My husband was struggling mightily with mercury toxicity. It ruins your blood sugar regulation (for one thing), so early on in this nightmare, and with the help of a nutritionist extraordinaire, we began the paleo diet. We eliminated all sugars, all grains and all dairy, overnight.
Couldn’t see daylight
I was pretty upset. What? Give up food I like? Surely I’ll be able to eat cheese and bread again. Yogurt? Cake? What in the world are we going to eat? I was at a loss and angry.
I say we because I realized pretty quickly I wasn’t going to make different meals for both of us three times a day; paleo for him, typical American diet for me. Did I miss a good loaf of artisan bakery bread? Oh yes. And frequent visits to the health food store resulted in a treat for me, not for him.
Another sweet treat
Practial Paleo a cookbook by Diane Sanfilippo, BS, NC is a delight. The first edition was a New York Times bestseller. This second edition has lots of updates. It has loads of information.
This cookbook reminds me of a popular book a few years ago called Prescription for Nutritional Healing by Phyllis Balch. The book educated readers about the elements of health and all disorders of health. In Practial Paleo the first half is about health, disorders of health and how to heal them, while the rest of the book contains recipes.
Could someone so young get it right?
I admit I was dubious about all this health-related information considering Diane is so young. It’s a huge book actually and I did wonder how anyone could get the sheer volume of information factual. For digestive distress, she advises to use deglycyrrhizinated licorice and phosphatidylcholine among other supplements. I knew about these two supplements, so I was impressed.
Health is everything
Of the cookbooks I reviewed, every one of its authors was in a health crisis. Diane was no different. She had health issues in high school, gained weight in college and suffered from digestive upsets and vision problems. She happened upon a paleo talk, followed meal plan suggestions, felt better and was hooked. Diane went back to college to gain a dietary degree and the very first hard copy paleo cookbook was born.
What’s new inside
- 50 new recipes. Diane deleted not so popular ones and replaced them with mostly entrées.
- Under “Paleo lifestyle” she’s added Information on dealing with unsupportive family and friends, paleo kids and more
- Three new 30-day meal plans and additional information on health related topics that many readers were questioning
- New information on “Why go Paleo” and “Getting started with Paleo”
What I like about it
- Reveals how to heal using the paleo diet
- Describes leaky gut, immune disorders and how to fix it
- Explains all about poop including graphics which are helpful
- Mentions food to take with you traveling. I like a summer sausage that is additive and sugar free. It’s from US Wellness Meats (uswellnessmeats.com) and Diane includes this company. Ok, I’m impressed again!
- For those with autoimmune conditions like allergies and asthma she addresses diet and how to help heal
Awesome tips
I like a good homemade muffin now and then, but was reluctant to use a muffin pan because the paper inserts we were using were not doing the job. And using the pan without inserts meant lots of clean up. Diane says parchment paper inserts are the way to go! And she is right! I use them exclusively now and they work like a charm.
How are the recipes?
My daughter made a beef entrée from the book called “Hayley’s skirt steak tacos”. She didn’t have skirt steak so used rib eye instead. It’s more expensive than skirt steak but the meat isn’t as tough. Have to admit they were delicious! Will add these to the ever-growing recipe collection.
Dairy-free chocolate mousse was another recipe we tasted. It was all you want in dessert; chocolaty, smooth plus it was made with avocado and you couldn’t even tell!
I’ve made the lemon blueberry muffins countless times and they are quite good. All family members love them. And no matter how much I miscalculate measuring the dry ingredients they still turn out!
Sugar craving?
So, we gave up sugar and wheat. Was blood sugar under control? Yes. Did we miss pastries? Not at all. We discovered the mind does actually play tricks on you. What we think was going to be an absolutely delicious pastry really wasn’t. Amazing isn’t
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