Paleo or Bust! Day Two:
Yesterday I only had one meal. That wasn’t a plan. it just happened. I drank 4, 48 ounce glasses of ice water and three 48 ounce glasses of tea. They each had a 50/50 blend of green tea and black tea. Each glass of tea was different flavored with; Black walnut extract, Strawberry Watermelon Stur, Blackberry and Blueberry Stur and one with Coconut and Pineapple Stur. I’m using the Stur squeeze bottles. If you haven’t used Stur, it’s a Stevia sweetened water flavor additive. http://www.sturdrinks.com/
I got up yesterday morning around 8 am. I didn’t go to bed until around 3 am this morning, but I didn’t get any good sleep before 6 am when my wife’s alarm went off. It’s currently 9 am and I might have gotten a total 3 hours of sleep. Spending what ultimately is 21 hours awake in a row with very little food and sleep might have had an impact on my weight.
Last night I roasted a skinless chicken with vegetables with no added salt or fats. For dinner I had about 8 ounces of Skinless chicken, breast, leg and thigh, with 1/2 of a yellow onion, a small portion of carrot and cauliflower with about 6 Roma tomatoes.
On Paleo we don’t count calories or carbohydrates. We simply eat all the vegetables and meat protein we want. I must say that unlike most of the time during the past 19 years of being fat, that small meal was satisfying.
I didn’t miss the fats or the carbs and the flavor was great. I used to drink Diet Dr Pepper and Coke Zero like they were water. It doesn’t really matter if they don’t have sugar since they are loaded with salt, and a lot of it. It causes inflammation and that means it cause water retention, which means it causes weight gain. I haven’t 100% given up my favorite drinks, which include Vodka, Tequila and Gin with or without Coke Zero and Dr Pepper, I’ve stopped drinking them daily in place of water. When I was 20, I was 60 lbs overweight and decided to lose that weight. I read a diet plan from a magazine, which the diet plan had been blamed for the deaths of 4 people in the New England area. I’ll say right now, that I don’t remember the magazine, the name of the doctor anything specific about the diet. Mostly because I didn’t actually follow it to the letter. Instead, this was in 1985-86, I went to a place called the public library and I read from some books on nutrition and human physiology and came up with an augmented version of that diet.
I’m not advocating this old diet I came up with for three reasons, I’m not a medical professional, it’s a difficult diet to stick with at first, and when I had need to try it again years later, I couldn’t do it. What it consisted of was three days of an induction type process, where I woke up in the morning and drank 32 oz of ice water within 30 minutes of waking and eat a piece of whole wheat toast. At lunch I would have a piece of toast and a bowl of lettuce after drinking another 32 ounce glass of ice water and I’d repeat for dinner. Between meals and bedtime if I was hungry, I would drink ice water until I stopped craving. I did this for three days. It is hard to do. After three days, I’d lost about 7 pounds and on day four I was allowed to eat normal again, however I was required to maintain the same level of water intake on the same schedule, 32 ounces of ice water within 30 minutes of waking and the same prior to each meal. I was also to drink ice water, when I could as a stop for any cravings throughout the day. My results were instantly dramatic. I lost 22 pounds within the first two weeks. After that it slowed, but I maintain this plan for 6 months. At the end of the 6 months I’d lost 62 pounds. That means I only lost a quarter of a pound per day after the first two weeks. I’d started the process of loss, but I’d also performed a measure of behavior modification. I’d stopped the cravings for fats and carbs, and stopped my bodies need to store nutrients which means I increased my metabolism. I wasn’t physically active and didn’t exercise at all. After the initial induction, I didn’t reduce what I ate. Drinking the water prior to a meal, lowered the mass of food I could ingest which in turned lowered my caloric intake. Five years later I became a restaurant manager and was on my feet most of the day. I ate meals at work, which consisted of pasta, salads and pizza pretty much three meals a day for 3 years. I didn’t gain a pound and I drank lots of Diet Coke. In spite of that habit, I’m convinced it was the water intake that helped me keep the weight off.
There was a point a few years later when I changed jobs and started working in an office and was sedentary most of the day, that I gained about 20 pounds over the course of about two years. I’d gotten out of the habit of drinking water the way I had been. Complacency had set in. I wasn’t happy about it so I decided to do that diet again. I did and it worked again. I lost 20 pounds in a two weeks and was back to my lowest weight of 155 pounds. That lasted until I stopped smoking. As part of our attempt to conceive a child, per my urologist told me I needed to stop smoking to raise my, near non-existent, sperm count. I did just that. I quit smoking. Within 3 months I’d gained 80 pounds. I was 245 pounds, but my sperm count had skyrocketed. Unfortunately it turned out we had other problems that prevented us from conceiving.
What had happened though, was I’d traded one health issue for another. My lungs were clearing up. I wasn’t hacking up phlegm nearly as often or in volume. I wasn’t short of breath anymore and I felt better, at least that way and I didn’t stink anymore. Of course their was a trade off. My stress levels had risen and along with my blood pressure. In stressful moment on the freeway driving home from work, I had a cardiac event. If not for my wife riding with me, I might well be dead. I once again tried the “Water Diet”, but now I couldn’t make myself stick to the induction phase. Over the next 15 years I tried my water diet two more times, failing each time. I did Atkins and lost 60 lbs but as soon as I stopped, it all came back, plus some. I tried HCG injections and again I lost 60 pounds. Same thing. I stopped to go back to real life eating, and it all came back. Ultimately I made it up to 310 lbs t my highest.
Last August I decide to try something different. I stopped eating dairy for 6 weeks. I lost 30 pounds in 6 weeks. Then I went back to dairy. I gain 12 lbs back within two weeks. Lesson learned is that dairy probably does cause inflammation and thus weight gain for me, at least when I’m already fat and inactive. So Paleo, right now, seems a viable dietary alternative. I get to eat meat. I love meat and I get to eat veggies, I love veggies and I get to eat fruit. I’m not a huge fan of fruit, but I like enough of them to make it interesting. I’ve already cut back on fats, dairy and sugars and salt, so this first couple of days has been fine. Yes I want Pizza and Pasta and cheesy things, but I’m feeling an overwhelming craving or loss of those things. In fact, my state of mind about this right now is that I’m so tired of being out of shape and the awful physical feelings I have been through for 19 years, that this ins’t much of a sacrifice. It’s a reward in and of itself to know that from yesterday to today I can see the immediate impact of my changes.
CURRENT PROGRESS: 1.8 pounds lost.
Day Two: Today’s weigh-in was: 279.4 lbs and the equals a loss of 1.8 lbs.
Day One: Wednesday’s weigh-in was: 281.2 lbs
My starting weight for this diet is 281.2 lbs.
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