Day five

More pretty smooth sailing today, although I had a very small amount of carbs, even by the standards of the diet, before 7 pm and so started to feel a little off at the gym. (Because I didn't happen to have any fruit in the house and was at home today, I only ended up eating 20 grams of carbs before going to the gym around 5, and after an hour on the elliptical and 30 more minutes on the treadmill I was pretty gassed. There was a "natural foods vending machine" in the lobby, so I got some 100% juice out of it just to inject some carbs into my system, since 20 is too low even for this diet and I had no intention of going into ketosis. Technically fruit juice is discouraged because, I assume, processing the fruit in any way takes away some of the benefits of eating whole fruit, but I give a hearty "meh" to that one.) I also had a rather large grapefruit with dinner, and ended up pushing my total carbs for the day to just under 100.

The only other thing that happened is that my cravings have been picking up. Last night I had two separate dreams, or one very long dream that took place in multiple locations, that involved me eating either fruit snacks or some sort of gummy candy. Then a Sonic commercial at the gym gave me a craving for a Coney dog, which eventually morphed into feeling like I could absolutely murder a five-way chili at Skyline - which makes no sense as there are no Skylines in the area and I've only been there once in my entire life. I think it was probably an amalgamation in the brain - I wanted the chili/cheese/onions but less so the hot dog, but throw in some nice carb-laden spaghetti and that'll do the trick.

As I mentioned, people talk about "cheat days," and while I had been thinking that that was more for people who were on the diet full time, it might not be the worst idea. I mean, the cravings aren't crazy or unmanageable, but if I can work things into the nutritional balance, there's certainly something to be said for not constantly depriving yourself of things just to do so. I could always just switch this to the Zone Diet if the Paleo turns out to be a bit too aggressive - it's working so far, but it has only been five days, after all. If I end up eating a lot of the same few things, well, how enjoyable is that going to be for five months?

(Yeah, yeah, it's day five and he's already trying to rationalize giving up. Giving up the Paleo diet wouldn't be the same thing as giving up the diet - clearly an alteration in food intake at some level needs to happen for this to work. But who knows if the Paleo is even the best one for me? I'll give it time, but let's see where we are after the first month.)