Today I’m asking, can you do Paleo on a pound a day? This is the challenge laid down by the Live Below the Line Global Poverty Project this week. As I blogged on Saturday the item was covered on BBC Breakfast featuring blogger Jack Monroe who blogs at A Girl Called Jack and writes brilliantly and eloquently about her struggles to survive on very little money. And how hunger hurts.

I wanted to rise to the challenge and see if Paleo can be done on a pound a day – or at least a diet high in protein. Jack’s shopping for the week contains nearly all carbohydrate. And that would be very difficult for someone trying to follow a Paleo high-protein diet. Read More→

Last night I dreamt about bread. About gloriously-filled juicy pumped-up fluffy white baps filled with ham and cheese. About freshly-roasted bread jewelled with poppy seeds and toasted grains. I didn’t just see the bread. I ate it.

I was somewhere in a city where food was suddenly needed. And the only place serving food was a cafe with a cabinet full of filled baps, French sticks, croissants and baguettes. “That’s all we have,” an irate large Italian man told me. “You take it or you leave it.” I ordered a ham and cheese bap but knew I was far too hungry to just eat the filling as I now try to do when only sandwiches are available. Read More→

Watched a very interesting item on BBC Breakfast this morning. About eating on a budget. A very tight one. A pound a day! (A bit more than one Euro and around $1.50). I marvelled at how blogger Jack Monroe made her money stretch so far and yet feed her and her three-year-old son so well.

We’d just eaten a full – VERY full – cooked breakfast when we saw this time so I whipped out my calculator to see what our breakfast had cost. Read More→

Following on from yesterday’s blog, I want to say a bit more about why it’s easier to play by the rules on Paleo and not game a weigh-in. Also why most conventional diets fail in the end.

in a word, it’s deprivation. You feel deprived on most conventional diets. And while that can work for a while, few of us are able to sustain it long term. In the end, we return to our former ways of eating and often overeat to make up for the undereating. Read More→

My weigh-in is now just over a week away and while that’s sufficient time to possibly “game” the result a little, ie starve myself for the few days preceding the weigh-in, I’m not going to do that. I want to get off this yoyo merry-go-round. I want to do this properly. I also set out when I started this Paleo lark to see if it would actually work and I can’t do that if I cheat. For gaming a weigh-in is cheating same as standing on the scales with one foot on and one off!

How to game a weigh-in!

Having said that, thought it might be a bit of fun to recall for you the various ways I used to game my weigh-ins when I belonged to a slimming group. Read More→

Happy St. George’s Day to my English readers. Can’t say there have been any crosses of St. George displayed where I live in the heart of Middle England but never mind. We Englishers don’t tend to wear our nationality on our sleeves as much as our Welsh, Scottish and Irish cohabiters. For which I admit to a touch of envy but there you are. Maybe our ancestors caused so much pain to said celtic countries that it’s best we don’t dance around the flag too much.

That said, I’m only English for two generations of my family. All my grandparents were born in Poland. But I feel very English and I like being English. I like living in England too, though must confess that the pull of Wales (see my last post) grows stronger every time we visit Portmeirion. But an Englisher who doesn’t speak Welsh living in North Wales? Not sure how that would work. And I’m too old to learn a new language now. Read More→

Have you ever felt that it’s all getting to you, the walls are closing in and you can’t breathe? That’s how I felt last Wednesday afternoon. Nothing was going right. I wanted to escape, just briefly, from it all and recharge the batteries. So I did.

I’m lucky at the moment that my work pattern and my partner’s too allows us to do this. I don’t advertise on this blog – yet! – and no one pays for a mention. But sometimes, I think a place or product deserves a free plug. And that place is Portmeirion. (I love Portmeirion Pottery too but that’s a whole other thing). Read More→

Today I want to look at something that I know some of my readers are concerned about. And that’s the cost of following a Paleolithic diet, or any kind of high-protein diet that requires you to eat more meat.

Surely it’s expensive I’ve been asked. How on earth can you afford it? I’ve also mentioned previously my unease with worrying about eating too much when so many in the world have nothing or very little. I recognise the injustice of this. And I agree with you. It’s ridiculous. Read More→

Yesterday, Sunday, I was hungry all day long. I woke up hungry and I stayed hungry. I was hungry after I ate. I was hungry while I ate. I kept thinking while eating what can I eat next? It was like my body had become hollow and everything I ate just slid down and out of me without touching the sides.

If you’re a dieter like me, such hungry days are probably inevitable. Paleo dieting should, in theory, put a stop to hunger pangs as protein fills faster and you stay full for longer. Maybe this was the result of a few not very hungry days I’ve had? My body was fighting back, yelling give me food, give me more food, feed me feed me feed me feed me NOW! Read More→

My tiny weight loss yesterday has galvanised me to try harder. A miserable two pounds can easily be attributed to normal fluctuations in weight. It’s entirely possible I haven’t really lost any weight at all in the last five weeks!

Quel disaster. After all that effort. So what’s to be done? Starvation is out. I’m not a believer in it and I don’t think it would work for me. Cutting calories back further won’t do it either. The normal way of dieting is to count and cut calories, keeping it low fat but high carb. I plan to do the very opposite of this. I plan to take the Keynesian approach. Read More→