Breakfast was more fulfilling than most. A hastily prepared jumbo omelet made from leftover ground beef and salsa. And fruit. Snacking on fruit throughout the day is now standard practice.
Large caesar salad for lunch.
T-bone, whitefish, and cauliflower for dinner.
Hunger is still pretty much the background state, but it's less annoying each day. Not sure if it's going away or if I'm just getting used to it.
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.
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Congrats on your test! Definitely hope it works out for you in the long run. Something else to watch is the fructose. Fruit is generally ok in moderation, but don't let it become your sugar substitute. Here is a link, the article/video itself isn't the main point, but there is a table half way down that shows fructose for different fruits. It just lets you see the balance of it, so you don't go overboard. As you mentioned, it's the hidden sugars that get you. Just avoiding dried fruit and juice is a great first step though.
ReplyDeletehttp://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2010/03/13/richard-johnson-interview.aspx
Another great "treat" is dark chocolate. Ideally 80% to get a good balance of low sugar. If you don't like dark chocolate you might have to work up to it, slowly going darker, and you definitely get used to it, to the point of not liking milk chocolate believe it or not. High coca content chocolate also varies in taste a lot, so find a brand you like. Personally I really like the Safeway Select 78%, but that might not be available in your area.
Good luck, keep it up! Did you get a blood test to start? Would be great to see before and after.