Once again I've found myself with no time to write anything on here for around a week. I'm not really in the right frame of mind for writing so here is a rather lazy, bulleted list;

• Molars seem to hurt more than front teeth when pushing through the gums, angry baby is angry.
• Simplefit is to regimented and simple for my liking, so I'm going to make up my own exercise program that suits me.
• I've decided to relax my dietary goals and aim for something slightly less hardcore than strict paleo.
• I've been doing more cardiovascular exercise including hauling out the bike and cutting the grass as often as possible.
• I've been attempting to relax as much as possible.
• I'm working on a new website for the Penicuik Community Development Trust.
• I might start blogging about geeky stuff every now and again.
• Expect more Penicuik Food Project news soon.
• I will make this blog work, and will try to post more frequently.
• I'm on holiday next week :)

Is it just me or does time seem to fly past these days, I suspect it's something to do with growing older making life seem faster that it did all those years ago, when the summer holidays seemed like forever and a day only a little shorter. May started off with grand aspirations, the intentions to stop drinking coffee, alcohol and eating chocolate for an entire month, none of which I achieved. I should really have remembered that you should only make one big change to your lifestyle at a time.

That aside I did manage to write a couple of posts that I'm happy with, asking are grains bad for you? and is soy bad for you?.

In the spirit of last month, I thought I'd use use this post for accountability purposes, this time being a bit more realistic with my intentions;

Strength training.

Over the last couple of months I've taken a rather laid back approach to exercise, giving my body a break and a chance to recover from the previous months of decent exercise digging and getting the garden ready for planting.

Recently, I came across SimpleFit and quite like the sound of the minimal approach of using only push-ups, pull-ups and squats to get yourself in to shape. I've decided to give it a shot for the month to see if it's any better than the sporadic body weight routine that i usually use.

Cardiovascular training.

On top of that I would like to do a bit more cardiovascular exercise, I didn't realise just how bad my stamina was until last week after a brief attempt at jogging. I've decided to haul the bike out of the garage and get out on it once in a while. I'd also like to get out and walk in the woods more often whilst doing a little bit more jogging and running when I get a chance.

Relax a little!

For years I've been an obsessive organiser and have had lists of things that need done since as long ago as I can remember. I think I'd like to take a step back from all that and see what happens. I've deleted my pages on Daytum for a start, which I had previously used to track everything I ate and how much I exercised. Why did I really need to track that?

Back at the end of April I set myself a few challenges for May which I listed in my post on Living the Primal Life. My main goal was to eliminate a good number of stimulants from my diet for a month to see how it would effect my body and in particular my ability to lose weight. I targeted coffee, chocolate and alcohol in particular and failed on all three accounts. The month got off to a really bad start as I mentioned in my Catching Up post last week, and I wrote off my experiment shortly after that.

Which leads me on to the topic of this article, which is coffee, and in particular my inability to not drink the stuff. It would appear that I seem to be quite addicted, and I'm hoping that using the internet for accountability purposes will help me get over it.

My reasons for wanting to stop drinking coffee are simple primarily it's a drug addiction, with a long list of side-effects, which can lead to eventual adrenal fatigue.

It should, in theory be a simple process, considering that I stopped smoking successfully after being addicted for fifteen years.

Wish me luck!

The Soybean, or Soya bean as it's know in the UK is a species of legume native to to the Eastern parts of Asia. The use of soy in the UK has increased significantly since the 1980's and it's very likely that you will find it in the majority of processed foods stocked in your local supermarket. On top of that Soy is heavily used in both vegetarian and vegan diets in the form of Tofu and quite often used as animal feed. As for whether our paleolithic ancestors consumed soy, the likelihood is very low, mainly due to the fact that the soybean must be processed to make it useful.

Phytoestrogens

Being male, one of the main reasons I stay as far away from soy as I possibly can is because they contain high amounts of phytoestrogens, which mimic oestrogen in the body. Oestrogen, which as you may know is the primary female sex hormone, whilst required by men in small doses it can cause the formation of breasts, raised cholestorol, weight gain, osteoperosis, enlarged prostate and in extreme cases infertility if over-consumed. Another thing worth mentioning is that ancient monks were known to use Soy to reduce their sexual desires.

For the females reading this thinking that it doesn't affect them, think again. I think the fact that Oestrogen is the primary ingredient in a lot of birth control tablets should be enough to put you off over-consumption. It's also worth mentioning that 80% of breast cancers rely on supplies of oestrogen to grow.

Processing and Genetic Modification

As I mentioned earlier Soy requires processing to make it safe for consumption. Some of the processes involved sound pretty extreme like acid washing and the use of neutralisation solutions. On top of that you need to consider what is added in at the processing stage to improve the flavour. The likes of MSG are very high on my avoidance list and I feel it deserves an article of its own, but to be brief it's very bad news. Adding to the apparently about 91% of the Soy grown today is genetically modified, which opens up another can of worms worthy of a separate article.

Mineral Absorption

Soybeans have really high levels of Phytates, which are guilty of blocking mineral absorbsion, specifically minerals such calcium, iron, magnesium and zinc. All of which are required by your body to keep it running properly.

Finally...

Whilst it's pretty obvious that Soy has quite a lot of negative effects, if you must have something soy based, fermented products such as Miso and Tofu is probably your best bet, since the fermentation process makes it a little better for you. However, I choose to avoid it completely where possible, including eating meat reared on soy feed, and doubt you could convince me otherwise!

When I first started learning about the Paleo diet one of the things that I found hardest to get my head around was that grains (including whole grains) are believed to be bad for you. Conventional Wisdom dictates the opposite and a trip to the shops with the thought in mind forces you to realise that the majority of food out there comprises of grains of some form or another.

I can't deny the fact that I still eat grains, but I have been transitioning them out of my diet and as I mentioned in my Primal Living post I have lost 8kg in weight and 7cm of belly circumference in doing so. Another interesting observation came to me after running out of food ideas and settling on eating macaroni cheese for the first time in a month or so. Close to an hour after finishing our meal I ended up on the receiving end of a headache and Anna with stomach ache.

Could it be that the staple food of the majority of the western worlds diet is actually bad for you?

Genetics & Intolerance

Grains started to make their way into the human diet approximately 10,000 years ago with the introduction of agriculture. If you consider that humans first appeared sometime between 2.3 and 2.4 million years ago (according to conventional science), 10000 years wouldn't even be five minutes if you made a comparison with your lifespan.

What I'm saying is that your body isn't designed and didn't evolve to eat grains. I realise that the human body has been proven to evolve over (a long) time to the environment that it lives it and the available food sources, but I believe that it hasn't. The existence of food intolerances is enough proof for me. An example being gluten intolerance, which affects 1 in 130 people, almost 1% of the population of all the European countries combined.

The Science

The majority of grains comprise of a large quantity of starch, which when digested converts to maltose and isomaltose in the intestines, which in turn is converted to glucose. Large amounts of glucose (sugars) cause numerous problems for your body, the one that concerns me the most is the massive spike in blood sugar levels and the amount of insulin the pancreas has to release to metabolise it. The long-term effects of such a process can cause Insulin resistance, hypoglycemia and type 2 diabetes.

Anti-nutrients

Anti-nutrients are compounds that interfere with the absorption of vitamins and minerals, sometimes blocking the ability for the nutrient to be absorbed or digested. Whilst fermentation can reduce the amount of anti-nutrients, the high levels in grains make the nutritional quality questionable.

I'd say those are the three main reasons that I concluded that the Paleo approach to grains is correct. The biggest problem for me is fully escaping them, having a look around the shop at work and realising that at least three quarters of what you see if potentially bad for you is quite an intimidating thought!

Photo credit: Kevin Dooley