Primal Journal (sbhikes) page 75

[sbhikes]

Hopefully going backpacking this weekend. I'm making pemmican right now. Probably the best backpacking food I've ever had is melted pemmican in a pot of reconstituted, hot sweet potatoes. I've got all kinds of great dehydrated food to bring on this trip. I made it several months ago after I got home from my trip in July. It all still looks good.

[sbhikes]

My pemmican turned out really good this time. I salted the meat. Perhaps that's the secret. For half a dozen of the pemmican pucks, I added dried cherries. I didn't quite have enough tallow so all of it came out a little dry.

Yesterday I had a pretty bad workout in the gym. The only lift that I progressed well on was the deadlift. I lifted 115lbs. On the squat I moved up to 100lbs but couldn't finish my reps. I felt dizzy on the last one. My bench I went for 65lbs like last time but couldn't get past 3 reps so I lowered the weight to 60lbs. I felt off. On my way to the gym I was walking in the dark and heard voices so I turned to look behind me and was suddenly overwhelmed with the urge to vomit. I had the salivating response and everything. I recovered after a couple minutes and felt good after I got out of the gym. I went home from work early and took an hour nap. I went to bed fairly early and slept like a log. Today I feel very sore. I just feel like I sorta crashed yesterday. Perhaps it is the stress of this new physical activity. Perhaps the "finishers" I did the last two times were just too stressful. Perhaps the stress of trying to get up so early to get there. I don't know. I hate it that I can't do as much as I feel I should be able to do.

[Owly]

Honestly, I think trying to do squats and deadlifts in the same session is maybe counterproductive. I don't like doing both on the same day because they are both very demanding and tend to fatigue the legs quite a bit. I'm not surprised that you felt dizzy. You might do better picking one or the other. I'm not sure what the SS program says about it, but it seems like a lot to ask of yourself in a single workout.

[Mr. Anthony]

Honestly, I think trying to do squats and deadlifts in the same session is maybe counterproductive. I don't like doing both on the same day because they are both very demanding and tend to fatigue the legs quite a bit. I'm not surprised that you felt dizzy. You might do better picking one or the other. I'm not sure what the SS program says about it, but it seems like a lot to ask of yourself in a single workout.

I agree, although I'm about to go to the gym for a squat/deadlift combo so I can put all the turkey I'm eating today to good use.

[Owly]

Heh, yeah, we hit the gym after dinner on Thanksgiving Sunday for similar reasons (ours was a few weeks ago). Had to do something with all those potatoes!

[sbhikes]

So my backpack trip was excellent. We had the best weather you could possibly ask for. Warm, clear sunny days and cool nights but not too cold. Really nice people to hike and camp with, too. We had a campfire both nights and drank hot toddies (I had a taste and it was delicious) and beer that we dug up out of the ground after someone told us where they hid it. Three of us saw a mountain lion and heard it scream. I heard the scream but only saw something move that I couldn't identify. We followed its tracks for a while. Lots of bear tracks and scat, too, but we didn't see any bears.

After my trip last July watching the other hikers eat all this great dehydrated food, I made up a bunch of dehydrated food and brought it on this trip. It tasted great. I would fill up a plastic peanut butter jar with a mixture of dehydrated veggies (beets and greens, corn, carrots, sweet potatoes, celery root, rutabaga, sometimes dehydrated chicken) and fill it with water and let it soak for about 4 hours until meal time. Then I would melt some beef or coconut pemmican (beef + tallow or coconut + tallow) into the soaked veggies for a hearty stew. It tasted great and I was always super full. It didn't always fully digest, however. I felt really strong on this trip eating so well.

Next time I won't put so much in the jar each meal though. And I think I'll use olive oil instead of pemmican so I can eat a cold lunch but keep using the melted pemmican for dinner. The veggies probably could have been cut in half and still would have soaked up the whole jar of water. It might have digested better to be fully reconstituted. Plus I felt like I was forcing myself to eat way more than I wanted to eat.

[sbhikes]

I turned off javascript on my browser and this website works way better that way. It's much faster.

I measured my waist today and it's still 29". Eating more plus lifting weights has not hurt my size one single bit. If anything I look a little better because I can see more definition, at least on my belly and my thighs.

Last night I felt some crusty stuff on my scalp so I tried to see what it was. It seemed like it would come off so I scraped a comb against my scalp. A large lock of hair fell right out with the crusty stuff. Maybe I will be the first person on a high carb version of primal to have their hair fall out.

[Owly]

Hmmm, I'd keep an eye on that. You can get that kind of hair loss from fungal infections.

[sbhikes]

Thank you for that info! I bet that is what it is. The hair just broke right off and left a red and slightly sore spot. I wonder how on earth I got something like that. It's not like we have a cat or dog or anything.

[Owly]

It's possible you picked it up out in the woods or even at the gym. All it would take would be contact with a contaminated surface or dirt, then maybe rubbing or scratching your scalp. Good news is, it's probably quite easily treated.