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.

Thursday, September 23, 2010

Day 4

I think I've finally settled into some sort of emotional Lagrange point between hunger, food lust, and disappointment. I'm less frustrated each day that I'm eating mostly fruits, veggies, and meat. I still fantasize about snagging a muffin out of someone's hands and sprinting down the street Seinfeld style. But I think I'll get past that shortly too.

Breakfast: orange, grapes, and a banana
Lunch: leftover meat and cheese "lasagna"
Dinner: an enormous salad (ranch dressing - blech)

Late night snack: Sardines. Which, without crackers, are a pretty disappointing snack.
Posted by Ryan VanMiddlesworth at 8:48 PM

1 comment:

  1. AnonymousOctober 6, 2010 at 9:48 PM

    I've lost about 100lb in the last few years and the last 60 were really fast because I discovered some great foods to make. So for the salad thing, I found something SUPER easy and incredibly tasty.

    Mixed greens - you know the big plastic tub with purple and green mixed lettuce-like stuff.
    Lots of Sliced Strawberries
    Strawberry Vinaigrette - it actually calls for Strawberry Champagne Vinaigrette but I can't find that around here
    Ample Goat Cheese - really makes the salad. Highly recommended and get some milder goat cheese.

    The other thing I eat all the time that's really easy is just a caprese thing - tomatoes, mozzerella, etc..

    One last thing - I really wonder if after this, the no-grain experiment might turn into a 'old school human' experiment? Fruits, nuts, stuff they could find around them and not really "MAKE".

    As someone who pretty much cut out sugary extras in the last couple years, I'm shocked to see the Coke FFS :) I used to really love it, now I can hardly smell it.

    Anyways, following your progress now.

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