Another day down, and today was a challenging one to say the least. Every year our local arts center holds a fundraiser called Men Who Cook. Guys cook up stuff and serve it all night. People pay by “tipping” your table and all the tips go to the center. This year we entered the drink section because being our fifth hearing doing it, we wanted a little break from cooking!
This morning we had a lazy morning around the house. Somehow our kids managed to sleep till like 9, which is miraculous believe me. I wanted to try something new for breakfast. I decided to make hash browns out of sweet potatoes! I shredded a sweet potato, diced up am onion, and fried it in a non-stick skillet with ghee until the hash was nice and charred and yummy.
Next I set my sites on a two egg omelette. Actually, two of them as my wife was standing by as well. I heated a stainless steel pan super hot and added some ghee to it. I swirled the ghee around to coat the sides of the pan as well. I whisked up to farm fresh eggs and poured them into the hot pan. Gently swirl the pan in a circular motion for 10 seconds or so, then flip the omelette over on itself with quick short jabs with the pan. Serve with some of your hash and a few cherry tomatoes, and it’s breakfast time!
Thanks to the late breakfast I didn’t eat much all day. At the fundraiser it was decidedly not paleo friendly! My savior was two tables down where they were serving parts of their whole roasted pig! How paleo is that! It was a fun night, I managed to stay clean, and a good deal of money was raised for a good cause. On to tomorrow…the two week mark!
PaleoHikerMD 
geminiathletics
May 20, 2012 at 10:15 am
Now that is my kind of breakfast. I haven’t tried the hash with onions so that’ll be a new twist. A bunch of chopped strawberries or some oranges would be my add ons.
geminiathletics
May 20, 2012 at 10:27 am
I finally had some time this morning to chime in. Your blog is great! I do not consider myself Paleo even though a ton of what I eat is Paleo friendly. My preference is Zone and if my food choices are Paleo then that’s all the better. What is your take/Paleo take on food quantity at each meal, food timing, and the need for protein at every meal? Paleo seems to be primarily focused on food quality and I think misses some other key aspects that play into optimizing the body’s hormonal response to food intake. I saw a while back you mentioned a handful of figs for breakfast – Paleo – yes but where’s the beef?? 😉 This is Jeff Prejean by the way…
erniegarcia76
May 20, 2012 at 2:47 pm
Hey Jeff, thanks for stopping in! My take on Paleo is to try to keep it as simple as possible for everyone. I’m trying to get not just elite athletes like yourself to eat this way, but more importantly everyday people with everyday chronic diseases. To that end, I try not to label it Paleo as much as emphasize the foods I think are either good or bad for you. It’s a Paleo framework, but no need to argue over the minutia of whether this food or that food is “Paleo”. I don’t want people to get caught up in details too much, especially at the beginning. Stay within the bounds of paleo foods, and work from there with what you have.
I think food quality does outweigh food quantity as long as you are eating the right kinds of foods. Worrying about proportions of certain foods may again mean more to someone training for something, but not for a diabetic trying to get their sugars down. Eating a Paleo based diet makes it hard to overeat significantly; it is easy to polish off a dozen donuts, but much harder a dozen apples or a dozen 16 oz ribeyes. I also don’t want people to get caught up in the grassfed/ organic nature of the diet. Obviously eating these types of foods are best for you for many reasons, but I don’t want the inability to access or afford these types of foods to stop people from benefiting from the lifestyle. A regular old strip steak from the grocery will be better than a bowl of fettuccine alfredo any day of the week. Maybe I should say the optimum is on food CHOICE rather than quality or quantity.
Timing of meals is absolutely paramount to healthy eating, particularly for my diabetic patients. I try to make sure people eat consistent meals so that they can get their metabolisms in some sort of cycle. The human body as a whole craves symmetry and consistency, so eating that way is important.
Lastly, I do think that protein should be the backbone of every meal, but I can’t say that I always pull it off. Figs on the way out the door are not optimal by any means, but sometimes you just gotta do what you can do. Figs are better than a danish or drive through breakfast sandwich. As in all things its about time. When I have time, which I try to allow for every morning, I eat a more balanced breakfast based on around 1/2 protein. But, this is a real life blog with my real life actions. Some days…even the best laid out plans fail! Thus the life with a 3 and a 6 year old 🙂
Overall I like the Paleo lifestyle because it really eliminates the major everyday food items that drive the insulin train in my patients. Cut the major stimulus to increase insulin and therefore start the path to insulin resistance and we are getting somewhere. So, the less carbs the better unless they are in fruits and veggies. Some of my views are different than what may be considered optimal by some, but I am looking at this mainly as a physician trying to change the lives of my patients. I’m not training athletes, I’m trying to extend lives!
E
geminiathletics
May 21, 2012 at 1:29 pm
Makes total sense. Really great to have an MD take on all this. Glad at least someone is taking this to the masses and it’s creeping out of CrossFit Gyms and Seminars only. We are all athletes at life though, but I get your point. Hope to see you soon!