Surviving A High Carb Holiday? page

[Chorlton]

Hi everyone,

What is your experience of temporarily going back to grains?

I am about to go on a meditation retreat for 10 days and and have not done one of these since going Primal. The food is old school vegetarian -- Rice+Chickpeas for breakfast, then vegetarian food like quiche, pizza, pasta etc sometimes heavy on dairy and eggs (yay!) for lunch.

There is no dinner. It's a 5hr eating window for old students.

So, my questions are....

• If I eat the rice/chickpea dish for breakfast then try to stay clear of the bread/pastry at lunch but basically do the best I can. What can I expect?
• Will I feel sick? Tired? Upset stomach?
• Should I take my own paleo musli and have it with yogurt instead, then load up on coconut fat at lunch + whatever else I can scavenge from the buffet?

Basically looking for some advice! Its taken me ages to get over carb flu, and Im not keen to regress...

thanks

[solstice]

10 days sounds like a long time...but it obviously won't kill you. If you do react to gluten grains that might be more of the issue and what you need to avoid, if possible.

[Damiana]

I hesitate to predict how you'll feel going back on grains again. Some people are more sensitive to grains than others and going paleo will definitely bring out issues of gluten sensitivity if you have one. Others will feel perfectly fine going back on grains. You won't know until you do it, honestly.

[Chorlton]

Ah, going to have to just try maybe..

Well I can avoid gluten mostly. It'll be rice i wont avoid unless I try to take my own food!

[Damiana]

You could bring your own food in, nuts, pemmican, nutrient-dense foods that will keep well and sustain you for the length of your stay. Pretend you're packing for a camping trip.

[magnolia1973]

I'd avoid anything with wheat in it or do a test run just in case it makes you physically ill and not just bloated a bit!

[sbhikes]

So you will be doing basically a 5 hour eating window, so this sounds like intermittent fasting, like the "Fast 5". I think you will be fine. Enjoy the rice and lentils and chickpeas and all the veggies and fruit. You'll probably fart a lot but I don't think it'll hurt you otherwise.

[Chorlton]

Thanks sbhikes and everyone,

that sounds like the best strategy. If I take my own food Im just giving myself a bunch of stuff to fret over instead of getting on with the work. I'll start eating a little rice in the next couple of days to lead up to it and avoid the pasta / bread if at all possible.

[Drumroll]

I will not have a choice about this myself, come Christmas time. Out of 25 folks I am the ONLY one who eats a primal diet and I can only imagine that is not about to change before then. My family is inundated with CW propaganda.

So much so that my grandfather has sent out several "alert" measures, urging us to go on statins as a preventative measure if our cholesterol gets above 180. A PREVENTATIVE measure. Statins being taken casually like that is a pretty f*cking scary thought!

But yeah, that's just to show you the extent of my family's indoctrination. It's pretty bad. And being the ONLY person who does NOT eat a CW diet in my family out of 25 people... I'm just going to have to suck it up. I am resigned to that fact. *sigh*

[Drumroll]

By the way, I expect at LEAST one lasagna meal complete with wheat noodles and bread. Guess I'm eating plain, undressed salad that night (because the dressing will be made with crap oil)!