In The Paleo House

“In The Paleo House” with Jennifer Higgins

What is the Paleo House?

The “Paleo House” is a loose description of wherever you are in life when you need to eat! The “Paleo House” might be your own kitchen, your office, your gym, or a restaurant. Hanging out with Jen in her “Paleo House” will give you the knowledge, skills, ideas and motivation you need to keep Paleo in your own House. “In the Paleo House” was born out of Jen’s love of teaching about food and nutrition. Counseling and teaching people about traditional foods and their impact on health and wellness has been Jen’s work for several years. Keeping the human body in a state of robust health requires more than just good food. That is why CrossFit Works was established. CrossFit is a strength and conditioning program designed to increase wellness via a comprehensive definition of fitness. “In the Paleo House” was conceived as a way to inject a little community learning, delicious food and good company into the quest for optimum health.

What is Paleo?

Paleo is a catchy little term for the process of choosing food based on your evolutionary metabolic condition. Instead of eating a diet composed mainly of recent, Neolithic-era, agricultural and processed foods like grains, dairy and frozen dinners, Paleo eaters choose their foods from meat, fish, eggs, nuts, seeds, fruits and vegetables. Adopting this hunter-gatherer approach to food will keep your body fat percentage in check , your insulin sensitivity strong and your entire body functioning in accordance with its ingenious design. There are a few principles that I feel are central to eating Paleo. When you hang out with Jen in her Paleo House she will help you get comfortable and experiential with these guiding principles.

Here are the Paleo Principles:

Eat foods that sustained human beings before we wrecked our health by becoming settled, citified farmers. Eat meat, fish, eggs, leafy vegetables, root vegetables, fruits and berries, nuts, wild seeds.
Eat foods raised in accordance with their own natural environment. The animals you eat should eat grass if they have four stomachs. The birds you eat should eat worms, bugs and weeds. The plants you eat should be grown in soil that does not require pesticides and herbicides.
Eat foods that are like a stick of nutritional dynamite, instead of like a wimpy little firecracker. Everything you eat should provide your body with a concentrated source of nutrients for maintaining, building , repairing and fueling your body. A bowl of rice is a wimpy firecracker. A piece of grass-raised beef is dynamite.
Eat your carbohydrate in accordance with your energy expenditure. Carbohydrate only has one function in the human body: to provide energy. If you are primarily sedentary at your computer, then don’t eat like a 17^th century peasant farmer.
Prepare your foods the way that humans have traditionally prepared foods. Certain foods require specific handling methods in order to make their limited nutrients bioavailable to the human body.
Don’t eat things that aren’t food. Food should be easily identifiable. Soy milk, protein bars and sports drinks are a far cry from any food that exists in the natural world. Better nutrition through chemistry is A BAD IDEA.
Eat a wide range of traditional, life-giving fats that have not been damaged by processing.
Eat foods that are rich in lacto-bacteria to replenish the micro-organisms of our gut.
Eat some of your foods raw, including animal foods. Nutrient content and bioavailability of food is affected by preservation and cooking method.
Eat a wide variety of foods. The majority of the caloric intake of most Americans is derived from only 3 foods.
Do not partition your food wastefully. If you are eating an egg, eat the whole egg. If you are eating an animal, eat the organs, muscles and bones. If you are eating a plant eat all the edible portions.
Get to know your food supply. Know your hunters, your butchers, your gatherers, your storekeepers and your farmers. Know what foods are produced in your own geographic environment.
Know yourself. How do you feel, perform and look? If the way you feel, perform or look isn’t top level, change something about the way you eat, move and care for yourself!!!
Enjoy your food. Enjoy eating. Eating is Primal Human satisfaction at its best.