Fourth Dinner

Tonight/last night was a great meal, as usual. A lot of good topics raised after we ate. I was particularly interested in Gina's comments on aerobic vs. anaerobic exercise. Exercise is important, but I don't think killing yourself at the gym is useful, and can even be highly damaging - as Gina pointed out, many people are doing way too much cardio, causing a stress response in the body, leading to some of the same issues we're trying to avoid by cutting out stress-inducing dietary things like sugar and gluten. Also, you can't work out to make up for a bad meal. Really, at the end of the day, you have to do what makes you feel good. Exercise can't be a chore, and it can't be a form of self-punishment for eating the wrong things. It has to be a pleasure, and I think healing the body through diet can help to make working out less laborious.

On another note, I found tonight's meal to be rather acidifying. After the meal I felt a bit of off, not necessarily tired, but my lips were tingling and my tongue felt very mildly sore around where it rubbed up against my teeth. My mother used to say this feeling was caused by hot qi, which I've found lines up nicely with western findings about acidity vs. alkalinity in the body. This meal actually had way more sugar than our usual fare. Dates, though unrefined, are very high glycemic (they spike the blood sugar very rapidly), and I put raisins and apples in the tongue salad. And though Victoria's smoothie was delicious and might have been great on its own between meals, when food is pureed, it increases its glycemic index (the sugars in it enter the bloodstream faster). There was also quite a bit of fruit in this meal, which could have been a problem. The tahini in the Katey's soup is also acidifying. Did anyone else feel anything?

Of course, this is not to say that the meal wasn't delicious. Thanks everyone!

For the next meal, I'd like to have more veggies, minimize the fruit and dairy, and basically have no sugar. If Edward's torts are successfully paleo friendly, this would be even more reason to minimize sugars in the rest of the meal, so that we can more fully appreciate his hard work. Meat. Veggies. That's the moral of the story.