All things coconut

If I say "coconut", what comes to your mind? If you had asked me that very question about a month ago, my top 2 would probably have looked like:

These days however the picture has changed quite a bit. Since I decided to try out the paleo diet, I've had to give a serious look at my fridge and pantry, and still came short on occasions. What's the relation you say? Well it turns out coconut was the answer to most of my problems. Obviously not the only answer, since there are many alternatives in each case, but its ubiquity struck me, especially for something that seldom ever made it to my kitchen. A few cases in point below:

	One nemesis of the paleo diet is sugar, so cutting sugary drinks has been a priority. On a day-to-day basis, I did not find that to be so complicated; as for sport drinks, coconut water, while a bit over hyped, happens to be a very good alternative, packing plenty of electrolytes, and even better than water to keep you hydrated, if you don't mind the taste. It still comes with a decent amount of calories, so moderation! It could still add up.
Dairy products are a bit of a grey area for the paleo diet; purists apparently stay away from them, but overall they seem to be given a pass. With this said there are plenty of alternatives, such as almond milk, soy milk or... coconut milk! While richer than its water counterpart, its taste is mild (somewhat sweeter) and works great for cooking. Here's a paleo smoothie that now hits my blender every morning: 1 apple + 1 banana + 2 celery + 1/2 a cucumber + a fistful of kale + 1/2 a bunch of parsley + 1 squeezed lemon + a glass of coconut milk + a few ice cubes.
	Another nemesis of the paleo diet is grain / grain-based product. This turns out to be more of a bummer: no cereals, no dough, no pasta, no pizza, no cake nor cookies :'(  I didn't quite fathom this, until I realized there were options such as almond flour, chestnut flour or... coconut flour! What it really meant was more time cooking, assuming I really carved for a cake ^^ Here's another easy recipe variation I came up with: 2 eggs + 60g of sugar + 40g of coconut flour + 1/2 a glass of coconut milk + 40g of melted butter + some vanilla essence + couple pinches of salt + raspberries & blueberries (1 pack each) + cook for 20mn with some sugar atop + let it cool down and refrigerate.
The list wouldn't be complete without mention of coconut oil, though I personally didn't try it. As I understand it, it's not necessarily a healthier alternative to the more common olive or vegetable oil, but it is still supposedly better than butter or animal fat.

I also thought I might add 2 special mentions, so you can learn from my mistakes: coconut cream, and cream of coconut... I mistook them for one and the same, thus completely screwing up an attempt at Thai curry (shoulda coulda tasted it first!), but really, they are vastly different:

• coconut cream is essentially thickened coconut milk, so that its taste is just as mild, but creamy instead of watery; you could reasonably use either in a cooking recipe, if texture is not an issue.
• cream of coconut is a mix of coconut cream and cane sugar, in equal part... so it's massively sweet! You might use it to bake a cake or even in your pina colada, but well, not in a curry!

Dod Goes Paleo

I've always had a knack for sports. I run fairly regularly (including 2 NYC marathons), swim during the winter season (when my odds of having a lane for myself are higher) and play tennis, where my partners know me for my spotless technique my athletics on court. So it is somewhat frustrating when my wife describes my belly as "under control"... especially since it does look that way. In fairness, I've been willing to push myself doing a lot of cardio, but uncompromising with my eating... I did grow up in France after all!

But it has dawned on me that I can't outrun my eating habits. I had already ruled out anything along the lines of miraculous pills, wacky proto-food or magical sporting accessories; I also thought somewhat unrealistic (for me) to start counting calories or cram any significant additional sporting habit (a day only lasts so long). And so I went roaming about the web, placing my tall order to Mr Google, rewording a few time. Google feels sometimes like it has a life of its own, and I did sense some twist of dark humor when it eventually zeroed in on Nerd Fitness... but it so happens that it's a perfectly legit website, with some interesting nuggets at that. While a lot of it has to do with workout routines and the like, a surprisingly strong emphasis is made on the diet, going as far as stating that "your diet is at least 80% of your success or failure", leaving workouts to a near cosmetic 20%. Nothing scientific there, of course, but it did catch my attention, and I ultimately came away with 2 points stressed by the author:

• Cardio is one of the least efficient methods of burning calories. Shorter, but more intense interval runs would be more beneficial, though still not as effective as strength training. So much for all the running ^^
•  A "paleo" diet is recommended as a great way to trim down by avoiding some foods, but with no real restriction on quantities / calorie count; to make a long story short, if a caveman couldn’t eat it, neither can you. As the reasoning goes, our ancestors strove for most of the past couple hundreds of thousands years as hunter-gatherers, until agriculture developed about ten thousands years ago; so grain-based food, preeminent today, has become common in man's diet only very recently (from an evolutionary perspective), and our bodies haven't yet adjusted to that steady supply of rich food.

I honestly can't say how accurate this is, but the website does have a pretty accurate take down of my own experience, and it promotes the kind of balance I could manage. So I've decided to give it a shot for at least a couple of month, and see the outcome!