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Do I Need to Supplement with Resistant Starch?
Probably.
This has been a big topic lately, and I don’t think that it’s just a fad. It makes too much sense.
Is Your Hand Sanitizer Making You Infertile?
If you’re trying to have kids in the near future, a few items around your house might be making it a little bit harder for you, at least according to recent research out of Virginia.
Is Paleo a Fad Diet?
We happen to see eating whole, unprocessed foods as not very fad-ish, but I can understand how someone could see removing all grains and legumes in that way.
Personally, I don’t think legumes necessarily need to be removed from a lot of diets unless there are digestive, weight, or other health issues, and the same could be said for most grains (apart from gluten-containing grains). One of the main issues, however, is that grains and legumes still aren’t ideal, mostly because they’re not very nutrient-dense.
How Do I Get Back on the Wagon After Cheating on My Diet?
Whenever I get asked this question, I get the feeling that the person asking me feels like they’re unique in their inability to either stick to a diet or else get back on it after falling off.
That couldn’t be further from the truth.
Over the past year, I’ve been pretty good, but if you’d follow me around all the time, you’d see that I still eat things I shouldn’t and still spiral just a little bit.
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What Percentage of Protein, Fat, and Carbs should I eat?
There are a lot of varying opinions on this.
Generally, throughout history (for as long as we’ve known and across all cultures), protein varies between 12-18%. It’s not a huge range, so generally, 15% protein is fine. That said, higher protein diets are generally more satiating, so several studies appear to indicate that higher protein diets contribute to weight loss. For my part, I think keeping protein anywhere between 15-25% is a pretty good target, and there’s a lot of great research and anecdotal reason to believe that we should cycle protein consumption (some days higher protein, some days very low, rather than keeping it constant every single day).
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Spotlight on Garlic
We all know that the foods we like can change throughout our lives, but one thing I can say for sure is that I grew up loving garlic and just never stopped! As a seasoning and ingredient in soups and on meats, my family always made sure to have that extra pinch; even the smell of cooking garlic was enough to lure me into the kitchen.
Mom had no problem getting me to eat garlic, and that’s a good thing, because this unassuming little bulb of flavor really packs some amazing boosts for your health. A member of the onion family, garlic has been used since before ancient Egyptian times as a seasoning all around the world. However, even more than as a delicious food, garlic has been prized for thousands of years for its medicinal effects, many of which come from antibacterial sulfur compounds (like allicin) that appear when garlic is chewed or crushed. It’s also what gives garlic that delightfully pungent smell.
What’s great about garlic:
Is Oatmeal Paleo? (Don’t take away all of my breakfast foods!)
Most of us have sampled some sort of oatmeal creation in our lifetime, whether it’s cookies, oatmeal in the morning, or a family recipe for baked oatmeal squares.
In fact, many people tout oatmeal as one of the best breakfast foods for you. Should we follow along and grab a bowl of oats every day, or should we be a bit more cautious about adding oatmeal to our daily Paleo lifestyle?
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Is Ghee Paleo? (More Specifically, Why Ghee is Amazing…)
I didn’t grow up exposed to a lot of foods that you might consider to be traditionally non-American. (Whatever that means, but you get the idea.)
Ghee is certainly such a food.
In fact, when I first read about it, I didn’t even know how to pronounce it. Gee? Jee?
I had no idea, except the vague understanding that people seem to spread it on things.
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How Do I Cure Constipation AND Diarrhea?
I recently had a reader email me with a question similar to this.
They were dealing with constipation after going Paleo, and they’d taken eaten various foods to try to cure the constipation. And that’s great, because the alternative is being constipated (which can actually be quite dangerous) or taking laxative and supplements, many of which damage the gut lining.
Unfortunately, though, the foods they’d eaten (including prunes) had too much of the desired effect, and the result was diarrhea and an upset stomach.
The answer, unfortunately, is not a simple one.
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Is fructose worse than all other sugars?
We don’t know conclusively, but fructose in its natural forms is probably not an issue for healthy individuals.
So, is fructose worse than all other sugars?
Are Sardines Paleo?
One of my most vivid memories of elementary school is of sitting in one of our incredibly cramped, 20-person classrooms and eating lunch with friends. They’d be munching on zebra cakes and I would, with an excited smile, pop the lid off my little bin of sardines.
Apparently the smell of fish was less favorable to the 8-year-olds than the sweet aroma of those zebra cakes, because more often than not, I’d look up from my sardines to find myself sitting all alone.
What are Sardines?
I think part of the problem was that no one really knew what a sardine was—a small, whole fish also known as a pilchard. Belonging to the herring family, sardines are rather tiny, oily fish that you can buy fresh or in a can.
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One Huge Reason That Artificial Sweeteners are Unhealthy
Artificial sweeteners have gotten a very bad rap for a long time without much solid evidence as to why they’re bad.
There have been a lot of studies that have shown correlations between things like obesity and artificial sweeteners, but there are so many confounding factors in those studies that they’re pretty much irrelevant for anything other than casual conversation.
That’s rapidly changing.
Is Crab Healthy for Me? Plus, How to Properly Cook Crab
200 million years is an extraordinarily long time.
Upright ancestors of humans evolved from monkeys just 4-6 million years ago. And we weren’t REALLY human until about 130,000 years ago (at least by some metrics like brain size). But however long it’s been, it’s nowhere close to 200 million years.
Crabs, though, have been crabs for about that long. They were around with dinosaurs, for crying out loud.
I’m a geek for facts like this, but the one that might blow you away is that the largest crabs can measure 12 feet across (from claw to claw). That’s not a crab that would fit in any pot that I have at home.
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Gratefulness Significantly Correlated with Better Sleep
Among the changes I’ve made to my life over the past couple of years, one that I’ve stuck to very well is practicing gratitude.
This isn’t something that came naturally to me. I work on it every morning and night, and I try to remember to be grateful at other times during the day.
I practice gratitude for the peace that it brings me, but as science is beginning to show, there are many other benefits.
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Group Nature Walks Stave Off Depression and Stress
The part of my lifestyle that I have always had the hardest time feeling healthy about is my stress levels.
And I know I’m not the only one.
When I talk to almost anybody, it seems like stress and anxiety (and even depression) are extremely common and extremely difficult to deal with. But the fact is that we already know a lot about how to control these parts of our life. We just don’t do what we already know.
Nature + People = Lower Stress and Depression