I've been at a restaurant with friends talking about ordering something to share, and had someone say "but wait, you don't...eat meat...right?" I told him I probably ate his bodyweight of meat every week.

I think most people just mentally file away anyone who doesn't eat something or eats differently somehow as "dietary weirdo," which usually means vegetarian or vegan.

Both of my sisters are vegetarian. Every holiday my Mother meticulously makes sure they will get fed (she's a good Mama.) I have increasing anger over my carnivorous holidays being intruded upon with pseudo-meats.

This last Thanksgiving my sister's new girlfriend brought a Tofurkey to go along with my pasture-raised, perfect, real Turkey.

When she asked if my 4 and 6 year old would like some of the Tofurkey (while my sister was extolling the benefits of vegetarian living) I replied to her..."No thank you. I don't like them to be exposed to that much soy."

You should have seen the look on her face. Anyway...that's not that funny but it sure did make me smile.

Well, I don't know if you consider water kefir paleo, but my friends razz me pretty hard about making it. They call my water kefir pitcher my "still" and keep asking when I'm going to put a stand out front to sell my "moonshine."

I tell them I'm drinking all my inventory.

All my friends seem to "tactfully ignore" my bizarre eating pattern but they're all celebrating with me as the excess fat continues to melt away.

My grandson seems to be getting more ancestral with each passing month. He doesn't like water kefir but he just decided to start eating my home-made yogurt and tonight when I was exclaiming over a recipe for jalapeno poppers on Chowstalker he calmly asked, "Are they Paleo?"

Some quotes (sorry for grammar mistakes, I always had bad scores at school in english class, probably because my mother language is french) :

"That's a silly way of eating. You can survive on bread only, but you cannot survive with only meat."

"You cannot be sure you became healthier just because your skin, your eyes, your teeth, your digestion, your body composition and your mood got better. You might have cellular mutations going on right now."

"It's your birthday, you HAVE to eat some cake." (yeah, sgonna be a GREAT birthday with lots of zits)

"I'm 100% sure I don't have nutritional deficiencies" (he goes outside less often than me last year, and I had a huge vitamin D deficiency back then). So I asked "what about magnesium". He replied "Oh I drink beer, that gives me all my magnesium. Why do you think beer is so bitter". Made me chuckle.

"There's sugar in EVERYTHING, you know". I asked, with lots of sarcasm "In meat too". He replied, with a serious voice : "yes". Clearly he was hoping I'd shout "OH NO I'VE BEEN WRONG FOR WEEKS I SHOULD EAT CANDY RIGHT AWAY IT DOESN'T MATTER ANYWAYS"

"I try to eat 3 fruits and 2 vegetables every day :) !" (sure you do, that's why you ate 4 apples, 2 kiwis, 2 oranges and a small serving of carrots. oh right, potatoes are vegetables?).

"Fat people are just lazy. I can't stand them." (I've never been fat, but that's a very mean and ignorant thing to say)

"What you eat is disgusting <starts eating whole wheat bread while I indulge in celeriac fries with a steak from heaven>"

"I'm in PERFECT health." (so tell me why you have acne, mood swings, spend your days playing computer games, have eye and teeth problems, ...)

And now some doctor's advice (I like my doctor, but you know how they are) :

"You have hypoglycemia. You should eat slow sugars like bread and potatoes. Or eat fruit very slowly throughout the day" (I had been fruitarian for 4 months before that).

"HALF A POUND OF MEAT DAILY?? ARE YOU CRAZY?? Fish is unlimited though"

(To my sister) "You sleep too much"

Housemate: "You are frying with butter again!?"

Me: "Last month I weighed 86Kg and had 13% body-fat, this month I weigh 83.5Kg and have 12.1% body-fat."

Housemate: "Yes I was about to say you are looking much thinner."

Me: "Obviously two months of butter isn't working too well is it?"

Housemate: "Hmmm..."

Me: "And I am going to eat this whole avocado too."

My sons stayed the night at their Grandparent's house, who are renowned for asking things like, "why can't you eat corn?" and "what's wrong with whole grains?" The next morning they were going to make pancakes and they got a special gluten-free kind. For the life of me I do not know when they shifted their thinking from my family eating a Paleo/Primal diet to gluten-free?!?! Anyway, oldest son says, "No thanks, can't we just have some eggs?" Grandma, "How do you know we have eggs?" Son, "Don't you need eggs to make pancakes?" Grandma proceeds to make eggs for my sons and nasty pancakes for everyone else, including the asthmatic, always have snotty noses, and covered in eczema cousins.

My sons are tall and lean, considered by everyone around them to be too skinny (comparatively speaking to other kids, I guess). Grandparents keep harping on them to eat so they can be big and strong. Grandparents are trying to get them to run marathons with them and told them about the hot chocolate reward at the end. Sons ask, "Why, hot chocolate at the end of a race. Shouldn't you have something healthy?" Grandparents explain how healthy the carbs from hot chocolate are after a marathon run. Sons say, "We would rather have healthy fats." Grandparents, "That's an oxymoron." Sons, eyeroll and think, "What morons," to themselves.

"how does a little girl like you eat all that?!?!?" exclaimed at my 1pm breakfast of 4 eggs, 1/4lb beef kidney and cup of broccoli.

For some stupid reason when I tell people I don't eat ANY Grain, they try to find exceptions. Like Rice! Or Oatmeal!

I had someone tell me that I should eat grains. I asked why. They told me, "Because the government says we should." Really? Sometimes I feel like I'm living Circa 1950 over here...

It's always amused me how often the people I talk to mishear "I don't eat wheat" for "I don't eat meat." Usually right before I tear into a fatty steak cooked in Kerrygold.

My favorite...

"Bread was in the Bible, it has to be good for you"

Today a lady mentioned how I'm similar to her son: tall, skinny, doesn't eat processed food, low fat, etc. Once she saw my roast duck and said it looked delicious, I started telling her about my "diet". Lots of meat and vegetables. High protein, high fat. She had a funny look after I said high fat. Unfortunately she didn't tell me why fat is bad for me...

My quasi-pescetarian (she will occasionally eat chicken, for some reason), candy-hoarding sister is full of great ones. She actually is very supportive but she maintains that being vegetarian is healthier and doesn't quite get the science behind how I eat. (FYI: Terry Wahls's TED Talk was my conversion to paleo, and I've showed it to my nuclear family.)

[In the middle of dinner with my extended family, whom I barely know and am not comfortable discussing my health/diet with, while my mouth is full] "Marielle is minding her mitochondria!"
[Hearing the sizzle of fatty beef hitting a hot pan] {horrified} "That sounds like fat!"
"WHAT? What's wrong with soy? I thought you just weren't eating bread."
"Get some kale for those mitochondria!"
[Watching me drizzle some extra virgin olive oil on some kale] "I didn't see any olive oil in that video."
[After I simplified the concept behind paleo to "we did not evolve to eat grains, but we did to eat meat"] "We didn't evolve to eat red meat."

Christmas morning I'm asked to cook bacon and scrambled eggs. No problem. As we're finishing up eating my sister asked "Did you cook the eggs in olive oil or canola oil?"

"Neither."

begin argument...

I always get:

You are throwing away the egg whites?

I have a feeling this thread will be rather long! Eating feels to be a very political act, even when one eats for purely self-involved reasons. I'm doing this because I believe it to be the best option in a world where food is just so removed from its natural form. I still get co-workers, friends and family trying to challenge me during meal times. It's extremely frustrating as I am doing this as a form of self-love and healing, not trying to convert anybody or judge others' food choices.

I live with my mother, who recovered from her eating disorder after a counsellor taught her to regard all food as energy and to take 'everything in moderation'. I can totally see the merit in that approach. Now that I am recovering from mine, I too am eating all things in moderation - but sticking to foods that are more or less natural. I won't touch oatmeal, wholemeal bread, peanut butter or jam because they trigger binges, send my moods out of whack, give me nasty bloating and digestive issues... but my mum makes it hard. She takes my lack of energy to be a symptom of 'eating too much red meat and fat' (rather than something that was caused by chronic malnutrition). Last night she was on my case about eating wholegrain toast and cheese to give me energy (which probably would help, as I just need more calories). She has a rather damaged digestive system and can't handle red muscle meat anymore, is constipated for days. Arthirits, high blood pressure, anxiety, poor sleep, and she's having a hell of a time with menopause. She doesn't eat red meat because of it and eats her wholemeal bread for fibre. I hope to get her started on water kefir and other probiotic foods to help heal her gut, but I think realistically she might never improve her quality of life if she continues eating what she does.

Folks at work comment on how lean I am and how I got that way by eating 'low carb', even though I load up on the starch and fruit all the time. These are not 'real' carbs for most people, or they tell me they just didn't think of it that way. They shame each other for being fat. Our office manager has low self-confidence, a stressful job and I often see him comfort eating from the vending machines. He's on an 'all protein' diet but of course won't touch fat because fat makes you fat. I told him quite seriously that adding healthy sources of fat like avacados, olive oil and fatty fish would be hugely beneficial for satiety and energy (didn't mention saturated fats in case I scared him off). But these type of diets are like group challenges and only last about two weeks. They simply aren't sustainable lifestyle changes- yet they all congratulate each other for losing weight (even though the constant yo-yoing is more damaging to your heart than saturated fats or being 'overweight' ever is).

Last week I made a curry with coconut cream, beautiful yellow curry spices with nothing added, and rather lean grass-fed goat meat. Mum was initially excited because it tasted so good, but looked at the nutritional info of the cream and declared she couldn't eat it because it contained too much saturated fat and would give her a heart attack. She made another curry besides mine, with chicken and jar curry, containing 20 ingredients, soy, wheat, milk powders, vegetable oils, flavours, thickeners, the lot. It just makes me so sad.

I stick with saying that I'm gluten-sensitive and give up trying to explain except to a few more enlightened and objective ones. Gluten-sensitivity is usually enough to have my co-workers leave me enjoy my own (yummy) meals.

Of course, frequent reactions I get include - "you mean that (salad bowl) is edible?" and "but isn't everything made of wheat then?"

I got some pretty funny reactions to paleo over the holidays. They'd get the paleo in a nutshell lesson (not that I brought it up, my immediate family things paleo is odd) and then look at my plate and comment about how much wheat/sugar I was eating. Further explanations ensued.

I was lamenting over not having room in my freezer for an order from the co-op of pastured beef and pork.

My (not paleo) best friend is absolutely appalled that I wouldn't make room in my freezer by throwing out the combined 18lbs of lamb liver, spleen, and heart that I had stored in butchers boxes in there. He made a quip every time we went out to eat or were just talking about food for the next month: "Josh will be happy to eat your pig-anus casserole, do you have any lambs hooves that Josh can eat, or a pancreas? Please tell me you have a pancreas!"

There is a happy ending though... I thawed out some of all three and ate well that week (liverwurst in sausage casings), then was able to make room for my 230lbs order.

The best part? I gave him one of the cased liverwursts and he greatly enjoyed it on sandwiches. I never told him that most of the "liver" was spleen (much milder than liver).

I get plenty of comments from co-workers when I heat up my leftovers of sweet potatoes and pork roast while they are shoving a Jimmy John's sandwich down their throats. I discuss my diet only with a few people who have some interest, but they don't actually want to try it for themselves. Too scary, I guess.

The dietary habits of my co-workers are appalling. We have an overweight protein-deficient vegetarian, a skinny skinny sugar junkie near vegan. A low blood sugar person who has to eat every couple of hours. A lot of just generally overweight people who start their day with a huge diet soda. We have an unusually high number of people with migraines. The office snack basket is filled with HFCS-laden "whole grain" cookies. The freezer is full of Lean Cuisines. Even our office bulletin board is covered with health-related flyers from our Human Resources Dept. touting Meatless Mondays and MyFoodPlate. And then everyone seems to always be nursing a cold, allergies or a sinus infection. I've tried to gently steer people to sites like PH or MDA, especially when the topic covers one of their maladies.

And my partner gets pretty cranky when I start discussing paleo. He's not on board.

I raise a few chickens and barter with a couple of my coworkers for them. I offered some to one guy and he said, "Sure, my wife will use the whites for omelets and we'll give the yolks to the dog." DENIED!

When the sandwiches are passed round and I eat only the meat I now get, "Oh, Jean doesn't eat bread" which is nice as they now accept my funny diet but I am the only one there who isn't diabetic, arthtitic or overweight and no-one ever thinks I might have got it right!