Fatty 1 – Intermittent Fasting – Week 2

So it’s been another week.  I weighed myself again this Sunday and I was down another pound.  Three all in total in 16 days.  That’s not too shabby considering I haven’t really changed my eating, other than condensing the feeding period from all day to 6 hours or so.  So far I’m satisfied and plan on continuing.

I seem to be adapting to the not eating period pretty well.  I don’t get as hungry as I did in the beginning, although there are still periods of hunger, but very manageable.  I feel less sleepy during the day overall and I seem to have more energy.  It’s not like I’m bouncing off the walls, but I’m just less tired than normal through the day.  I seem to be sleeping a little deeper at night too, so that’s good.

My Crossfit gym is having a 7 week Spring Leaning contest, which I’ve decided to do.  The rules are you have to follow a paleo type diet or a paleo-Zone mix diet.  I’ve opted for the plain old paleo diet since you have to weigh and count things with the Zone Diet.  For those who don’t know the paleo diet is a diet composed of foods we humans would have eaten in pre-agricultural times.  The idea being that since the advent of agriculture and widespread consumption of grains and legumes our human health as a whole has gone downhill, especially in the last 100 years or so since the industrial revolution brought us increasing amounts of processed sugars, high carb, and unnatural foods.

I could write about it but there are million websites that have more information than I care to think about.  In a nutshell (an appropriate paleo metaphor) you eat the following foods: meats, seafood, eggs, vegetables, fruits, nuts and seeds.  No grains, no legumes, no processed sugars, no processed food.  No grains means no wheat, no rice, corn, barley, oats, etc.  No legumes means no beans and no peanuts.

Now paleo diet aficionados fall on a spectrum.  If you’re hardcore you limit your foods to those mentioned above.  But some people will allow dairy if you are tolerant of it. Apparently 70% of the world is lactose intolerant, but as far as I can tell I don’t appear to be one of them, so I’m keeping the dairy for now, but I’m minimizing it. Some people are more flexible and they will eat some legumes or a slice of bread on occasion, but are predominantly paleo.  Sort of like the vegetarian who occasional has a hamburger.

For the period of the contest I’m allowing myself to have dairy, and keeping the legumes to the hummus I eat with my carrot sticks.  We will see how that goes.

Did I mention the prize for winning the contest is $2100?  Cha-ching.  I can not eat wheat and beans for  7 weeks for that amount of moola.  They took before and will take after photos, so it will be interesting to see the differences.  I’m going to continue my intermittent fasting too for the week and see how the paleo and fasting combine.  I’m naturally going to be cutting out a lot of carbs by not eating grains, so I may go back to feeling kind of sluggish for a few days.

Let the adventure begin.

P.S. Some paleo links of interest that I’ve used

http://www.thepaleodiet.com – barebones format but a lot of info

http://www.paleodiet.com -  Loren Cordain’s site, one of the main paleo guru’s

http://robbwolf.com – Robb Wolf’s site, a paleo, Crossfit, and Zone guru and the inspiration for my gym for the contest.  Also a fasting resource.

http://www.marksdailyapple.com – Mark Sisson’s site, another take on the paleo (he calls it Primal) diet. Also a fasting resource.