Paleo Start-up

I started eating "primal" or "paleo" on Monday. It's also known as the "caveman" diet. The basic gist is that you eat what our ancient ancestors were eating - our body hasn't actually evolved since then, so that's what we're designed to consume/process. In practical terms, this mostly means NO GRAINS. (They're actually pretty toxic, no joke.) Cavemen didn't farm. They were hunter/gatherers. So what you get to eat is this (from Mark's Daily Apple):

(I love this food pyramid. Makes me so much happier than the other one that only had that tiny box for meats and proteins.)

And the amazing thing is, you usually end up eating a lot LESS calories eating this way, because meat and vegetables (sans sauces and dressings) are pretty low in calories, and also, eating protein all the time FILLS YOU UP. I've been eating around 1300-1500 calories for the last couple of days, which is what I was actually eating before, but it didn't seem like work - I didn't feel like I was stopping myself from eating all the time. And I've felt really full.

I really thought this was going to be tougher for me. I thought I should attempt it now, as I already had a $100 bet running with a friend to keep me from eating sugar until Thanksgiving Dinner (a Halloween-Thanksgiving sugar fast). But not eating grains at all has been remarkably non craving-inducing. Usually I crave things like rice and pasta because I crave chewy textures - but so far nuts and seeds have been covering that pretty nicely.

Also, I think this works well for me because I. Love. Meat. SO. MUCH.

I think many people starting this have a hard time getting that much meat into their diet. For me, I always take less meat than I like because I feel like I'm supposed to be eating more of the other things. And yes, I should still probably eat more vegetables, but one of the main tenants of this diet/lifestyle is that the more protein you eat, the more protein you'll have on your body. I.e. fitness is 80% what you eat, and if you want to be a lot of muscle, you should probably be eating a LOT of muscle.

There are obviously different levels of how "primal" you want to get - and I'm definitely in the lower echelon of those, at least for now. I'm still eating some dairy (but woot! for higher fat milks! I'm excited for post-Thanksgiving when I can find some good dark chocolate or something to add in and finally make hot chocolate again), still eating Stevia (it or honey are still the only way I can make tea palatable), and I'm also giving myself one free day a week to eat some grains, although I'm going to try and keep them under the 150g/day limit.

Anyway, I really loved my "primal" life last night. I had bacon for dinner (as long as it's nitrate-free, it's pretty much okay, although there are some differing opinions on this, I guess). And then to go with my bacon, I had turkey meat. Fried in bacon fat. MmmMmmMmm. And since animal fats are a good thing, I'm saving all my bacon fat from now on to cook other things with.

To read more about going "primal", I suggest Mark's Daily Apple - which is really informative and easy to read. And the success stories are friggin' amazing.