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.

Sunday, September 26, 2010

Day 7

The hunger is definitely starting to become a non-issue. I'm still usually a little hungry a lot of the time, but it's nowhere near as oppressive as before.

In fact, now that I'm not constantly perturbed by hunger, I may have a new problem. While coaching a soccer game this morning I almost forgot about the diet. During half-time I caught myself instinctively reaching for one of the granola bars. Fortunately, I realized it before I opened it up. I'm not sure how the parents would have reacted to the coach gagging himself on the sidelines, mumbling hysterically about a "no grain" diet.

Otherwise, uneventful day. No noticeable change in well being.

Breakfast: Real omelet, grapes, and banana
Lunch: Caramel apple with nuts
Dinner: Chicken wings and enormous caesar salad

2 comments:

  1. Ryan,
    can you please also weight in every morning for us? :)

    (Really) Thanks (for sharing your diet.)

    ReplyDelete
  2. I don't have a scale at the house, but I'll report every workout day (M, W, Fri).

    ReplyDelete