So once we realize that the food pyramid has been upside-down our whole lives, what do we eat? We pretty much have to re-think everything that goes in our mouths. They have literally turned the truth completely upside-down on us! They tell us that sugar is innocent and that animal fat is killing us, and the exact opposite is true. Sugar and grains are killing us and animal fat is the healthiest food we can eat. Saturated fat is absolute health food! The Inuit (Eskimos) are the healthiest people we've ever found and they eat 80% animal fat. There is an amazing researcher responsible for this discovery, Vilhjalmer Steffansson. You can read his book, My Life With the Eskimo, on google books.
Basically this man went to live with the Inuit mulitple times for months or years at a time, spending more than 5 years of his life living with them. He adopted their diet and then studied himself and brought Inuit people into the lab as well, taking blood samples and measuring all kinds of disease parameters and nutrient levels. Off the chart healthy. They eat nothing but animal foods for almost 9 months of the year, and show no deficiencies, no disease. They do have some health problems, like high infection rates, which is attributed to their close living conditions and the unsanitary nature of living in a small ice house with many people.
The question people most often ask me is, What should I eat? So here is a list of meal and snack ideas.
Breakfast: easy peasy, as long as you love eggs and bacon. If you don't, it's time to learn. After a couple days of eggs for breakfast, you will start to crave them right when you wake up. Eggs have an amino acid profile of 100. They essentially set the standard for all other proteins. Plus they are full of extremely healthy cholesterol (doesn't cause heart disease, that is a huge myth), other healthy fats, and vitamins. For some reason, I just love pork products in the morning. Beef, chicken, or fish for breakfast just seems gross, but bring on the bacon, sausage, and ham for breakfast! Then eat beef and fish for lunch and dinner, since they are healthier than pork. I also have a quarter or half of a grapefruit most mornings, or some berries with yogurt, or maybe a piece of grain-free toast (the gluten-free bread from the Wedge makes better toast than any wheat bread) if I want a carb serving in the morning, which lately I usually don't.
Frittata: 8 eggs, 1 cup of cheddar cheese, half cup cream, 10 pieces of bacon or sausage or both, any other ingredients you want like mushrooms, scallions, tomato, garlic, onion, spinach. Fry up the meat and veggies in some butter or bacon fat, then stir in the beaten eggs, cream, and cheese, then bake in the oven for 20-30 mins at 350 degrees until cooked through. Delish.
Another amazing breakfast recipe that can be premade and frozen to have something quick to grab in the morning: Bacon Muffins! These are fabulous.
http://www.cheeseslave.com/2009/01/06/low-carb-bacon-egg-cheese-muffins/
Lunch or dinner ideas:
Wild caught salmon burger (frozen), on a bed of greens with melted cheese, dill, and lemon
Pizza toast - Gluten free bread with pizza sauce, pepperoni, sausage, and mozzarella in the oven for 10 minutes. Great for kids.
Brats with kim chi or sauerkraut and mustard, with cheese melted on top
Grilled summer sausage and cheese sandwich on GF bread.
Coconut curry - soup or stirfry with any veggies or meat you want, fish sauce, ginger, garlic
Shepard's Pie, heavy on the meat and non-root vegetables and light on the potatoes
No pasta lasagna - julienned zucchini, artichoke hearts, olives, diced tomatoes and spinach instead of pasta with the usual meat sauce, ricotta, parmesan and mozzarella layers
Spaghetti with meat sauce and spaghetti squash instead of noodles - just cut the spag squash in half, rub with olive oil and bake cut-side down for 20 mins in the oven at 350 or so. Then scrape with a fork and instant spaghetti noodles!
Any big piece of meat like a steak or some oven baked chicken, with a green vegetable side like asparagus, broccoli, brussel sprouts, swiss chard, kale, etc. My favorite new way to cook green veggies is sprinkled with o.o. and salt/pepper, then baked in the oven. They get all crispy, like green potato chips. Yum. Baked chicken is really good with herbs, garlic, and butter smeared on it before you bake it.
Pot roast. So easy and so good. Brown the roast in a hot pan with some bacon fat or o.o. in it, then pour broth over the top, add celery, onion, garlic, and a couple carrots and cook on low heat for many hours. Maybe add some baby portobellos toward the end for the last half hour or so.
Three awesome dessert ideas:
These first two can be made with stevia, and hardly anyone could tell it wasn't made with sugar. I especially like the Sweetleaf Stevia, although it has inulin in it, so don't eat it if you struggle with candida.
Panna Cotta. The best recipe is Giada's, just use 1/4 of the sugar she calls for (a good rule of thumb for any dessert recipe, if you get your tolerance down, you won't even notice after a short adjustment time) or a little stevia. No, honey, maple syrup, and agave are not better for you than sugar. Just the same, or even higher in fructose, which is worse for you than glucose.
http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/giada-de-laurentiis/panna-cotta-with-fresh-berries-recipe/index.html
Egg Custard. So good and so easy, I could make it in my sleep. I eat this constantly. You can use 4 cups of cream instead of the cream and milk if you are trying to lose weight. Milk has lactose - milk sugar which is half glucose and will cause a insulin release, which causes fat storage.
8 eggs, 2 cups cream, 2 cups whole milk, a little bit of some sweetener (or better yet, a teaspoon of stevia), 1 t vanilla, couple dashes of nutmeg (I like to add some before mixing and also dust some on top) and a dash of fine salt. Wisk or hand-mix, then set your custard cups or large glass bowl in a slightly larger cake pan and pour an inch of hot water in the bottom, and place the whole thing in the oven at 325 degrees (not above 350 so the water doesn't boil much) for about 35-40 mins.
Best cookies ever, and they are gluten-free. No one will ever know. So yummy. Just skip the weird grapeseed oil and use room temp butter, and you can go easy on the raisins, or even better, use dark chocolate chips instead! And you don't even need the full quarter cup of sugar - I usually aim for less than 5 grams of sugar per cookie. Stevia doesn't work so well with chocolate, almond flour, or other flours. Stevia is best with dairy and eggs. Best to just use a little sugar here and skip your fruit or other carbs for today.
http://www.elanaspantry.com/dinas-delightful-cookies/
Hope that gives you some good ideas to get you started! Remember calories don't exist, they only truly measure carbohydrates. Keep your carbohydrates below 50-80 grams/day for weight loss - about 2 or 3 small servings, spaced throughout the day. Then eat all the beef, bacon, sausage, chicken, cream, yogurt, eggs, and fish that you desire and watch the pounds fall away! Happy eating!
