Self-reliance through swimming-pool re-purposing

...Really!

http://gardenpool.org/

Chickens, container gardens, tilapia ponds, complete with mulching of waste, water reclamation, and bio-filtration.

Photos and a short video tour--more detail on the specifics of the interlocking biosystems would be nice, but achieving self-sufficiency for a family of 4 from the produce of a retro-fitted swimming pool is impressive, indeed.

Tribe of One

I'm pretty sick of cooking meals for myself. Today I made an amazing breakfast of ground pork seasoned with garlic, ginger, white pepper, and gluten-free tamari, sauteed with shitake mushrooms and yellow squash. I dribbled a few drops of sesame oil on it after I plated it. And then I ate it. Alone. As delicious as it was, there was something missing.

Even in an artist warehouse in a wonderful city where I've found the closest thing to a community I've experienced outside of college, I find myself alone 90% of the time. If we're trying to investigate and even emulate the best parts of hunter-gatherer lifestyle, we have to rethink the ways in which we organize and prioritize our social life. It just doesn't feel natural to have to make plans to see your friends. Ideally, you and your friends find each other through the course of a day organically, because you have the same places you like to go within a relatively small land area, and you gather together to share food because it's more efficient to pool all the fruits of your hunting and gathering than to keep what you have to yourself. I left New York specifically because I was tired of having to "schedule" my friends in.

Of course, I realize people have jobs that force them to arrange their days a certain way. We are still ultimately slaves to clocks and gas tanks and bills and paperwork. This is the modern world, and paleo is only an attempt to remind ourselves who we are on a biological level. We can't actually go back to the paleolithic savanna, but I do think there is room to relearn how to be social according to our evolution.

Check out Evolutionary Psychiatry, a blog specifically about what I'm talking about.

In the meantime, I'm hoping to find people to share food with on a daily basis. Our potlucks are great, but I want that every day. I feel most at peace when I'm breaking bread, er, meat with people. I hope that people who work office jobs can still find a way to make each meal a social event. I think this is a vital component to our overall health that many of us in this lonely modern world are missing.

Happy Little Boozer

On bus up to New York. I feel like shit. I've been pretty off for the past couple of weeks, and I can't figure out why. I hate to admit it's probably the drinking. I love the sauce, what can I say. I love wine and whiskey, and I like to drink it every day. It's genetic. My whole family is like this. We drink regularly, but we don't like getting smashed — it's more of a physiological craving than an emotional crutch. I also love coffee. I've always said that coffee is the one drug I don't think I could ever give up. But I think I've established some sort of metabolic yo-yo thing with the booze/coffee routine. I don't get hungover anymore since I stopped eating/drinking gluten, but I'm definitely not feeling optimal right now. I think I may have adrenal fatigue from my hectic on/off schedule, from all the coffee, and from the low-carb thing I was doing. I think the euphoria of my first few paleo months is wearing off. I'm still committed to ancestral eating because I know my problem isn't that I'm not eating enough bread or hummus. I know I'm getting enough nutrients, but I haven't really fine-tuned anything. I guess before I start trying to micromanage my macronutrient intake, I should probably just try cutting the booze for real. I did it for a week when I first started paleo with no problem, and I also did it when I cooked on the boat recently. I guess it's the aimlessness of a sedentary life. As fun as my life is in general, I get a little bored at night sometimes, and my reflex is to hit the packaged goods store for a half-pint of Evan. I think a small amount of alcohol is healthy, but I easily go through a bottle of wine by myself without even noticing. That can't be good.

Nothing is Set in Stone Age

I am trying to make every single meal I eat for the rest of my life the healthiest meal possible. However, I'm basing what I think is healthy on information that is constantly evolving and changing. Right now, I know this: I will never eat refined sugar, I will never eat processed foods, and I will never eat junk food. Of course, my definition of "processed" includes store-bought bread and pasta, and a lot of other common foods most people consider wholesome, such as pasteurized dairy. If anything, the paleo thing is just an excellent guideline for how to compose most meals - it's flexible and includes most of the foods I love anyway. But as strict as I am adhering to these guidelines, I by no means think that I have it down perfectly, and I by no means think my way is the definitive right way.

I am learning how to listen to my body and change my food to suit what it needs. I seem to not have a problem with corn, but beans really fuck my shit up, even sprouted and soaked beans. I don't have a marked reaction to gluten, but I know that if I reincorporate it into my regular diet, I will have brain fog, fatigue, and bad hangovers. I will also have more pudge. I've recently tried reducing my carb intake, but that seems to not be helpful. I feel tired, and while my brain and attention span seem fine, I just feel lethargic. Eating fruit doesn't help that much, even high-glucose fruit like pineapple and mango. I was blaming it on the heat, which may be a factor, but I didn't feel quite as good as when I was eating sweet potatoes and yams at most meals. I think I need starches that break down slower in the body. Even Girl Gone Primal, who has been doing the zero carb thing, is starting to re-evaluate what she's doing. I'm going to start eating a little white potato and see how that makes me feel. I do love potatoes.

Anyway, I love food, I will always love wine and butter, and when I'm in Italy I will eat the fuck out of some pasta. I don't want to scare people off from good food. I'm just trying to be conscious of how every food impacts my body. This is a constantly evolving process, and I'm always learning. I hope everyone else is doing the same.

Losing My Religion

No, I'm not stuffing myself with pizza. In fact, it's pretty clear to me now that I will be paleo for the rest of my life. I see and feel very profoundly the benefits of my current diet, and I truly enjoy what I eat. I don't feel like I'm missing out on anything, and really, I'm exploring new foods that I had barely even considered until now. That said, I am very cautious of having this become a religion. Raw foodists, vegans, and paleo people alike all feel the need to proselytize when they first fully switch over to their way of living. However, what has drawn me to paleo in the first place is the overall lack of ideology. Everything I originally read aimed to be rooted primarily in the latest science rather than some philosophical, ethical debate. There is a weird, disconcerting crossover between primal living and libertarian/Objectivist thought, but I would say that's a small sub-sect of paleo.

Overall, paleo is a pretty diverse and flexible clan - some avoid white potatoes, some don't, some avoid olive oil, some don't, and there is a constant re-tinkering and re-evaluating based on science and anthropology. I do not believe how I eat is morally or ideologically superior to the way anyone else eats. In fact, I think on the most part, veganism is 100% an intellectual choice whereas paleo, at least for me, is 100% a physiological, biological choice.

I try to eat locally and I try to eat well-raised grass-fed animals because I think that's the best way to get the best quality and most dense sources of nutrients possible. I don't deceive myself into thinking I'm saving the world. I don't deceive myself that all those animals march happily into the family-run abattoir and offer up their throats to be cut in return for the farmers' kindness. But I also don't have a moral objection to killing for food. I'm saving myself, pure and simple, and I'm making choices according to my biology. This is not to say that I don't want our food system to be as ethical as possible, I just don't think that denying our biology in favor of subjective ethics is ultimately sustainable. As I progress and learn more, I'm continuing to tinker with my diet to make sure that I stay healthy for as long as possible, and eating meat is a huge part of that process. I am not seeking moral purity. I'm not trying to tell other people how to live. However, if you have questions for me, I can relay information as I come across it.

The indisputable facts for me are that humans are evolved to be omnivores, grains and legumes are relatively new to the human diet evolutionarily speaking, and that sugar and gluten are bad for us. I believe that processed foods, including industrial seed oils such as canola and corn, are unhealthy, especially in the amounts that we consume them. I think there is a lot of wisdom in our ancient traditions, and I try to learn from them. There's really nothing revolutionary or radical about my approach to food. I'm just trying to be healthy, and I would like to help the people I love be healthy.

Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes

BEFORE


AFTER

Ok, I hope this isn't TMI for you folks, but I wanted to show you a before and after of my body since I started eating paleo. The first picture was from around the time I moved to Baltimore. I already wasn't eating grains every day and I was avoiding sugar, but I was drinking beer and eating beans. I was still feeling a lot of brain fog at the time, and I often felt hungover for entire days even after only drinking just a couple of beers.

Recently, I've noticed some weird physiological changes. On tour, I had no choice but to wear the same pair of socks for a few days at a time, yet my feet never got stinky. They started smelling strongly of the rubber my shoes are made of, but not that yeasty smell. I used to be pretty prone to athletes foot, particularly if I didn't change my socks every day. I went all of tour with about 5 pairs of socks, and I never had a problem. Another thing I noticed just today is that I am sweating much less than I usually do despite the heat, even after I've run a couple blocks to catch a bus. My heart rate also doesn't increase too much with a short sprint. It used to be that any sudden movement would make my heart pound.

The heat in Baltimore has gotten me feeling pretty fatigued, but not in the same way I used to feel every day, which is to say no concentration and a desperate desire to dip my brain in bleach because it felt like there was a greasy film covering it. The old fatigue also made me feel like I didn't want to lift a finger, but right now my tiredness just makes me want to take things slightly slower. I feel pretty alert, even when I'm exhausted, and all of tour I felt more energetic than I ever have. I think it's heat and dehydration that is getting to me right now.

Anyway, I'm not sharing this out of a sense of vanity. I've just been experimenting with my body for the past couple of years, and I think these changes are pretty interesting. I think it's noteworthy that I've been able to change my body composition with no concerted effort to establish an exercise routine - I lost fat (keep in mind that I have significantly increased the amount of fat I eat), and while I haven't really gained any muscle, I think I'm somewhat stronger. I wound up lifting a lot of heavy stuff on tour, but that was out of obligation more than anything else, and I only lifted one or two heavy things a day. I did notice that it was remarkably easier to lift my bandmate's keyboard than it was two years ago.

Paleo Breakfast

Paleo breakfast. Three-egg omelet with spring onions (eggs were from the egg guy at the Waverly farmers market and the spring onions were from the downtown market), apple salad, and sweet potato, served with mustard/cider vinegar dressing, chipotle salsa, and salsa verde with avocado. I used ghee to cook the omelet, and I melted extra butter and a touch of ghee into the sweet potatoes. I didn't put any cheese in the omelet. For those of you still getting acne or gaining weight, or generally still feeling a bit bloated and gross, please try eliminating dairy from your diet for a while. Ghee is ok because the milk solids have been removed, it's just pure fat, which is good for you. It's the casein and the lactose in milk that are particularly growth-inducing. Chill on that shit. The irony of that ashtray in the picture is not lost on me.

Also, another note, when doing scrambled eggs or omelets, scramble the eggs in a bowl before you cook them - really whisk them to get them to froth up a little. Once you pour it into a hot pan, turn the heat down and stir very gently once every 30 seconds or so just to get them to cook evenly. Don't scramble in the pan. You need to be gentle with eggs when you cook them, otherwise they stick to the pan or become mealy and gross.