Day One

Starting Weight: 212 lbs (as measured Thursday night at the gym)

The paleo diet is going to take some getting used to. In particular, I don't really have a sense for quantities yet, which led to me only having eaten about 900 calories prior to 9 pm tonight. In retrospect I could probably have seen this coming; vegetables have some bulk, but their caloric imprint is virtually nil - the broccoli and onions I cooked up to go with my chicken dinner added a combined 60 calories to the proceedings. I talked to my trainer briefly at the gym and he recommended eating more eggs for breakfast (I had three this morning, but that's still only 210 calories, although quite a bit of cholesterol) and eating heavier meat. Chicken is a good diet food if you're also eating other stuff, but I ate more than a pound of chicken breast today and only got 550 calories out of it. That's all well and good except for the fact that it was my main course at both lunch and dinner. I certainly got a lot of protein out of that, but protein isn't everything.

So it'll probably be back to the store tomorrow to look for more red meat, or something with a bit more of a caloric impact than chicken. The other alternative is just to eat a lot of nuts, but I'd rather mix up what I'm eating anyway, lest this diet get super boring and quickly start to feel like a chore. Or more like a chore.

More positively, I went to the gym and did an hour-plus on the elliptical, going 4.46 miles (so it measured) and burning 620 calories. It was easier than I thought it might be to get used to; when I first got on my leg muscles were not thrilled, but I pushed past that after a few minutes. When I got off the machine my feet felt like they were encased in cement, but no matter. I also thoroughly sweated through my shirt, something that I don't normally do at the gym, so that seems pretty indicative of greater exertion.