Experimenting with recipes for each of the types of diets I’m planning on trying is going to be key to having any success. I have tried some Paleo recipes off the internet for health bars and some other things, but I only have one Paleo cookbook in my library, Practical Paleo, by Diane Sanfilippo. This is the first entree I’ve ever attempted from this book. I was hoping for the best based on the description.

A successful diet is built around foods that you enjoy, that are nourishing and healthy and that fits within your budget.  This applies to everyone from vegans to your average joe just walking down the street enjoying his SAD diet.  One of the tricks behind this experiment is going to be finding that combination for each of the diets that I’m going to be trying out.  I’m going to be employing several tools to do that.

Even before I finally decided to start planning this experiment, well planning to begin the experiment in the very near future, I always suffered thinking of the notion of not getting to experience holidays with everyone else.  So much of our family holidays surround certain foods and good drink.  What would a birthday party or New Years Eve be without a good toast of champagne?  What would Christmas Eve be like without being able to chow down on some big bowls of Scungilli salad, crab claws or pasta in mushroom sauce (with of course some nice bottles of wine to wash it down)?  What would Christmas Day be like without noshing on a nice charcuterie and cheese plate and later a high stacked keilbasa and ham sandwich with freshly grated horseradish on dense traditional rye bread?  I’m getting hungry just thinking about it.  However for the duration of the experiment, which could be upwards of two years, these will not be in the cards at all.

As with an a early post to any new blog, it is fitting that I lay out who I am and why you should care about anything I have to say. First, I’ll say what I am not. I’m not a doctor or a personal trainer. While I have stayed in plenty of Holiday Inn Express hotels, scoured WebMD and online medical journal sites countless hours through the years and had a keen interest in human physiology I can make no claim of being a licensed expert in these fields. I’m not here to claim to be a health guru either. I don’t have some new magical elixir to sell you that will magically make you healthy, feel twenty years younger or be able to live into your 100’s. I’m not an adherent to any particular diet principle, tried and true or relatively newly discovered. I’m not a film maker working on yet another recast of a Morgan Spurlock adventure.  So who am I?