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errantemberSo a combination of factors lead me to try the Four Hour Body's Slow Carb Diet (a version of a Paleo diet) for a few months. For those unfamiliar, it's basically a sugar, starch, dairy and fruit-free diet where most of the additional carbs are made up for by beans, and an eat-anything cheat day once a week. I had definitely changed my life in drastic ways, as you will see.
Here's the Executive Summary:
Things that changed over two months on the diet:
Pros:
o Consistently lost a small amount of weight despite eating like a wild boar on crack once a week.
o No longer crave snacks, sugar, starches, bread, etc. Despite previously being a huge fan, most lust-feelings for these items have been magically transferred to more healthy foods.
o Eating meat and fats not only provides at least as much pleasure as eating carbs once did, but levels of satisfaction and feeling "done" at the end of a meal are *much* higher.
o Much more even energy levels than any point in my adult life
o Overall lowering of food cost
o Finally a solution to a life-long chronic oversleeping problem!
o Tiny little aches and shooting pains I've experienced for years have almost completely evaporated
Cons:
o Still low overall energy level, though some minor consistent improvement
o They pulled all the great low-carb food out of restaurants just in time for me to want them there. Fuckers.
o It is now almost *completely* impossible for me to buy food at coffee houses, one of my favorite places to spend time. Where I would previously stay at one all day and order a lot of food, I am now the asshole who buys on tea/coffee and stays for hours, because they literally serve *nothing* on my diet. I often smuggle in Paleo snacks, and have started to talk to coffee house owners about the potential benefits of having, say, at least one salad.
Metrics over two months:
Starting Weight: 167.8 lbs
Ending Weight: 164.4 lbs
Starting Waist: 35.1 inches
Ending Waist: 32.5 inches
Starting Hips: 37.4 inches
Ending Hips: 35.6 inches
The Paleo people generally think that Everything Went Wrong with the development of agriculture and the coming of grains in large quantities to the human diet. They feel that diabetes, many forms of cancer, heart disease, and most auto-immune and inflammatory diseases (in which they include Alzheimers) are caused by grain consumption (at all) and chronically insulin insensitivity levels caused by overeating of carbohydrates. The biochemistry isn't *that* complicated if someone is really interested, and in his book Robb Wolf does a good job of breaking it down, with generalities for the impatient and details for those who want them. After reading that book and several others that deal with the biochemistry of digestions, I really think these people are onto something. I don't know if it's quite the Total Solution they believe it to be, but based on my own results over a few months, particularly to really persistent long-term problems, I'm really have to fight to remain as skeptical as I should be. I look around at the people I care about, and their eating habits, and the problems they have, and I can't help but wonder, how might things change if they ate Paleo for a month? It wasn't *that* hard, though some people might find it more difficult than others.
I was already at 167.8 lbs at 6'2", so I wasn't really doing it to lose weight. It's kind of too bad I didn't try it earlier, because my average weight over the past five years or so has been around 180 lbs. I've been eating "healthier" for a while, but the extra weight loss happened shortly before I started the Slow Carb Diet, and I really don't know why.
I've had a number of really persistent lifestyle problems for as long as I can remember. The three biggest were unpredictable energy level swings, chronic tiredness, and a truly difficult time keeping normal sleeping hours. I've tried shitloads of things to address them, and never really had any success. The inability to go to bed at a decent hour has been the worst. If I have a commitment to someone else, I can nearly always wake up early enough to make it, but if the commitment was to myself, I could almost *never* do it. It was definitely at least at the level of a neurosis, if not worse. At thirty seven years old, I *should* be enough of an adult to fucking dictate my own sleeping schedule. But none of the many, many things I've ever tried has worked before.
Until now.
The single most important change that came out of this experience was that I can now go to bed at a normal time, and my schedule is consistently headed back toward something sane. It's important to realize that I would routinely sleep well into the afternoon as much as 4-5 days per week. I rarely went to bed before 2 AM. But no matter when I went to bed, it was nearly impossible to get myself up without External Motivation, and has been for my entire adult life. Like an alcoholic with years of practice, I had learned to adjust the rest of my lifestyle around this craziness. I held a job with a major U.S. corporation for nine years, and I lost it only because our entire department was outsourced. For years I dragged myself into the office barely awake, and have actually almost passed out during meetings *when* I was talking.
People who are familiar with my conversational style may be less surprised by this. At least one of them will probably bring a stethoscope to my grave one day.
There are some body metrics I've measured. They were done with an inductive scale, which are notoriously inaccurate, particularly for body-fat percentage, but I wanted to have some basis for comparison.
Things that changed over two months on the diet:
Starting Weight: 167.8 lbs
Ending Weight: 164.4 lbs
Starting Waist: 35.1 inches
Ending Waist: 32.5 inches
Starting Hips: 37.4 inches
Ending Hips: 35.6 inches
Do I *did* lose a little weight, and definitely gained some definition, all with *no* exercise. And by "no exercise", I don't mean the same amount of exercise (although I do), I mean no exercise program of any kind. I do go to Japanese (not Brazilian) jujutsu less than once a week, but at the level I'm practicing it's very low-impact. Walking a dog is generally more work. And I definitely didn't do it more during the diet.
I also monitored my body fat percentage by hyper-hydrating the morning of my cheat day, waiting 30 minutes, peeing, and then using an inductive scale. Tim Ferriss, the FOB author, says that these scales are basically shit for bodyfat percentage, and getting real measurements requires more extensive/expensive methods. It was what I had, however. In general my bodyfat percentage seemed to change from about 14.7% to around 13.9%. Not only is that probably well withing the huge margin of error for such a shitty piece of gear, my final measurement had me right back up at 14.7% again. I *did* eat an extra fatty meal *just* before going to bed the night before.
Ferriss makes some pretty drastic claims about weight loss on the diet. I obviously wasn't a good test case for this. If I lose much more weight, I will fall into the toilet and never been heard from again. I did eat like a total fucking pig every 6-7 days on my cheat day, however. You could not possibly have eaten more or more poorly than I did on those days. And, even so, I did consistently lose weight a few days after the cheat day.
While on this diet, I was turned onto the Paleo Solutions podcast by Robb Wolf by my jujutsu instructor. I ended up on the Slow Carb diet due to previous tales of success from him. He had also had chronic insomnia, had gained a lot of weight, and was generally going downhill fast. After switching to a Paleo diet, all those problems had reversed themselves, and he's felt better than he has in years. The major difference between the Slow Carb diet and the Robb Wolf Paleo diet is that the Paleo person doesn't eat beans (because they're inflammatory to the digestive system.) I actually stopped eating beans about 6 weeks into my Slow Carb diet for that reason. Ferriss claims that not eating *enough* beans is a common beginner's mistake, and it's possible that might have accounted for my still low energy level.
The Paleo people generally think that Everything Went Wrong with the development of agriculture and the coming of grains in large quantities to the human diet. They feel that diabetes, many forms of cancer, heart disease, and most auto-immune and inflammatory diseases (in which they include Alzheimers) are caused by grain consumption (at all) and chronically insulin insensitivity levels caused by overeating of carbohydrates. The biochemistry isn't *that* complicated if someone is really interested, and in his book Robb Wolf does a good job of breaking it down, with generalities for the impatient and details for those who want them. After reading that book and several others that deal with the biochemistry of digestions, I really think these people are onto something. I don't know if it's quite the Total Solution they believe it to be, but based on my own results over a few months, particularly to really persistent long-term problems, I'm really have to fight to remain as skeptical as I should be. I look around at the people I care about, and their eating habits, and the problems they have, and I can't help but wonder, how might things change if they ate Paleo for a month? It wasn't *that* hard, though some people might find it more difficult than others.
Q & A:
Q: Wasn't it hard to give up the stuff you don't eat on the diet? I really love pastries, rice, bread, cheese, etc, etc, etc.
A: It was for a while. The short answer is that the great feelings I used to get from eating those things I now get from eating things that are *on* the diet, so there is *no* sacrifice in terms of pleasure of eating once your into the diet, but it takes a few weeks to get there. You *can* still be a Foodie and eat Paleo/Slow Carb.
Here was my reaction to seeing such things on cheat day by week:
Week 1: Holy shit Oreos! How many can I eat in one sitting? How long until I get hungry again!
...
Week 3: This Oreo tastes a little funny, and *damn* is it sweet. I will continue to stuff myself on cheat day, but even though I look forward to it, I'm not really actually *enjoying* it as much. On the other hand, the high-quality meats and nuts I'm eating are starting to provide the same level of almost-as-good-as-sex feeling when I eat them.
Week 4: Giving up on several old staples, including Oreos, which now taste decidedly chemicaly. The difference in my reaction give credence to the research that shows that eating sugary foods releases opiates in the brain similar to super-addictive drugs like opium. I can see that I was *actually* an addict before. Instead of feeling deprived, I now have very little reaction to dessert-type items and even bread. Similar good feelings now come from meat, and my veggie food continues to be more delicious as I become a better cook. Futhermore, I feel more *satisfied* after a meal than I can ever remember feeling. I didn't realize it before, but the food I was eating never really sent that "it's time to stop now" feeling. I was no longer hungry, but while I got satisfaction from the taste of food *while* I ate it, I never got to a point where I looked at the food left on my plate and was no longer interested, because my body was telling me "you're done."
Week 5: Why am I doing this to myself on Cheat Day? The FOB diet requires it, but if I switch to Paleo at the end of the month I may ditch it. I still do like the opportunity to eat the occasional pasta or ice cream, but my previous Lust Affair with such foods is over.
...
Week 8: Looking at the huge, bountiful dessert display at Mozarts, I realize that I don't really want *any* of it. It looks like some kind of art display. My life-long sleeping problem is gone, and I have all these other amazing benefits. My choices going out to eat have been drastically reduced, but I can still do it, and my skill at cooking is making eating out seem less and less fun anyway.
Here's the Executive Summary:
Things that changed over two months on the diet:
Pros:
o Consistently lost a small amount of weight despite eating like a wild boar on crack once a week.
o No longer crave snacks, sugar, starches, bread, etc. Despite previously being a huge fan, most lust-feelings for these items have been magically transferred to more healthy foods.
o Eating meat and fats not only provides at least as much pleasure as eating carbs once did, but levels of satisfaction and feeling "done" at the end of a meal are *much* higher.
o Much more even energy levels than any point in my adult life
o Overall lowering of food cost
o Finally a solution to a life-long chronic oversleeping problem!
o Tiny little aches and shooting pains I've experienced for years have almost completely evaporated
Cons:
o Still low overall energy level, though some minor consistent improvement
o They pulled all the great low-carb food out of restaurants just in time for me to want them there. Fuckers.
o It is now almost *completely* impossible for me to buy food at coffee houses, one of my favorite places to spend time. Where I would previously stay at one all day and order a lot of food, I am now the asshole who buys on tea/coffee and stays for hours, because they literally serve *nothing* on my diet. I often smuggle in Paleo snacks, and have started to talk to coffee house owners about the potential benefits of having, say, at least one salad.
Metrics over two months:
Starting Weight: 167.8 lbs
Ending Weight: 164.4 lbs
Starting Waist: 35.1 inches
Ending Waist: 32.5 inches
Starting Hips: 37.4 inches
Ending Hips: 35.6 inches
The Paleo people generally think that Everything Went Wrong with the development of agriculture and the coming of grains in large quantities to the human diet. They feel that diabetes, many forms of cancer, heart disease, and most auto-immune and inflammatory diseases (in which they include Alzheimers) are caused by grain consumption (at all) and chronically insulin insensitivity levels caused by overeating of carbohydrates. The biochemistry isn't *that* complicated if someone is really interested, and in his book Robb Wolf does a good job of breaking it down, with generalities for the impatient and details for those who want them. After reading that book and several others that deal with the biochemistry of digestions, I really think these people are onto something. I don't know if it's quite the Total Solution they believe it to be, but based on my own results over a few months, particularly to really persistent long-term problems, I'm really have to fight to remain as skeptical as I should be. I look around at the people I care about, and their eating habits, and the problems they have, and I can't help but wonder, how might things change if they ate Paleo for a month? It wasn't *that* hard, though some people might find it more difficult than others.
I was already at 167.8 lbs at 6'2", so I wasn't really doing it to lose weight. It's kind of too bad I didn't try it earlier, because my average weight over the past five years or so has been around 180 lbs. I've been eating "healthier" for a while, but the extra weight loss happened shortly before I started the Slow Carb Diet, and I really don't know why.
I've had a number of really persistent lifestyle problems for as long as I can remember. The three biggest were unpredictable energy level swings, chronic tiredness, and a truly difficult time keeping normal sleeping hours. I've tried shitloads of things to address them, and never really had any success. The inability to go to bed at a decent hour has been the worst. If I have a commitment to someone else, I can nearly always wake up early enough to make it, but if the commitment was to myself, I could almost *never* do it. It was definitely at least at the level of a neurosis, if not worse. At thirty seven years old, I *should* be enough of an adult to fucking dictate my own sleeping schedule. But none of the many, many things I've ever tried has worked before.
Until now.
The single most important change that came out of this experience was that I can now go to bed at a normal time, and my schedule is consistently headed back toward something sane. It's important to realize that I would routinely sleep well into the afternoon as much as 4-5 days per week. I rarely went to bed before 2 AM. But no matter when I went to bed, it was nearly impossible to get myself up without External Motivation, and has been for my entire adult life. Like an alcoholic with years of practice, I had learned to adjust the rest of my lifestyle around this craziness. I held a job with a major U.S. corporation for nine years, and I lost it only because our entire department was outsourced. For years I dragged myself into the office barely awake, and have actually almost passed out during meetings *when* I was talking.
People who are familiar with my conversational style may be less surprised by this. At least one of them will probably bring a stethoscope to my grave one day.
There are some body metrics I've measured. They were done with an inductive scale, which are notoriously inaccurate, particularly for body-fat percentage, but I wanted to have some basis for comparison.
Things that changed over two months on the diet:
Starting Weight: 167.8 lbs
Ending Weight: 164.4 lbs
Starting Waist: 35.1 inches
Ending Waist: 32.5 inches
Starting Hips: 37.4 inches
Ending Hips: 35.6 inches
Do I *did* lose a little weight, and definitely gained some definition, all with *no* exercise. And by "no exercise", I don't mean the same amount of exercise (although I do), I mean no exercise program of any kind. I do go to Japanese (not Brazilian) jujutsu less than once a week, but at the level I'm practicing it's very low-impact. Walking a dog is generally more work. And I definitely didn't do it more during the diet.
I also monitored my body fat percentage by hyper-hydrating the morning of my cheat day, waiting 30 minutes, peeing, and then using an inductive scale. Tim Ferriss, the FOB author, says that these scales are basically shit for bodyfat percentage, and getting real measurements requires more extensive/expensive methods. It was what I had, however. In general my bodyfat percentage seemed to change from about 14.7% to around 13.9%. Not only is that probably well withing the huge margin of error for such a shitty piece of gear, my final measurement had me right back up at 14.7% again. I *did* eat an extra fatty meal *just* before going to bed the night before.
Ferriss makes some pretty drastic claims about weight loss on the diet. I obviously wasn't a good test case for this. If I lose much more weight, I will fall into the toilet and never been heard from again. I did eat like a total fucking pig every 6-7 days on my cheat day, however. You could not possibly have eaten more or more poorly than I did on those days. And, even so, I did consistently lose weight a few days after the cheat day.
While on this diet, I was turned onto the Paleo Solutions podcast by Robb Wolf by my jujutsu instructor. I ended up on the Slow Carb diet due to previous tales of success from him. He had also had chronic insomnia, had gained a lot of weight, and was generally going downhill fast. After switching to a Paleo diet, all those problems had reversed themselves, and he's felt better than he has in years. The major difference between the Slow Carb diet and the Robb Wolf Paleo diet is that the Paleo person doesn't eat beans (because they're inflammatory to the digestive system.) I actually stopped eating beans about 6 weeks into my Slow Carb diet for that reason. Ferriss claims that not eating *enough* beans is a common beginner's mistake, and it's possible that might have accounted for my still low energy level.
The Paleo people generally think that Everything Went Wrong with the development of agriculture and the coming of grains in large quantities to the human diet. They feel that diabetes, many forms of cancer, heart disease, and most auto-immune and inflammatory diseases (in which they include Alzheimers) are caused by grain consumption (at all) and chronically insulin insensitivity levels caused by overeating of carbohydrates. The biochemistry isn't *that* complicated if someone is really interested, and in his book Robb Wolf does a good job of breaking it down, with generalities for the impatient and details for those who want them. After reading that book and several others that deal with the biochemistry of digestions, I really think these people are onto something. I don't know if it's quite the Total Solution they believe it to be, but based on my own results over a few months, particularly to really persistent long-term problems, I'm really have to fight to remain as skeptical as I should be. I look around at the people I care about, and their eating habits, and the problems they have, and I can't help but wonder, how might things change if they ate Paleo for a month? It wasn't *that* hard, though some people might find it more difficult than others.
Q & A:
Q: Wasn't it hard to give up the stuff you don't eat on the diet? I really love pastries, rice, bread, cheese, etc, etc, etc.
A: It was for a while. The short answer is that the great feelings I used to get from eating those things I now get from eating things that are *on* the diet, so there is *no* sacrifice in terms of pleasure of eating once your into the diet, but it takes a few weeks to get there. You *can* still be a Foodie and eat Paleo/Slow Carb.
Here was my reaction to seeing such things on cheat day by week:
Week 1: Holy shit Oreos! How many can I eat in one sitting? How long until I get hungry again!
...
Week 3: This Oreo tastes a little funny, and *damn* is it sweet. I will continue to stuff myself on cheat day, but even though I look forward to it, I'm not really actually *enjoying* it as much. On the other hand, the high-quality meats and nuts I'm eating are starting to provide the same level of almost-as-good-as-sex feeling when I eat them.
Week 4: Giving up on several old staples, including Oreos, which now taste decidedly chemicaly. The difference in my reaction give credence to the research that shows that eating sugary foods releases opiates in the brain similar to super-addictive drugs like opium. I can see that I was *actually* an addict before. Instead of feeling deprived, I now have very little reaction to dessert-type items and even bread. Similar good feelings now come from meat, and my veggie food continues to be more delicious as I become a better cook. Futhermore, I feel more *satisfied* after a meal than I can ever remember feeling. I didn't realize it before, but the food I was eating never really sent that "it's time to stop now" feeling. I was no longer hungry, but while I got satisfaction from the taste of food *while* I ate it, I never got to a point where I looked at the food left on my plate and was no longer interested, because my body was telling me "you're done."
Week 5: Why am I doing this to myself on Cheat Day? The FOB diet requires it, but if I switch to Paleo at the end of the month I may ditch it. I still do like the opportunity to eat the occasional pasta or ice cream, but my previous Lust Affair with such foods is over.
...
Week 8: Looking at the huge, bountiful dessert display at Mozarts, I realize that I don't really want *any* of it. It looks like some kind of art display. My life-long sleeping problem is gone, and I have all these other amazing benefits. My choices going out to eat have been drastically reduced, but I can still do it, and my skill at cooking is making eating out seem less and less fun anyway.
