the little market in town when I run out of something.  I get to take my kids to a farm on Wednesdays to get our produce.

Then: Instead of having fun and being creative with my cooking, I was boring myself to death by executing recipes.
Now: We seldom eat the exact same meal twice.  Perhaps contrary to what one might think, making use of whatever we have on hand and keeping our meals focused on a few key ingredients allows me to be more creative and innovative in my cooking.

Then: In order to spare myself more boring time in the kitchen, I would buy processed convenience foods which weren’t healthy for me or my family.
Now: I can spend as little or as much time in the kitchen as I feel like because I am not beholden to a weekly plan that requires I make enchiladas on Tuesday no matter what.

Then: I was buying cheap food of questionable quality in order to compensate for having to buy such a huge diversity of ingredients.
Now: I buy higher quality food and I buy less of it.

Then: I was wasting food because I didn’t stick to my plan or the recipe didn’t call for all of what I had bought (green onions, anyone?).
Now: I waste less food because I don’t rely on recipes to use the food we have.

Now that I’ve said all this, let me be sure I am not giving the wrong impression of myself.  I probably sound more organized than I really am.   Sometimes I don’t feel like cooking and I give my kids cottage cheese and deli turkey for dinner.  Sometimes a bunch of green onions still rots in the crisper.  Sometimes I bust open a packet of McCormick Bearnaise Sauce Mix just because I can’t resist the yummy MSG.  My point here is that overall I’ve found a way to not only eat healthier foods but also increase the enjoyment I receive from preparing and eating while greatly simplifying related processes.

I believe that a lot of people will find familiar elements in my old routine because it is a common approach to mealtime management.  To be fair, my heart was in the right place.  I wanted to make delicious and interesting meals for my family every night.  I was making reasonably nutritious food and was trying hard not to rely on fast food or take out meals.  Turns out, there’s a better way.

That said, I am not interested in living up to an impossible ideal of healthy kitchen efficiency and I hope you’re not either.  What works for me might not be the same thing that works for you.  For that matter, I’ll likely be doing things somewhat differently five years out.   If I’ve given you an idea or two, then I’m happy.  Likewise, if you have tips or an approach to weekly meal planning (or un-planning as the case may be), leave a comment, I’d love to hear from you.

Pardon my absence as of late.  I haven’t been feeling like posting much mainly because I haven’t been cooking much.  Here it is the fall harvest season and I’ve done little more in the kitchen this last week than whip up a few meals for the kids and cut up a rotisserie chicken.  The reason?  In a very un-primal manner I have been drinking protein shakes for breakfast and lunch followed by a simple meat-based dinner followed by another protein shake.  I gave up whey protein earlier in the year when I decided I’d rather eat actual food following a workout.   But now I am, temporarily, subsisting off them as I conduct a 6 week experiment following the dietary guidelines in the Eades’ new book The 6 Week Cure for the Middle-Aged Middle.  The fact is, since starting this blog, I have put aside my body composition goals for the sake of expanding my primal cooking repertoire.  As nice as it is to know how to make a primal-friendly muffin or cake, I am generally better off without either.  So I am taking a month off from any serious cooking and am back to a regular weight training schedule.  Oh, and did I mention I’m going on vacation to Costa Rica next month?

For someone like me who spends a good portion of their time planning, procuring and preparing food, it can be a relief to devote attention to other endeavors for a while and just let someone else decide what’s for dinner.  And who better to decide than Michael and Mary Dan Eades, that friendly, low-carb husband-and-wife-doctor-team from Arkansas?  The Drs. Eades, authors of the NYT bestselling book Protein Power, are on-board with primal principles and from what I can gather, it is somewhat unusual of them to be recommending something like a protein shake in lieu of real food.  What they’ve devised is a high-protein regiment that supposedly gets the liver in optimal shape so that maximum fat loss can occur without the usual losses in lean body mass too.  By the way, I have absolutely no idea whether the Eades can back up their claims in the book with actual research.   I’ve read some criticisms that call it gimmicky.  I decided I didn’t really care.  Here’s how the diet works in a nutshell:

Stage 1 (2 weeks): 3 whey protein shakes a day and 1 meal consisting of protein and some veggies.  No caffeine, no alcohol (ouch!).
Stage 2 (2 weeks): 3 meals a day consisting mainly of meat.  Limited veggies, no dairy.
Stage 3 (2 weeks): Maintenance mode – your standard low-to-moderate carb diet.

Mark Sisson makes an appearance in their book, although I’m not completely sure why.  The Eades recommend an abdominal exercise called Laplace.  After describing it’s execution they show a shirtless photo of Mark and tell us that he achieved his current physique through no other abdominal exercise than this one.  Of course, not only was Mark Sisson never overweight but he also didn’t come to look the way he does by virtue of some funky sucking-in exercise… but whatever.

I am not yet middle aged (I checked!) and I also don’t have a lot of visceral fat so I may not be the target audience for this diet.   Even though I am already at a good weight for my height I still wouldn’t mind leaning out a little.  In less than 2 weeks, I’ve lost nearly 5lbs of scale weight.   I took into account an initial drop in water weight, so as far as I can tell – that’s real poundage.  So, yes, this diet ‘works’.  But just to be clear, there’s nothing magical going on.  Switching things up can help when you’re at a plateau, but there’s definitely some plain old calorie restriction going on here.  Also, in an effort to stay compliant with this temporary plan, my eating behavior has changed in that I haven’t been eating out, snacking, drinking, or partaking in small indulgences that I might not resist otherwise.  If you are interested in losing fat and are at a standstill, you might give the 6-week cure a shot.  I’ve also learned a few things, such as that I can survive without fruit and sugar in all of its forms (at least for a while), and that it might not be so bad to try intermittent fasting again at some point (hated it).

Once these shake weeks are over after Wednesday, I’ll be back to posting recipes.  After the two ‘meat weeks’, I’ll look forward to resuming my usual primal eating style – in Costa Rica!

I am most proud of my Quotable Quips entry. I’ve never felt particularly adept at writing tag lines or clever one-liners so I was very proud of myself when my entry received an honorable mention.  Dave thinks it would make a great primal t-shirt:

Stop killing wheat; eat more meat

I also entered the Show Your Lunch contest. The prize is a mace. I was pleased to discover that the modern mace doesn’t have spikes. If I win, I’ll be sure to post a video of my new garage mace workout. I took a picture for the Show Your Breakfast contest but in typical fashion, never got around to submitting it. Unbelievably, I did manage to enter the Show Your Groceries contest. I wish Dave could have been in the photo but he was at work and I felt I had to take advantage of the fleeting moment of motivation. Finally, I also entered both of the Primal Video contests. You can see my recipe video on the Garlicky Squash Fritters post and also on YouTube. Here’s my primal fitness video, which is also on YouTube.

My entry to the Primal Blueprint Health Challenge "Show Your Lunch" Contest - kielbasa, sauteed egglant and summer squash with basil

My entry to the Primal Blueprint Health Challenge "Show Your Groceries" Contest. Check out that basil plant!

I hope the Primal Blueprint Health Challenge is achieving its goal of motivating people to try a primal diet and approach to well being. Regardless, it’s been a fun distraction during these long, August days and an interesting glimpse at a diverse group of people.

Now on to a few other matters. First of all, please go to the 2 Blowhards blog for an excellent, recent interview with Mark Sisson. You may have to scroll down a bit to get to the interview as I am late in posting this link. To give you a sense of some of the funny and informative material in this interview, here’s a short excerpt:

Read the whole 2-part interview at 2 Blowhards.

Next, you may have noticed that I’ve started to include a few advertisements in the right-hand sidebar. I have gone through some trouble to ensure that the advertisements are only for companies and products that I trust and feel proud to support. Some of these advertisements can generate a small amount of revenue,  and others are just organizations that I support.  Writing this blog has turned out to be more time-consuming than I anticipated and it would be nice if it could contribute a little something towards groceries. If not, though, I’m having enough fun with it that I’ll probably keep writing it anyway!

Finally, I spent a good chunk of time yesterday experimenting with some new primal recipes!  Some were definite winners so check back soon for new recipes or, if you haven’t already, subscribe to This Primal Life via email or RSS to be informed of new posts immediately.