@Melissa "When I ate a “healthy” low-fat, high-carb diet, hunger showed up all the time. In fact, it sat on the stoop and hung around in between meals, too."

That is what cut it for me. My previous diet would get the thumbs up from just about every health organisation in the world. But for me it didn't work. I'd eat a large breakfast (muesli and skinny milk), a large lunch (lots of ruit and nuts as well), and a large supper (usually pasta based).

However, the gap between lunch and supper felt like a lifetime, and I'd be getting hunger-shakes just cooking the evening meal, even though it would be only five or so hours from my last meal. I remember making a stir fry whilst gorging on toast, fruit and nuts.

I'll never forget those hunger-shakes. This was my first realisation that my diet was actually wrong and that possibly my metabolism was screwed.

Having gone 'paleo', I knew things were improving. After six months I scheduled in IF, although by this time the shakes in general were a thing of the past, and I was instinctively going longer between meals.

The ability to fast for long periods of time - upwards of 24 hours and to do highly intense exercise in a fasted state was a revelation and liberating. It was instinctive and desireable - I just wasn't hungry some mornings.

Now I trust fatigue to tell me when to rest, I trust my thirst to tell me when to drink, and I trust my hunger to tell me when to eat.

🙂

@Batman

Carbs (sugar) aromatizes testosterone and turn it into estrogen. I familiar with the Silverster Graham/John Harvey Kellog story and when ever I tell it the punchline is and they have the last laugh, because their foods work.

In general, I dont have time for a full meal before work. However, Im a weightlifter(not a bodybuilder). My morning meal is usually a scoop of whey protein, a handful of mixed berries, 2 TBSPs of almond butter, a few ounces of coconut milk, and water mixed in a blender.
Its sort of in the middle I guess. No animal fat, but there is plenty of fat in it. There is no corn or wheat but a bit of sugar from the berries. Also packed with protein.
After that, the rest of the day is eggs, meat of various sources, vegetables, and avocados.

Opinions?

@Melissa,

regarding beef well done: It might be different in the US because you have a big steak culture there. Most women I observed in central (exception: france maybe?)/south/east europe are repulsed by a bloody steak. And when they eat meat, they eat less (as a ratio of meat:condiments). That's my experience.

Coincidentally, I just finished my breakfast at 11:30. Today was beef broth with spinach and red Thai curry paste heated in the microwave at work. I cracked a couple eggs into the hot broth and poached them in the soup for another couple minutes (back in the microwave). I almost never hungry in the morning, and often just have coffee & coconut milk or cream to sip on my commute to work. Then I eat at my desk later in the morning. I find that a combination of eggs and meat keeps me satisfied until late afternoon, when I take my lunch break and eat my last meal of the day. A snack of fruit or a small salad in the evening is generally all I want.

Eating this way just makes so much more sense. At work, we have free bagels, donuts and oatmeal, but even if I didn't eat one of those until 10 or so, I would be starving and ready for lunch by 11:30.

A roast-wich sounds like a genius idea, I will have to give that one a try! And count me in as another woman who likes rare steak and always has.

@all about the "girls don't like it blue" issue, I think it has a lot to do, again, with culture. Not just because of dietary advice or risk-awereness, but becuase they're supposed to be more "delicate".

A big blue steak is seen as grotesco-animalesque, so men are allowed or even encouraged to indulge and boast about their manlyness. Women on the other hand are supposed to think it's grose. It's a pretty strong thing in the modern gender roles.

Now of course that's not to say there can be no actual biological difference, that would be naive, all I mean is that the perceived differences are not really that good a piece of evidence for these particular differences.

On a different note, some time ago (way before I had ever heard of Paleo) I decided to have a bacon chesse burger, but didn't really care for the bread. My solution was an inside-out cheese burger. So if meat in the innermost layer of a cheese burguer, now it was the outermost, completelly encompassing everything else. Then cheese, then a lot of bacon and onions and at the very core there was a very small piece of bread. The thing was huge. Best burger I've ever had.

Oh, besides roasts, not-so-well-done chicken breasts can also work for sandwichs.

paul halliday said about meat based pizza.

i have to say meatza as it is often called is a fantastic meal to serve for non-paleo guests (as long as they eat meat!) they quickly forget there is no bread/whatever.

however it is very filling and i made two mistakes the first time i made one:
used lean minced steak which took forever to cook
gave it enough meat-based topping for a normal pizza forgetting that the base was all meat!

it was my first meal of the day at 3pm but i still struggled towards the end, my son who was 14 had to eat half later!

for the smoothie i suppose i could use a slower digesting protein like casein, i just thought with the cream, full fat milk and full fat greek yogurt absorption would be slowed enough. plus the whey tastes great:)

i generally agree with you that replacing non-paleo foods with paleo subs is not a good road to go down.
but i miss pizza a lot, so erm i do meatza 😀

see it a lot of veggie/vegans with the substitute meats and can't help but think it is missing the point.

good comment though

All I can say is that Dr. Kellogg belongs in hell if anyone does(though I don't think anyone truly would because we're all victims of our circumstances in some sense).

Genital mutilation of children, both female and male, is one of the few crimes that should be punishable by death.

Circumcision of both males and females amounts to violent, disfiguring, child rape.