Why are coconuts awesome?

• Very nutritious with plenty of minerals and saturated fat. And yes, saturated fat is good for you especially medium-chain triglycerides.
• Dense in calories with all that fat. Extra calories are great when building muscle mass or needing to replace a meal.
• Relatively cheap. Or more accurately, coconut products are relatively cheap. Fresh coconuts are usually more expensive, more likely to be spoiled and more difficult to handle in my opinion. Cracking open a mature coconut is fun the first time, but not much so the second time.
• They are delicious! Just don’t go overboard and drink two frozen coconut bags a day…or you may begin to hate all things coconut. I speak from experience.

Young Coconuts

• Coconut water – What you drank from a green coconut when you were vacationing in the Caribbean.
• Coconut jelly – What you scraped out of said coconut after drinking it.

Mature Coconuts

• Coconut water – Mature coconuts have it as well, but it’s not as nutritious nor delicious.
• Coconut meat – The white flesh from inside the coconut, which contains most of the nutrients.
• Coconut milk – Grate the meat from above, soak it in warm water and strain the solids out.
• Coconut cream – Same as above, but contains less water. Thus it’s more creamy.
• Dried coconut – Dehydrated/dessicated meat that’s usually found in a shredded or flaked form.
• Coconut butter – Putting dried coconut into a blender or food processor will produce “butter”. It’s very delicious and what I’ll be showing how to make below.
• Coconut oil – The extracted oil. Extra virgin coconut oil still has a hint of coconut taste and preserves some of the coconuts nutritional properties. Refined coconut oils are tasteless and odorless and not very useful unless you looking for something with an even higher smoke point.

Buying Coconut Products

• Whole coconuts – Check out your Asian markets. More main stream grocery stores will have them, but they tend to be more expensive.
• Coconut milk – Once again check out your Asian markets as they tend to be cheaper than mainstream grocery stores and have a wider variety. Be careful with canned coconut milk as many tend to have unnecessary preservatives. I prefer frozen coconut milk specifically the brand Masagana. Although I attribute a case of food poisoning to one of these packages, so make sure the milk isn’t off-colored or tastes funny.
• Dried coconut – Or instead of buying coconut milk, make it yourself from dried coconut! I actually haven’t done this yet, but plan to in the next few weeks. I’ve had success buying dried coconut from Indian markets (labeled coconut powder or flakes), grocery store bulk bins (usually labeled shredded dessicated coconut) or online through Amazon where I prefer Bob’s Red Mill Shredded Coconut.
• Coconut butter – I’ve actually never bought this from a store and have always made it myself. It tends to be on the expensive side and easy to make anyways. But you can always find it on Amazon!
• Coconut oil – I’ve bought Nutiva Organic Extra Virgin Coconut Oil from Amazon and some from Trader Joe’s. Both are solid brands, so buy whatever is cheaper or more convenient.

Making Coconut Butter

1. Buy driedcoconut.
2. Put it in a high powered blender or food processor.
3. Turn on.
4. Wait a while, turn it off and you now have coconut butter!

That’s a shortened version, but it’s almost that easy. You may have to stop the food processor occasionally to scape the sides down and prevent over heating. It usually takes my food processor between ten and fifteen minutes, but it’s going to depend a lot on food processor power, temperature and humidity. After I’m done I store it in a glass jar. Refrigeration doesn’t seem to be necessary and you’ll go through the stuff pretty quickly anyways.

Pictures coming soon!

My month long experiment was based on the Whole30 program created by Whole9. Essentially eat clean paleo for thirty days to reset your health. I had never actually read too much into the program nor had I read their book, It Starts with Food.  But since I’ve heard good reviews and a friend lent me a copy, I decided to read it…and finished it several hours later. I wish I would have read this a year and half ago when first starting on the paleo diet. Although plenty of information wasn’t new to me now, reading the science behind hormones like cortisol, glucagon, insulin and leptin was very informative. I highly recommend you buy or borrow a copy if you’re at all interested in a healthier life.

Even before following a Paleo diet, I usually brought my lunch to work and have been trying to finding the most optimal containers. I started out with the plastic Ziploc Containers. They’re cheap and store easily, but they have a few drawbacks. They tend to stain easily especially with tomato based sauces. Plastic is lipophilic and difficult to clean. Although the containers are BPA free, I still shy away from heating place. Using it as a plate leads to cut marks and possibly scrapes of plastics in my food. And the lids aren’t very air tight, which becomes a problem if you bring a soup or ride your bike to work. I still use them for storing food around the house but rarely for bringing meals to work.

Instead I’ve bought Kinetic Go Green GlassLock containers off Amazon: a 30 oz square set a few years ago and the 64 oz rectangular set a few months ago. They address every single drawback of the plastic containers: don’t stain, easy to clean, BPA-free, useable as a plate and air tight lids. But there are some drawbacks: don’t store as well and pretty expensive. It’s also possible that the lids lose their air tightness after a while, but I haven’t experienced that yet. Of course, it’s glass, so don’t drop it! And don’t microwave with the lid on!

Thirty days of following a fairly strict paleo diet has been completed.  The diet pretty much consisted of meat, fish, eggs, green vegetables, nuts and “healthy” fats without fruit, dairy, nightshades or alcohol. The main driver of this experiment was to determine what was causing acne break outs. Unfortunately I wasn’t able to narrow it down to a specific cause, but it seemed to be correlated to high carbohydrate intake and nut intake. Based on what I read in Loren Cordain’s “A Dietary Cure for Acne”, spiking insulin and eating too much omega 6 are two of the main causes of acne. My post workout sweet potatoes spiked insulin and a binge on Marcona almonds increased through off my omega 6 to omega 3 ratio.

Even though I didn’t discover the cause of acne, my experiment was still pretty successful.

• Self Discipline in Social Settings – Saying no to a friends request for lunch or dinner was pretty easy. Going to a loud bar and explaining why I wasn’t drinking was difficult. Surprisingly most people were supportive after the explanation.
• Hunger – Although following paleo and doing a few weeks of intermittent fasting prior improved my control over hunger, it has improved even more. Sixteen hour fasts are becoming pretty easy, and I’d eventually like to try a full day fast… for science of course. This makes it easier to forgo less than ideal food choices especially while traveling. I can always wait a few hours and eat something more optimal.
• Body - Initially I felt my performance would be decreased due to the low amount of carbs, but my strength has been increasing while hitting new PRs in bench press, deadlift, power clean and press. Although I lost some weight, I’m about as lean as I’ve ever looked in my life.
• Money – Not eating or drinking out means more money for grass fed beef and lamb!

What’s next? I’m going to continue with the program for at least a few more weeks but with some minor modifications.

• Carbs – Low carb in conjunction with no nuts to see how these affect acne.
• Nuts – As referenced above, no nuts.
• Alcohol - Norcal margaritas are back on the menu.

I’m starting to wonder if I should try a carnivore diet for a few weeks: meat, fish, eggs, oils and spices. No vegetables. No fruits. No nuts. With organ meats and whole fish, I shouldn’t be missing out on too many essential nutrients. Even if I am deficient, a few weeks probably won’t have a long-term, negative effect on my health. Actually I just convinced myself, I’m starting this within the next few days.

8:00am – Vitamin D pill.

11:45am – Handful of raw almonds and a couple Brazil nuts. And a pack of sardines in spring water.

12:15pm – Lamb shoulder roast with cauliflower. Same spices as my most recent roast.

1:00pm – Guacamole – Avocado, lime juice, cumin, salt and black pepper. Some Earl Grey tea.

7:30pm – Ham and eggs fried in olive oil topped with Italian seasoning, sesame seeds and black pepper. Fried ham is actually pretty delicious. And some broccoli with olive oil, salt and black pepper.

8:30pm – I made some coconut butter and ate a few spoon fulls.

12:00pm – Handful of raw almonds, macadamia nuts and a couple Brazil nuts.

12:30pm – Lamb burger and broccoli covered in olive oil.

2:30pm – Can of smoked oysters in olive oil. And Vitamin D pill that I forgot earlier this morning.

8:00pm – Ham and egg fried in olive oil with some thyme and black pepper. Some broccoli. And then some sardines.

9:30am – Fat bread, bacon and Vitamin D.

10:30am – Scrambled eggs in spinach and olive oil.

11:30am – Some seaweed.

2:00pm – Ham and broccoli with some olive oil.

4:30pm – Smoked herring and almonds.

5:30pm – Lamb burger and broccoli with some olive oil.

8:30am – Vitamin D.

11:00am – Four eggs fried in olive oil. Some almonds and cashews.

12:00pm – Lamb steak and oven roasted cauliflower.

6:00pm – Another steak and fat bread (macadamia, coconut, eggs, lemon, salt and baking soda).

9:00pm  – Some more fat bread.