Today is my day off, and I have a massive headache. I didn't really feel like eating at all, but for the sake of the experiment I worked out a menu and made myself a shrimp (and cream cheese) stuffed omelette for brunch with 4 pastured eggs, 2 T. cream cheese, and 1.5 T. pastured butter. I also had coffee with cream.
Dinner was 12 ounces of pork shoulder with the last of the green beans in butter.
Today marks Day 7 of my experiment. I did not manage to measure myself last Sunday, so today's measurements are the first I have. I will compare them to next Sunday for a better indicator of how I am doing. I have lost a total of 1.8 pounds, although since it is almost my TOM I will doubtless lose some more of my excess water weight--hopefully it should fall off in a couple of days. I have faithfully followed Robb Wolf's exercise suggestions from his book, The Paleo Solution.
To reiterate what I am doing as far as diet goes, here is the rundown:
I am using The Ketogenic Diet recommendations from Lyle McDonald's book, The Ketogenic Diet.
My ratios for the first two weeks will be:
2400 calories
160 grams protein
190 grams fat
under 20 grams carbs.
I am using dairy to add fat to my diet. There are lots of pure paleo options for fat that could be substituted, but my experience with coconut oil and coconut milk has shown a definite weight gain associated with it, so for now (the next couple of weeks), I am trying to avoid it. I could use macadamia nut oil and avocado oil, however these are very expensive, and the amount of fat I need to add into my diet for the next couple of weeks is very high, so I will probably transition to them after the first few weeks--in other words I will be gradually phasing out the dairy and replacing it with nuts and avocados and more expensive fats--as my carbs increase and my fat decreases.
After the initial two weeks, I am going to increase my carbohydrates by 5 grams per week, and slowly lower my protein and fat accordingly. Hopefully this will allow me to continue to lose weight and burn fat until I reach around 60 grams of carbs per day--that seems to be a good number, allowing for fruits and a nice variety of starchy and non-starchy vegetables, and occasional chocolate and wine...
So, one more week to go before the transition to slightly more carbohydrates!
Observations during this past week:
I have not had too many carb cravings surprisingly. Usually the week before my period I have tons of carb cravings, and am bitter and grouchy about it, then usually buckle under the pressure and drink an entire bottle of wine and half a pound of chocolate. This week, I haven't touched the chocolate, despite having it right there in front of me. I have had several days where I felt vaguely nauseated, and one day where I felt very dizzy. But mostly I feel fine. I have not snacked at all really, although a couple of times I have had so much protein to eat that I spread it out into four meals instead of three. Several times I have been VERY hungry--like yesterday when I inhaled my lunch so quickly I couldn't get a picture of it in time. :) But once I eat, I am fine, and the one huge advantage to eating mostly the same thing all the time is that it is easy to plan.
Changes for the coming week:
I have been relying too much on pork and chicken which are both very high in Omega 6. I will be getting some salmon this week, and smothering it in pesto for added fat, and I will see what other budget options I may have for meats. I want to re-focus on beef and lamb since they tend to have better rations of O6 to O3, especially when pastured--but even without pasturing they are much better than pork and chicken. I do buy organic, pastured chicken when possible, but it is kind of expensive, and still has a lot of Omega 6...
Also after this week is over I am going to switch out some of the eggs I am eating with meat for breakfast. Right now, for the sake of sticking with it, I am having eggs every morning--this is kind of a treat for me because I love eggs and bacon or sausage, (or both!). But eating so many eggs in the long term is a little questionable. If I am realistically trying to emulate a paleo diet--I need more variety. Plus I can't afford pastured eggs if I eat that many--they are $9/dozen at the farmer's market!
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