RECIPE: Bacon and spinach stuffed beef hearts

I'm always on the lookout for new high protein food, and when I was wandering around Newcastle's Grainger Market on the weekend looking to stock up on multipack chicken breasts, I saw this fantastic bargain - two beef hearts for only £1! They weigh about 800g each (the ones I got are actually on the small side), and one heart is probably enough for 2 servings. That's approximately 70g protein per serving says MyFitnessPal. I've actually had heart before a while ago, but it was lamb heart (also tasty!), so this is the first time I've done beef heart. I thought stuffing it would be the easiest thing to do, and give it a bit of extra flavour. Lamb hearts are quite strong tasting, but it turns out the beef heart is much milder. Still, the stuffing worked well. The addition of bacon makes everything better.

I started by opening the heart to get a flat bit of meat. If you are in any way squeamish you may find this bit off putting, though I reckon everyone should have a good idea of where their food comes from and what exactly it is you are eating. You'll find the inside of the heart has some stringy bits, and probably some blood clots. Cut the stringy bits out (sharp knife or scissors), and give it a quick rinse to get rid of the blood.

Stuffing is really simple. Cut 6 slices of streaky bacon into small pieces and fry until crispy, add some finely chopped shallots (onions would do), then when they are done add some finely chopped garlic and 200g spinach. The spinach will wilt pretty quickly. Once it has cooled down a bit, then stuff your heart! Ideally you'd tie it up using butcher's twine, but as I never have any of that in the house, I sort of rolled it up and squashed it into a bread tin so it didn't unfold itself. I added a bit of oxo stock to the tin as organs are a bit tougher than muscle and I didn't want it to dry out (this also means you have a nice gravy to go with it). Cooking time I estimated at 20 ins, which turned out perfect, on the well done side of medium rare. I've written up the recipe for a meal to serve 2, if you're really hungry just double everything and have a whole heart per person!

INGREDIENTS

• 1 beef heart
• 6 slices streaky bacon (other bacon fine too, streaky just goes crispy quickly)
• 200g spinach
• 3 shallots, finely chopped
• 1 large garlic clove, finely chopped (or grated)
• 1 oxo cube
• 1/2 tbsp coconut oil (or whatever oil you prefer)

METHOD

• Preheat oven to 260°C
• Cut heart down the side so that you can lay it flat, remove any stringy bits and give it a good rinse to get rid of any clots etc
• Cut bacon into small pieces
• Melt the oil in a frying pan, add bacon and shallow fry on high temaperture until crispy
• Add shallots, turn temperature to medium and fry until transparent
• Add garlic and spinach, stir until all the spinach is wilted
• Turn off heat and let it cool down a bit
• When cool, add stuffing to flat side of heart and roll up
• Tie it up with butcher's twine, or improvise and pack it in a small dish to stop it unrolling!
• Transfer to small oven proof dish (I used a bread tin), fill the bottom with beef stock
• Cook in oven for approx. 20 minutes
• Slice and serve! The stock in the bottom of the tin thickens in the oven and makes a fab gravy

Big Fun Run!

Well I've been pretty rubbish at Palaeo blogging! I thought it would be easier, as I update my work blog a couple of times a month no problem. It's a combination of time (the work blog I feel more comfortable updating at work), and also knowing what to say. There has been a lot going on in the gym, lots of progress, I just don't know how to translate it into an interesting blog post. I'll get used to it eventually I hope! For now, a bit about a recent event. A couple of weeks ago I signed up for a 5K charity run. Before I started weightlifting I'd been running for over a year, at least 3 times a week. I was living in Edinburgh at the time and had an amazing lunchtime route that went up and around Arthur's Seat. Then when I moved back to Newcastle I got out of the routine, and didn't find a new route that I liked. So I gradually stopped running. The moral of the story is, you need to make the effort to keep an activity in your routine! I still enjoy running, but weightlifting has taken over much of my 'fitness time' so I haven't made time to get running back into the picture. I still get uncomfortable running outdoors (but I hate the treadmill!) so I really need to find a route that I know and feel comfortable running. So when I saw the Big Fun Run in Exhibition park, I signed up hoping it would push me to start running again.

I decided to raise money for Asthma UK - the major reason I didn't do much physical activity when I was younger was due to an asthma diagnosis as a child, and thinking that I couldn't do sports. It really had an impact. I wish someone had told me for example that Paula Radcliffe, marathon record holder, has asthma! The things we believe as children really do impact us, but we really can change things if we just get over that initial discomfort. When I started running I couldn't manage 10 minutes without getting that horrible tightness in my chest. But after 4 weeks, my breathing actually improved, and I could do things like run for the bus without struggling. But after stopping for almost a year, I went back to being worried about whether I could do it. In the end I was rubbish and didn't practice AT ALL, so I was very nervous on the day. I am happy to say that I completed the run in 29 minutes exactly. Not an outstanding time, but not at all bad, considering it was my first run in over a year! I know I didn't push myself either, as I could feel the tightness in my chest. However, it didn't happen until 3k into the run, and it was nowhere near as bad as it was when I first started running back in Edinburgh. I reckon that if I start running regularly again, I may even be faster than I was because of all the leg training I've been doing in the gym! I'm also happy that I managed to raise £120 for Asthma UK!

Olympic inspiration

Until this year I've honestly never been that bothered by the Olympics. I used to watch bits of it as a kid, mostly the gymnastics cause it looked cool, but the rest of it I had pretty much zero interest in. Looking back it makes me sad in a way, that I had this idea that I was no good at sports, therefore sports are boring. It just goes to show how so much of your perspective can change as the result of making a change in your own life. This year I've been fascinated by the Olympics. I've watched men's and women's diving, gymnastics, weight lifting, heptathlon. I've found myself thinking about the muscle groups involved in each of the activities, and having a better appreciation of the amount of training and discipline that these individuals have put in. That is what is truly impressive - as well as seeing that they are physically amazing at these sports, I have a better understanding of the effort behind it and it's an inspiration to see what people are capable of. It's also really interesting to see the range of physiques, even within a single category. If bodybuilding has taught me anything, aside from the actual fitness and nutrition, it's that we shouldn't write anything off as uninteresting, who knows what new things you may enjoy in future! Saying that, I'm still not sure I'll ever care about football, but you never know.

RECIPE: Chocolate protein muffins

I wasn't sure whether to do recipe posts, but hey, why not! I've been experimenting with various recipes for protein muffins, largely because protein shakes get very boring after a while, but also because I sometimes get chocolate cravings and these are a good way to help resist and to stick with the macros. I thought I would post this one as it turned out really well. Most of the recipes I've tried have been edible, but the texture has been a bit dry and rubbery. These muffins have a texture much more comparable to 'normal' muffins, especially if you eat them 1-2 days after making. I noticed that after day 3 they went a little stale. I think the secret to the good texture is the addition of honey, with a bit extra baking powder so that it isn't too dense. This made 9 muffins. According to MyFitnessPal, nutritional info per 1 muffin as follows:

Calories 145 Fat 6.5g Carbs 12.8g Protein 10.8g

INGREDIENTS:

• 2 eggs
• 1 tablespoon cocoa powder
• 3 scoops chocolate whey protein powder (I used Protein Dynamix Whey Choc Brownie)
• 2 tablespoons baking powder
• 1 cup ground almonds 
• 1/3 cup honey
• 1/4 cup water
• Pinch of salt

METHOD:

• Preheat oven to 175°C 
• Combine dry ingredients in a  mixing bowl
• Add eggs and water and stir until combined
• If it feels too thick adjust so that the mixture pours into cases
• Divide mixture into muffins cases
• Bake for 15 minutes until a skewer comes out clean 
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You may need to play around with the timing. I've found that there is only a minute or so between a sticky skewer and a clean skewer, and you don't want to overcook!

Palaeo what?

Having worked as an archaeologist for over a decade now, I sometimes forget that a lot of people are not aware of what it is archaeologists actually do. There is sometimes confusion between archaeology (studying humans in the past) and palaeontology (studying the stuff that came before humans). There can be a bit of overlap between the two. Some palaeontologists study fossils of the hominids that came before modern humans. Neanderthals for example are one of the earlier hominids, and the ones that most people have heard of. There was a period when modern humans and other hominids overlapped, so you can get palaeontologists and archaeologists working on similar things.

It's a bit of a running joke in archaeology, that the first thing you get asked about is dinosaurs, when in fact the dinosaurs died out 66 million years ago (66,000,000). Archaeology begins 3.3 million years ago, when the first tool using hominids appeared. Modern humans did not appear until roughly 200,000 years ago, in the middle Palaeolithic. So studying dinosaurs very firmly falls under palaeontology, not archaeology! When it comes to palaeodiet in the fitness community, I've come across several blogs which make jokes about cavemen having to run away from dinosaurs. Maybe it's the fault of the Flintstones. Humans and dinosaurs have never co-existed I'm afraid.

Palaeontology and palaeodiet sound similar because 'palaeo' comes from the Greek word 'palaios' meaning old or ancient. So the Palaeolithic means old Stone Age. When you look at a timescale showing the history of life on Earth, by far the biggest span of time falls under palaeontology. We humans have been around for a relatively short time. The popular use of palaeodiet refers to a supposed 'palaeolithic diet', but this period of human history actually covers a very long time span (about 2.5 million years) and a lot of dietary changes.

The Palaeolithic period (lasted for such a long time it is divided up into 3 parts, the early, middle and late Palaeolithic) becomes the Mesolithic (middle Stone Age). This is the transition between the Palaeolithic hunter-gatherers and the Neolithic (new Stone Age), when people became sedentary. So if you talk about the early Palaeolithic, you are actually saying the 'early early Stone Age'.

To confuse things further, archaeologists studying ancient diets in any archaeological period, from the Palaeolithic to the Romans are said to study palaeodiet! By the time we get to the medieval period, the use of 'palaeodiet' shifts to just 'diet'. It's just not that ancient by this point. This is of course a generalisation - the shift from being mobile hunter-gatherers to settled farmers didn't happen everywhere in the world, and certainly not all at the same time. And in some cases archaeologists have found evidence of Palaeolithic hunter gatherer cultures building houses. Even when people became settled and started farming, they often still hunted as well. This is why studying palaeodiet is so fascinating - humans are a diverse lot. How and why have we changed our dietary habits?  How this linked in with other cultural changes? How does this vary in different parts of the world and why?

Fitness and Fieldwork

Getting a few lunges in between digging

I’ve just got back from Sicily, not on holiday as I accidentally keep telling people, but on an archaeological excavation, which is one of the best parts of my job! Since I started training I’ve found tracking macros to be fairly straightforward on a day to day basis (thank you MyFitnessPal), and actually enjoy the variety in diet between high carb (low fat) and low carb (high fat) days. I was hoping to stay at least a little on track with this whilst away on fieldwork, and brought a few snacking essentials – rice cakes, whey protein and Nakd bars. The plan was to eat the fieldwork food as much as possible, and supplement with snacks where needed. I even thought I would give ice cream a pass, maybe just have a cheat weekend. But oh how that went out the window on day one. There is nothing in central Sicily that fits my macros. So much carbs, with carbs and more carbs, all cooked in olive oil. And really, once you’ve had just a little bit of Italian gelato, there’s no way you’re not going to eat ALL the gelato at any opportunity. And we’re staying in a village that has its own bakery, and they bake fresh croissants every morning and fill them with ricotta. Even my willpower isn’t that good.  Actually, with the amount pf physical activity I’ve been doing, my main worry has not been eating enough and losing all teh gains. After the first couple of days I realized I had a deficit of about 1000 calories and so switched to stuffing my face with all the carbs, whilst also trying to eat all the protein physically possible. This has mostly meant 3 protein shakes a day, plus eggs, tinned tuna and salami mini meals in between main meal times. I’m hoping the past 6 months of building muscle and increasing my metabolism will mean this leads to great gains in muscle, though I’m pretty sure my newly visible abs are going to disappear again.

I also had grand plans to stick to my lifting routine as much as possible, doing body weight versions of exercises. But the work schedule has been so tight I didn't get a chance. Instead my routine looked like this:

• Wheelbarrow dead lift row (emptying wheelbarrows into standing sieves)
• Bucket goblet squats (emptying buckets onto spoil heap)
• Bucket lat raises (walking from trench to spoil heap with a bucket in each hand)
• Bucket curls (as above but curling as you go)
• Shovel lunge, delt raise twists (don't forget proper shoveling technique!)

Add in the fact the site is on a hill, and there’s plenty of HIIT going on as well. It turns out that all the gym knowledge has translated really well to fieldwork. I definitely noticed the difference in how hard everything is. I used to be absolutely crap at maneuvering a wheelbarrow full of soil, and was rubbish at shoveling, now I can do both easily. Having spent ages trying to get a good form for squat and dead lift, it also feels really natural keeping health and safety approved body positioning for physical tasks. No more bending at the back for me!

Motto of this story is, don’t bother trying to carb cycle if you go to Italy. Embrace the food safe in the knowledge you can easily get back on track with macros when you get home. But do bring extra protein! And if you’re not an archaeologist doing physical labour for 6 hours a day, it might be a good idea to do some press ups and suitcase squats.

Coming soon: lessons learned from shoveling dirt everyday for 2 weeks...

Fitness and social media

I've noticed since taking up my fitness hobby that my social media accounts have polarized into different areas. Facebook has always been my 'friends only' account. Everything about my personal profile is private, and it's the only place I make any substantial posts about family. I use it mostly to chat with 'real life' friends who live far away, and to keep in touch with the American side of my family. I do however have two Facebook 'pages' related to each of my blogs, which I use for sharing posts with friends and blog readers alike, but I always post under the blog alias rather than my personal profile. Twitter on the other hand is very much my academic persona. I use it to network with other archaeologists and related academics, and to keep track of different university departments' news, to follow conferences through live tweeting etc. I also manage several other Twitter accounts for academic related bodies, where it's used for sharing the latest research papers and news. Instagram was not a site that I used a great deal. I did have a profile but never really posted that much. Maybe because I shared all my family photos on Facebook and didn't want to make them public. Getting involved in body building and fitness, my Instagram account has firmly become the place where I follow other like minded fitness folk, and my news feed has turned into a stream of flexing gym pictures, food, and motivational pics. It probably looks quite odd to those who are not into the whole gym thing! I do follow a few friends on there as well, but most of the stuff I post myself is now related to my super hero training efforts, or nutrition and meals. It has a very different feel to it than my other profiles. It's funny how each of the different accounts has its own distinct focus, but they're all a part of me, just a different emphasis. Does anyone else separate their social media in this way? I find it interesting, though perhaps not surprising, that Instagram has such a focus in the fitness industry. I guess for a sport/hobby that has a lot of emphasis on physical appearance, it makes sense that this would be the case.

5 archaeological sites where ancient dietary evidence comes from fossil faeces

Last week I talked briefly about one of the more unusual ways that archaeologists study ancient diets, through looking at the contents of fossilized human faeces! Today for your reading pleasure, are 5 examples where fossil faeces (aka coprolite analysis) have given us insights into prehistoric diets around the world.

Desert Flowers and Grasshoppers: Pecos River, Rio Grande canyon Texas, dated 2800 - 1500 BP (AD 500).

The southwest USA has seen a huge amount of coprolite analysis. The dry environment and the fact that peoples occupied caves and rockshelters has meant that fossil faeces have preservation really well. One study found that human coprolites contained large amounts of zoophilous pollen - that is, pollen from plants which are pollinated by animals. This is interesting as pollen that is transported by animals doesn't get very far, and also the plants only produce small quantities of it. It is usually pollen that is transported by wind that we see more of, as it gets blown all over the place and it is produced in huge volumes. If you suffer from hayfever, it is very likely that it is wind transported pollen! So, human coprolites containing large quantities of animal transported pollen means that people were ingesting the flowers of these plants. The most common plant pollen was yucca, agave, sotol and anther, along with prickly pear cactus fruits, wild onion bulbs, goosefoot seeds and...grasshopper!

Mostly Maize, Some Small Mammals: Anasazi diet, Antelope House Arizona,  1500 - 500 BP (AD 500 - 1500).

This site is also located in a cave at the bottom of a canyon. Coprolites were examined for pollen, and also contained large amount of 'visible' particles. Pollen types included cattail and horsetail. Cattail pollen is highly nutritious, and still eaten today - you can forage for it yourself, or buy it online either as raw pollen or prepared into a protein rich flour. Maize, or corn, was found in 74% of the samples, either as whole kernels or milled. Even more interesting was the fact that the whole kernels and milled maize were never found together, which suggests that these made up two different types of 'cuisine' that were eaten on different occasions, or at different times of the year (milled maize could be stored, for example, and so could be eaten out of season). Other types of seeds found included amaranth, cactus, pine nuts, squash and physalis (you may have seen these in the supermarket - the weird little orange fruits with a papery case). Coprolites with bone fragments were found together with the maize kernels, maybe a maize and small mammal stew! These coprolites were also analysed for protein residues, which found a small number of samples tested positive for animal protein, including pronghorn, rabbit, deer, guinea pig/squirrel, cat and dog.

Lots of Rabbits: Dust Devil Cave, Utah, 8800 BC - 6800 BP

Another site where prickly pear was incredibly popular, along with chenopod seeds, other desert succulents, pinyon pine nuts, sunflower seeds, fragments of wild onion bulbs. A huge amount of rabbit bones were also found at this site, along with smaller quantities of rodents and unidentified small birds, and it is thought that these people focused their hunting efforts almost exclusively on the cottontail rabbit.

Bone Marrow: Catalhoyuk, a Neolithic 'town' in Turkey, 9400  - 8200 BP

Of course I had to mention Catalhoyuk, as it's the site I have worked on for over a decade, working on fossil faeces and rubbish heaps! It is one of the earliest large settlements in the world. Compared to the other sites above, we have a much wider range of dietary evidence from Catalhoyuk, because we have human skeletons, houses with food storage bins etc, so we can look at diet in lots of different ways. My own work has shown that some of the human coprolites have large angular fragments of bone in them. This is normally something that is associated with dog coprolites, as dogs chew on bone and ingest splintered fragments. Finding these splinters in human poop shows that people in the past had less qualms than many people do today about chewing on bone! It is possible that this was done deliberately to 'suck' or otherwise remove the marrow from the bones.

Lots of Meat, Also Veg: Neanderthals at El Salt, Spain, c.50,000 BP.

Rather than looking at the remains of seeds and bones inside the coprolites, these archaeologists looked at invisible chemical residues. They found that the Neanderthal diet was meat heavy, as has always been suspected, but also that plants were a significant component. So they were very much omnivorous, much like modern humans.


These are just a few examples. Basically, prehistoric diets were incredibly varied, and often based on what was available in the local environment on  a seasonal basis. Where in the world you are obviously dictates the types of plants and animals that were available to you. Some groups hardly ate any meat, others relied heavily on one type of animal. Some ate mostly wild plants, others engaged in cultivation, from small scale horticulture to more intense agriculture, or had a mix of food strategies that included both wild and 'managed' resources. Even in the permanent settlement of Catalhoyuk, people ate a mix of 'domestic' and wild resources.

desert succulents, parched Sporobolus (drop-

seed) caryopses, sunflower achenes, wild onion

bulbs and pin

˜

on pine nuts

Palaeodiet from Palaeofaeces

What?

Yes, you read that right, there is such a word as palaeofaeces. It's a word archaeologists sometimes use to refer to ancient human shit. It's pretty common knowledge that archaeologists work with human skeletons, so it's not that much weirder that they look at poop, right? Another word that is more commonly used is coprolite. Technically it means fossilised poop, and is the word for dinosaur poo that has turned to rock, cause it's like millions of years old. Ancient human poo isn't really old enough to be properly fossilized, but coprolite sounds much more polite than palaeofaeces doesn't it. Anyway, why I am posting about ancient poop? It's something I've talked about a lot over on my archaeology blog, and that's because it is probably one of the most useful things that we can examine in order to understand what people ate in the past. It can also tell us a lot about the gastro-intestinal health of ancient populations. So if we want to learn something about 'real' palaeodiets, it's a fun place to start.

What can you learn from ancient poo?

Just like a doctor can ask for a stool sample to check the health of your digestive tract, archaeologists can look as these little packages to get an idea of how healthy people were in the past, and what they were eating. Although a lot of the nutrients that you eat are absorbed by the body in the process of digestion, it's not a completely efficient process, and bits of the food and nutrients make their way through the body until they emerge at the other end, in an amorphous brown lump that we are all familiar with. This can include stuff you can see like fragments of bone, parasite eggs, bits of partially digested seeds and plant fibres, and also 'invisible' stuff, like chemical residues of fat and protein. We use pretty much the same tests that a doctor would to determine how much of this stuff is present, and where it came from. Unlike many of the other methods that archaeologists use to study ancient diets, looking at the stuff bundled up in a coprolite is a direct indicator of what someone was eating, over a very short period, probably a few days, along with an indication of their health. If the coprolite is well preserved, you can even slice it up into little bits to look at how the diet varied between each individual meal!

It's a bit like a detective game - not everything makes it's way through the digestive tract. Some stuff survives better than others (corn cobs anyone). So we have to be careful when we interpret the results. Ideally we look at lots of samples to get an idea of variations and whatnot. So finding ancient toilets is way more exciting than finding the next Stonehenge or some boring old precious metal object. If you're interested in palaeodiets anyway.

Next time...what sort of stuff do we know about palaeodiets that we learned from looking at palaeofaeces?

The famous Lloyds Bank turd - Viking coprolite

Getting used to be a student again

The best thing I ever did in my quest to become a superhero was to go and get the advice of a professional. For a long time (well, the 3 ish or so years) when I first started out to become a not crap at physical activity person, it never really crossed my mind that it was something I should get advice about. Maybe it was all the bad memories of being utterly useless at PE at school, and the hugely unhelpful pseudo-shaming and lack of encouragement from the PE teacher. The more I reflect on it, the more annoyed I get. As someone who now does a lot of teaching as part of my job, it infuriates me that I was made to feel so embarrassed and upset about school sports, just because it didn't come naturally to me, and because I was super shy. That's not the job of a good teacher; the teacher is someone who helps you achieve your best, whatever level that might be, and provides the encouragement and support that makes you want to succeed. Yes it's super exhilarating to work with the students who are exceptionally bright and talented at your subject, but that doesn't mean you neglect the rest. And actually, the sense of satisfaction is often greater from helping those who started out at the bottom, and made huge individual improvements.

So I spent almost a year doing random stuff in the gym by myself, with no help whatsoever. It wasn't completely pointless (though I suspect some of my amusing muscle imbalances are a result of all those bicep curls...), but it wasn't until I decided to ask for help that I started to see real changes. It makes sense - you wouldn't try and master any other subject without getting instruction! I've achieved more in the past 6 months than I thought was possible, and more importantly, I've learnt more about why I am doing certain exercises, the muscles that are being targeted, and the processes that are taking place in the body, why it is important to eat certain combinations of food macros. For me having that understanding makes it easier, more interesting, dare I even use the word exciting! I've gone from sort of wanting to go to the gym but not really being arsed half the time, to really looking forward to it on a daily basis.

Biceps yeah!

The hardest part has been putting myself back into the role of student. It is a long time since I was a student (I finished my PhD in 2008), and even longer since I was the kind of student that took instruction (I won't even mention the last time I went to a lecture that I wasn't giving myself). So having to keep quiet and learn from someone else has been strange, I am just so used to being in the instructor role. It's a big of an ego check as well, not being the person in the room who knows the most about the subject. But it's made me remember how much I enjoy learning, and also how I'm not the sort of person who can do something challenging without going as far as I can with it. I am determined to get a superhero physique, in the same amount of time or less than it took me to get a PhD!

How it all started

How it all started. I am referring here to the gym thing, rather than how I became an archaeologist. If you're interested in that you can read all about it here. So, the gym - some background. I was never ever into fitness or sports when I was younger, in fact I was one of those kids that absolutely dreaded PE lessons and would come up with any excuse not to do it. Not because I was lazy - actually when I was really small I used to love running around playing outdoors. I can't really remember when I started hating physical activity, but I do remember it being linked to being diagnosed with asthma as a child (not really bad asthma, but enough that I needed an inhaler), which made me really nervous about exerting myself. That, and being a very shy child, I found the team sports that we focused on at school very daunting. It didn't help that the PE teachers didn't really pay any attention unless you were already really good at something. All in all a combination that led me to label myself as being crap at any sort of physical activity, with a medical condition to justify it.

Fast forward to university. I still considered myself crap at sport, but I did begin to wish I wasn't. For some reason though it never occurred to me that maybe I could do something to change things. I tried stuff like climbing with friends, but there was always a voice in the back of my head telling me that I wasn't any good at it and that I would never be a 'sporty' person. I was good at academic stuff and books, and that was that.

Funnily enough the major change happened as a result of a personal crisis with the academic stuff. Back around 2013 I found myself in a situation where I didn't have a permanent job (contract jobs are the norm in the early stages of an academic career, and there is no guarantee that you will ever get a permanent contract). My future was hugely uncertain, and I thought I might have to give up everything that I had worked towards. At the same time I became pregnant, which made everything even harder. I sank into a bit of a depression, probably post-natal combined with the career crisis. It was pretty bad if I'm honest, and I knew I had to do something to help deal with all the negative feelings. Putting on my researcher hat I read that physical activity was a really good way to combat depression, and something clicked. I thought, honestly nothing can be as bad as the way I am feeling right now, and even if I'm crap at it at least it will give me something different to focus on.

Julie Bell self portrait

So I started running. I was bloody awful at it to begin with. I spent 40 mins to an hour at a time on the treadmill, slowly slowly increasing my pace and aiming for 5k. Sometimes I made it, sometimes I didn't, but after about 4 weeks it suddenly got easier, like really noticeably easier. I started doing 5k in around 20-25 minutes, and better still, I didn't feel like I was dying afterwards, all the tightness in my chest that I got from the asthma disappeared. I started to feel more confident, and plucked up the courage to start running outdoors. Up and around Arthur's Seat in Edinburgh (where I lived at the time) nearly every day. The feeling was so exhilarating. Not just the running, but the feeling of achievement, having done something I never thought I would be capable of. Once you have that moment where it 'clicks', everything else becomes easier. I started to wonder, if I have managed to become a runner, maybe I can do other physical things as well.

So I started lifting weights. Despite being anti-sport when I was younger, I've always had a huge admiration for athletic female physiques. I was (and still am) very much into sci-fi and fantasy books and comics, and some of my favorite artists since I was young have been Boris Vallejo and Julie Bell (NB some of their art is a bit NSFW). Julie Bell was a bodybuilder in her youth, and the women (and men!) in their paintings are all very muscular. I would spend hours trying to draw women that looked like that, but I never imagined it would be possible for me. I didn't have a clue what I was doing though. I spent about a year randomly doing bicep curls and lat pulldowns. Not much happened to my physique but I did find it oddly relaxing.

Then, at the end of 2015 I achieved the impossible and got my dream job in my hometown of Newcastle! After the stress of the house move I stopped running for a few months, but was desperate to get back into doing something physical. I tried doing some classes at the university gym but didn't really enjoy it. My new route to work took me past a private personal training gym, and I thought maybe I should talk to someone who knows what they're doing and see if I can really do this muscle building thing. I cannot stress the difference this has made - I've been training with guidance for 6 months now, and in that time I've learned so much about biochemistry, biomechanics and nutrition. It's a perfect applied science in many ways, putting ideas into practice with yourself as the experiment, and seeing how amazing the body is at responding to change. And it's a huge challenge - if I can get the job I always wanted, maybe I can master this as well!

Phoenix versus Magneto - one of Julie Bell's X-Men paintings

Palaeo!

As this is the first post of a new blog, I'll begin by explaining a bit about me, and the name of the blog. I am not new to blogging - over at my other blog, Castles and Coprolites, I've been blogging there for 5 years now, mostly work related. I am an archaeologist, I work at Newcastle University, and I blog about my research, field work and topics related to academia. Archaeology is a very diverse subject, and my own work comes under the heading of environmental archaeology, which means I look at how people interacted with the environment in the past, how they selected and used different resources, and the impact this had on the environment. One of the ways I do this is by looking at ancient diets. What types of food were people consuming, how did it relate to what was available in the environment, and how does it link in with other things that rely on environmental resources, such as cooking and fuel use. And also, how did all of this vary in different parts of the world, and how did it change over time?

So this is where 'palaeo' comes from. In archaeology the word 'palaeo' means old or ancient. So when I look at what the environment was like in the past, it's the palaeoenvironment, when I look at what people were eating in the past, it's palaeodiet. But the reason I started this new blog is because of my non-work interests. At the beginning of 2016 I decided to take up bodybuilding. I'll be posting more in future how and why I made that decision! I've learnt that a huge part of weight and strength training is diet, more than I ever realized. There is a lot of talk in the fitness world about Palaeo Diet, based on the types of foods that are presumed to have been eaten by early humans, but largely separate from archaeological research as far as I can tell. This seems to be based largely on meant and fish, with certain vegetables and fruits, and excluding cereals, dairy and processed food. I've been fascinated how popular the Palaeo Diet is, and how it relates to my academic research. There has been a lot of criticism from archaeologists about the justification for Palaeo Diet not being wrong, but that is not the point of this blog. I am more interested in why people are into Palaeo and the mechanisms behind why it really works (or possibly not, for everyone?). So a lot of what I'll be talking about in this blog is related to the modern idea of Palaeo Diet, in what ways it relates to the 'real' paleodiets that we know about through archaeological research, and also how it differs. Importantly I'll be thinking about geographic variability. We have a tendency to talk about the past as if everything was the same everywhere, which is obviously not true today and wasn't true in the past either!

As I learn more about fitness and nutrition, I'll be incorporating this into the blog as well. So basically this is a place for me to discuss my thoughts informally about diet, fitness and nutrition, with less of the serious stuff about academia!