Why I am still trying...

Benefits that I have read and experienced outweighs my desire to quit and chow down on a big piece of sourdough baguette...

Experience
- no more of the "starving" feeling
- my sweet tooth has become very minimal. I am now able to say no to sweets laying around!
- clothes are fitting better even though my lbs have not decreased for a while
- not feeling cold all of the time

Read
- you do not experience the symptoms of being sick. Meaning, you are sick but you dont know it. Explanation below.
- flat abs without a single sit up. (mysterious! but great sounding)
- better cholesterol and blood pressure. (I have no problems here but it's always a good thing to keep them low)


I have been trying to eat much better this week. Making my food and bringing it to lunch. Go me!!!
Yesterday I did go to El Pollo and got a $1 Al Carbon Taco and had the inside of it. As I was having the spoon full... I thought to myself.... hmm... this is so dang good and simple... can I make this at home??? So the project began.

Went to the market and picked up whatever I thought was in the Al Carbon... Chicken, cilantro, onions, lime, and I added green peppers and jalapeno peppers. The end result was very good... I topped them off on cabbage and it was yummy!!! Bit spicy but still very good. I was very happy with it and gave myself a gold star.


















Not being sick explanation by Warren Dew:

My question: How does this not feeling sick but being sick thing work? Why are paleo-ers not able to feel sick? But once we eat bad food we start feeling sick? Very interesting.

Hm, this is kind of complicated.  I'll see if I can make it understandable.

The first thing to know is that most of the symptoms people get when they are sick are not from the actual infection itself.  Rather, they are from the body's immune response to the infection.  Antibodies and one type of white blood cell kills off infected cells, another type of white blood cell - macrophages - engulf and consume the dead cells.  Extra mucus is generated to prevent any new germs from reaching and infecting live cells, and to carry detritus out of the body, leading to congestion and runny noses.  Coughs are an attempt by the body to expel bacteria from the air passages before they can become too much of a problem.

The body has been highly optimized to deal with infections.  As a result, on the diet the body is designed for - a paleo diet - the symptoms are mild.  The immune system works efficiently, and it doesn't take a lot of mucus, coughing, and sneezing to stay healthy.  From the standpoint of a paleolithic human, this makes sense - one needs to fight off the cold, but one also needs to stay fit enough to face down other predators if needed, even when one has a cold.  At most it might be beneficial to feel a bit tired or sleepy so as to know to take it easy for a few days.

Unfortunately, neolithic foods interfere with this optimization.  For example, glucose interferes with the efficiency of macrophages, by displacing the vitamin C that macrophages need to function properly.  For reasons such as that, eating a lot of carbohydrates, which are in part broken down into glucose in the digestive tract, seems to interfere with immune system efficiency.  With a less efficient immune system, infections make it farther before they are stopped, and the body then needs to step up the immune response beyond what it would need to be on a paleo diet.  The result is the stronger and more debilitating symptoms that the general population has when they get sick.