Who is this guy?

I figure before folks decide to part with their hard-earned money for some random guy on 'teh interwebz' they are going to want to know a little bit about him and his motivation.

I've been following Richard Nikoley's blog about 4 years now. In fact, it will be four years exactly on New Years Eve. I know this because, like a lot of his readers, I discovered him from a post at Boing Boing about some crazy dude that never uses soap or shampoo. I'm convinced now that the Boing Boing editor posting the story deliberately did so as a bait-and-switch to get people turned on to an incredible, heterodox blogger. If Richard had been introduced as yet another great blogger one should check out, I'd not bothered clicking the link -- I need another blog to follow like I need another hole in the head. The irony is I don't keep up with Boing Boing anymore, but I'm still following along with Richard all these years later.

So. Richard introduced me to the paleosphere and from there I reckon things proceeded in the usual fashion. Probably the biggest difference between me and what seems to be the typical paleo convert is that I didn't come at it for a weight-loss or strength-gaining program, but just as guy with a strong interest in biology and health (in fact, I wanted to be an MD back in the day). I do share a deep skepticism of conventional wisdom and governmental recommendations for how we should live, eg. statins and the USDA food pyramid. So that was likely part the hook for me with Richard as well.

That said, I've never been dogmatic about paleo eating. The high fat, low carb, moderate protein style of diet was clearly doing a lot of good for a lot of people that were in some pretty dire straits, but I could never get into it 100%. Strict gluten/veg oil/starch free eating is too much effort. We're gluten/veg oil/sugar light instead. We try reasonably hard to avoid those things, but as an otherwise healthy family I see no need to strictly and forever swear off pancakes and birthday cake. It's also hard to believe beans and potatoes, apples and oranges are going to wreck our health, or, for that matter, a loaf of real sourdough bread once in a month or two. I appreciate this is not the case for everyone. And that's why I think my family and I make an interesting science project. It's because we're in good overall health. The help that resistant starch and stricter forms of paleo does for people with pathological conditions is already well established. I would like to know what resistant starch might do for regular healthy people.

Anyway, that's how I got here. A few other incidentals are that I live in Portland, Oregon. I don't go out of my way to exercise, but I do ride my bike more often than I drive. I'm presently working mostly from home on a startup I co-founded. We make K-8 educational apps. Before that, I bike-commuted about 300 miles a month to an office in the 'burbs. Nowadays my riding is closer to 50 miles a month. My wife and children bike to school, the grocery store, church, and friends' houses. I should say, as much as we like riding our bikes and sticking it to the OPECs, it's not our religion. If we're going across town with kids, or if we are in a time crunch, we drive -- about 300 miles a month, many months.

Hope that helps. Sorry if this was tl;dr.