Noene

Oh man, that's great. I've had a hard time tracking down even individual recipes, so a collection is like the holy grail to me! Thank you! She's allergic to more than I am... For example, I can eat apples, but sometimes she has a reaction when I eat them sitting next to her while we're carpooling to work. Neither of us can do the majority of nuts - especially almonds and walnuts, and hazelnut for her. I'm allergic to coconut too, which is one of my biggest struggles and one of the things that makes substituting difficult. A lot of the time we end up eating things that we're mildly allergic to, just because we really like them. She loves strawberries, and is willing to deal with a bit of discomfort to have a few every now and then. I have a TREMENDOUS weakness for baklava, but I also know my limit. It's just frustrating to want to make smoothies or granola bars and to not know how to do it safely.

Does anyone here do Paleo or any similar whole foods diet with a food allergy? Specifically nuts and fruit, in this case. My roommate and I are trying to clean up our diets, but it seems that the majority of food suggestions and recipes use nuts or nut oils. We're both allergic to nuts and fruit with varying degrees of severity. Anybody else have to work around diet limitations like these, or have any suggestions? It doesn't seem to be a very common topic...

This article should help! http://www.nerdfitness.com/blog/2012/01/16/how-to-stretch/ Personally, after running I follow the Advanced Stretching (second video) with a slight modification to focus on my calves. Stretching after your run will definitely make your next run more enjoyable!

I've done a LOT of work with various volunteer organizations, and the best advice I can give based on that is: find a group! Get some friends together, especially co-workers (or even better if you're at school, a club) and commit to doing the race together. Once you have a group, you can get into doing fundraising together, like getting your office/school to sponsor your group. Often you can get local businesses to give small donations as well. In my experience, one of the easiest ways to get people to donate sponsorship money is to put their name/logo on a team t-shirt. This also works well for getting support from non-profits and professional societies in your area! The best part of forming a group is that you can all pool your resources to reach your fundraising goal, and you know you'll have someone to run with on race day

haha I'm with you on being converted! These minimal shoes are the BEST SHOES I've ever owned. I never understood people who described running as being like flying before, but even with the muscle soreness from adjusting to the new shoes I've never felt so ridiculously good while running. It's almost embarrassing, 'cause I couldn't help laughing and jumping over things like I really was flying, and I'm sure the folks I went passed thought I was out of my mind...

Haha I live in Florida, we don't really have hills... I may be able to find a pedestrian-friendly bridge though, which is about as close as we get. I got a pair of the New Balance Minimus shoes. I've been looking into barefoot running, and figured it was a good place to start. I expect you know a bit about that yourself though! They also had some neat software at the store that analyzes your form and arches, so it was a fun day out.

It's fairly persistent, though it does tend to be worse a few hours after running before it calms down. I spent the last few days walking instead of running, and it seems to have gotten much better. Perhaps I just needed to take it easy for a few days for my legs to rest properly? My guess is I'll find out tomorrow morning, since I have a brand new pair of shoes to try out.

I'll try that. It sounds a lot more reasonable! 50g of fat compared to ~65g... That's a pretty big difference

Actually, I'm allergic to both coconuts and tree nuts (with varying degrees of severity). I might try cooking with coconut oil, since I think I've had coconut milk before without having a reaction. The only nuts I don't have problems with are peanuts, and they don't even count XD I'm still looking into ways of getting around the nut problem though, since I know I can handle small amounts of almonds at least. Have you heard of anyone being able to decrease food allergies through paleo? or is that just seasonal allergies I'm thinking of?

That part seems to make sense. I guess what I was looking for was exactly how much fat to eat, since I have a problem just eating enough in general. Is 40%fat/40%protein/20%carbs a good balance for starting out? It just feels odd, trying to figure out how to get ~60-90g of non-junk food fat in my diet when I mostly eat fruit, veggies and lean meat. Is fattier meat a good route to go? lol I suppose it isn't a common problem for most people dieting XD unfortunately I suspect it's from having a super slow metabolism from being lazy for so long.. I think I figured out part of the problem on my intake being so low, but it's because the calorie counter I use subtracts my exercise from my daily intake. I've actually looked back and found a few days I went on long bike rides and had a negative 'net' calorie intake for the day, when I should have been looking at taking the exercise from the week totals (and super thanks to Laney for pointing it out in a way that made sense lol)

I have a very related question... I recently started the C25K program, too. I'm really happy with my progress, and I haven't had any post-run pain (just some muscle spasming immediately after stopping and before I stretch XD). Also, I have fairly minimal shoes and decent arches. I've been paying attention to my form the last few times out, so I'm fairly sure I don't have an overpronation problem. That said, my shins feel almost as if they're bruised, though I can't see any discoloration. They don't hurt, but certain points on my shins are very sensitive. It's been this way pretty much since I started about 4 weeks ago, but I didn't really notice because it doesn't prevent me from walking or running. I'm not sure if I should be concerned or not. Is this a sign of a shin splint problem?

Also, where do the cool sig badges come from?? From the sounds of things, I'll be joining up with the scouts, but I've been reading through all the back-logged NF blog posts and haven't gotten around to scouring the boards intensively yet. Should I be looking somewhere specific?

Thanks ponita <3 Right now, I'm trying to get back into the swing of things... and in my humble opinion, I'm doing pretty well! XD About a year ago I went from being an avid cyclist to being almost completely sedentary. I had met a bunch of really cool folks at my school, and I didn't want them to think I was being antisocial when I declined hanging out with them to go ride and lift by myself. Unfortunately at the time, it didn't occur to me that I had changed my lifestyle in a VERY negative way (they ate out CONSTANTLY, and now I don't think I can ever have pizza or Chinese food again ><). Eventually after fighting through a month-long bought of pneumonia, I came to the realization that if they had a problem with my workout schedule and didn't want to join me than that was their problem and not mine. It wasn't until after I crashed and burned though, and I gained a lot of weight and lost a lot of self-respect in the process. I've been back in the saddle for about 2 months now though, and I'm incredibly grateful that I was able to earn back quite a bit of my previous strength in such a short amount of time. I'm trying out some body weight exercises while I wait for classes to start up so that I can go back to using my university's free-for-students gym and get back on track as far as lifting is concerned. I'm also thinking of trying out the Paleo/Primal diet (or at the very least a similar carb restricted diet) but I'm allergic to coconut, and folks seem to rely on it for cooking... Do you know anything about that? I honestly can't remember the last time I felt so excited and optimistic about life in general, so I know it's gonna be good =)

Haha Thanks! I love Douglas Adams =D

So I've been getting back into my old fitness habits after a pretty hard fall off the wagon, and I really want to start changing my diet to fit the Paleo/Primal model. Unfortunately, I've hit a road block I wasn't expecting, and I'm really not sure where to go from here. Some background is in order at this point: I was an avid cyclist until about a year ago, and after stopping I put on a lot of weight and was eventually very sick. In the last two months, I've been turning things back around by biking and running again. I'm incredibly grateful that most of my previous strength has come back to me in such a short period. I've gone from a sedentary lifestyle to a moderately active one, and burn between 2000 and 3000 calories a week. I'm female and on the "overweight" side in the BF% department. According to the numbers, I should be eating around 2500 calories per day. Since I'm looking to lose weight (at about 2lbs/week) I've scaled that number down to about 1500. Now, I'm not sure if that's meant to be before or after the calories I burn from exercising, but I'm assuming it's after. Working with that, I generally come in with several HUNDRED fewer calories than all that, which is concerning because I'm also not losing much weight. I'm worried I'm doing some harm to myself by not matching that number. Back to the Paleo: The past few days I've been cutting out as many carbs as possible, and I'm having even more trouble getting to what should be the minimum healthy amount of calories I need each day. I know one of the goals is to have my body burn fat instead of carbs as its primary fuel, but I'm not sure how to go about substituting fat for carbs in my diet. From the numbers it makes sense, since fat is more energy dense than carbs are... Supposedly eating the same amount of fat by mass as I currently do carbs would give me more than twice the energy. I know I'm in a good range for lean protein in my diet, but I can't figure out what a good range for fat is. I'm concerned that I'm not eating enough and that the reason I'm not losing weight is that my body thinks I'm starving, but I'm just... not hungry. I only eat when my body decides it's time for a meal, and I'm not certain I'm doing myself any favors =P Any help or advice you can provide is GREATLY appreciated!