Predictably, my legs weren't too happy with me this morning, but as long as I kept the blood flowing the soreness wasn't as bad as I might have expected after an hour on the elliptical. I also didn't wake up totally starving, which was nice, although I don't want to be eating dinner at 9:30 pm on a regular basis - even on a diet I have to think that putting a few hundred calories into the system that late in the day isn't really helpful. My total calorie consumption for Monday was just under 1600 and my carbs were only 112 grams - a little over the 50-100 "weight loss sweet spot" touted by Mark's Daily Apple, a site dealing with the "primal diet" that my sister pointed me to.
As I was explaining the basics of the paleo diet to Drew, he seemed shocked that I could avoid eating grains and dairy, in particular, for months at a stretch. Certainly it will be hard. I think the toughest part of the paleo diet isn't so much its restrictions per se, but more the significant level to which those restrictions conflict with modern living. When was the last time you went a week without eating either (a) a piece of pizza, (b) a bowl of cereal, (c) a sandwich of any kind, or (d) a pasta dish? Yeah, I don't know offhand either, but I'm guessing pretty much never. (In fact, a lot of my initial weight gain in high school can be attributed to my daily penchant for foot-long Blimpie sandwiches after school followed just a few hours later by dinner, which often involved me eating goofily large amounts of pasta.) Well, on the paleo diet, not only can't I eat any of those things this week, I can't eat any of them again for several months. At least. And that doesn't even include ice cream, yogurt, etc.
So the willpower will be more to do with dealing with the sheer ubiquity of all the foods I'm not supposed to be eating. In that spirit, I offer you here my one cheat so far: last night, I had a bottle of Vitamin Water (125 calories, 33 g of carbs, pushing me out of the sweet spot) with dinner. It was the last of a few bottles I had purchased before deciding to start the diet, and I figured it was better to just finish it now than have it sit in the fridge for months. Could I have given it away or something? Probably. But it was late, I hadn't had a lot of calories and tap water wasn't sounding appetizing.
I plan to have that be my only cheat. But I still feel better about writing it down rather than justifying it to myself as not a big deal and keeping it to myself. I will now say three Hail Proteins, and go and sin no more.
Just a question: why the Paleo Diet and not, say, just trying to cut back on calories/fat/carbs in general? Is it the structure you're looking for?
ReplyDeleteI'll be back in town for an extended stretch over Christmas and New Year's---you can pick the restaurant. "Steak?" "Money's too tight for steak?" "Steak?" "Eh, sure. Steak."
Well, my trainer recommended it, first of all. But I would agree that (while nevertheless tough) it's in some ways easier to diet when there's an agreed-upon list of things you can't eat as opposed to a rougher guideline to just hold carbs down, say. (If you're not eating grains, it requires virtually no mental calculus to make sure you're keeping carbs low.)
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