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red meat inflammation

Red Meat Inflammation. A Pro Metabolic way around it.

Do you believe the mainstream view that red meat causes inflammation?

Or maybe you have experienced the inflammation from red meat yourself, and now you believe it to be true and stay away from it as much as you can?

On this pro metabolic journey, I’ve found that unless you open your mind a little and as Ray Peat always said – explore the context around what is being said – then you may just very well miss out on highly nutritious food. As with so many other foods like coffee, sugar and dairy which are given a bad wrap, it’s often how you eat it, when and with what other foods that makes all the difference.

Red Meat is Nutritious

Red meat has a great number of nutrients that we need in our diet — protein, Vitamin B12, Vitamin B1, B2, B3, B5, B6, Zinc, Selenium, Iron, Magnesium, Potassium, Phosphorous etc. So eating an adequate amount in the appropriate way, is beneficial for our health.

So what is the appropriate way to avoid the inflammation?

  1. Complete amino acid profile

All muscle meat has certain amino acids which are inflammatory such as cysteine, tryptophan, and methionine which need to be balanced with the anti inflammatory amino acids such as glycine, alanine & proline.

In the old days, people would eat the entire animal and make gelatin rich stews by boiling the meat and bones for hours on end and eat everything. This would balance the amino acids out nicely. If you are in the situation where you can do this, it’s probably the best option.

Now most of us only seem to eat certain cuts of meat like steak and need to supplement the gelatin separately, to balance the amino acids.

Collagen/Gelatin Supplier

In Australia, I recommend the brand Collagen X who are well versed in Ray Peat philosophies. Their products are high quality and formulated often with accompanying nutrients required to improve assimilation in the body.

Find their products here & utilise the code: slimbirdy for a 10% discount and free freight in Australia.

  1. Phosphorous to Calcium Ratio

Ray Peat always admired dairy as the perfectly balanced food.  It has vitamins, minerals, protein, fats & carbohydrates. A complete food and the only one with approximately 1:1 calcium to phosphorous ratio. A diet too high in phosphorous is inflammatory, which is why it needs the calcium to balance it out.

In red meat however, the phosphorous amount is way higher than the calcium content, so unless we balance this with an additional calcium supplement of some kind, then we will most likely get inflammatory effects from this imbalance.

Previously I used to believe that having milk or cheese with meat would assist this balance but it doesn’t, because dairy also has phosphorous. So you would never catch up and get the 1:1 ratio you need.

Until I understood this, I used to get joint pain in my hands after eating meat. Now if I have my calcium supplement and gelatin after/with meat, there is no pain.

Some have suggested the egg shell calcium but I am too busy/lazy to bother with this and I just use the best quality supplements I can find. In Australia this is:

Thompsons Liquid Calcium—which is calcium carbonate the same as the egg shells

Herbs of Gold— Calcium K2 with D3

  1. Carbohydrate to Protein ratio

Red muscle meat is one of the most energy intensive foods to digest and assimilate, so the body needs to have that fuel on hand to assist in the process. If you are having quick converting sugar carbs at the same time as your steak, such as orange juice for example, your body is able to utilise this quickly to assist in the process and still have energy to run the rest of your body.

If you don’t eat any carbs at the same time or if you eat slow digesting carbs that are not available right now to help with this process, then the body needs to raise stress hormones to liberate fuel from glycogen stores. Constantly raising stress hormones in this manner leads to inflammation in the body.

The ratio recommended to not raise stress hormones is 2g carbs to 1g protein

  1. Meat with high Polyunsaturated fats vs Saturated fats

Followers of Ray Peat are well aware of the dangers of Polyunsaturated Fats—if you are unsure then please read this article.

When there is an excess of Omega 6 in the diet, this is the cause of inflammation.

So when it comes to selecting meat to eat, Ray suggested those higher in saturated fats as these are more protective to the body. For example: Ruminant animals—Beef & lamb. When it comes to chicken, there is only one part of the chicken that is low in any fat at all—read on to find out more about this here.

  1. Excess Meat consumption

While this point wasn’t on my original list, when doing some reading for this article, it popped up as another potential cause of inflammation with meat. This is because eating too much meat causes changes in gut bacteria and allows bad bacteria to flourish, leading to inflammation.

  1. Drinking coffee with red meat to limit iron

This point wasn’t on my original list either, it was raised in our private group and is worth a mention. Excess iron in the body is inflammatory.

Drinking coffee after a steak meal for example, will block the iron absorption by 40%.

This is good to know IF excess iron is an issue for you. However just be aware that coffee can also limit other minerals too, such as manganese, zinc, and copper and by its diuretic effect can lower magnesium and calcium as well. So utilise coffee strategically for its thyroid stimulating benefits—see how to drink coffee properly here – but don’t go too crazy drinking it with meat unless you need it as a remedy for excess iron in particular.

So in summary, we CAN eat red meat without inflammation, so long as we do the following:

  1. Gelatin supplement to balance amino acids (or cook with gelatinous cuts for meat & cook it for 3 hours or more,)
  2. Calcium supplement to balance phosphorous
  3. Carbohydrates at the same meal (2g carbs to 1g protein is recommended)
  4. Select the right meat with protective saturated fat
  5. Eat an appropriate amount in a balanced diet
  6. Drink coffee with the meal only IF excess iron is an issue.

There you go. Enjoy your meat inflammation free.

To our health!

 

Kristy

Zen Beach Diet

Easy Mayonnaise Recipe – No Egg, No Oil, No Blender!

I started looking into how to make an Easy Mayonnaise Recipe, after a few occasions when the store bought stuff made our household sick.

We rarely have it, but it’s the base for a Seafood Sauce that we like with our prawns and other seafood over Christmas and birthdays.

Looking into other Easy Mayonnaise Recipes online, they were trying to use:

Raw eggs salmonella alert. Not interested in making us sick again.

Boiled eggs those who tried it said it tasted terrible.

Oil didn’t suit my lower fat diet.

Blender whiz it too much & it would curdle, too little & it didn’t work. Then you would have to clean out the whole sticky mess!

Often too it was in a big batch, when you really only need a small amount, so you would waste a lot of it.

Then I found it – a much better Easy Mayonnaise option. Given that we pro metabolic types are not afraid of sugar any more, this version was a total possibility. I can’t remember whether I found it on the side of a can or when searching online, but it is the version made from Sweetened Condensed Milk.

The original recipe used a whole can of Sweetened Condensed Milk which is way too much for my needs, so I have divided it down to make a smaller batch which suits about 2 meals. Also the original recipe had mustard powder in it. Now mustard powder was popular about 50 years ago when they didn’t have many other mustard options, however I always have Dijon Mustard in my my fridge to have with steak! I tried it in this recipe and it works a treat.

This Easy Mayonnaise Recipe has only three ingredients and I always have these ingredients on hand at home anyway! Time to share, here is my variation:

Easy Mayonnaise Recipe - No Egg, No Oil, No Blender!

Easiest homemade mayonnaise recipe ever.
Prep Time1 minute
Total Time1 minute
Course: Sauces
Keyword: 3 ingredients, no egg mayonnaise, no oil mayonnaise
Servings: 2 people

Equipment

  • 1 small bowl
  • 1 spoon

Ingredients

  • 2 TBS Sweetened Condensed Milk
  • 2 TBS White Vinegar
  • 1 tsp Dijon Mustard

Instructions

  • Mix all ingredients in a small bowl with a spoon until well combined.
  • Refrigerate for a few hours to thicken up.

AND THAT’S IT!

Can you believe it’s so easy? It tastes better than the store bought one – creamy, tangy, flavourful. It may appear a little runny when first mixed, however place it in the fridge for a few hours and it thickens up.

It keeps for up to a week in the fridge in a sealed container. But honestly, it takes about 10 seconds to make, so why wouldn’t you just make a small fresh batch any time you need it?

Then even more good news, it takes only another 10 seconds and 2 more ingredients to make Seafood Sauce!

Easy Seafood Sauce

1 TBS Homemade Mayonnaise

2 TBS Fresh Cream

1 TBS Tomato Sauce

Salt/Pepper

Method

All ingredients in a small bowl and mix together with a spoon & done!

 

Easy Mayonnaise Recipe

 

I’ve made both of these about ten times now. It always works and is delicious. Best of all, no-one gets sick any more. We can enjoy our seafood and feel nothing but great afterwards.

Enjoy!

Kristy

 

Zen Beach Diet

 

Thyroid Diet and Hormones

A good friend sent me a message after my Insta story post on the Keto Diet causes Hair loss.

She was trying to convince me that it was menopause causing the hair loss and had  nothing to do with diet.  “It’s all about hormones,” she said.

Yes menopause can cause hair loss, absolutely.

Double yes, it totally is about hormones.

But she is 100% incorrect to say that diet doesn’t play a part. Diet is a massive contributor to how your hormones function.

I am the perfect example, I changed from Keto which is an anti Thyroid Diet to a Pro Metabolic Thyroid Supporting Diet and my thinning hair grew back.

Let’s discuss just one aspect –  feeding the Thyroid properly.

The Thyroid requires sufficient carbohydrates to function optimally. It controls the entire metabolic rate of your body and how efficiently you create and use energy.

Once you mess with this and don’t eat enough carbs, it slows your body down. This in turn slows down your body’s ability to remove excess estrogen, causing an estrogen dominance situation, leading to all kinds of issues.

Issues like this:

  • abnormal menstruation (heavy/painful periods),
  • PMS,
  • headaches,
  • bloating,
  • mood swings,
  • fatigue,
  • anxiety & depression,
  • breast tenderness,
  • endometriosis,
  • fibroids,
  • hormonal weight gain
  • breast cancer

Also once you are in an estrogen dominant state, this further negatively impacts how the thyroid works as well. So it becomes a vicious cycle.

All because you didn’t eat carbs or enough of them!

(There are good and not so good carbs to have, learn which are which in my FREE 7 day email course. Click here to get started.)

Then there’s progesterone. Your thyroid also stimulates progesterone production.

So we’re back at the start— no carbs, wrecking thyroid function and then progesterone stops too.

Following this pattern, you wouldn’t be surprised to learn that testosterone also declines when thyroid function declines.

So this is just one tiny glimpse of it and if you’re so inclined, you can study it until you’re blue in the face.

Or you can just grab a copy of the ZEN Beach Diet and start living the life  – enough of the right food, enough sun, enough of the right type of gentle exercise, enough rest and just enough of the good habits to let nature work it’s magic.

Bliss out.

 

Kristy x

Note: For those still on the Keto, Carnivore, Low Carb train and say you don’t need to eat carbs, your body can make them from fat – it is true that they can be made. However when you are relying on this conversion for your entire fuel, it puts the body under stress, which it can’t keep up forever. I think I lasted 10 years on Keto because I didn’t exercise much. Those who do will fall apart much quicker. 

Lemon Coffee

meal plan ray peat

Meal Plan – Ray Peat Inspired

When you have issues with food, diets and weight loss, the thought of constructing a meal plan can be overwhelming.

For me personally, the less I focused on food in the past, the more successful I was in terms of weight control. I would just eat whatever, when I was hungry.

Then I started a blog about food, weight loss and diets and now am torturing myself a bit more!

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