The Neo-Paleo Gourmet

Taking Stock - Five Months In

I've been eating and exercising "Paleo" for five months now.  Time to take stock.

First, a brief summary of what I've done.  Second, results.

Inputs...

Nutrition
- Almost zero processed foods (no ketchup, mac and cheese, mozzarella sticks, etc.)

- Very little dairy (I bought some Jarlsberg a couple of times, cream cheese once)

- Very few sweets (10-15 small chocolates, one or two sweet deserts)

- Extremely few grain products (one piece of bread, one bagel, no french fries, a little brown rice with sushi, one small portion of pasta at a dinner party)

- A few legumes (like peanuts, cashews, green beans), no corn, beans, squash, or other starchy veggies

- Lots of meat, seafood, fresh vegetables, fruits, nuts, and seeds

- Cod Liver Oil supplements five or six times a week

- Vitamin B12 supplement once a day (found out from my doctor I was deficient)

- Resveratrol supplement once a day

- Flossing at night, every night (something I never used to do)

- Still a fair bit of alcohol (maybe 10-15 drinks per week on average)

- A moderate amount of coffee (one normal-sized cup per workday, one cup per weekend)

- A few salty snacks like olives and pickles

- Liberal use of olive oil, some balsamic vinegar (sugary)

- 70% of nights at least 7 hours of sleep

- Fasted one dinner per week for first three months

Exercise
- Three months of exercising on my own about 2.5x - 3.0x per week.  25-35 minute workouts, never longer than 45.  Emphasis on anaerobic lifting.  High intensity.  Little rest between exercises.

- Two months of CrossFit with CrossFit NYC.  2.5x - 3.0x per week.  Hour long sessions, but usually only twenty minutes or less of the main workout.  Emphasis on full range motions, anaerobic lifting, skills and form training, flexibility

- Extremely little running on treadmills

Outputs....

Energy
- More consistent energy throughout the day.  No more head on the desk after lunch

- Clearer minded, particularly after meals

Mood
- More consistent mood, better mood in general

- Better able to weather negative external shocks to equilibrium

- More confident

Immune System
- Haven't gotten sick all winter even though I've been around sick people at home and at work.  Once each in November and December felt tired and light runny nose and sneezing for a day, but actually fought it off

Weight
- Lost ~22 pounds, from 185 in August to 163 in January.  Most of the weight I lost in the first two and half months.  I lost a few more in January, but have stabilized since, and I think I'm back up to about 165.

- My ass isn't nearly so big.  Dropped from a 34/35 waist to an easy-fitting 32.  My thighs don't rub together when I walk.

Body Composition
- Way less fat, much more lean muscle mass.  But you're not going to get any topless photos of me (yet).

Complexion
- Best five months of complexion since puberty.  Noticeably better during high stress/low sleep periods when I used to nearly always get a big ole zit right on the same area of my nose.  None of those even though had a few multi-week of high-stress/low sleep.

Teeth
- Don't feel any of that thin filmy residue on my teeth, due to the low sugar content of what I eat.

Social Interactions
- Has not been an impediment to eating out or going out with friends on nights and weekends

- However, fairly significant impediment to having lunch with co-workers (I tend to buy my lunch on my own)

- Discussion of the diet peaked during month 2-3 became tiresome in month 4, but has since subsided to occasional chit-chat when people are actually interested.  This is a healthy development

Other +'s and -'s

(+) Spurred me to start a blog, compose thoughts, work on writing

(-) Spending 20%-30% more on food

(+) Harder to be pegged as ordinary

(-) Easier to be pegged as a wierdo

(-) Probably come off as preachy/self-righteous/obsessive compulsive (though I never proselytize,
except here - where it's your choice to visit and read)

(+/-) Unclear effect on girls/girlfriends.  Physically and mentally more fit, but (perceived) hyper-self-improvement is off-putting and exhausting.  Very few people who seriously date have drastically different food customs...this opens and closes doors.

(+) Lost the cravings for carbs, enjoy natural flavors more

(-) Harder to compare before/after condition and "feel" the benefits like in the early months

(+) Becoming more comfortable cooking, improvising

(-) Spend more time on menials aspects of cooking (shopping, prep, cleaning)

The bottom line: Hey, works for me.  If it's not your thing, that's cool.  I hope we can still be friends.

Fish oil and felons

Art De Vany links to an article in the Guardian about nutrition experiments being run on inmates in Britain.  They started giving some of the inmates fish oil, high in omega 3 fatty acids.

"The results, published in 2002, showed that those receiving the extra nutrients committed 37% fewer serious offences involving violence, and 26% fewer offences overall. Those on the placebos showed no change in their behaviour. Once the trial had finished the number of offences went up by the same amount. The office the researchers had used to administer nutrients was restored to a restraint room after they had left."

The researchers in the article make some stronger research claims that I'm not prepared to endorse, but interesting nonetheless:

"To test the hypothesis, Hibbeln and his colleagues have mapped the growth in consumption of omega-6 fatty acids from seed oils in 38 countries since the 1960s against the rise in murder rates over the same period. In all cases there is an unnerving match. As omega-6 goes up, so do homicides in a linear progression. Industrial societies where omega-3 consumption has remained high and omega-6 low because people eat fish, such as Japan, have low rates of murder and depression.

After the appropriate disclaimers about correlation and causation, they add:

"Moreover, many other things have changed in the last century and been blamed for rising violence - exposure to violence in the media, the breakdown of the family unit and increased consumption of sugar, to take a few examples. But some of the trends you might expect to be linked to increased violence - such as availability of firearms and alcohol, or urbanisation - do not in fact reliably predict a rise in murder across countries, according to Hibbeln."

Eat your fish, and no, beer-battered fish and chips with lots of tartar sauce doesn't count.

If pregnant, eat fish.

The benefits of eating fish have been dramatically underrated, the risks of mercury poisoning vastly overrated:

"A large study has found that children of women who ate little fish during pregnancy had lower IQs and more behavioral and social problems than youngsters whose mothers ate plenty of seafood, a finding that challenges the U.S. government's standard advice to limit seafood while pregnant.

"The study finds "no evidence to lend support to the warning of the U.S. advisory that pregnant women should limit their seafood consumption," concluded the team led by Joseph R. Hibbeln, a researcher at the National Institute of Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, writing in the Lancet.

The bottom line:  The tricky part about paternalism is having to know the right answer all the time.

The full article from the Washington Post.

Vegetarianism revisted

Here's another argument a vegetarian might offer:

"American meat eaters are responsible for 1.5 more tons of carbon dioxide per person than vegetarians every year."

More facts on the growth in meat-eating:

"As prosperity increased around the world in recent decades, the number of people eating meat (and the amount one eats every year) has risen steadily. Between 1970 and 2002, annual per capita meat consumption in developing countries rose from 11 kilograms (24 lbs.) to 29 kilograms (64 lbs.), according to the FAO. (In developed countries, the comparable figures were 65 kilos and 80 kilos.) As population increased, total meat consumption in the developing world grew nearly five-fold over that period."

      

"Beyond that, annual global meat production is projected to more than double from 229 million tons at the beginning of the          decade to 465 million tons in 2050. This makes livestock the fastest growing sector of global agriculture."

Article here.

Good sources of rationalizations, anti-oxidants

If asked under oath whether I was sitting alone in my apartment on Valentine's Day, drinking red wine, eating a few chocolates, and reading Cathy cartoons, I will deny every bit of it.

The Marine Corps rethinks its physical training

Three months ago, the U.S.M.C. released a short thought piece called "A Concept for Functional Fitness" on why their current training regimen was failing soldiers in combat, and how to change it.

Too much aerobic training:

"The program over-emphasizes aerobic training (long distance running) and gives very little attention to strength training."

The way most people lift weights creates "show muscles", not functional improvement:

"Most human action (work) seems to involve a relatively limited number of fundamental movements (such as lifting, pushing, pulling, throwing, and locomotion). However, many exercise routines (especially weight training or body building as it is popularly practiced) follow a “reductionist” approach that strives to de-construct a movement in order to apply focused stress on a singular joint and muscle group. Unfortunately, the human body does not work that way. The body works together as a system and exercises that serve to de-construct what are essentially irreducible (though admittedly complex) movements, can create imbalance, unnatural stress on muscles and joints, do not generate an ideal adaptive response, and most importantly do not mimic the reality that the Marine athlete will experience."

On variability in normal life, and combat life:

"Combat poses an infinite variety of physical tasks, many of which are foreseeable, some of which are not. This varied nature of physical requirements and the fact that some aspects defy predictability, place any preparation effort that is overly specialized at risk of irrelevance. Stated differently, the physical demands real life—and combat operations in particular—support the argument that a preparation effort should promote a strong foundation of general fitness based on function."

It's CrossFit in everything but name.  Read the entire piece here. 

Hunger and Thirst

Hunger and thirst are sophisticated mechanisms to guide the behavior of an animal.  And with a few million years of R&D, they tend to be pretty good guides....given the environment in which we evolved.

Hunger
If you're eating foods that are natural to humans, then eat when you're hungry.  It's hard to overeat on avocado, celery, chicken breast, and almonds.  (But fast for a meal every week or so.)

Thirst
Thirst is much like hunger.  LOTS of folks say that the key to health is drink bucket loads of water.  This might be somewhat true if you're chronically dehydrated from eating salty, processed foods and drinking sugary liquids.  But if you're eating right, your thirst will be an accurate gauge of your body's needs.  Don't force yourself to drink tons of water if you aren't thirsty.

Wikipedia on "The Paleo Diet"

Here is the entry.  It's an excellent overview, including a list of criticisms.

One interesting criticism concerns calcium deficiency.  Hunter-gatherers got some of their calcium from gnawing on bones -- something I don't (often) do.

The convergence of Mind and Body

Riding a stationary bike is boring, but gives you a workout.  Video games are engaging, but makes you obese.  We're starting to see them converge.

From the video game side, the Nintendo Wii is holding its own against Playstation 3 and XBox 360.  Here are some more innovative examples.

From the exercise side, more gyms are starting to install stationary bikes with video game monitors where you go your actual speed, and compete against other riders.  This causes people to (1) ride faster, because they're competing, and (2) be more willing to go to the gym, because it's not so damn boring.

Most people's workout routines are cognitively sterile.  Here are a few ways to make it more engaging:

1. Work out with other people
2. Compete against others, (or yourself, by times or weights)
3. Exercise outside
4. Increase the variability of your exercises
5. Shorten your workouts (but compensate with higher intensity)
6. Add (a little) danger to your workout (headstands, rock climbing, etc.)
7. Play video games that simulate these qualities

The hunt was physically and mentally demanding.  As was battle.  A quality we need to regain.

Another battle scar from the homefront

Wustof knives are sharp -- I didn't feel a thing.  Not to worry, it was a re-growable part of my thumb.  Lots of blood, but nothing a little toilet paper, neosporin, and duct tape can't fix.

10:15am: A grapefruit, mixed nuts

1:00pm: 8 piece eel sushi (brown rice), seaweed salad

6:45pm: Volleyball match

8:00pm: CrossFit

10:25pm: The Wustof Incident, cutting mushrooms

10:45pm: Red grapes...salad with some leafy green, a whole avocado, celery, mushrooms, and a bit of thumb dressed with oil and vinegar....pork chop with broccolli, shallots, and red hot peppers...a glass of wine