So it's been two weeks since I started this thing. According to the original post by Robb Wolf on Tim Ferriss's blog, this is the point at which your gut has healed from the abuse of eating grains every day of your life for years. Supposedly now is when I will really start noticing the physiological benefits of the grain-less diet. I hope so, because so far I'm disappointed.
A Recap
The first few days of this diet are definitely the hardest. Within a few days of dropping grains, my body was insistent that I was starving. I could cram all the veggies, fat, and meat I wanted and nothing would assuage the hunger. It would actually have been funny if it weren't so expensive. Fortunately, that tapers off after the first week. Let me be clear: the hunger itself doesn't go away, you just sort of get used to a default state of "a little bit hungry".
After that, the main problem with the diet is that everything you're used to snacking on is now off limits. Granola bars, scones, cookies, cheese/crackers, handful of Captain Crunch, whatever - it's all off limits. The whole endeavor is incredibly irritating. Instead I find myself glumly sitting in the kitchen eating piles of cheese and braunschweiger or naked sardines. Trying to squelch the cognitive dissonance rolling through my head as the word "snack" comes to mean "a tiresome and failed effort to achieve satiety".
I haven't actually experienced any improvement in well being. I have the same level of energy. I have the same endurance on the treadmill . I'm still hitting my fall allergies right on schedule. And if you can objectively quantify "energy", it feels the same as ever.
I'm trying to keep an open mind about this and I'm hoping the next two weeks is going to bring my reward. I'll keep you posted.
Oh, and the daily stats:
Weight: 171
Breakfast: Apple
Lunch: Eggs, chili, another apple
Dinner: Salad, bun-less cheeseburger, cauliflower
What Is This?
If you're reading this, you may have read Tim Ferriss's lifestyle post about completely cutting grains from your diet. I did. I found it on Hacker News, and I thought it sounded interesting.
I was intrigued about the diet, for no other reason than that it satisfies my "what would monkeys do" rule of thumb. That is, the lifestyle choices that were available to our primate ancestors are, by way of evolution, quite often the circumstances we're best evolved for.
The simple truth is that grains are probably not a food that you'd find paleolithic man eating. The advent of agriculture was actually quite recent on an evolutionary time scale. Before that, we were mostly toiling away in the wild eating whatever sustenance we could get our hands on - fruits, nuts, vegetables, leafs, bugs, tubers, meat, etc. That 6 billion of us have transitioned to a diet of mostly grains in a few thousand years is not only amazing, it seems to me there's a reasonable chance that it's less than ideal.
Anyway, enough background. I found this on Hacker News and, at heart, I am a hacker (as in one that tinkers and experiments). To that end, I am going to take Tim Ferriss's challenge.
For 30 days, I will completely remove all grains from my diet. No foods containing wheat, corn, oats, barley, etc.
Now the dietary elitists among you will probably exude various protestations: "no alcohol - that irritates your stomach lining" or "no dairy - that rankles your colon" or "no simple sugars - that messes with your blood sugar". Forget that noise, I'm not a monk. This is a test of one variable alone - what happens when you *completely* remove grains from your diet. We can do dairy or cheese or meat some other time...
I suppose a litlle detail about where I'm starting from is probably in order. I am a 33 year old male. I am 5'11" and weight 171 pounds. I exercise regularly, though not particularly intensely. I'm mostly in pretty good health, though I do get the occasional stomach ache, back pain, and am bothered by a bit of chronic environmental allergies. But nothing particularly serious.
Okay, enough talk. Let's see how this thing shakes out.
Monday, October 4, 2010
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You are doing this to feel better? Did you get an allergy test first? I avoid grains for the simple carb factor, not gluten myself. It varies quite a bit person by how sensitive you are to that whole "grains and digestive" stuff.
ReplyDeleteI think anyone going off of carbs (grains) and sugars would have a much more significant effect on how they feel and what they weigh.
Also, watch the nuts, too many and they can make it hard to, uh, poo. For some people that is, depends on your fluids intake.
Hey Ryan, good luck with this!
ReplyDeleteI've basically been doing the same thing for about the last month - completely eliminating grains and sticking to real foods that were likely to be available to paleolithic man.
I know where your hunger problems are coming from though - you aren't getting nearly enough calories. You've cut out a major component of your diet and haven't replaced it with anything.
Since grains are a huge source of carbohydrates and you've cut them out, you've got a major calorie deficit that you haven't filled. My estimation via FitDay is only about 1400 calories in your stated diet (assuming 2 eggs and a bowl of chili, a tablespoon of italian dressing for the salad), which would be nowhere near enough even if you were sedentary, let alone active. That will definitely cause some serious hunger problems.
Paleo man probably wouldn't have had access to piles of fruit nor high-starchy vegetables (they were both occasional finds) on a regular basis, and leafy vegetables are very low carb (and therefore low calorie), so there is really only protein and fat left to make up that 600-1100 calorie deficit (depending on exactly how active you are). Protein you could stand more of but it isn't good to over-do that either, so you're really just left with fat to make up the difference.
Fortunately, fat is very calorie dense, so it won't take a ton to do the job.
Good luck with your experiment! I personally have lost 10 lbs in the last month and have found it very easy to control my calorie intake (where before it was completely out of control) after cutting out grains. I do miss them a lot though, I used to bake my own bread and make my own pasta. So far to me it is worth it though.
This is the second time around I've done the TF diet. I did everything to the T but 1 thing. I didn't eat enough calories, leaving me hungry all the time. This time, I'm eating a lot of legumes which helps keeps my hunger at bay. Last time I tried this diet I lost about 10 lbs in a month. This time, it's only been my second week and I've lost 4 inches off my waist.
ReplyDeleteI love and hate this diet. I love how I can eat as much to my hearts content of the approved foods but I had major cravings for grains and dairy.
If your not cutting out dairy and sugar (french fries and ice cream for lunch), than why are you doing this? I suggest if your going to say your doing the TF diet, you actually stick to the rules of the game if you want to see some positive results. Otherwise, you're just torturing yourself.
wish you the best of luck