Why I’m Cutting Back on My Fatkins Diet

Egg Muffins with spinach, onions, garlic, and hog sausages the neighbors made.

WARNING. AS USUAL, THIS POST CONTAINS WAY TOO MANY PHOTOGRAPHS. JUST KEEP SCROLLING.

Easter weekend we visited Aunt Pe & Mike in the Florida Panhandle. We had a great time laying sod, sea kayaking in the waterways, playing with the neighbor’s dog, cooking & eating lots of great food and drinking some lovely red wines.

Beach-dayz computing.

Moroccan Chicken with Green Beans.

The Moroccan Chicken was served on a tri-fold bed of quinoa, cauliflower “rice” (steamed, grated cauliflower) and red cabbage.

Cooking the Moroccan Chicken with lots of local limes.

Since early in the year, Pe & Mike have been exploring the Primal Blueprint. Primal is a diet that hates the word diet. Primal wants to be a lifestyle change. It is a supposedly in-grained, anti-grain pre-agricultural meats, vegetables, fruits, nuts, push-ups, heavy lifting, long-walking, occasional run-for-your-life sprinting, howl-at-the-moon sort of deal with a few modern perks like red wine and coffee with heavy cream.

Duck with Baby Bok Choy. Blake is serving up some duck breast.

Duck with Baby Bok Choy. Gotta love all that duck broth! We supplemented the Bok Choy with Kale since it was cheaper.

Serving up the Duck.

Blake and I tried it out for the weekend and went no-carb (besides some delicious french fries and some crackers! Well worth it.) and heavy on vegetables and meat. The diet, designed by Mark Sisson, is similar to other no-carb/low-carb diets like Atkins except it bases its claim to success not just on cutting out sugars and their next-of-kin, but by supposedly taking one back to pre-agricultral times. According to Sisson, the innovation of growing grains to feed the masses was great and all, but our guts never really adapted to it. He believes we should go back to a sort of forager stage, eating lots of veggies with some fruits, nuts, and grass-fed organic meat thrown in. He purports exercising often, but not too hard, and listening to your body.

Collection of delicious fruits, veggies and roots that we consumed over the course of the weekend.

All of this sounds pretty good, but where is the pasta? Seriously. Pasta is my favorite food. I also love to bake bread. Kneading bread dough through its stages and baking it up fresh is extremely satisfying. I often purport that I am on a “Fatkins” diet, eating mostly carbs in protest of Atkins. In any case, I’m trying out Primal this week, and it has gone well so far. I don’t really crave pasta or anything when I’m eating lots of turkey and eggs and spinach and the like. I believe true-Primal is a bit anti-dairy, but that’s definitely not for me. I’ve been supplementing with sharp cheddar and Greek Yogurt. I don’t even want pasta if I can put some cheese on my veggies!

The Primal Blueprint Cookbook, by Mark Sisson.

I hate all these diet cranks because I want to enjoy food and enjoy life, but I think it’s a worthwhile endeavor for the pasta-lover-I-even-eat-it-for-breakfast girl to cut back on her carbs a bit. According to Science, as a nearly 27 year-old 4′ 11″ woman, I’m supposed to weight about 113 lbs., and I can tell you I’m generally about 20lbs heavier than that, despite a fairly active life-style and occasional bursts of jogging. The last time I weighed 113 lbs was in high school when I played soccer, went horseback riding, and ran about 8 mi a day. Also, I barely ate anything. I went entire weeks where all I wanted was raisin bran or turkey breast with nothing on it.

The Original “Beef Cakes McGee” Sanders. Don’t try to imitate. Admire.

I actually have no idea what I weigh these days exactly, given the fact that having a scale in our house induces B. to some kind of addictive post-traumatic former wrestler dropping-of-weight sort of thing. At least when I’m a bit overweight, I qualify to donate blood. And I am built like an ox. I could bowl you over. Seriously. I don’t think of myself as fat, but plump. Sturdy. Sometimes I like the term “Beefy.” I once tried to start a nickname for myself, “Beef Cakes.” But you can’t start your own nickname. That’s not how that works.

Neighbor dog, Sumo. He doesn’t like the camera “clicking noise,” for he equates it with gun noise, which he thinks means hunting and then he gets overly excited.

Anyway, I started running a few times a week again, and I’m eating less carbs while still eating delicious meals, so what can go wrong? Over the Easter Weekend at ~~Pe & Mikes~~ (I want to call him “Me” [silent h at the end] so they can be “Pe” and “Me”) Pe & Me’s, we tried a lot of fun recipes from The Primal Blueprint Cookbook including Moroccan Chicken with Cauliflower Rice, Green Beans and Red Cabbage; Cheddar Cheese Chips; Root vegetable chips; Egg Muffins; and Roasted Duck with Baby Bok Choy. We drank more red wine and coffee than Mark Sisson would like, but that’s life. And a damn good one, at that.