Eating for endurance. Yes grains. How do you start YOUR morning?

People are shocked that I eat grains. I actually do, just not many of them. For a long time I was 100% grain free. I did initially experience weight loss but noticed that my fat intake was very high, mostly because I was substituting grains with meat. I hate to call what it was the "Paleo" diet because there is no standard to the Paleo diet. The premise behind it, is to eat like a hunter/gatherer during Paleolithic times. The Paleolithic era is distinguished by human use of stone tools and groupings of humans who hunted, fished, scavenged and lived on wild plants. It was the earliest period of human development. Farmed grains didn't exist, but there is evidence that some wild grains were eaten. I try to eat mostly ancient grains as they don't upset my stomach. I stick to quinoa, amaranth and millet. I use gluten free options as much as possible. Gluten and I don't mix well and I can't stand the bloating and cramping after consuming wheat products. Spelt I have been fine with and when we absolutely need bread, we bake it ourselves. So grains are a small part of our diet but important for the 30 mile bike ride I am about to do this morning. We eat mostly vegetables. Raw or cooked, they make up about 60% of what we eat.  We are not picky about which vegetables we eat because we love them all and like variety.  The other 40% of our diet is divided into ancient grains and meat or fish based protein. My primary problem with the Paleo diet is that instead of sticking to lean wild caught meat, very fatty meats have been used in it's place.  This was a turn off for us and it is not practical for us to have a freezer always reliably full of wild caught meat in Connecticut. So, we do the best we can with eating predominantly veggies, no dairy, ancient grains, and occasional wild caught protein ( including fish) or at the very least, our own grass-fed beef and chicken.  We have found this to have the greatest weight loss effect, without loss of muscle. It is still a low glycemic index way of eating but we get our needed glucose from only natural sources from the earth.  One good rule of thumb for us is: If it's in a box or a can it's too processed for us.  There are exceptions to this, like Almond milk ( Although owning an almond press would be very cool), but we stick to it as best as possible. We can talk much more about the different kinds of diets out there and the medical literature behind them but this post needs to be short this morning.

We have been told we make the best oatmeal out there..ever! One of my best friends and frequent house guests Jess, loves our oats and praises them with words like " they are just so bouncy" " can you make oats tomorrow?" " We are going to have oats right?"
The secret is the Japanese rice cooker we use: Xojirushi. It's incredible. Joe sets it at night, we wake up to perfect oatmeal. It's that easy. He eats his in the car on the way to work.

Zojirushi Rice Cooker


Bob's Red Mill Organic Steel Cut Oats
Organic fresh blueberries
Organic Raisins

That's all folks. We don't consume sugar. With the raisins and berries, it's sweet enough. I am dairy free so this has a splash of Pacific Organic Unsweetened Almond milk in it. Black coffee on the side.

Now off for a ride before it gets too hot.