Day Six

It's a Friday and normally on Friday, M and I go out somewhere to enjoy happy hour. We have a drink and happy hour food as our dinner, and then take the bus (or walk) home. It is not as hard as it might seem to find paleo-friendly happy hour food, especially if you are willing to let a little dairy in now and then, but Whole30 is much stricter, and so I am going to have to skip our habitual Friday evening escapade in favor of something else...

Tomorrow marks a whole week of Whole30, and I have to say that I think I'm doing ok. I was incredibly grouchy the first couple of days until I allowed myself to drink coffee again with a little coconut milk. Still not crazy about the coconut flavor, but it does have the creaminess I enjoy. I am going to experiment this weekend with a mixture of almond milk and coconut milk to see if I can come up with a creamer that might be creamy with a better flavor. I really don’t like flavored coffee, so it is hard for me to find a good substitute for cream. Also, I don’t know what it is about me and coconut milk, but whenever I start to use it in my coffee, or consume it regularly at all, I gain weight. I think that is totally unfair, because I love coconut curry and soup and whipped coconut cream on berries, and so many paleo peeps have no problem at all with it…unlucky me I guess.

The first four days of this, I had an awful time sleeping, probably due in part to the fact that our apartment faces west, and gets full on sun in the afternoon, and this summer has been a very sunny summer for Seattle! The humidity is miserable when you have no air flow. We find that a couple of fans help, but we only have windows on one side of our apartment, so no cross draft means that the humidity just kind of hangs out in our bedroom area… Thank god it’s cloudy and raining again! I moved here for the rain—I like cool, coastal weather and really appreciate it when the seasons change.
The last two nights, I have slept soundly only waking once or twice to the sound of thunder and pouring rain, (with my kitty is demanding my attention for some reason that is obvious only to him…) The tiredness I felt the first few days of this Whole30 could be due to not getting enough good sleep, but is also probably due in part to my body struggling as I ramped up the low-carb aspect of my diet.

An update on my status: I had a doctor’s appointment two weeks ago where we looked over my blood test results, and discussed how to improve them. My cholesterol results were enlightening. My LDL is low but could be better, my HDL is high but could be better, but my triglycerides are definitely high. Triglycerides rise in response to the carbohydrates that you consume. High triglycerides can raise your risk of heart disease and are a sign of metabolic syndrome. So, with my doctor’s advice, I cut my carbohydrates back to around 20. As a result, I cannot eat as many vegetables as I would like. I am averaging between 20-30 grams of carbohydrate per day, and need to be really strict about it. One of the benefits of the Paleo diet is all the great vegetables and fruits you can eat, but since I have to watch my carbs like a hawk, I need to stick to 3 or 4 servings a day and really should be eating more green vegetables and fewer tomatoes.

It is tricky crafting an effective low-carbohydrate Paleo Whole30 diet. I can eat lots of salads, and non-starchy veggies, but not much fruit, and I have been eating lots of tomatoes lately because they are in season, but tomatoes are a fruit and therefore higher in carbs…so I need to balance things out a bit.

When you are on a low carb diet, you are literally “fighting” your body for the first few days or weeks. Your body wants to burn glucose as fuel. Glucose is the preferred energy source for your body—but since you are not consuming very many carbohydrates, your body can create a state of Ketosis which switches your body from sugar (glucose) burning to fat (ketone) burning. This can be a difficult and uncomfortable process if you are not eating enough fat, and are consuming too many carbohydrates and protein. Not only do I need to watch my carbohydrate intake, but I need to keep my protein levels down to about 60-100 grams per day as well, since more than that can cause my body to resort to gluconeogenesis (the process of creating glucose from protein). My brain sees that I am eating more protein than I need for my daily functions, so it decides to turn the extra protein into glucose to use for other energy needs.
I think our bodies are pretty amazing. We have evolved to survive on pretty much any food source, how cool is that?