I only had time for some strawberries this morning, and now I am starving. Although strawberries are a healthy fruit (although I should probably check the glycemic index on them), its very un-zone to eat only carbs without any protein or fat. That's the trick with paleo, cold protein isn't easy to come by without dairy. I'm going to have to start buying pounds of deli turkey at a time for mornings like these.
Also, because my office is freezing, I'm not looking forward to warmed up chicken and a huge cold salad. What I'd really like is the "turkey chimichanga" from whole foods. Delicious, not heavy at all (its not actually fried), and not paleo with the tortilla.
Wednesday, September 10, 2008
Tuesday, September 9, 2008
Salmon and Ratatouille
The last half of today was a tough one. I wanted nothing more than pizza or a burger and fries or something fatty and unhealthy from about 3pm on. I was only slightly craving a beer, but the food was driving me crazy. Walking down West Broadway during dinner hours doesn't help.
Fortunately I managed to heat up some leftover paleo ratatouille and cook a filet of salmon. Both were much better than I expected. I'm getting in the habit of sauteeing, near carmelizing a quarter of an onion (sliced) in olive oil before I throw my meat on, and I love it.
It occurred to me today that I need to ratchet up th zone aspect of this experiment, and soon. Zone takes a lot more planning and effort, but I think it will help with my inconsistent energy levels during the day. More on that later.
Fortunately I managed to heat up some leftover paleo ratatouille and cook a filet of salmon. Both were much better than I expected. I'm getting in the habit of sauteeing, near carmelizing a quarter of an onion (sliced) in olive oil before I throw my meat on, and I love it.
It occurred to me today that I need to ratchet up th zone aspect of this experiment, and soon. Zone takes a lot more planning and effort, but I think it will help with my inconsistent energy levels during the day. More on that later.
Chicken Salad, Tomatillo,
Several pieces of the usual chicken I prepare in bulk for lunch at work and a huge salad that took me forty minutes to eat.
I've made this chicken for a few weeks, now. Its not totally amazing after sitting in the fridge for a bit, but it is really good straight off the stove. I cook about two pounds (raw weight) sliced into small strips and take it to the office for about a week's worth of lunch protein.
First I slice raw boneless chicken breasts into half-inch wide strips, then lay them all out on a plate and rub with some olive oil (not too much). Pre-paleo I threw on plenty of kosher salt and pepper, but now its tons of pepper and just a little salt. Throw these on a hot pan with a bit of oil and they cook up pretty quickly. I usually manage to cook all the chicken in under an hour on Sunday nights and take it to work on Monday.
The salad all comes from the paleo playground that is Whole Foods. In a large container, I lay a large base of greens, this week mescalin, sometimes arugula, baby spinach, or a combination. Then I throw in all the non-starchy vegetables I can fit sliced small enough to eat with a fork. I got a ton of supplies on Monday; today's salad included raw snow peas, cucumber, green squash, carrot and broccoli. I top with plenty of flaxseed oil, lemon juice, a handful of almonds and pine nuts and lots of pepper.
Its not the tastiest salad I've ever eaten, but its definitely decent enough to get through. Every week I try a few new vegetables to keep it interesting and to keep my sources of vitamins and minerals varied. I'd never had raw tomatillo before, so I picked on up yesterday. It was kind of good at first, but the acidic aftertaste reminded me way too much of vomit, so I had to throw it out.
Quick Breakfast
I normally manage to cook some ground turkey with sauteed onions, throw in some zucchini, add tomato puree and some cumin and serve over two sunny side up eggs for breakfast, and maybe some fruit and almonds.
Not today though. I woke up tired despite a solid eight hours (solid = setting my alarm for 6:30 and snoozing until 8) without enough time or energy to cook that.
I ate about four ounces deli turkey, maybe a pint of strawberries (10 berries?) and a few blocks of almonds, probably about 10. No preparation needed, and actually pretty tasty, although eating straight-up turkey can get challenging after a few ounces.
My only reservation is that I don't know what's in the turkey. I bought "deli oven roasted turkey" from my Met foods, so I'm going to assume that's strict paleo and not ask questions.
Monday, September 8, 2008
After one week
Today marks seven days of legit, no cheats paleo. I've had no alcohol, no sugar, no grains at all. How's it going? Pretty well actually. Energy is good, I think body fat is coming off, and I've definitely managed to eat pretty well, not to mention quit health-il-y.
A lot of fascinating things have happened since I passed my typical three or four day limit to living like this. The first four days were actually pretty hard. Work can be stressful, and when it gets really tough, one of the first things I want to do is eat comfort food and watch tv. Sometimes that's how I'll end up at the end of the night. Knowing that I can't, that I have to keep focused and prepare something balanced and paleo has produced surprising results. I (eventually) stop obsessing about relaxing with comforting (unhealthy) food and accept that I have to eat well. Its surprising that I've been able to push through the temptation with relative ease, and kind of embarassing that I rarely do so.
At the end of the week came Friday, my usual kickoff for the weekend's drinking. I substituted a great meal of a big flank steak, asparagus and blueberries and called it a night early while everyone else drank and went out for the night. I knew it would happen, and it wasn't that big of a deal. I got lots of sleep and woke up earlier than I ever do on a Saturday.
Overrall the weekend was great. Paleo is great when you don't have lots of non-paleo foods distracting and tempting you. Actually, its pretty good regardless if you do it right, but it takes a lot more planning and effort than just buying a slice.
My energy has been pretty good all week, save the (natural) sugar crash from eating a plumcot (plum/apricot hybrids that are very sweet--I didn't know this). On Saturday I had an interesting experience. I was enjoying a pork dish at a friend's bbq and wasn't too careful about avoiding the special sauce that contained sugar. Having eaten nothing but lean meats and tons of fiber for a week, I felt different immediately after a little of that sauce. It wasn't a huge difference, but it just felt like a different kind of food, one that I hadn't had in a while. The mouth feel, the way it settled in my stomach, my body's reaction to it. Makes me interested to see I feel like eating non-paleo after a month of this.
A lot of fascinating things have happened since I passed my typical three or four day limit to living like this. The first four days were actually pretty hard. Work can be stressful, and when it gets really tough, one of the first things I want to do is eat comfort food and watch tv. Sometimes that's how I'll end up at the end of the night. Knowing that I can't, that I have to keep focused and prepare something balanced and paleo has produced surprising results. I (eventually) stop obsessing about relaxing with comforting (unhealthy) food and accept that I have to eat well. Its surprising that I've been able to push through the temptation with relative ease, and kind of embarassing that I rarely do so.
At the end of the week came Friday, my usual kickoff for the weekend's drinking. I substituted a great meal of a big flank steak, asparagus and blueberries and called it a night early while everyone else drank and went out for the night. I knew it would happen, and it wasn't that big of a deal. I got lots of sleep and woke up earlier than I ever do on a Saturday.
Overrall the weekend was great. Paleo is great when you don't have lots of non-paleo foods distracting and tempting you. Actually, its pretty good regardless if you do it right, but it takes a lot more planning and effort than just buying a slice.
My energy has been pretty good all week, save the (natural) sugar crash from eating a plumcot (plum/apricot hybrids that are very sweet--I didn't know this). On Saturday I had an interesting experience. I was enjoying a pork dish at a friend's bbq and wasn't too careful about avoiding the special sauce that contained sugar. Having eaten nothing but lean meats and tons of fiber for a week, I felt different immediately after a little of that sauce. It wasn't a huge difference, but it just felt like a different kind of food, one that I hadn't had in a while. The mouth feel, the way it settled in my stomach, my body's reaction to it. Makes me interested to see I feel like eating non-paleo after a month of this.
Tuesday, September 2, 2008
The Meaning
I only realized a week before I planned to start the Sober September that September 1st was Labor Day. Although I didn't want to start out making shortcuts, I moved the start day back to the 2nd.
The way I see it, the beauty of September is that its free of tempting holidays (except for Labor Day apparently), the seasons change, kids go back to school and people are generally ready to start something anew with fresh energy.
Not that I was ever excited to go back to school, but when I was younger I always liked September at school because it was a chance to start fresh; it was a few good weeks before I fell behind in homework for the rest of the semester, never to catch up. There's something about not being behind in homework and being able to get everything done that's really refreshing. I had nothing to feel guilty about when I was caught up, no anxiety. And importantly, I didn't have to make crappy choices just to keep my head above water, like staying up late some nights or choosing one assignment to complete over another.
I realized today that that's what the Sober September will provide me this month. I won't have to choose between two different goals--between enjoying a cheat meal and pursuing my fitness and diet goals. Or between drinking and working out at full effort. Sure, passing up on those fun things will suck, but I'll get the rare luxury of having no inner conflict over those tough choices.
The way I see it, the beauty of September is that its free of tempting holidays (except for Labor Day apparently), the seasons change, kids go back to school and people are generally ready to start something anew with fresh energy.
Not that I was ever excited to go back to school, but when I was younger I always liked September at school because it was a chance to start fresh; it was a few good weeks before I fell behind in homework for the rest of the semester, never to catch up. There's something about not being behind in homework and being able to get everything done that's really refreshing. I had nothing to feel guilty about when I was caught up, no anxiety. And importantly, I didn't have to make crappy choices just to keep my head above water, like staying up late some nights or choosing one assignment to complete over another.
I realized today that that's what the Sober September will provide me this month. I won't have to choose between two different goals--between enjoying a cheat meal and pursuing my fitness and diet goals. Or between drinking and working out at full effort. Sure, passing up on those fun things will suck, but I'll get the rare luxury of having no inner conflict over those tough choices.
The Eating
Unfortunately, I didn't get all of my ideas in writing before the start of the month. September started on the 2nd this year by the way.
They say that diet is the foundation that fitness is built upon. I've had a growing interest in eating real "foods" for years. The idea that living as our ancestors did, something I would today call living "evolutionarily correct" has been growing in me for a long time. Michael Pollan's great article in the New York Times back in 2007 was exactly what I'd been thinking, but more so. I haven't thought about food the same way since I read that article.
Fast forward to today and the Paleo Diet. Paleo is best described as "lean meats, seafood, non-starchy vegetables, fruits, nuts and healthy oils," and I think paleo is the culmination of this trend. The hard thing about paleo, I'm finding, is no bread, no grains of any kinds, no refined sugar, no dairy, no extra sodium. Paleo is what you'd eat if you were a hunter-gatherer ten thousand year ago. There was no agriculture, hence no grains and no dairy. Obviously great stuff like ice cream, pizza, and twinkies are completely out. So is booze.
The healthy idea behind paleo is that its the diet your body is evolved to thrive on. Apparently, hunter-gatherers had pretty much no heart disease, cancer, cavities, or other "diseases of civilization."
So, paleo is fortunately quite easy in principle, and in some ways its easy in implementation. Its not too difficult to tell if a piece of food is paleo-qualified or not, think about if you could find it in nature or make it yourself as a hunter-gatherer.
For this reason, I'm setting a firm criteria of strict paleo for the month. Strict paleo is a simple criteria to judge: if I eat anything that isn't paleo, I fail.
The Zone is the other criterion I'm setting up for this month, but I'm not going to be as strict here. In brief, the zone means nothing more than getting nearly exactly 40% of your calories from carbohydrates, 30% from protein and 30% from fats. You generally eat something every four hours that you're awake, allocating calories, or zone "blocks" (one block is 7g protein/9g carbs/3g fat) in three meals and two snacks, always eating the same number of blocks of each nutrient at each meal.
Strict zone, in my mind, would be using a measuring cup and food scale to measure absolutely everything you eat. It also means eating every four hours pretty strictly and eating a LOT of food, especially when combined with paleo (I'm supposed to eat 17 blocks / day).
However, I've eaten plenty of very strict zone meals, so I'm going to do "eyeball" zone, erring on the side of too few carbs, and too much fat or protein. Its actually not that hard to get a good handle on the protein and judge your carbs and fats from there, so that will be my strategy. When time and energy allow, I'll cook zone-balanced paleo-compliant meals.
The two of these diets together form a rock solid nutritional foundation for human beings. The zone tells you when to eat and how much of each nutrient, paleo tells you what kind of food you can eat.
Over the past few months, as I've learned more about zone and paleo I've had intermittent success adhering to both, but I've learned a lot, lost a good bit of weight and have had some incredible energy when I nail it. I'm looking forward to seeing what dedication to these diets can do over a month.
They say that diet is the foundation that fitness is built upon. I've had a growing interest in eating real "foods" for years. The idea that living as our ancestors did, something I would today call living "evolutionarily correct" has been growing in me for a long time. Michael Pollan's great article in the New York Times back in 2007 was exactly what I'd been thinking, but more so. I haven't thought about food the same way since I read that article.
Fast forward to today and the Paleo Diet. Paleo is best described as "lean meats, seafood, non-starchy vegetables, fruits, nuts and healthy oils," and I think paleo is the culmination of this trend. The hard thing about paleo, I'm finding, is no bread, no grains of any kinds, no refined sugar, no dairy, no extra sodium. Paleo is what you'd eat if you were a hunter-gatherer ten thousand year ago. There was no agriculture, hence no grains and no dairy. Obviously great stuff like ice cream, pizza, and twinkies are completely out. So is booze.
The healthy idea behind paleo is that its the diet your body is evolved to thrive on. Apparently, hunter-gatherers had pretty much no heart disease, cancer, cavities, or other "diseases of civilization."
So, paleo is fortunately quite easy in principle, and in some ways its easy in implementation. Its not too difficult to tell if a piece of food is paleo-qualified or not, think about if you could find it in nature or make it yourself as a hunter-gatherer.
For this reason, I'm setting a firm criteria of strict paleo for the month. Strict paleo is a simple criteria to judge: if I eat anything that isn't paleo, I fail.
The Zone is the other criterion I'm setting up for this month, but I'm not going to be as strict here. In brief, the zone means nothing more than getting nearly exactly 40% of your calories from carbohydrates, 30% from protein and 30% from fats. You generally eat something every four hours that you're awake, allocating calories, or zone "blocks" (one block is 7g protein/9g carbs/3g fat) in three meals and two snacks, always eating the same number of blocks of each nutrient at each meal.
Strict zone, in my mind, would be using a measuring cup and food scale to measure absolutely everything you eat. It also means eating every four hours pretty strictly and eating a LOT of food, especially when combined with paleo (I'm supposed to eat 17 blocks / day).
However, I've eaten plenty of very strict zone meals, so I'm going to do "eyeball" zone, erring on the side of too few carbs, and too much fat or protein. Its actually not that hard to get a good handle on the protein and judge your carbs and fats from there, so that will be my strategy. When time and energy allow, I'll cook zone-balanced paleo-compliant meals.
The two of these diets together form a rock solid nutritional foundation for human beings. The zone tells you when to eat and how much of each nutrient, paleo tells you what kind of food you can eat.
Over the past few months, as I've learned more about zone and paleo I've had intermittent success adhering to both, but I've learned a lot, lost a good bit of weight and have had some incredible energy when I nail it. I'm looking forward to seeing what dedication to these diets can do over a month.
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