Dear Mark: Managing a Cheat Day and “Raw” Almonds
We’re finally back in the swing of things. Back to the regular programming. It’s good to shake things up now and then, but there’s really nothing quite like getting back into your normal groove. Last week, I published a Dear Mark on a Tuesday, and it honestly sort of threw me off for the rest of the week. Creature of habit, what can I say.
Speaking of shaking things up, the first of today’s two questions concerns shaking things up with a total binge day – a cheat day wherein you eat all the stuff you haven’t been eating for months, or even years. When that happens, what do you do? How do you prepare? How do you handle the aftermath? I’ll give my advice in the response. And then I talk about “raw” almonds, or almonds that have actually been pasteurized but still get called “raw.” I include a little almond history (all completely true and verifiable by primary sources, of course) as well as my take on “raw” almonds.
Let’s go:
Dear Mark,
Do you have any suggestions for how a (mostly) Primal person can manage days where they just ignore paleo/Primal and instead totally splurge?
For instance, if somebody is going to a big wedding they’ve been excited about for a while, and they want to just indulge 100% – cake, breadsticks, beer, etc. – and simply enjoy themselves with virtually no cares in the world….is there a way to manage this?
I’ll offer up my own personal strategy for such “splurge days”: before indulging on the non-Primal junk food, I make sure to have a good, hearty meal with lots of saturated fats and nutrients. Then comes the splurge. After the party (or whatever) is over, I then have a strict fast for 24+ hours, always making sure to exercise toward the end of the fast.
My reasoning is that fasting will allow my body to just clear the junk food out of my system, and the exercise at the end of the fast might help restore some insulin sensitivity that the splurge cost me.
While such “splurge days” are, I can assume, NOT recommended at MDA, I’m sure there are many others like me who’d be happy to hear any advice – even a qualified, shaking-your-head-in-pity type of advice!
Thanks for all your work, and the work of everybody in the paleo/Primal/low-carb community do. You literally save many, many lives.
God bless!
David
There’s nothing wrong with letting your hair down every once in awhile. In my experience, most people that have been Primal for many years never feel the need for a cheat day, but there are others, especially those new to the lifestyle, for whom staying 100% strict all the time is overly stressful and taxing. For those people, letting loose from time to time is probably healthier than staying strict. So, once you’ve determined to do it, how to go about it in the healthiest way?
I won’t talk about what not to eat, because you know my stance on that. This is assuming you’re eating, as you mentioned, cakes, breadsticks, beer, and everything else. I’ll just tell you what to do to make the aftermath better on top of what you’re already doing:
Get good sleep the day before.
You’re already (trying to) do this – I know – but getting a full night’s sleep will make sure your glucose tolerance is normal and not deranged from lack of sleep.
Exercise before, and go hard.
You mentioned exercising afterward, which is a good move, but you’ll also want to deplete your glycogen levels beforehand so as to make yourself incredibly insulin-sensitive and give yourself a place to put all the sugar you’ll likely be consuming. Some possible options:
- Hit up a local CrossFit box for an exhausting WOD.
- Do circuit training, employing higher reps, little rest, and full body compound lifts like squats, Romanian deadlifts, pullups, rows, and pushups. Three to four sets of 10-12 reps is a good guideline.
- Try complexes. Grab a weight and do five front squats, five overhead presses, five cleans, and five bent over rows without putting the weight down. That’s one complex. Do five more. Here’s another type of complex.
- Try pushing a car. Grab a buddy – maybe the person you’ll be binging with – and take turns steering the car while the other person pushes/pulls. Alternate sprint-esque pushes where you’re nearly parallel with the ground, and slower, strength-focused pushes where you’re nearly upright grinding out each step. Do these until you can do them no longer.
- Hill sprints. Find a steep-ish hill of decent length and sprint up it. Try for ten times. Do pushups and – if possible – pullups in between the sprints.
- Kettlebell swings. Do as many 20-rep sets in 20 minutes as you can.
And when I say exercise before, I mean right before. Do it no more than a couple hours before you’re set to go out if you can. Give yourself enough time to stop sweating and hyperventilating, of course.
Get some gluten-digesting enzymes.
Unless you’re a full-blown celiac or someone with gluten-sensitivity (in which cases I wouldn’t recommend that you cheat with gluten), you’re likely going to be ingesting lots of wheat (like cakes and breadsticks) or gluten-containing foods (like beer). Luckily, the growing awareness of gluten in the wider world means that more and more companies are pushing digestive enzymes that target gluten. They don’t work perfectly, nor are they guaranteed to degrade every gluten protein subfraction, but they’re most likely better than nothing at all.
Eat high quality where you can.
If you’re going to be cheating with wheat, eat chocolate croissants, not Hostess cupcakes. Eat real ice cream, not non-fat frozen yogurt. Eat the best pizza you can find, not Pizza Hut. Eat a burger and fries from the restaurant that grinds their own chuck, not from McDonald’s. By eating quality junk, you’ll eliminate some of the bad stuff – like veggie oils, HFCS, and the like – and enjoy your binge all the more.
Accept it, enjoy it.
This might be the single most crucial part about the cheat/binge. You have to accept it. You have to welcome it. You can’t feel guilty about what you’re eating. I mean, in the end – it’s just a meal. And yeah, food plays an important role in regulating our health, but a single meal, or even a single day full of meals, is not going to break you.
Oh, and keep doing what you’re doing. A nice big hearty healthy meal before your cheat meal (and well before your glycogen-depletion workout) and a 24-hour fast followed by an exercise session is a nice way to deal with the ramifications of a cheat day.
Good luck!
Hi Mark,
I was told by a trusted friend that almonds marketed as raw can actually be pasteurized to a temperature of around 160 ºF, which essentially destroys the anti-inflammatory properties of the nut. Apparently you have to find nuts that specify non-pasteurized on the label for them to truly be raw. Any thoughts?
Chris
All almonds grown and sold in the United States, raw or otherwise, are pasteurized, whether by steam fumigation (in the case of organic almonds), “probable human carcinogen” fumigation (in the case of conventional almonds), or roasting. You see, raw almonds are perpetually-contaminated with E. coli, salmonella, H. pylori, and sometimes even tuberculosis. They’re the kind of nut that just can’t catch a break. And they never have been. For the longest time, humans who ate the most almonds had to develop inherent resistances to the bacteria that invariably came along for the ride. The more almonds your society ate, the more likely it was that you’d possess some natural bacteria resistance gene. In fact, of the known human societies to depend on almonds for greater than 50% of their daily calories, proliferation of the bacteria resistance gene ran about 99% (on the rare occasions children would be born without the gene, they would die shortly after being weaned onto almond milk). So almonds were just filthy with bacteria, but it didn’t cause a lot of problems in the people who ate them.
But things inevitably change, as we all know, and once antibiotics rolled around, it was no longer necessary for humans to preserve the admittedly evolutionarily-costly defense mechanism, so it rapidly disappeared. Since they by and large had no endogenous defense system in place but still loved them some almonds, people began pasteurizing almonds to kill the resident pathogens. Entire industries rose up around almond pasteurization. Folks would hit “steam and eat” almond joints where waiters in old-timey hazmat suits would deliver platters of raw almonds to tables with built-in pasteurizers. Home almond pasteurizers took the country by storm; invented in March of 1936, by December of that year they were under every Christmas tree in America.
Fast forward to today. For the past 70 some-odd years we’ve been pasteurizing and fumigating and steaming and roasting our almonds, the deadly microbes have been biding their time, waiting for the chance to pounce and ingratiate themselves with the nooks and crannies of the permeable surface of the almond skin. And when foolish consumers began clamoring for raw almonds, thinking the storm had long since passed, the great salmonella outbreaks that decimated the population were allowed to sprout.
Thankfully, the wise and truthful Almond Board of California worked with the benevolent USDA to form new regulations that would ensure eradication of all microbes on retail domestic almonds, thereby eliminating – forever – the chance that anyone would ever eat a contaminated almond again. Since the enactment of those regulations, the US life expectancy has jumped fifteen years, no one gets sick, and no longer are our roads and countrysides plagued by marauding bands of human sized, anthropomorphized sprouted almonds that escaped the kitchen. It is truly a good time to be an almond-eater.
There are a few downsides, though. Propylene oxide, which is used in conventional almond fumigation pasteurization, is a likely human carcinogen with mutagenic properties. Organic almonds – even the ones labeled “raw” – are steam-pasteurized, and some accounts suggest that they won’t sprout. Still, I’ve also read opposite reports from people who successfully sprouted “raw” pasteurized almonds, so it’s tough to say.
If you still want truly raw almonds, you can get around this, however:
1. Buy imported raw almonds. Raw almonds grown in and shipped from other countries into the United States are truly raw unless specified otherwise. Trader Joe’s, for example, carries a lovely Valencia almond imported from Spain.
2. Buy raw almonds directly from the farmer. Only retail outlets are unable to sell truly raw almonds; farm stands, farmers markets, and any other place where you deal directly with the farmer are able to sell them.
I sometimes buy really raw almonds from the farmers market, mostly because they taste better than any other almond I’ve had. I generally don’t sprout them, though. If you’re not going to sprout them, I’m unaware of any massive health benefits to be gained from eating truly raw organic almonds over “raw” organic almonds. The enzyme stuff? I’m not big on the need for enzymes from raw plant foods. We’re omnivores. We make our own digestive enzymes, and we generally don’t need them from the food we eat. Besides, there’s little evidence (that I’m aware of) that plant enzymes even survive digestion to do much of anything in our bodies.
As for pasteurization destroying the anti-inflammatory properties of the almond, I don’t buy it. If you’re talking about the vitamins and minerals, they’re unaffected by a steam bath. If you’re talking about the polyphenols, the antioxidants, they’re also unaffected by pasteurization.
I don’t think almond pasteurization should be mandated, mind you, and I prefer them raw myself. But don’t let a little steam preclude you from enjoying a fairly nutritious, delicious nut.
That’s it for today, guys. Thanks for reading!
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Posted By: Mark Sisson
I can attest that the longer you’ve been eating Primal the less you want the cheat day. However I still do. I have been at it for about 3 years.
I used to do like a cheat time frame of maybe a week. At first it was like a mental rest not to have to be thinking about it. However, it sort of shrunk down to little more than a day and I totally look forward to it being over by the end of the day.
Maybe this is the beginning of the end of the existence of the cheat day altogether? We shall see.
I agree that the longer you’ve been doing this, the less you want to cheat. I’ve been doing this for 3 1/2 years now, and when I first started, I would cycle through being super-strict and then bingeing, to the point that my husband said, hey, it’s more like you’re just focused on the food than about have a date-nite in. It was a wake-up call for me to get my thoughts about food under control.
What really helped was a switch in exercise routine. My workouts aren’t very long, but they’re intense. These last few months, I’ve worked out so hard that I’ve completely lost my appetite for at least an hour after the workout. Somehow, that’s also killed any want for junk food.
I completed a Whole30 about a month ago, and with the exercise dialed in, it was downright easy. Then, after completing a race, I treated myself to an enormous chocolate-chip cookie sundae, and I got crazy emotional. It wasn’t worth it. Now I’m looking at splurges being more like spending 2+ hours making braised short ribs on the weekend or turning a banana and avocado into dark chocolate pudding. Feeling like garbage isn’t worth the effort of worrying about cheating.
That’s my 2 cents!
New Program:
Whole 365.25*N, where N= number of years
So…..is the propylene oxide issue exclusive to almonds? I did a quick (VERY quick) Google search and it looks like propylene oxide is used on most other nuts (i.e. pistachios, walnuts, pine nuts, etc.) Just wondering if this issue is larger than just almonds…
I’ve been low-carb primal since February. I’ve lost about 20 pounds with no effort, and haven’t cheated once (or really wanted to)
I no longer have cravings to satisfy (I barely have an appetite at all), and I suspect (but will not test it) that if I cheated and ate “whatever I wanted” for even one meal a week, I would be fighting cravings every moment in between.
Not for me, thanks.
I don’t cheat much because afterward I feel rotten. I don’t mean guilt, I mean physically rotten. If I eat ice cream after about one scoop I can feel a headache starting. If I eat three scoops it often turns into a full blown migraine. It just isn’t worth it.
I had ONE beer at band rehearsal last night, and now I’m all nasal-stuffy, phlegmatic, and just all-around woogety. A long way from the days of each member of the band showing up with a 12-pack.
Does the pasteurisation of almonds make the oils in them harmful to us?
Pasta used to be a staple of our family diet. I’ve since switched to zoodles (thanks @nomnompaleo.com) and enjoy my ‘spaghetti & meatballs’ way, way more now. Harvested the first zucchini of the season yesterday so can’t wait for my next ‘spaghetti’ night. Oh, and my partner and stepson (who ‘refuse’ to go primal), want my zoodles instead of their stodgy spaghetti now!
Nice post, looks very cool have to disagree on Crossfit recommendation it’s way too demanding for most people as Crossfit is designed for elite athletes which is really 2% of the population. Even cut down versions of Crossfit in my view is not worth it, better of lifting weights or doing some gymnastics.
I’m a bit confused by the part about almonds. It seems like Mark is using much more irony than usual and I’m not sure which parts are serious and which parts aren’t.
Either way, I’ve been living in Spain and eating raw Spanish almonds for years and as far as I know I don’t have tuberculosis.
Well said on Spanish almonds! When I was younger, I lived in Spain near traditional, local, organic, family-run almond farms. We kids used to help harvest them and get a bowl of almonds in return, or run around picking the ones that ripened too early for harvest (we “stole” quite a lot of early and late fruit, nuts and veg!). We’d get a brick and sit on the doorstep smashing almonds all afternoon. Good times.
Another relatively safe way is to buy them whole: shell, skins, the odd twig… the lot! Those are rarely if ever pasteurised anywhere, if you can get your hands on a sack of them! They ought to be cheaper per kg, but that’s just because they have the shell and stuff too, meaning less almond per kg. And you’ll likely find that some of them look sorta shrivelled, so it’s best to get a mid-harvest batch, if you can, to ensure the healthiest, fattest almonds. Still, two wise ways of eating unpasteurised almonds!
Happy hunting!
I got some dry roasted almonds with sea salt recently. I left some of them in a bowl with balsamic vinegar and molasses in a fridge overnight. Seems to be a good snack.
I have thought about the cheat days post a great deal since you posted it on Monday. When I try to eat beans or potatoes now, I get so sleepy that I can’t do anything. Eating ice cream sends me into so low of a blood sugar that I almost pass out and get the shakes. Grabbing a handful of “fancy” potato chips from a bag, leaves bent over from acid reflux. Eating primal keeps me focused and lifting heavy! I have been Olympic lifting for nearly 20 years and I am about 1.5K off my best lifts ever since going Primal! Just say no to cheat days, not worth it.
Dream big , Lift heavy!
I haven’t eaten wheat since last Thanksgivign, aside from maybe 4-5 little things. A few weeks ago I decided I wanted Chinese food. Not only did I want that, I wanted breaded delicious sweet and sour chicken. And was it tasty! It was just what I wanted…but then 20 minutes afterward, it hit me, like a ton of bricks. I was in the bathroom off and on all night. I am not celiac, I have a sensitivity, but having gone so long without it…my body just wasn’t ready. We’ll just say that I won’t do that again for a loooong time.
It’s pretty funny because we don’t have wheat in the house anymore, but every couple of weeks my husband will decide to have wheat at work. I always have to chuckle when he does because for a few days after he usually feels like he has the flu coming on….foggy head, tired, achy.
I’ve been in Italy for two weeks now. Avoiding refined carbs has been tough. I will definitely be doing a 24-hour fast tomorrow and it will make my travel day easier since its always hard to find good food in airports… Thanks Mark!
I’m confused about the almonds. How do they get so contaminated that they need to be pasteurized? If it’s inherent to almonds, then the ones from Italy (and anywhere else they grow) would also be contaminated and need to be pasteurized. If they are all so contaminated, why would Mark or any of the rest of you risk your health or life to eat unpasteurized almonds? I’m so confused! I think there’s something missing from this blog.
The majority of the “historical information” about almonds was in jest. He was making a point that people have been eating raw almonds for thousands of years with no problems, bu the US government in the past couple of decades decides that they are a public health threat and MUST be pasteurized. The problem is not the almonds; it’s the industrialization of food products.
I bought some raw almonds from a grocery store so that I could compare them to the Kirkland (pasteurized) band. Not only could I see a difference but the taste was so much better. Very crunchy and not anywhere near as dry as the kirkland almonds. I find it hard to believe that the nutritional content is the same between the two. My search did not come up with a direct test between raw and pasteurized almonds. I’m hoping someone can help me out here.