Well, it's only been four days and already there's a pretty intense discussion about the pros and cons of eating meat. Both sides have weighed in with excellent points, and the conversation immediately skewed off into realms of nutritional science that far supersede my understanding even at my most lucid.
To meat, or not to meat: That is not a question that I'm here to answer.
Trying to convince people to give up meat (or to start eating it for that matter) is a job for someone else. For me, the point is to try to help people understand that there is a reason to be concerned about the food we're eating. I'm no expert, I'm just here to document my journey. The first and most important thing that I want people to discover is that the isles of the grocery store are filled with food that causes our bodies to malfunction and get sick.
Since I got off to such a late start with the blog (I should have started it eight months ago when I learned about Paleo for the first time), I have quite a bit of catching up to do. In light of all the discussions and science and strong opinions that folks obviously have on the merits of carn/herb/omni-voreism, instead I'll just tell you what my results were.
After being influenced by what Rob Wolf said in "The Paleo Solution" and by what I'd learned from Bryan, who was also in the early stages of the learning process, I gave it a shot. I cut out all the carbs and sugars. I did a good job of it too, for weeks I ate a very restricted diet comprised almost entirely of meat, eggs, cheese, vegetables and butter. I ate a lot of avocados, a lot of chicken... for breakfast I'd just eat a hard-boiled egg an a handful of roast beef.
I stopped drinking soda, beer and basically all sugary drinks and just drank water instead. As a milk replacement I made a coconut milk concoction that is actually very good... if I remember later I'll include that recipe. Actually I'll put it at the end of this post. I didn't give up coffee, but I did stop putting sugar in it. I switched to heavy cream. I noticed very quickly that my level of hunger had dropped substantially.
So what happened? I lost almost thirty pounds in a couple of months.
I'm a big dude. At the end of the 2010 holiday season I weighed in at 295 pounds. That's on a 6'8" frame, so I could almost get away with it, but I knew I wasn't healthy. I watched the pounds melt off, and I admit that I wasn't doing much exercising, just a little bit here and there.
It was glorious. I know that a lot of it was water weight, which as I understand it has something to do with carbohydrates causing the body to retain water. I peed a lot.
That was before I got more information on what sort of quality I was getting from even that restricted food.
Now I know more about the condition of stockyard meat, the low quality eggs, even the nutrient depleted soil the vegetables are grown in. Still, just doing what I did, I can't argue with the results.
I've since become less afraid of carbs, and have reintroduced them into my diet in moderation, but not so far as to calculate them out to the exact number. I've really tried to resist obsessing over the numbers and all the counting grams of various vitamins and minerals. Too much information stuffed in my face at once that I don't understand usually just makes me tune it out. I've got other stuff to think about, I really don't want to spend my life worrying about how many parts per million of my urine is made up of vitamins A-Z.
I'm maintaining a weight now of 265, still with a lot of room for improvement. I'd let myself get soft, so I'm working now on converting fat stores into muscle. Bryan turned me on to High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT) which I'm actually enjoying quite a bit. More on that to follow in the posts to come, but if you want to check it out now, here's the Wikipedia link:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-intensity_interval_training
I'll put it up in the links section at the top of the page.
Conclusions: I am not a hard-core Paleo guy. The Paleo diet was a launching point for me, and I got great results from it, but I'm not prepared to take it as gospel. At this point I'm also not prepared to subscribe entirely to vegetarianism, though I do appreciate its merits.
Tomorrow (time permitting... there's a Renaissance fair in town) I'll hone in on some of the difficulties I've come across in the hunt for nutrition while on the go, and what I do to overcome those obstacles.
The Coconut Milk Recipe:
Take a can of coconut milk (some are better than others, play around with it) and dump it into a small sauce pan. Use the can to measure out the same amount of water and pour that in there. Add a teaspoon of vanilla extract, and a couple dollops of agave sweetener. Heat and stir until it's all smooth. Pour it into a container and toss it in the fridge. Shake before serving. It's pretty good! Also it seemed to keep me feeling full for a lot longer that usual, which helped a lot.
TSN
Yes, each gram of carbohydrate is stored with 3-4 grams of water attached to it by the body. This is not a bad thing (just a number on a scale). Being hydrated is one of the most important things one should maintain (peeing clear about 10 times per day/night; if your piss has any color, then you still have some hydrating to do).
ReplyDeleteFat/obese people do not have a problem of too much water weight. They have a problem with too much body fat and all of the problems that go along with it. You likely loss an extremely small amount, if any, of excess stored fat weight with such a high fat diet. Unfortunately, you did not do a before and after body composition test to be objective about things. [note: I have never does so, either.]
Also, you are likely in ketosis, which is not a healthy physiological state to be in for prolong periods of time. Have you tested your piss for ketones? [note: I got a score of 1+ ketones in my urine from a urine analysis preformed for my army commissioning application in October 2010. I was eating a high fat diet then with plenty of cheese, fish, and perhaps some other animal parts I cannot recall. Guess what? they did not like that and wanted me to get it redone in May 2011. Thankfully, I was eating my current diet for the second test which produced a not detected result for my second test to get me a step closure to my goal.]
Of course, you can also eat a high fat vegan diet. You were eating some of the highest fat content (by caloric value) plant foods listed above (avocados and coconut meat/milk; olives are also very high fat). TOO MUCH FAT OF ANY TYPE IS NOT HEALTHY TO DO FOR PROLONGED PERIODS OF TIME. The liver produces less than 1 liter of bile per day (which is stored in the gallbladder). You need bile for proper fat digestion. Go beyond the capability of your physiology, then you will have fatty blood serum and the remaining fat will putrefy in your intestines. Neither are healthy states. People without a gallbladder have even less capacity for fat digestion.
I know you stated, "I really don't want to spend my life worrying about how many parts per million of my urine is made up of vitamins A-Z." However, if you are not objective about things, then you will mostly likely just be spinning your wheels...
On a positive note, I am proud of your attempts thus far. Change is hard, especially when we have been misguided for so long. Just continue to learn and tweak things along the way (the rest of your life) and you should be fine. That's what I am doing... :-)
By the way, lowering your salt consumption likely played a role in your water weight loss, as well. Of course, that is a good thing.
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