ParisMama, how are you doing on Wahls? Catching up on podcasts and heard her interviewed on That Paleo Show (Aussie http://www.thatpaleoshow.com/portfolio/tps/)
She mentioned people can do well on a Ketogenic diet or vegan for a few years, until vegans run out of B vitamins and other fat solvable nutrients and Ketogenic dieters run low on a range of micronutrients from nutrient dense foods. Phase 3 is the attempt to bring both into balance, not easy without close management of staying in ketosis while eating enough nutrient dense foods.
Also mentioned she lowered the fat content of phase one in the book to make it more acceptable to CW doctors, then quoted the recent studies that exonerate fats but at the time of writing, it was believed important for acceptance. She is working on the proposal for a new book.

I'm not measuring my veggies, but I'm probably eating 3-4 cups a day now, many of them raw. I'm also making a conscious effort to eat organic.

I made pickled beets... SOOOO GOOD!

Cutting out eggs is hard for me. I did have a bad weekend of eating and I've been super ouchy this week, but I also ate eggs too.

I need to get back on, get stabilized, then make an egg attempt.

No, no, you're wrong, pickled beets are an abomination. Everybody should hate them. Blechh.

I made them with white vinegar, stevia, red pepper flakes, and onion powder. Delicious!

Well, that all sounds good. Except for the beets.

Well, you've caught me as I'm faltering a bit on my diet in general (bad weekend!) but I am still pretty enthusiastic about Wahls Paleo Plus however.

I guess you need a couple of things to make it work - you need to like vegetables, and you need to be pretty organized. I have struggled twice in the past month, both times due to travel. I suppose if you were willing to be a massive PITA and bring your food with you everywhere you might be able to make it work on the road, but I live in France where it's just not culturally acceptable to be that much of a PITA at a restaurant... Anyway, I took a planned few days away from dieting mid-May, struggled a bit to get back on track, and then took an unplanned step off the diet this weekend (away again).

I do need to be really vigilant about the prepping and planning to make it work (all my struggle days at home come down to this more than anything else) and it requires a lot of effort and discipline to hit ketosis while eating so many veggie carbs - I suppose it's possible for newbies to her diet to get there, but I'm sure it's easier for a low carber like myself, at least I understand what ketosis is and recognize how/when I can get there...

It would also help if I was willing to eat organ meat... so far, no dice on that (although I did *taste* foie gras this weekend, that's a huge step for me).

As for the eggs, I hate to admit it but I think I might actually be sensitive to eggs... I had some over the weekend (falling off the wagon) and had pretty immediate GI stress... this makes 3 times I've had some kind of reaction to eggs, and I'll still do a careful AIP style reintroduction trial at some point (eggs weren't the only thing I wasn't supposed to have at that meal!) but I'm now mentally preparing myself to stay egg-free (or at least dramatically reduced). I'd most like to know about nightshades right now, since summer is around the corner that would be pretty useful information right now, but I'm afraid I need at least a week to get back on track after my indulgent weekend, so not sure when I'd feel ready to reintroduce foods (Wahls allows nightshades, actually, but I did AIP before Wahls and have been mostly nightshade-free since Feb).

I find the arguments that whole foods contain a lot more than vitamin pills ever could really convincing (phytonutrients, limitations in our knowledge, small complimentary elements that probably help in ways that are currently unknown, etc). And combined with Jo Robinson's excellent book "Eating on the Wild Side" I think I'm now able to make some really good choices about veggies that pack an immense nutritional boost.

Of course, it would help me know if it was "working" if I actually had some kind of problem to address in the first place, but I'm lucky that I don't so I just have to go by the extremely subjective "how I feel" meter...

Nancy - she tells the MS patients and arthritics to stay on DMARDs and other drugs, stabilize on the diet and then slowly wean off, so I'd imagine her advice would be the same for NSAIDs. One of the things I like about her is the pragmatic approach, you can tell she's a practicing physician, not a diet marketer, because she does a good job of encouraging people to make the changes they are willing to make without making it sound like every last detail is critically important. Not easy with a diet as detailed as hers is, seriously Wahls Paleo Plus has at least 20 rules to it, fasting, timing of meals, meals per day, what to eat, avoid, etc - That said, I am very much a "make the diet your own" person, I've never religiously followed anyone's diet plan, and I find the rules of Wahls are helpful because I understand why they are there, what the goal is - so I might be struggling with yuck factors on organ meats and seaweed, but I adhere to the objective of wanting them in my diet (just wish I could shell out some bucks and get a convenient pill to swallow!)

And I've been adding a raw beet to broccoli salad or to raw carrot salad ("color" veggie category) - yummy, and I eat small quantities of the beet part, and nutritionally very good. I'm the only beet eater in my family though, so I have to go gently - if it tastes like beets I get rejection, although I've been able to increase the beet to carrot ratio a bit, and my husband now says he doesn't categorically hate beets -although the canned ones still make him gag...

I try to listen to all her interviews because she usually drops some nugget of insight I haven't heard before each time she talks (the latest bulletproof executive one was good) - will follow that link you mentioned, I didn't catch that one.

It is a heck of a lot of work. I bought a scad of veggies: 2 types of beets, chard, baby bok choy. Then spent Sunday cleaning and cooking. I made a roast duck, a thai curry (with golden beets, beet greens, a couple of carrots, and duck!). Yum!

I've also been drinking the juice from the beets when I cook them. Not bad tasting.

Thanks for the update and the info about the drugs.

I've actually gotten worse lately. I'm having a hard time staying away from eggs and peanut butter. I know I should!

For organ meat, have you tried pate? It is delicious! I also sneak ground livers (chicken) into chili. You really can't taste it at all. I think heart or kidney would be just as good.

I grew up eating that stuff though. It isn't an issue with me.

I made some sweet pickled beets that were awesome:

1/2 cup distilled vinegar (cider would work too)
1/2 cup water
red pepper flakes (optional)
stevia (sweet however much you want)
onion powder (or real onions)

SOOOO yummy!


Absolutely! We have only just started discovering stuff like this. There are probably thousands of things in real food that do us good.

Have you tried the seaweed crispsy snacks? They're super tasty! Also, sprinkling some dulse on your food would probably be untasteable, especially if it were highly spiced. I've got some dulse, I keep forgetting to use it!

I've taken a few steps towards organ meat. Baby steps, but mentally huge ones. First, I'm now convinced they are important for health and I WANT to be consuming them. I broke down and ordered dehydrated liver tablets and I've been taking those - I know they are a pale comparison to "real" liver but mentally it was huge to be able to put liver into my stomach at all. And I've bookmarked a few instructional blog posts about making frozen liver "pills" that I will try in the Fall (not doing it this month, and then will be traveling most of July/August). And in my mind it's clear I will do this, so that is big progress.

The voice of the kind people on this site has resonated in my head since I mentioned my fear of organ meats a few months ago, and someone replied that foie gras tastes like the marriage of meat and butter... and so I tasted a tiny bit this weekend and indeed it tasted more like meat and butter than it did like "liver".... not that I wanted another taste, but it was less horrible than I'd been expecting, and maybe, with time and practice, I can learn to like it. (My husband, a French pâté loving man, is thrilled to help introduce me!).

The seaweed has been harder than I expected, maybe I'm an iodine "supertaster" but even very small amounts overpower the flavors of anything I put them on. I actually don't like any strong-iodine flavored foods (many shellfish). The nori chips have made me gag (and worse actually) and I've tried many brands and types of seaweed but will look to see if one of those is dulse, maybe I've not tried that one. In the end I have a salad-shaker kind that I can sometimes tolerate, and I put some in stock recently and I didn't think it ruined the batch, so maybe I'm making progress there. Actually it's another thing I'd love to move to pill form and just pay for the convenience factor... It's not gotten much better over the past 2 months, and unlike organ meats I've really made some effort on it. But will keep at it, and see if I find other brands that work better for me when I'm in the States next month.

While I love pate, often the "dip" for veggies now, rather than hummus, I too couldn't get with the seaweed part. Recognized that I needed iodine as haven't had any in the salts purchased for many years, and ended up using Kelp Capsules.

Thanks to you and Nancy for all the detailed explanation of Wahls. I'm eating many more veggies mainly because it is summer and the farmers market has so many tempting items. Rather like NANY with a primal rules...where I started four years ago.

Beet soup might be worth a try for people who don't like pickled beets. Totally different flavour and texture. I actually like it.

That sounds like it might be dulse.

You're thanking the wrong person, Janet! It was ParisMom, I think.

I'll have to try beet soup. I like beets pretty much, but I like them best of all in my sweet Thai pickling juice. It is 1 part vinegar, 1 part water, onion (powder or fresh), sweetener to taste (stevia works), red pepper flakes.

Have you seaweed haters tried kelp tablets? It might be a way to get it down if you can't tolerate the taste.

So far, I must say I'm having a particularly bad time with my arthritis issues. I feel sore everywhere. I wonder if it is all the oxalates I'm eating? I'm still eating a bit of peanut butter here and there. Still drinking coffee. No nightshades to speak of since I quit the potato experiment.

I had some egg over the weekend, but stopped a couple days ago. Argh! I was hoping to find relief in this diet, but so far it is just worse. Could be coincidence.

Maybe it is the kale. I've been eating a ton of it in salads. I've grown VERY fond of it.

I would think that living in France would be the ideal way to get over an offal aversion. The French have so many wonderful ways of cooking the various organs. However, I have never had much problem eating the stuff, so can't really relate to not liking even the idea. I will say though that, if/when you are ready to take another step in that direction, make sure the cook is excellent, and go for organs from young animals; the flavor is much milder. I just made lamb kidneys the other evening, in a mustard cream sauce, and I'm sure only the most sensitive tongue could have even said for sure that the meat was kidney.
Another way to add it into the diet might be to add it in small quantities to something else - ground up liver and heart would be good for this. A small bit added to a meatloaf or spaghetti sauce might be a way to start - though I can see that not being the best solution if you yourself are the one doing the cooking

I've heard that ground heart added to hamburgers is very good. And liver with fava beans and a nice chianti... oh wait... wrong example!

I find beef heart just tastes like beef to me. It's usually cheaper than other cuts of beef where I am, so if I need something in the way of a stewing beef, I'll usually buy that.

This article from Examiner linked in the Wahls blog.
Two media personalities treat their MS with Wahls Paleo diet.

http://www.examiner.com/article/cha...s-jack-osbourne