Category: Nutrition

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My experience with the Primal Diet

When I first started Tony Horton’s P90X, I followed the included diet plan religiously.

The plan called for a diet of 50% protein, 30% carbs, and 20% fat. I created a spreadsheet and entered everything I consumed, ensuring I kept my daily totals very close to those targets. I lost a lot of fat.

About six weeks after I’d started P90X, though, I read Mark Sisson’s The Primal Blueprint. It intrigued me and made more sense to me than any other dietary lifestyle I’d ever read about.

If you are not familiar with Sisson’s philosophy, let me explain briefly that it involves eating lots of fat and protein, only some carbs, and those carbs should come primarily from vegetables, a bit from fruit, and not from anywhere else. No grains or sugars of any kind. The concept is that our bodies evolved to eat certain foods. Grains have not been part of our diets for very long, so when we eat grains, we are, essentially, eating things that our bodies are not accustomed to as food.

Because this made a lot of sense to me, I switched from the 50/30/20 diet to a primal diet after six weeks of P90X. I have been on the primal diet since then.

But now I’m switching back to 50/30/20.

Why?

While P90X has been great for getting me into shape, making me much more fit, and strengthening my muscles, well, dammit, my waist size has not budged from where it was ten weeks into the program, shortly after I went on the primal diet. I’ve been stuck. And it’s pissing me off.

I believe that our body composition is at least 80% what we eat, so I’ve thought for some time that I should make this move, go back to 50/30/20. Problem is, I really like primal eating and it’s a healthy way to eat. Plus primal does seem to be great for body-fat-percentage maintenance. But I guess that’s the problem. I’ve maintained my fat level, can’t seem to lose this fat around my gut.

I am not certain that primal is the cause of this lack of fat loss. But I’m back on 50/30/20, as of yesterday, to see if I can find out.

I’ll keep you posted.

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I’m okay with caffeine … really ….

Caffeine is one of those drugs that sparks a lot of controversy. Is it beneficial? Harmful? What’s up with caffeine? The reviews are mixed, so I experimented with my body.

I went off caffeine for about 18 months a few years ago. I’m an active person who pushes the clock as much as possible, which is a nice way of saying I don’t tend to get enough sleep. (How much sleep is enough? Another controversial questions. For me, 6.5 to 7.5 hours seems to be optimal.)

I went off caffeine primarily because I hate to be addicted to anything, and, dammit, if I didn’t get my morning coffee, I’d get that withdrawal headache around 1:00 or so. Bump that. So I quit.

Fine, but here’s the problem. When I’d tell people I was off caffeine, they’d invariably ask, “Do you feel better?” and I would invariably answer, “No.” And it was true. I did not feel better. I felt run down. Sure, you can say, “Well, you should just have gotten more sleep.” Do ya think? Easier said than done.

About 16 months into this experiment I read The Caffeine Advantage. It’s an interesting book about the benefits of caffeine. I know, I know, don’t believe everything you read. But the fact was that I didn’t feel better without caffeine, so I was poised to jump off the wagon. (Does that phrase remind you of this Seinfeld episode?)

I went back to using caffeine a couple months later, but his time, instead of coffee, I started popping a 100mg caffeine pill in the morning. Saved time and money, plus it’s hot in New Mexico, where I lived at the time, and a pot of coffee is not necessarily a pleasant way to start the day.

I’ll stem your imagination’s wandering right now and let you know that I did not slip into a downward spiral of caffeine addiction that threatened my very soul. I was very controlled with the pills, but I soon discovered that I missed the taste of a good cup of coffee.

So I am back on caffeine, enjoying a cup of coffee (currently making Americanos with my Breville espresso maker) when I think I need it. I also dig the flavor of a sugar-free Red Bull from time to time. And you know what? Yeah, I feel better.

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What’s your motivation for working out and eating right?

My brother posted on one of those social networks today something about how he needs to get into shape for a reunion this summer. I have a friend who started a diet in January, because she’s getting married in the fall.

That’s great. I mean, whatever motivates you to get into better shape is good, right?

Sort of, but let’s examine the phenomenon of getting into shape for a specific event. What happens after the event? Well, you can either find another event right away to force you to continue your good health habits, you can feel so good from your new lifestyle that you continue your healthy ways, or you can go back to your old habits once the event has passed. Guess which route most people take?

This is why your fitness motivation must come from within yourself. You need to want to be fit more than you want to eat that cake. You need to want to be fit more than you want to sit in your easy chair pounding beers. You need to want to be fit more than you want to smoke that cigarette.

How do you get to that point where you want fitness that much?

I have to admit: I dunno.

I remember when I quit smoking for the last time. I had quit previously, once even for about 18 months, but I always went back. The last time I quit, I never had any doubt that I would not go back — I knew it was over between me and cigarettes. They were not only killing me, but they also made my clothes smell really bad, and with more and more buildings going smokeless, it had become an inconvenient habit. I had the cravings, the nicotine withdrawal, but I was never tempted to smoke, because I was done with it.

General fitness is tougher, I think, because I’d tried many times to lose weight. I needed results to stay motivated.

When I weighed 235 and was on two blood pressure meds and had pains in my gut, I was motivated to lose weight, but the only thing I knew worked was calorie restriction, and that is really hard to stick to. But once I started and saw the pounds dropping off, I stayed motivated to continue. When my weight went under 200 for the first time in years, I was elated, but I didn’t quit. I ended up losing 50 pounds.

But then I plateaued. And I lost my motivation. I gained back 10 pounds.

Then I found Tony Horton’s P90X, and I realized that losing fat is not all there is to fitness. I needed to put on muscle as well.

I have since plateaued a few times, but have stayed motivated throughout, because I feel like I’ve found a good solution to my fitness problem. Plus, Tony keeps it mixed up with his One-On-One series, so that helps.

How about you? What’s your motivation? Hopefully it is a general quest for fitness, because that will last a lifetime. But if you really feel that you need to get your body looking good for some event, that’s cool. Any port in a storm and you might, you just might, get motivated enough by your results that you internalize the motivation and stick with it for the rest of your life.

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How do I really feel about carbs?

Carbs. Much maligned, often praised. Some claim you don’t need them at all (I’m looking at you, Mark Sisson) and many low-fat proponents have hailed them as the natural alternative to fat.

I’ve done a lot of reading and experimenting on my own body with carbs, and you know what? I think they are necessary for me, but not in the quantities I used to consume.

I did a little experiment on my body a few months ago. During a four-week span, I ate no carbs except those found in vegetables. No fruit, no sugars, no honey, no breads, no anything but meat, veggies, and cheese. Why four weeks? I figured that was long enough to get over any “low-carb flu” or whatever it’s called, that short adjustment period your body is supposed to go through to get used to burning other fuel sources than carbs.

The result. I FELT LIKE HAMMERED SHIT JUST ABOUT THE ENTIRE TIME!

I was tired and sluggish, and my eyes burned. (I use the eye burning sensation as a gauge of overall well-being. Not sure why on that one, but I know when my eyes burn, I don’t feel nearly as well as when they do not burn. Take that for what it’s worth, which is just one guy’s experience.)

If you’ve read some of my other posts, you may know that I am no friend to white carbs like flour and sugar. I try to avoid them, even looking at sugar as a poison.

But other carbs, like those from honey and fruits, well, once I added them back into my diet post-no-carb-experiment, wow, I felt a lot better. More ready to face the world. More alive.

Are carbs right for you? Maybe you feel great not eating any carbs. Fine. Do what makes you feel healthy. Note that I did not say, “Do what makes you feel good.” I said “healthy”.

When people question my eating habits as they shovel the cake into their mouths, with a glib, “Gotta die sometime!” — I would really love to be at those people’s deathbeds, just to see how glib they are then — I simply reply that, while I may not outlive you, it won’t be because I didn’t try.

And that’s the whole point of life to me. I don’t want to live recklessly. I only have one life, so I want to make it as long and healthy as possible. And if I die before you, well, at least I gave it a shot, and that will allow me to die happy.

So, how do I feel about carbs? Refined carbs are poison. Fruits and vegetables are natural. I’m gonna eat ’em, because I need some carbs.