Hi there!
My name’s Chris, and thanks for stopping by Paleo Method! As an avid eater (as humans tend to) and lover of delicious food, I made the natural leap from eating to cooking, first out of sheer necessity after striking out from the parents’ house on my own, and then out of love for eating delicious food and cooking to my own tastes.
As a once 18-year old kid and now 40-“something”-year old ‘man’ (no, my age doesn’t really matter to me), I made the other natural leap from eating whatever I want and however much I want of it, to numerous “wait, who is that guy in the photo?” and “uh oh” moments, and then to a new-found interest in making and eating delicious food that actually compliments my health, weight, and fitness versus declining it (novel concept, I know).
I’ve had quite the journey in my 20+ years of adulthood with many lessons learned and MORE than a few setbacks. I’ve chased trends, downed three-times-daily diet pills that cost WAY too much per month (and turned out to be dangerous), researched and read & borrowed many a new concept in health and fat loss and cooking, thrown out ideas, adapted new ones, tweaked others… all that to basically say (in a very long-winded way) that I know I can offer help in your journey as well, in both health & body fat management as well as cooking delicious food in a simple and easy way to compliment your goals!
Here’s a bit of my history…
From Top Ramen to Top Chef…
Chris is an award-winning… NO, no he’s not. Yeah I know, I think I missed a comedian calling there. But anyway, I don’t even like the word “chef” in conversation surrounding me or my food because being one requires true skill that takes so much to passion, time, energy, and training in order to earn that title, and I just love good food too much and respect chefs too much. BUT that doesn’t mean only a “chef” can make delicious food, or that years of professional training is needed to wow your family and friends (and most importantly, yourself). Anyone can learn new things as long as they are sucking air, as they say. Even me, so clearly you too.
My mom was and is a great cook (I will NEVER match her Thanksgiving food), and growing up in Southern California (Let’s Go Dodgers) in a very diverse area and in a multicultural and blended family, I was exposed to a lot of homemade deliciousness pretty much from my first baby tooth onward. Double-edged sword there because of what awaited when it was off to college and work. Y’know, as tends to happen. Hot Pockets are great, but they only go so far before you can’t stand to see even the packaging.
So of course I went to Mom, but not to cook for me. Well not always, anyway. I’d ask, “How’d you make that family hot dish we always used to have?” Then Grandma. “How do you make your arroz con gandule?” Then my tío. “What’s the secret of your refried beans?”, “Grandpa, what’s in your ‘secret’ chili?”, “[Other] Grandma, how do you do that pepper steak you make?” And so on.
I also resorted to making easy stuff like eggs, and learned that eggs are the blank canvas standing opposite the flavor color palette. You can do whatever you want with eggs. Want to figure out Mexican flair? Eggs. Want a taste of the Middle East? Eggs. Something Asian inspired? Eggs. Spices, herbs, and the like define those flavors we all know but maybe can’t specifically identify. When you’re cooking, the taste of the tongue is a teacher (and doesn’t lie to spare your feelings or ego), and eggs are great for practice there. That’s why there are a ton of different omelets on restaurant breakfast menus. Now you know.
At any rate, doing all of that, you tend to learn some things. A lot of it is hundreds of ways how not to make something (at least for me). But also you learn there is always next time. Then after the next time you learn what you tried that actually made it taste better. You add to that with something else. You look for something new to try. You start tweaking ‘black and white’ recipes and adding your own colors to it, so to speak. You try shortcuts and discover so much that actually works and doesn’t take away from the dish. Who wants to spend 4 hours making something that tastes only slightly better than a method that takes an hour or even less? Well, maybe occasionally you do, but not every day (unless you’re getting paid for it).
And so without realizing, you actually build up a skill set and suddenly people are asking you how to make YOUR version of this or that. Weird. What I tell them is that I selfishly cook for myself to make it delicious to ME (not a lie); but more often than not it turns out that others love what you make when you put that into it and cook with that mindset. Who knew?
I LOVE rollercoasters, but a 20-year long weight rollercoaster? Not so much…
Aww, I really do love rollercoasters. But I digress. There’s another side of that coin in my quote, unquote culinary journey.
So I grew up very active in numerous sports (I was basically born with a baseball bat in my hands thanks to Dad – I grew up at Dodger Stadium), and never really stopped until after high school. All of the varsity teams I was a part of required we be doing something during the respective off-season for that sport if we even wanted to be considered when it came to starting in games. Baseball and basketball were my two main sports, so that meant either track or cross-country in the fall, and something else during the summer. So all this to say that at that time in my life, fitness, and by extension weight and shape, was built in for me with a pretty much 365 day-per-year sports life, and so wasn’t even an afterthought during those years. Plus I was a teenage kid with a bit of metabolism on my side, so who cares what you eat?
But oh how quickly I learned that eating as I had been throughout high school wouldn’t work so well for me once I started juggling college and part-time work in the place of constant sports, and it became apparent to me fairly quickly once I started to see photos of myself and got ‘looks’ from family & friends.
Once after I had graduated high school I was at my grandma’s house for a family get together and my tío said to me, “Damn Chris, you’re getting big. You been working out?” as he grabbed my arm as if to indicate I had these huge biceps or something (I didn’t). What he meant was, “Damn Chris, you’re getting big.” Period. It hadn’t even been a year since I had graduated. Who was he to say anything with his… **AHEM** sorry, deflection.
And so I hopped onto a rollercoaster. The drops were great, but it never stopped at the station and the restraints never unlocked for me to get off and it kept climbing another time to ride it again. The ride lasted a long, long time.
At the time, I was working part-time at a grocery store that rhymes with Shmalbertsons, making tons of money bagging groceries and pushing carts and cleaning public restrooms that somehow mirrored beach restrooms. (Really just making money, period – I had never done that before.) Every day I didn’t work was packed with college classes, and even some of the ones I did. I was a good athlete, but not ‘athletic scholarship’ good. So naturally I ordered some $80 (back THEN!) diet pills that I saw on a TV commercial using my Scrooge McDuck money (I’m 99% sure the ingredients of which are now illegal). They worked, and fortunately I didn’t have a health emergency as a result of taking them. When I stopped, I ballooned.
I heard about something called the Atkins diet, so I used some of my limited AOL CD internet time with my 56k modem (these are very old-fashioned statements) to find out about it. I learned that some of that works and some isn’t so great (or healthy). Then I cheated on the diet. “Cheating” for me tends to last several months or more. “I’ll restart it tomorrow.”
I paid for other, newer, better diet pills (current legality also unknown). I bought legitimate health supplements. I took ‘homeopathic’ droplets (that I’m pretty sure were just saltwater, thinking back) and severely restricted my calorie intake. I made giant pots of ‘special’ soups which would constitute the only thing I ate for every meal for however long. Then I went to In-N-Out and redefined ‘Animal Style’. (I know, California references. Sorry, not sorry.) And so on.
Once again, mirroring my cooking journey, I learned a lot. I’m about 6′ tall, and in high school I ranged from the 170’s to 180’s. Where I am today and now, I’m pretty much at my best, look and health-wise, at around between 180 and 190 pounds, which I do pretty much hover around (there’s always room for improvement). But at my heaviest points since high school, I’ve weighed 240 pounds, and that was NOT me prepping for a bodybuilding competition. And I’ve covered all of the territory in between so much and often that Luis and Clark ain’t got nothin’ on me. The numbers also don’t particularly matter as much as what the weight consists of – mirrors > scales. Over time, my viewpoint has narrowed to what would now fall into the Paleo and sometimes Keto categories. Not religiously so, but fairly in line.
What’s the point of learning if it’s just me and a mirror (vain, much?)…
So 20+ adult years of experimenting, succeeding, failing seemed to me to be pretty relatable for a lot of people out there (such as maybe you). Food and health are inexorably linked (it’s true, Google it).
The struggle is real (so is the overuse of that phrase), and we all face the same challenges, some more than others, like the seemingly genetically gifted few who seem to eat whatever they want with no repercussions. But sometimes it isn’t the ‘gift’ that you think it is; sometimes people actually just have the knowledge on what works (in general, and for them more specifically) and what doesn’t, and it just appears to be so to the rest of us.
So I figure why not share what I know, what I will continue to learn, and bring in others to join in on the conversation and learning? Shared knowledge is so much more valuable than knowledge existing on an island with a population of one!
Let’s learn and share great recipes. Let’s learn strategies, choosing the right foods (for you uniquely), and build habits that enable making split-second decisions that make a world of difference!
My goal, the goal of this site and the bottom line (get to the point)…
There are a TON of sites out there in this category. It’s a literal ocean. So what’s unique here? Well hopefully it’s that we share in our love of cooking and eating delicious food for starters. But more so, discovering that overall HEALTH and BODY FAT management can absolutely coexist with amazing food and don’t have to be viewed as the proverbial lion and lamb. And that the sharing of ideas can amount to greatness we never even considered. Lofty.
Ultimately, my personal goal is to help YOU make delicious food AND lose and/or maintain the weight you want to in a sustainable and healthy way, through the things I have learned, and through techniques and ideas that I (almost obsessively) am always researching and trying in the realm of ‘dieting’, losing body fat, and maintaining it – all in a delicious way.
UGH, the term ‘dieting’. As if a person is either ‘on a diet’ or they aren’t. No. We are all on a diet because we all eat. We eat a diet, whatever that may be. If a person is not ‘on a diet’ then they are not alive (or won’t be for long). I know, sorry, you GET it. I’m good at beating a dead horse. So to me, a diet should make you feel good first (WHILE eating it, and continuing on to feeling good overall), and then make you look good second. When you feel good, it naturally follows that you look good. Socratic-level revelations here.
So regardless of your specific goals, whether it’s just cooking great dishes, dropping 100 pounds (or those last fossilized few), getting a ‘ripped’ or ‘defined’ look, or just feeling amazing all around… it’s all doable SIMULTANEOUSLY and can be delicious! This website and its content are dedicated to help with that!
Also, definitely feel free to hit me up if you have any questions, have ideas to share related to your own recipes, your diet, or overall health, OR just to drop a comment below and shoot the breeze. At this point it’s gotta be pretty obvious I can go on and on about anything. Oh well.
Anyway, that’s me. Thanks for fighting our society-wide short internet attention span and reading! I hope you have a blast here within the walls of the Paleo Method experience and your own kitchen walls, and find the success you are looking for!
See ya soon!
~Chris
paleomethod.com