Eat Drink Paleo with Irena Macri

hello my name is Sam feltham and welcome to expert in to use here on smash the fat with me today is paleo food blogger and cookbook author of Eat Drink paleo irina mak ray how you doing Irina I'm going hi Sam thanks for having me not a problem not a problem at so I'm now as I just kind of mentioned there you are the author and blogger of eat drink paleo I'm like which one I think the printed rod right there I so good it's coming to you but you probably haven't got it yet so I'm not quite yet not quite a bit so good and as you can see here I've got the kindle version and well the PDF version and it's a beautiful book as you kind of sort show it showing there oh absolutely beautifully put together and you're also as a paleo food blogger at eat drink paleo calm ayee where people can kind of check out all of your info right there but before we kind of get into all of that first I wanted to find out how exactly did you kind of get into this paleo world and start kind of blogging about cooking food and things like that yeah sure um well I guess I started out the best way to tell the story is I mean I've always been interested in food and cooking that's something that's been a passion of mine since I was a sort of little girl so I've always known that at some point in my life I will I will do cooking as a job or as a career I mean it took me about 30 years to get there but but I did eventually and so I used to work in a digital media space sort of in media and corporate for quite a few years and you know how did the typical career climbing you know from one world to another and getting pretty sort of running the rat race and sort of fitness and wellbeing is there's always been a passion of mine and a hobby you know I've always been interested in that and a few years ago I got interested in the 4-hour body a book by Tim Ferriss which is not paleo primal but it's it's about sort of low carb aging and I mean it just made me a asked questions about my health and well-being and how I eat differently and so that was my first introduction to the low carb way of eating I suppose and at the same time friends of mine were experimenting with paleo and on the background of all that story is my mom got sick and she was you know fairly healthy laid in she's an herb sort of like fifties and she had two cancer's back-to-back and you know had a bit of a wake-up call of you know what what can I do now to forget to bulletproof my health and well-being so that I I can prevent what lease prolong my my health into the future and you know luckily she's in remission now but it has made me question my own choices and Kayla came into my life right at the same time and you know I am very curious by nature so I read lots of blogs and books about it and a lot of it made sense to me because it was just it's just a natural way of eating and I was just like bingo wow why haven't we thought of this before and and so yeah the more research the more read about it I've kind of tailored the framework to suit my own lifestyle and my blog became a documentation of my own journey as a cool and also as a paleo enthusiast and an advocate and I guess I started it because I wanted to show people that paleo is not meeting sorry bitch you know it's not what people have this kind of preconceived me an idea of what matter is it's not just me and you know I basically photographed what I ate and I just wanted to show people actually it's just about eating really good food made with fresh produce with herbs and spices lots of flavor you know not being afraid of using different ingredients new ingredients um and that's how it started out yeah absolutely and as I said before you kind of put together this beautiful and creative culinary cookbook because as you kind of mentioned there it's not just about kind of meat in three veg and things like that I'm you can get really kind of creative and experimental with real food and the kid of um you know relates to a paleo kind of lifestyle now for those that haven't heard of paleo or even prime or anything like that what exactly does this mean okay so KO refers to a way of eating and leaving I suppose that is inspired by our ancestors or hunter-gatherer ancestors it's not a way of mimicking I just wanna make that really clear it's not about me making our ancestors you're not hunting for for animals we're not fishing and we're not foraging in the forest although that's part of the lifestyle and it's very highly encouraged that you try and you know go get your own food but it's basically looking at what our ancestors did right you know because they're a lot of the current diseases that we were experiencing from cardiovascular and obesity and diabetes Alzheimer's they're all modern diseases that didn't exist even 10,000 years ago you know so so how it did we leave for millions of years without them and and what what contributed to us developing these new diseases and so well of our ancestors to see what they ate and how they lived how they behaved about how they slit and we then apply the chiro research and and studies and sort of combined that into a framework or set of principles that is called paleo and as far as the diet is concerned it's going back to the way we used to eat and the way our immigrant grandparents used to eat maybe not the hunter-gatherers and so things like excluding the you know processed industrial oils for example so the canola the soybean vegetable corn oils and all the foods that they contain because there are so many things it's amazing and it's you know and refined grains too much sugar and carbohydrates it's going to going back to natural way of eating which is protein so animal fish and seafood lots of vegetables and some fruit and berries some nuts and seeds lots of healthy fats from from animal fats as well as you know olive oil avocado oil coconut oil things that are less processed you know the cold-pressed so it's basically an just excluding processed food that's probably the easiest way of saying it if it comes in a packet and has been refined and processed that's certainly something that our grandparents wouldn't recognize and so it's not necessarily good for us and so paleo basically is that framework and it's it's something that people can then adapt themselves and your question was before yours mentioned primal for example and primal is sort of a deviation of failure which which was just coined a different name for the same thing it's like same same but different right mm-hmm so some people in primal which is a little bit more flexible and allows them to have a little bit more of dairy and those sort of the healthy kind of dairy now whether it's raw dairy full fat and sweetened fermented some more natural sweeteners you know a little bit of rice that sort of thing but essentially it's just it's just a way of eating Whole Foods real foods that came from the ground from the sea from the trees from the air absolutely yeah I've seen that that's kind of like the consistent message kind of through the Paleo primal communities that it's about kinda real food and as he kind of eloquently said there it's not necessarily about mimicking and it's a well it certainly isn't about mimicking and what our ancestors did cuz you know they didn't necessarily have broccoli or anything like that no no no but the whole point is is that it's kind of a real food approach which is what they would have had to have done and back in back in the Paleolithic era and so with that in mind kind of like the background about what paleo and primal is and what and what does the diet kind of include and what doesn't it include kind of specifically okay specifically so and when we're talking about paleo sort of one hundred percent clean polio it's no grains and by grains we mean wheat rye barley millage corn lentils are no lentils and no grains and though beans they're lentils legumes of any sort of type of form I do you want me to talk about why they excluded yeah yeah sure let's go into it though so grains and legumes I mean one of the things that we're trying to avoid is is to cut down the level of carbohydrates we consume we're not we're not trying to cut out carbohydrates because we do need it's just that we eat a lot more that we can actually we actually need and so carbohydrates then turn into into that truck with red so we're just not we're not using it and it's it's a very inflammatory way of eating so all too much sugar and specifically refined sugar not the natural kind from honey or maple but refined sugar refined carbohydrates omega-6 a high Magus x files which are soybean canola corn vegetable rapeseed sorry grapeseed oils lots of the seed oils which sort of known as healthy oils actually if consumed in higher amounts and very inflammatory because they have high amounts of omega-6 pro-inflammatory fatty acids at the same time we don't need enough fish to counteract that so so peleas about excluding foods that are supposed inflammatory really in the kind of essence since the grains and legumes because they are really high in carbohydrates and also they had contained anti-nutrients which some of them are lectins which can irritate our digestive lining making I guess causing malabsorption leaky gut you know poor gut flora and things like that and the other one is a fitting acid or phytates and that can bind to minerals in our body and again prevent their absorption so um they're the main reasons to exclude those and mainly because we didn't really used to eat these foods you know many would argue that we need grains and legumes because you know they contain nutrients that are essential but but actually you can get all of the essential nutrients from from meat and find based diet so so grains and legumes are the two things then the processed oils which I just mentioned and sugar dairy is excluded as well mainly because gary with any mammals that drink milk from another mammal essentially I think genetically some cultures are better suited to dairy than others are my cranium you know I'm from the sort of Central Europe where cattle has been cultivated for a long time we've been you know we've had dairy around for very long time so i can probably digest it better than say Asian cultures or maybe some of the South American cultures you know if you go down to some of the African tribes they've they eat drink a lot of milk so so so dairy is one of those sort of gray areas where in the clean pelo it's excluded mainly because um it is a little bit inflammatory and it can cause some issues for people so they're the main things dairy grains legumes process it in oils sugars things that are included and advocated are lots of protein and again from really good sources so we're talking about our meat from grass-fed cattle free-range eggs and poultry pork sustainable fish and seafood wild if possible vegetables lots of vegetables are lots of starchy and non-starchy vegetables so you can be more low carb paleo or more high cut failure in which case you'll eat more bananas more tubers such as sweet potatoes in your parsnips lyrics beechwood current etc and so lots of veggies i would say probably seventy percent of the paleo diet is vegetables unlike the popular belief mmm and it's kind of like a side of meat basically and then you know some fruit militant season berries some nuts and seeds here and there and lots of healthy fats you know we're going back to eating butter again how fantastic is that you know cooking in duck I mean that's the taste amazing avocados coconut oil coconut milk coconut cream you know I no longer go to the restrooms and get off Harry's and so much fat in that you know now I just embrace it now so all those things included and you know things like alcohol and coffee and little treats and chocolates i mean that's that's kind of a that's a personal choice i think and you know we'll need to live a little bit so you know it's fine if you have a little bit of red wine or you know black coffee if you like that and some people prefer not to have that at all because they feel better but um i think that's that's a personal framework i suppose yeah it's very much kind of personal choice and in your book there as well you kind of go on about your 8020 philosophy to this approach is kind of to some people that might sound really restrictive and things like that stay kind of tell us about your 8020 philosophy and your your philosophy about putting this this paleo framework into a modern world yeah the easiest way to think about it is um I always say to people that if you try to be too strict and too dogmatic about being paleo and it's not very sustainable long-term you know at some point in time you will fall off the wagon and then you will make ourselves feel so guilty and stressed about it that you're going to cause more negative effects on your health and then by eating well so for me you know the twenty percent is that eighty percent of the time I eat pretty clean paleo you know and I cook at home a lot so I find that when I'm at home I will eat paleo way of eating because I can control what's in my pantry what's in my fridge and what goes into my food when I go out that's when I make certain exemptions and you know often when I travel or when I'm going out with friends I will allow myself to have white rice so sushi is a great option for when you're trying to set up eat in the road you know i will have things like pina maybe corn chips and salsa if i'm going to mexican restaurant and i will have a little bit a little bit of gluten-free desserts so maybe creme brulee renowned then you know and certainly no enjoy glass of wine with my with my dinner and I love trying new things so for me it's more of a you know if that twenty percent is is things that I know that in in small amounts are not going to affect my health very much and I have to put a cab it there because i'm not you know seriously allergic to things like gluten for example or casein in milk for some people they have to avoid those at all course all the time and so you know that's a different situation but for me that twenty percent can include things like an occasional slice of sourdough which is you know once in a while which i think is is fine because for me as a cool i need to try those things so that i can then somehow recreate them in the you know in the in a way that's paleo-friendly my with two different types of flowers so i'd say it's for research as much as for pleasure that's a good way to look at it good what about the twenty percent so think everybody has to make their own choice you know some people can't afford to eat grass-fed meat all the time so you know it's fine just go for the best next choice that you can get it's the same with vegetables and fruits you know some people can't afford organic fruit and vegetables and so you know they can use the Dirty Dozen where there are certain fruit and vegetables that are that are worse off than others and then make sure that you wash them within a little bit of apple cider vinegar and water so um I think that that twenty percent is something that it's a personal paleo code as priests press important it's something you have to define and the best way to do it is to do maybe like a 30-day paleo challenge or 30-day paleo plan where you that I've tried to be more or less one hundred percent clean paleo and then you may introduce certain foods back and and you see how you feel you know because you might you know I handle dairy really well as i said before so we've got butter in the fridge i often have you know just plain Greek yogurt alaska fee and things like that so i include a lot of probiotic foods and so in that respect you know cheese and things like that is something that i can have with problems but for other people it is a problem so I can understand why they can I have to go everything or nothing so mm-hmm absolutely and and that's kind of what it comes down to again the paleo kind of lifestyle is in an individual quest and as kind as he said there Chris crecer kind of goes on about your personal paleo code is that you kind of start off with this base foundation and that helps you kind of discover what works best for your health and that's kind of the major thing with paleo it's not really just about fat loss or anything like that it's about health and having the healthiest body possible absolutely yeah I think and and the other thing that I always said to people to me palu is all about keeping the inflammation down and I i always keep reiterating it because people often associate paleo with weight loss or you know trying to get must therefore CrossFit or you know some other reasons but to me you know I've seen I've seen people heal with paleo diet I've seen them sort of you know reversal of the conditions that they have chronic conditions for me personally I know that when I eat more or less paler you know most of the time my boy inflammations low because I don't get as many colds and flus or any other sort of regular things that I would normally get and they've just become almost you know extinct for me so I know as soon as I get a flu or cold I know that my immune system has been compromised and it's because I've been eating in stress ignore I haven't slept enough and it's amazing that since I've gone pehli I've become so in tune with my own body and I think from people that I've spoken to they experience the same kind of transition is that you really start to feel and kind of understand how your body feels absolutely absolutely that's kind of one of the biggest things is starting to be able to listen to your body because the fake foods that are out there the sugar refined carbohydrates in the and the highly processed oils and kind of almost make your body and hard of hearing that's yeah it kind of switches off your senses I stand when you start taking a real food approach it kind of opens up your eyes and ears I'm in a metaphorical sense in terms of your body senses and you start to kind of feel where your body should be going at that moment in your life and and and that's kind of yeah one of the good things i think the Paleo community kind of give and to the health and fitness industry and now again people might kind of sort of feel that it it's really restrictive and things like that but as you can sort of see here and you've got some really beautiful kind of photos of food yeah of meals and things like that it's kind of absolutely wonderful like to see these these nails they beautifully photographed but then they're also kind of really wholesome and wholesome and nutritious meals so kind of what does your day and daily diet kind of look like yourself okay I'll well I'll tell you what I had this morning that might be they might be the easier so yeah this will probably be representative of most mornings but we usually have I'll have to pan fried eggs and I usually pan fry them in coconut oil or butter or ghee and we'll have a side of avocado and I like to ferment my own pickles sort of sour crab or by kimchi from Asian supermarkets and so i'll have a side of kimchi or sad crowd um you can have some bacon in the house again I know paleo people go crazy over bacon and I and I love bacon but we don't have it every morning again that's another myth so we'll have some bacon if I heaven but otherwise I often do this really good cool t-shirts called sweet potato rosti and your grade sweet potato and you pan-fried in butter or ghee for about ten minutes five minutes on each side and I season it with you know garlic and onion powder and salt and pepper and some green onions and it's delicious and sort of gets caramelized on both sides and it's it's a little bit of a you know a good source of carbohydrate in the morning for people if you're quite actually may use a little brain power during the day so oh and it's yeah its eggs and sweet potato and avocado smoked salmon sometimes it's just leftovers from the night before which is also fine I think people then breakfast needs to be you know toast and cereal and it's often sweet but it's actually a breakfast can be dinner or vice versa um and for lunch I usually usually have a salad but I like to be a rage and my salads are quite again quite creative and do a big rainbow salad like to see lots of colors from different vegetables I get lots of fiber and i will have either salmon or sardines i love having settings for their mangastream today i had prawns and fried and garlic the garlic chili and onion um and you know make my dressing and usually salad as my lunch that's quick and for dinner tonight we're having and making a bolognese ragu sauce with some porcini mushrooms and I'm making sweet potato noodles with the sort of spiralizer and we're going to bake them in the oven quickly and some zucchini levels as well but that's going to be our spaghetti bolognaise month buster um that's probably quite a representative sort of day I think I try to include you know three four times a week I try to include fish as much as I can whether it's lunch or dinner and I very protein as much as possible so it's not just me or just chicken and and the same is fruit and vegetables I try to get what's in season because then we'd sort of get her a variation of stuff and yeah I'm quite lucky i have a greengrocer right next door to me and I just pop over and get what I running for the meal and and and make that on the day oh goodness girl get his gold um and that's kind of another thing about the paleo lifestyle is it's about that variation and seasonal variation trying to yeah get vegetables and fruits in season so then they're they're most nutritious Oh amazing yeah yeah absolutely in candy ideally from his local farms as possible as well yeah and that's that's actually another cool thing about paleo is again it's pelo is one of those things I have a dilemma with the name every now and then because you know it really shouldn't even be called pallu it should just be a normal way of eating and living you know and we used to eat and live that way now when I was little we used to go to the markets and and yet fruit and fruit and vegetables and meat that was brought from the farmers that morning and we used to grow a lot of our own stuff so to me that was quite normal you know now like years later I'm in Australia and I'm eating a lot of commercially produced food then the eating decision alee and organically locally becomes this novelty but we kind of we used to eat that way all the time and so in a way of palos is is is a movement that is reintroducing it back and which is fantastic and I often say to people who think that Bailey is not sustainable because we eat so much meat or you know they think it's anti vegetarianism almost but in a way you know we advocated me that is sourced from grass-fed cattle cattle that's been raised humanely and it's been treated really well that's had a very healthy and happy life and same with pork and eggs it's all free range and and pasture fed wild sustainable fish and ce4 as much as possible so I think in a way Paley is actually very eco-friendly way of eating of that makes sense it's kind of nice ethos behind a nice philosophy um then I think often gets misrepresented and confused but but but yeah it is it is a really nice way of getting your life back into that you know the way we used to eat absolutely absolutely I'm fantastic well thank you so much for your time today I've arena were there any kind of last wise words that you'd like to part with out with our listeners and viewers oh I think don't be alienated by the name paleo because if you've always wondered what it is and you've read in the art in the media that paleo this and that you know don't take anything for granted i think try it for yourself try and see how you feel because it's all about your own body nobody else is like you and see how it makes you feel how it changes the way you leave and then as I said you know create your own tour 8020 rule if you want to if you want to keep it 100% that's totally fine but you know adapted to your own lifestyle if you're busy if you have kids if you have a family to feed if you travel try and make it work for yourselves and and it's all about making just small steps you know better you know it doesn't have to be a huge leap transition you can just sort of take it a little bit at a time you're not exclude just try cooking with butter and game coconut oil to start with you know digital processed oils and then maybe exclude the wheat and then maybe eggs with the sugar and slowly slowly sort of get your body back in tune with itself um and yeah don't be afraid about what other people say anything it is your body it doesn't matter what other people say if you think you're crazy there are hundreds of thousands of us if not millions of us eating that by now so um just give it a go and you know there are so many great resources my book is and my websites like one of hundreds and add there and it's really fantastic that it's growing it's becoming more mainstream and yeah it's becoming more accessible and approachable I suppose so definitely give it a go see we think you know and you don't even have to call caeliar than of the day just eat real food yeah absolutely absolutely and people can check out your book by going to smash the fat com ford / eat drink pee that will forward you yes straight until there you go yeah absolutely I'm it's a beautiful book and people can kind of check it out on your website there they can either get an electronic or fully printed version as well and then I believe there's and there's a there's a program that you're kind of running as well yeah so um on the back of my website which is entering paleo website I've partnered up with the nutritional medicine practitioner back in Australia Claire yet and you know she brings in a lot of nutritional wisdom and then you know degree in science and I bring my cooking kind of you know tryouts so too other we put together like a 28-day program um it's not necessarily paler it's more just clean eating and toxic free living it's called rejuvenate program and we've got a website that we we're running together on the back of that called rejuvenated for live com and it's a website where we move away a little bit from paleo and just cooking and will focus more on just sort of healthy leaving and and well-being and we'll talk a lot about the foods and ingredients specifically what nutritional value that have how to make your environment more sort of toxic toxin free and so it's not it's not just cooking because cooking is something I love but I'm also chicester than the other stuff and and so clay and i wanted to try and introduce that lifestyle to the mainstream maybe two people who are not necessarily interested in Taylors specifically but it's just our way of spreading a message via on the Paleo community so yeah check it out it's rejuvenated falar com and it's got lots of fantastic interesting in-depth articles and recipes as well fantastic fantastic highly recommend everyone to go check that out um and yeah is there any way that people can kind of get in contact with you by Twitter or Facebook currents oh yeah I'm a social media hora yeah absolutely no I've got so I've got a facebook page obviously for entering pelo it's just if you search for a drink later you'll find it on twitter i am at Irena mercury and on instagram i'm a drink pelo I've got a Pinterest account as well so I'm kind of you know him I'm floating around between social media platforms all time we can shoot me an email just Irina and a drink telecom that are you and I'll George matter answers as soon as I can yeah absolutely absolutely I was he said we're all kind of like digital nomads these days I'm sorry very very busy folks but yeah highly recommend again we're going to check out eat drink paleo bio Rena at smashed fat calm for / eat drink paleo um and yeah I really thank you again so much for your time today and there we hope to see you soon absolutely and I'm really looking forward to see where I guess the Paleo community goes in the UK and just around the world and so having these kind of interviews is great because we just get to introduce some new concepts of people so I really appreciate you having me no worries are in my pleasure my pleasure all right take care .

Video Description:

Irena, or Irey to her friends, was born in Ukraine into a family of doctors, engineers, economists, athletes and very good cooks. When she was 16 she moved to Australia with her mum. After her mother, an otherwise healthy and active woman, went through two cancers...back to back...Irena wanted to find the best nutrition and lifestyle to sustain optimal health and a long, happy life. After doing lots of reading and research she grew to understand and love Paleo philosophy and approach to eating and living. Now her mission is to provide inspiration and tools to people who want to achieve better health and wellbeing through Paleo nutrition and lifestyle; to showcase the diversity of Paleo diet using her beautiful fresh produce and flavours inspired by many cultures and cuisines; and to help unleash your magical powers in the kitchen.
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October 02, 2020 Tags : #hangoutsonair , #hoa , Cooking (Interest) , diet (industry) , Dieting (Symptom) , Eat Drink Paleo , Food (TV Genre) , Hangouts On Air , Irena Macri , low carb , Paleo , Paleo Diet , primal , Video

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