Paleo, Day 4

I can write more about why I chose to go Paleo some other time, but for now here’s just a bit about how it’s going. I wrote most of this yesterday, which was my fourth day, hence the title. I probably didn’t need to explain that.

This is both harder and easier than I expected.

Easier because I do not feel deprived or hungry at all. Seriously, the volume of food I’m eating feels like it has doubled because it’s all fairly low calorie, and nutrient dense. I sort of tire of chewing about three-quarters through some meals. But, I haven’t felt even an iota of hunger, so that’s pretty awesome. For dinner last night I wasn’t even hungry. The thought of eating anything at all kind of made me nauseous. So I had a cup of chamomile tea instead. Processed, sugary foods are not enticing me the way I expected they would.

The hard part so far, and honestly it’s not *that* difficult, is giving up the Diet Coke. Oh, Diet Coke, how I loved thee. If I’m honest, though, I drank it because it was there (work provides soda freely) and felt more convenient than getting tea or a glass of water. But, even though there aren’t any calories, the aspartame probably still triggers an insulin response for me, so it’s really something to be avoided on my part. I read on Wikipedia (awhile ago – not yesterday, obviously), that one of the chemicals in Diet Coke, phenylalanine, actually has anti-depressant properties. I suspect that was one of the biggest reasons I drank so much of it at work. (Hi, my name is Misty and my loathsome job depresses me.)

To compensate, I’ve been drinking LOADS of tea. I’m going to have to replenish my tea stash soon because if I continue at this rate, I will have none left by early February. And I really do love tea, so I don’t view this as a punishment or something that’s replacing Diet Coke. I’m just adding in more of something I already liked. This is helpful and making the transition much easier.

I’ve been very tired, but I was expecting that. There’s supposed to be a transitional period where your body has to reconfigure itself to get the energy you need from meats and veggies instead of sugary, processed foods. I’m hoping that my transitional period is over soon, but it could last another week or two. After that though, and my energy should be through the goddamn roof and boy am I looking forward to that!

In general I don’t believe weight is an accurate measurement of a person’s health in that a woman who weighs 160 pounds could be healthier than a woman who weighs 130 pounds. But for me, being as overweight as I am, losing weight is definitely a good thing, so I am happy to report that I have lost nearly 4 pounds already. Woot!

Monday, we are meeting my sister’s family and my mom for a belated birthday dinner for my youngest niece at a fun 1950s style diner that I do not believe is very Paleo-friendly. I’m torn between having a hamburger and sweet potato fries as I would normally, and trying to find a better option from their menu. One bonus though is that they have Pepsi products and I am not a fan so at least that won’t be an added dilemma. 😉

One of the problems that has become evident to me about doing slow carb (championed by Tim Ferris of the Four Hour Body), is that every week you get a cheat day where you can consume whatever you want. Robb Wolf (author of The Paleo Solution book and podcast) likens this to a heroin addict who is allowed her fix once a week. She’s never going to get over heroin that way and she’s just going to spend 6/7ths of her life looking forward to that one day a week where she can get her fix. Putting it in that light and acknowledging that I have probably become addicted to sugary, processed foods and carbs and such means that this cheat day idea sounds worse to me. And when I was trying slow carb, that’s exactly what I went through too – I spent most of the week dreaming of the foods I could eat on that seventh day. I don’t think I ever really enjoyed the food I was eating the rest of the time. Naturally, one cheat day binge often turned into two or three days. It wasn’t useful for me. (Which isn’t to say it can’t work for some other people – I know it has, and it worked for me initially too.)

So, I’m conflicted about dinner on Monday. Also partly because if I do have a hamburger and fries (even if they’re sweet potato fries), I’m fairly certain I’ll feel super sluggish and awful afterwards. I might do it just to remind myself why I’m doing Paleo anyway. I just don’t want to get onto that slippery slope and slide into a binge on sugary, processed foods. By then, which will be Day 8, I might be feeling so good about my food choices that having a hamburger and fries will feel off limits already. We’ll see how it goes.

Overall, this isn’t too bad and I’m still hopeful that this will be the solution for me to get my health back.