This post is primarily to provide information to anyone curious about trying this diet/lifestyle. I'm not claiming that your results and experience will be similar to mine, but I'm not trying to sell anything so you can trust that my reflections are candid and honest. I've had a lot of questions from friends and family that were interested in adopting this diet, so here is my take on my experience thus far.
The positives:
One of the nice things about this diet is that you get some pretty immediate results as your body is adapting. I dropped 7 lbs in the first week and kept if off the remainder of the challenge.
You know it is bad when there are certain pairs of jeans that you avoid putting on. After the holiday season I noticed that some of my clothes were getting a bit tight around the waistline. I ended up losing two inches off my waist and now even my skinny jeans fit comfortably.
Although yesterday's benchmark was a bit disappointing, I think it was the result of non-dietary factors. Overall I've noticed considerable improvements in several exercises from presses to pull-ups.
I know this probably sounds silly, but I've become an expert at cracking eggs. No more shell fragments in the bowl.:)
The negatives:
Let's face it, this diet is very restrictive. Unless your family and friends are all gym rats and are following a similar menu, there will be many sources of temptation in social settings. You will get a lot of people that are curious about why you are eating what you are - sometimes to the point of being almost confrontational. There will be moments that you will need to choose between sticking to the diet or enjoying important life experiences. Lucky for me, there wasn't anything major going on for these thirty days, so I was able to stick to it.
As an endurance athlete, having enough fuel to burn is critical. After the first week of the challenge, I had a few awful distance workouts. I'm not sure if it was because I was adapting to the new diet or because I wasn't eating enough. Regardless, I continually felt better after the first week of the challenge.
Sticking to this diet will require a time investment. It takes time to plan our your meals and go shopping. Many of the best recipes require fresh ingredients that you will not likely have on hand without prior planning. Generally the prep times for the meals wasn't any longer than for non-paleo meals. I also found that cooking and dining at home for most of the challenge resulted in many more dishes to wash.
Expect to spend slightly more on groceries especially if you are seeking very high quality proteins. Wild caught fish and grass fed beef are often hard to come by and you pay a significant premium for them. I'm not saying that you can't eat Paleo on the cheap, but your menu will be much more restricted.
Dining out Paleo style is a bit pricey (sorry, no sammiches) and it is always a bit hard to tell what you're eating without sounding like the Gestapo (what is that cooked in? What is in that sauce? Is that all natural? Is any sugar added to that? etc.)
Things I would have done differently:
Although my vegetable intake was significantly higher on the diet, I think I could have done better. Being the winter time there isn't really an abundance of yummy fresh vegetables here now - not that that is a very good excuse. Next time I think I'll focus on having about 5-6 servings of veggies per day and not plan my meals around the proteins as much. I also found eating veggies at breakfast time to be nearly unpalatable - I'd sneak some salsa or peppers and onions into eggs, but that was really all I could stomach.
I probably didn't eat enough during the first week, hence the dramatic weight loss. I assure you that my body was telling me I was full so I wasn't feeling terribly hungry during that time.
Around week two I began consuming too many nuts. One of the richer foods you can eat on the diet is nuts. They seem to always taste pretty good and work well for snacks or desserts. They also have a pretty high caloric content and in moderate quantities can be rough on the digestive system. I think one of the reasons my weight loss plateaued was because I started eating them often after the first week.
Towards the end of the challenge, I started to get really tired of drinking ice water at every meal. Sure I'd have some tea every now and again, but I drank mostly water. Near the end of the challenge I started squeezing a lemon wedge in my ice water (just like one of dem fancy restaurants) and I found that much more enjoyable to drink.
Over the course of the challenge, I think I ate more than the recommended amount of eggs. I would easily go through a dozen eggs in a week. Most of this was from eating them at breakfast. I found them delicious and filling but I probably could have benefited from more variety.
Remaining Questions: (I hope to have answers to these soon)
If I switch to a less restrictive Paleo diet, will the results I've obtained start to erode?Will my blood-work come back and show my cholesterol through the roof?
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