I’m officially halfway done with the Great Primal Experiment. Actually halfway plus ONE. Which is important because I am counting every day on this sucker. I still don’t like eating meat. I still miss my morning oatmeal and dark chocolate. But hey, I’m loving all the veggies and I’m not at all constipated. (What? You don’t care about my bowels?)
Living Like Grok
Week two was bad. Way bad, kids. I did all right eating like Caveman Grok until I decided to live like Grok. We took the kidlets (like Chiclets, but for bears) camping this past weekend. I thought it would be the perfect occassion to go full-bore Primal. Apparently the Minnesota State Parks & Rec folk agreed with me by giving us the campsite farthest from the biffies. I tell ya, it doesn’t get more neanderthal than pooping on a big pile of other people’s poop. Which, having 3 preschoolers, we made that long trek to the “stinky place” at least 2 million times a day and night.
The campground also had a lovely river, picnic tables, and a playground – all at least a half a mile away. I ate it up. I walked everywhere, toting a kid on each hip National Geographic style (but with my shirt on thank you very much). I even got a nice long hike with one of my best girl friends in the whole wide world where we talked in the way that only people who are already deeply in tune with the other’s brand of crazy can do. The coup d’etat was carrying a 30-pound bundle of firewood (on my head!!!) from the ranger station to the site.
Eating Like Chris Farley
The result of all this fabulous exercise and fresh air? An appetite like a freakin’ raptor. Two clean weeks of no carbs combined with hunger like I haven’t experienced in ages made for a 3-day long binge. And I mean binge. I was so starved for carbs that I ate things I would never imagine eating before. I had Raisin Bran (I hate raisins!!), white pancakes with fake syrup, Little Debbie snack cakes, gummy bears, dutch oven cobbler, chips, soda and pretty much anything else that couldn’t run away from me. Thankfully the children are fast.
It was ugly. I’ve never in my life binged like that before. Even now I shudder remembering it. But I thought I was alone in my despair. Until I got home and checked my e-mail to find this missive from Reader (and fellow Primal Experimenter) Cara. Our conversation went back and forth over several e-mail threads but I think she said it best and quite eloquently so I share this with you with her permission:
I don’t think I can handle weeks of lethargy and fatigue, because the way I have trained myself to handle those feelings is by binging on sugar! Also, between you and me, after 5 days into the PB I ate ice cream and subsequently purged. So there is way too much control in the PB – for me. It’s triggers my eating dis…..disordered eating.
I have been eating all sorts of crap I never eat either! I loathe McDonalds and all fast food, but today I found myself in the drive-thru in my UN-air conditioned car, 120 degrees, buying a medium fry and a double cheeseburger for the whopping total of $2.38. (No wonder why people are addicted to this stuff, it’s cheaper than crack!) Anyway, I ate that and had a regular Dr. Pepper and had a piece of cake, or two. Didn’t puke, just allowed nature to run it’s course, let myself feel the extreme exhaustion as my body put all its energy into digestion.
I am not happy eating all this meat either. I was talking to my co-worker today, he weighs about 130 and is about 6ft. Not exactly a healthy weight, but obviously his body is doing the proper thing and eating its excess fat. His diet consists of a large portion of meat every once in awhile (he said the protein from one steak lasts him about 3 days), no dairy, no soy, no gluten, no peanuts, no bananas. So his diet is basically meat, vegetables, and Fritos. I want to try something like this…. actually, I want to try something different – I want to eat and only listen to my body.
My room is filled with books like Diet No More, Body For Life, The China Study, Eat For Life, Nourishing Traditions, Back To Eden, Eat Right For Your Type… and for once, I need to just listen to what my own body wants. It sounds simple enough, but I’m sure you can understand, there is fear there. There is fear of a lack of control – what if what my body wants is not “the right thing.” My body is a hungry animal, but I am cognizant – I can control it. No, I can’t. It’s this type of need for control that gets me down on my hands and knees in front of the toilet, trying to correct an “error” when really, I am just eating. And there is nothing wrong with that.
Once I release that fear, that need for control, that hold on my body and weight, I can be back in the flow. In that rhythm, I eat when I am hungry, I stop when I am full, I enoy the preparation of healthy meals, I do not resent others for their food choices, I do not hold onto food rituals, I do not base my mood off of the numbers that appear of the scale. Part me says – YOU CAN’T DO THIS, YOU DON’T KNOW “NORMAL,” – and part of me laughs at this aspect of myself. I have to lovingly hush that voice, and whisper calm, patient, nuturing words.
We’re not crazy. If anything, we are blessed with complexity. Why do the PB if it’s making us unhappy? To force our bodies into something it isn’t comfortable doing? I mean – come on – monitor your fruit so you don’t get too crazy on the carbs?? Wtf? Obviously we’re going to go crazy on carbs sooner or later, and I’d much rather it be when I desire a juicy plum and not when I go on autopilot with a bowl full of vanilla ice cream and chocolate syrup.
So I think the best idea for me is to splurge on all the yummy veggies this experiment prompted me to buy (F choking down the oil olive/balsamic gag mix on my salad – I’m gonna juice ’em!), eat oatmeal in the morning if I feel like it, quit excessing on the dairy/flesh products if I don’t want them, stop focusing my protein to be at a certain level, give myself the freedom to eat carbs if I want them, and just be real with myself. No more good food, bad food. It’s time to just give my body the attention it’s crying out for.
Do Cavewomen Cry?
I’ll admit I cried reading Cara’s e-mail. I feel like my carb binge this weekend was a personal failure. But maybe it’s not me that’s broken, maybe it’s the diet. Or maybe it IS me. I don’t know. She said everything I’ve been thinking, except she said it better. I want to add that I also received another e-mail from a reader (which I do not have permission to share) basically saying this experiment led her to binge and purge as well as take up the chew-n-spit method, despite never having been bulimic previously. This was all concluded by Leslie and my sister, good friends that they are, e-mailing me to say that my primal posts are beginning to sound “disordered” and they’re worried about me. (Leslie: “You’re freaking out about a plain non-fat yogurt?!?!”) And the depressing post-script to all this is MDA informing me that even one “bad carb day” will set you back to the very beginning, as far as switching to fat-burning for fuel and achieving ketosis. Just lovely.
So now to you guys – all of you doing this primal experiment with me and those of you just watching from the sidelines – what do I do? Do I stick with it and hope that this awful stage passes? I do hate to quit things. And it’s only two more weeks. And I really want this to work! Or do I realize that I’m doing a diet that’s causing some of us (me?) to revert to old eating disorders. Any of the rest of you experience the carb binge phenomenon when you try and do a low-carb diet? I’m wondering if this might be another way the genders differ in their response to the paleo plan. I e-mailed Aaron over at Mark’s Daily Apple about this but he hasn’t got back to me yet. If/when he does I’ll update this post with his response. In the meantime… help?
I always read about the primal stuff on Mark’s site, and I’m glad it works for him, but it’s definitely not for me. First, I just really hate the way meat tastes. Second, I’ve read the China Study and so much other info about how meat and dairy products lead to health problems (or at least higher risk of them) eventually, and I’m just not buying it. I feel great mostly vegan, and I don’t think meat is going to greatly improve my muscle mass or health in general. For what it’s worth, I vote that you drop that primal like a bad habit! Your body is a great barometer…If you feel bad, it can’t be good!
If the primal diet is causing you to revert to disordered eating, then by all means quit.
You’ve come too far to screw it all up for an experiment, but that’s just my humble opinion.
I’ve been trying to follow the primal diet too for the past week and while I’ve lost about 4 lbs I’ve had no energy, barely worked out (not my idea of a good thing)and been taking 3 hr naps. Trying to wake up in the morning is a struggle of epic proportions and the house is in desperate need of a cleaning. I haven’t binged on carbs but I did have a bowl of fiber one raisin bran with 1% milk and acted like it was the richest food I’ve ever tasted. I’m losing weight, my stomach looks lean and yet I can’t really enjoy my life because just unloading the dryer feels like such a huge task.
I have to say I am dropping it before anymore of my summer goes by without me and you definitely need to listen to your body-this is not a sustainable lifestyle for me and I don’t think it is for you either but ultimately that’s up to you and you’re a smart cookie. Forgive the sugary carb reference.
“I recommend taking it slowly”, says MDA. I think that’s good advice for almost every dietary change. Cold turkey works for some people (they’re usually the ones advocating other people to go cold turkey), but the vast majority will relapse when trying cold turkey (pardon the pun). Keep the dietary changes gradual. Slowly reduce the foods that aren’t allowed, and replace them with foods that are.
That being said, what are your motivations for trying out the primal blueprint? Do you just want to try it out? Do you want to prove that you can do it, having been challenged? Are you experimenting whether the primal diet is healthier than your previous diet?
I don’t think the “primal blueprint” is so much a diet as it’s a lifestyle change. If it’s not something you think you can maintain for a long time, then it better provide some short-term benefits.
From the sounds of it, short-term is miserable. If you think the misery could possibly subside and the long-term benefits are worthwhile, then start over and go gradual. Otherwise, end the misery and eat what you used to eat. You also don’t have to follow pb 100%. Take the parts that you enjoy and believe in, and incorporate them into your lifestyle.
I wouldn’t do something that made me feel awful. What’s the point?
Personally, I think we have evolved a bit from the past 10,000 years….Grains have been in the diet since 5-7000 years ago so there’s my bias. Do people eat too many processed carbohydrates? Of course. Does that mean we have to go cold turkey? I’m not convinced. Choosing a diet isn’t going to work the same for everyone; we all have the same genes but that doesn’t mean they are regulated in the same manner.
Eeek charlotte, stop, and stop now darling. Don’t see it as quitting a diet but saving your sanity! I’m sorry but I really don’t believe that anything you CHOOSE to pursue should result in such mental anguish.
I can entirely empathise with you, and Cara, I’ve usually binged to a disgusting degree on carbs before I embark on a low carb adventure, and then last no length at all before I relapse with another binge. I’d have been in a better state just maintaining a sense of moderation in my approach and abandoning strict regimes, but like Cara I have no idea how to be normal anymore…all or nothing holds such appeal, but ends up impossible and I hate myself for falling off the wagon when really it’s just my body doing what it’s been programmed to do.
I agree with dislyxec. I think any kind of huge, sudden dietary change (or change in general, for that matter) leaves one open to reverting to old/bad habits, or just going completely off your rocker. We’re creatures of habit, and making such a huge change so quickly would throw anybody off.
I personally think that the very solid, valuable and almost universally applicable idea behind the caveman diet or primal diet or whatever you want to call it is this: eat real food.
Dieticians and trainers and scientists will have many different views on what the ideal diet should be. But the cornerstone of every single plan is eating the good stuff, in moderation. I agree with the primal diet’s definition of “good stuff”: the veggies, fruits and meats that humans have been eating since we were identifiably human.
I’ve heard it stated another way: only eat things that your great-grandmother would recognize as food. It’s a bit of a looser interpretation, but the basic idea is the same, and you can apply this idea to your own life in many ways. For some people it would mean choosing natural, plain yogurt instead of that gogurt yogurt-in-a-tube stuff. For others it would mean eating whole grain breads instead of white. For others it could mean eliminating sugary drinks in favor of home-distilled whiskey… the idea in all cases is replacing a highly processed food with a food that’s closer down the chain to the natural materials it came from. And I think that’s an idea that can fit in anybody’s dietary philosophy and do a world of good.
I think the meat issue is a whole ‘nother can of worms. I personally think meat, eggs and dairy products are some of the healthiest, most natural foods a human being can eat. The problem is that every single meat & diary item you find in the supermarket is very, very processed. Even certified organic or free-range meats aren’t really very close to what grok ate when he killed a wooly mammoth, or what grandpa ate when he went out to the pasture to slaughter a cow.
Hi
I’ve been reading your blog on and off but have never posted. However, I did wanna chip in with how I went low-carb. In Jan I found MDA and decided to add a salad to lunch and dinner. I did not eliminate anything. Then a week later, I took out bread and other white flour things. I kept eating oatmeal and cracked wheat and salad and veggies. I increased my meat consumption slowly over a month/2. After that I did some more reading on the internet and found some other options. Right now I am doing the Anabolic Diet (in which you lo-carb for 5 days and then have a carb-up day(s) and then go back to lo-carbing it.
My point is this- I found that a diet which lets me eat carbs once a week lets me adhere to the lo-carb lifestyle the rest of the week. I think of it as a cheat meal.
My 2nd point is- new habits take 21 days to develop. If you start slowly, then you have a better chance of adhering to the changes you make without bingeing.
My 3rd point: Some people never do well on lo-carb diets, some folks do phenomenally well. It depends on how carb sensitive you are.
I am not a nutritionist, the above is merely based on what I have researched so far. BUT if a diet is leading to bingeing and purging, then you shd probably not adhere to that diet.
Hope this helps.
Hi Charlotte,
Sounds like you’re in a bit of a conundrum. I eat Paleo, which is like the Primal Diet I think, but am not quite an authority. If you need quite badly to chat with someone about this, may I suggest Mike O’Donnell at TheIFLife http://www.theiflife.com/ or posting at the Paleo section of Performance Menu http://www.performancemenu.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?f=8 (which Mike frequents as well). I’d suggest checking out that section even if you decide not to post there because other people have posted about similar problems.
Best,
Alicia
The times I’ve low-carbed I’ve been permenently exhausted. Carbs are fuel, as we all know, and I think if you’re a relatively active person (ie. anything more than sitting on your bum in an office all day – which was the only time I could just about manage to stick to plan) it’s going to be such a struggle to stick to.
I know your brain is not a million miles away from mine, and I certainly LOVE a neat little set of rules to adhere to. OH I LOVE IT. But when I find myself deviating from any rules I set myself, I feel like I’m failing. Whereas actually the RULES are failing ME.
It looks a little like the rules are failing you here. You are ACE, the rules SUCK.
If you decide to stick with it, check your motivation. Is it for wellness? Is it really really really? Or is it just for the Love Of The Plan?
TA x
I think my email isnt working as I responded to yours immediately yesterday (so yes. Im commenting with the message. how classy :)) my answer was ‘no Im not low’ (so yes. cryptic kinda. how classy :))
M.
I won’t offer advice just because there’s no way I can truly evaluate your priorities: how important is it that you stick to your blog experiments? If you’re doing them for a grander purpose, and will eventually achieve fame and fortune and educate the world like the guy who ate only McDonalds and nearly killed himself, it’s a different question than whether you want to stick to it to just to see if it works for you.
But that said, if it’s triggering disordered eating I would take that VERY seriously.
I tried to go primal for 3 days last week. That’s how long I lasted. I got home and was too tired to even hug my husband or pet the animals. Cutting out the carbs so quickly made me lethargic and muddled, neither of which are good for anyone. So I quit.
If it’s making you feel like crap, why do it? I know that you are dedicated to your experiments, but your sanity and energy levels are far more important than an experiment. Especially one that you don’t plan to carry over into the rest of your life! Still, if you feel the need to carry it out, maybe you could modify it so that you’re eating more than the 100g of carbs recommended or adding back in some dairy.
Most importantly, though – if this is causing you, or anyone else reading, to have disordered eating, STOP! Is it really worth having another battle, even if it is a smaller battle, just to say you finished the experiment?
Sorry if I sounded a bit preachy.
I have a few thoughts on this PB thing:
I was looking forward to your experiment, because I was curious about the whole PB thing but not quite ready to jump in (maybe never, to be honest). When I look at the “rules” it seemed a little to strict to me, and any plan that labels certain common whole foods as poisons worries me, frankly. While PB shows excellent results for Mark and others, I think its clear that there are a lot of folks that do very well health-wise on lots of other healthy, whole foods based diets that range from vegan to carnivore to macrobiotic. I wouldn’t discount any of them, but I wouldn’t buy into one of them if it didn’t suit my body’s needs, either.
PB’s strict rules combined with a 30 day window seem like eating disorder waiting to happen to me. Any time you restrict that many food in that short of a period, with no time to phase things out and adjust, most people will not be able to live with it. I would have been binging on things I never normally eat, either. I couldn’t even follow the commonly used program of writing a food journal because that brought on neurotic food tendencies and food guilt that I normally don’t suffer with.
Since I care about you (internet friend who I’ve never met but already like very much), i say f*#k the experiment and eat in a way that makes you feel happy and healthy, not guilty. The plan failed you, not the other way around.
But you can still CrossFit your brains out if it brings you joy.
Okay…Wow.
First question – why do you want to finish the last two weeks? I get the impression this was somewhat of an experiment (that being what you do here).. I sort of understand wanting to see the experiment through. But as far as the idea that “it seems to be working”…I don’t see you sticking with this long term, so how much benefit do you think you’ll get from sticking to it for the next two weeks, then reverting back to your normal way of eating?
I’m not saying you should quit, as you say, it’s only 2 more weeks. But, it does sound like you are experiencing some negative side effects, so I think you need to figure out if you can handle two more weeks and whether it’s worth it. I’m thinking if disordered eating is the result…not worth it.
Husband and I tried South Beach once, briefly. I thought it seemed to be a slightly less drastic low-carb diet, and Husband was willing, so we gave it a try. I think we lasted two weeks. I don’t really remember whether I felt tired or anything like that, but I did feel like I was spending all my time in the kitchen trying to come up with 3 meals a day that would keep both Husband and I happy (normally he’s on his own for breakfast & lunch, so this was definitely extra work). After a week of eggs for breakfast, I would have killed for a bowl of oatmeal.
Somehow it strikes me as a problem – that craving a bowl of oatmeal is wrong. It’s not like I was thinking about Froot Loops. Oatmeal. How is oatmeal bad?
The only good thing that came of that two weeks is that Husband discovered he could go without drinking soft drinks every day. But never again.
Body fat monitors can be bought online with only 2.99 postage from:
– bazaar.posmena.co.uk
I don’t think I can say it any better than everyone else, so I’m not going to try. (Lazy, right.)
If it makes you miserable and makes you binge on stuff you wouldn’t normally eat…STOP! 🙂
I don’t know if this will help or not but I’ve also been trying PB for about the same amount of time. I’ve found that in order to feel normal and be able to function on a level that lets me take care of my four kids I HAVE to consume some carbs as either fruits or breads depending on what I need. It’s not a lot and it enables me to stick to lots of veggies/meat without making me obsessively crave a pop/chips. I’m trying to benefit from the positives of more veggies (very good in general) and more meat (good for muscle growth, I’m a dude and I need some of that) while mitigating the negatives of ketosis which apparenlty makes my brain non functional. Maybe people can be groggy an non functional at an office and fight their way through a couple of weeks until they adjust but I simply cannot function like that when taking care of my kids all day.
I think your experiment has been a success. You’ve shown that this doesn’t work for you, and you’ve done it in only two weeks! That’s half the time it ususally take for you to decide something doesn’t work right? So all you’ve really done is save time. Great job. I’m impressed.
My feeling is that any diet which restricts so many foods right away is going to be hard to sustain. It’s so much easier to phase them out over time (I used to drink tons of soda and hated water. Now I drink tons of water and an occasional soda).
I really like Lucas’ suggestion of eating the way your great grandmother would. That’s kind of what I try to do a lot of the time (I do eat some processed foods, that’s hard to get away from, but the majority are whole foods). It’s the trans-fats and chemicals that really bother me about food nowadays.
I put a post up about restrictive diets on friday: http://leth-gourmet.blogspot.com/2008/07/friday-rant-diet-schmiet.html
I admire your dedication to this experiment, and understand that since you’ve already worked so hard, you want to follow through. But I’m going to have to echo the others who’ve said that if it’s creating disordered eating, it’s really not worth it. Your long term health (both mental and physical) is more important than a diet that’s not working for you.
Charlotte,
I just read something on Naked Nutrition Network yesterday that might possibly be helpful — carb rotating with high, low, and no carb days (evidently, rotating them this way rather than trying to go no carbs cold turkey doesn’t slow your metabolism or, more importantly, make you feel awful). I dunno, I haven’t tried it myself, but perhaps worth a read? I’m not sure what your policy is on posting links so I really hope I’m not breaking the rules by posting this for you to see (if I am, my apologies!): http://nakednutritionnetwork.com/rotate-carbs-for-rapid-fat-loss/.
first, I just want to clarify that my yogurt comment was said with love 🙂
Second, I think you should stop the primal thing. Some great fitness experiments are made to be broken, especially if they’re making you unhappy, hungry, and causing binges.
Cara’s email is powerful – I applaud her effort to start becoming more in tune with her body’s needs. I tend to eat sugar and candy to soothe my emotions (angry, stressed, bored, PMS, etc). I actually just wrote an article on mindful eating for Health and the concept is so intriguing…but I sometimes feel like, “how would I even start to do that? Could I trust my body to tell me when it’s TRULY craving a peanut butter cup?” I have a feeling , tho, that in time, I could gravitate towards that model of eating.
Charlotte, I’m wishing you love and luck and health and fruit and oatmeal. You will be great. I know it.
BTW this – “tell ya, it doesn’t get more neanderthal than pooping on a big pile of other people’s poop” – is why I don’t go camping unless a hotel is involved.
Ugh, the link got cut off. Attempt No. 2:
http://nakednutritionnetwork.com/
rotate-carbs-for-rapid-fat-loss/
Geez- I call 2 weeks a great experiment. Let it go… Take what you can benefit from and throw the rest out… move on 🙂
You know if that caveman had been standing there while you guys ate the pancakes he’d dove in too 🙂 Who knows how long before that next mastodon kill. BTW, why are those nasty pancakes/fake syrup part of every campout???
Thanks for sharing so honestly.
Lori
I know that this blog is all about the experiments, but if its causing you to revert back to an eating disorder or disordered eating then its probably better to stop. Ways of eating are things that work differently for everyone; you’ve tried this one and it doesn’t work for you. None of us wants for any disordered eating patterns to come back and haunt you! Take care of yourself, yeah?
Everybody else has already said it all. But that doesn’t mean I’m going to shut up. 🙂
As fascinated as I am with the whole “Primal Blueprint” and I read MDA daily, I think there are some problems with it. One of the big problems I see with this (or just about any) overly restrictive or specific diet plan is that it is a “one size fits all” and doesn’t account for all the variables.
I was reading a book recently (the title of which escapes me, and I can’t find it) which discusses various ways in which foods interact with genes, and the differences based on ethnicity, gender, etc. It was written by an anthropologist. A couple examples of things he talks about are how some peoples love hot spicy food, because it probably offered a protection against potentially harmful organisms in things such as meat, and how certain populations can’t eat fava beans.
The point is that different people react differenty to specific foods, combinations of foods, etc. Different populations, over the last few thousand years, have had access to different foods. (What percentage of the world’s adult population is lactose intolerant? The ability to consume lactose as an adult is the deviation, not the norm.) So, yeah, there are populations who can genuinely survive and thrive eating nothing but (seriously) meat and blood, or primarily fish, while others never touch anything that comes from an animal.
So, Primal works for Grok, and Mark? GREAT! I bet Mrs. Grok (and little Grok, and Marks’ wife, too, as he’s said before) ate/eat differently than Grok/Mark did/does. And the distant cousin JavaGrok ate a different diet, too.
And, I don’t really buy – at all – that Grok wouldn’t have eaten a lot of fruit. I think humans naturally have a sweet tooth, and Grok – certainly Mrs. Grok and Grok junior – would have eaten whatever fruit was available to them, and probably more fruit than veggies, and would have started eating fruits much sooner than veggies. But what do I know?
Oh honey, if it’s hurting you and setting you back. You should really stop.
And please don’t think of it as quitting, it’s doing something different and better for you!
Also you should keep in mind that not only are you on this diet, but you are also exercising all the time! Cavemen and the sorts didn’t have to exercise. They were always on the move and I don’t think they were that concerned with being chubby. What I’m trying to say is you NEED carbs. That is your main form of energy. After that is fat and from looking at you and your stats, you already have the perfect amount for you. And after that is muscle. Girl, you can’t lose your sexy muscles!
You overtrained by working out too much and I’m glad you realized it and got yourself back to happy. I think you may be “overtraining” with this diet.
Please hun, for you, reconsider.
If it doesn’t kill you it makes you stronger. Sounds like this one is not making you stronger. Only leaves the other option. Mark seems to think he is so healthy and fit due to the primal way. It seems to me he really developed himself as a great tri-athlete before he ever went primal.
I’d throw in the towel. This shows how much diet really is a four-letter word.
You’re numero uno! Not meat.
Charlotte, as a friend, I also vote that you stop the experiment here. Heaven knows I’m no nutritionist, but weren’t you happy with the foods you were eating before? Before the start of the Primal thing didn’t you already feel healthy and fit? If so, why mess with a good thing? I personally feel if a diet is so restrictive that it’s causing you to feel guilty about low-fat yogurt and fruit and oatmeal, something is amiss.
Many comments already stated….I won’t be redundant. Nice post.
YOU are NOT the problem Charlotte, the problem is the diet. I absolutely agree with what Kristy said; if you feel bad, it can’t be good.
As far as listening to your body and Intuitive Eating, I have been doing that for almost a year. I’ll be honest, it’s REALLY hard sometimes, but the freedom is worth it. I have my bad moments (the past couple of weeks have been really touch and I have, in fact, put on a little weight recently), but I haven’t binged, purged, or been on a diet in a year. It takes time: we didn’t learn to starve and mistreat our bodies overnight, and un-learning those habits takes time. It may mean a weight gain before the loss, or it may mean NO weight loss and just coming to accept and truly love and appreciate your body. I know how scary that is, and I have had a lot of moments of wanting to give up and go back on a diet, but I just can’t.
This morning, on the news, a nutritionist was saying that “breakfast cannot be more than 300 calories!” and, for a second, I bought into it. Until I shook my head clear and thought “you’re not the boss of me!” OK, not the most erudite, mature response, but WHO MAKES THESE RULES?!?!
I can’t live by random diet rules anymore. So I’ll continue with IE.
Sorry for such a long post.
To me a good rule of thumb is to follow a diet/way of eating that you can do for the rest of your life. This is not the one. I’ve been doing low carbs (about 30%) and then doing a high carb day it works great. I also do a lower carb day in there as well on my day off from working out. It works for me. Keep playing around and you’ll find something that works for you. Good luck!
Joy
http://fitandhealthygal.blogspot.com/
I second everyone in saying quit it if it makes you binge/purge/feel miserable. I enjoy Mark’s blog and his primal idea has made me pay more attention to what I eat, but I doubt Grok would have continued his lifestyle if it led to an ED. Also, what good is being skinny if you feel like crap?
I also like Lucas’s idea of only eating what Grandma would recognize. I’ll have my carbs (mmm, cake), I’ll just make it from scratch. Plus, mixing batter has to burn calories, right?
I’d like to add a little common sense to this comment board. Many of you are saying that there is nothing wrong with Charlotte, but instead with the diet. What about all the people that follow the Primal Blueprint, love it, live it and have achieved ultimate levels of health and fitness? If it is the diet, what is wrong with this large group of freaks? Well nothing. This is flawed logic, people. This is but one case, and the merits of just about anything shouldn’t be judged by a single example. With that said, if it isn’t working for you I’d suggest quiting it too. Just don’t bag on the Primal Blueprint just because it isn’t for you.
I’ve been doing the diet since the 1st but since my diet log begins on Sunday’s I count the 29th and 30th of June in my first week.
I went from an average 282 grams of carbs per day during the first 26 weeks of this year to an average of 81 grams per day during my first two weeks on the primal diet. My protein went from an average of 108 grams to 154 grams per day and my fat went from an average of 43 grams to 54 grams per day.
I generally eat small meals several times a day.
I’ve lost six pounds in the first two weeks, mostly right at my waist. I figure that if I give up four more pounds over the next two weeks I will be at my ideal weight and waste line – which is pretty much what I had in high school (more years ago than you can probably imagine).
I ate no beef and few eggs before this diet and have eaten both items every day during the diet. I also drank more than a pot of coffee every day for years before this diet and I gave that up for the month just to see what would happen.
I am male and 5”9” tall and my only real exercise is long walks with very short intervals of jogging.
I haven’t run into any of the issues you have run into. I haven’t had any cravings for carbs and didn’t even have the massive headaches I’ve experienced when I have cut out coffee in the past.
I am no nutrition expert but I am thinking that if I did have carb cravings, I would increase my carbs in small amounts throughout the day to see if I could both satiate the craving without going over the limit. If that didn’t work, I’d increase the carbs in small amounts until I hit the point where the cravings diminished. I would then try to find a way to counteract those carbs in a healthy manner. First, I would try to increase my walking by a mile per day for every 100 calories of carbs I added to my daily intake. Second, I would try to insure that my fiber intake was 35 grams per day or higher and use psyllium as needed to achieve that goal.
If those things didn’t work, I’d probably abandon the primal diet and pick one that was more geared to my needs. I also think that we each have so many variables in our lives, diets, genes, etc. that what works for one person will not work for another and that the best choice is to choose that which works best for me and let others choose that which works best for them.
As it turns out, I’ve already told my friends and family that when I get to my ideal weight and waist, I’m dropping the beef and eggs. I’ll still keep my protein above a gram daily for each per pound of weight and try to keep my carbs in the 100 – 150 range but I’m not going to stay primal to do it. I like pasta and pizza way too much to permanently cut them out of my diet.
I enjoy your posts immensely, support any decision you make and look forward to reading about what you choose to do.
Like Charlotte, I too came to PB/EF/IF (etc.) from a high-carb (a la Clarence Bass) lifestyle. I too used to eat oatmeal for breakfast every morning. In my own experience, it is never wise to implement drastic changes at once. As I understand PB (singling it out from the other extreme low-carb stuff out there), it does not really forbid any food; rather, it gives you a “down and dirty” ranking system for food and encourages you to eat stuff high on the list while minimizing or avoiding entirely the stuff lower down. The way I live PB is as follows. On an ideal day, I follow Mark’s plan to the letter. On a day when I feel hungrier, I eat more nuts and fruit between meals. On a day when the world and my taste buds conspire against “ideal” PB, I may have oatmeal (with plenty of nuts, fruits, good dairy) for breakfast or a fish taco (complete with whole-grain shell) for dinner. I enjoy the occasional (read weekly) ice-cream and don’t feel too bad about it: look up a UK blogger known as “Hyperlipid” for my reasons. Like any diet, PB is great, as long as you (the dieter) know how to apply it without killing yourself over stuff that does not really matter. As long as you are moving in the right direction (eating lots of salad and top-notch PB protein generally), the occasional lapse into oatmeal (which is infinitely preferable to Little Debbie et al) is relatively inconsequential. My two cents: use PB as a lifestyle more than as a “diet” and don’t sweat the small stuff. Good luck to all, and thanks to Charlotte for a great column. I really enjoy reading.
Here’s what a wise woman once told me: Life is as easy or as difficult as you want it to be. I still apply this to my life (almost daily) and am forever trying to convince irrational preschoolers of same (futile, for now), and I think it works in your situation, too. And for what it’s worth, after checking out those cool fitness model photos I know you have a fantastic, healthy, fit bod. From where I stand you look like the kind of woman who CAN eat what she wants when she wants, and because she values her health and her body, and follows that fabulous 80/20 rule it isn’t a problem for her (so long as she has the confidence to believe and trust herself). And that too, is as difficult or as easy as you want it to be. Oh. My. God. I sound like my mother.
Just in case you read today’s MDA, but didn’t dig down into the actual study, the study says this:
“The present study has several limitations. We enrolled few women; however, we observed a significant interaction between the effects of diet group and sex on weight loss (women tended to lose more weight on the Mediterranean diet), and this difference between men and women was also reflected in the changes in leptin levels. This possible sex-specific difference should be explored in further studies.”
There were only 45 women involved in that study, and it suggests that for the women, Mediterranean worked better for them.
Dislyxec, yeah, it’s unfortunate that only 10 women started the low-carb part (and we don’t know how many finished). I would have loved to have seen more women in the overall study (and especially low-carb) but it was done within a group of one company’s employees in Israel, most of whom were either men, or most of whom were overweight men.
Something I’ve always been curious about with the PB diet thing is how on earth it is possible to eat seasonally within this framework. There just are not that many low-carb fresh veggies available in the cooler months on most of this planet. Should we all really be eating the big salad for lunch when it has to come shipped a thousand miles by refrigerated truck?
Also, as a student of physical anthropology who specialized in neandertals, I am constantly trying to figure out what is meant by “the caveman diet.” I can guaran-frickin-tee you that come boreal blueberry season, the Grok household was gorging themselves on carbs. I’m not sure what environment of evolutionary adaptedness we are trying to reach here–10,000 years ago in North America (e.g. fully modern Native Americans)? –75,000 years ago in ice age Europe (classic neandertals)? –100,000 years ago on the African savannah (hello wild tubers!). Eating seasonally would have been HUGE part of any of these diets, so maybe the primal blueprint should really be all about bingeing seasonally.
And what the hell makes anyone think that any diet that we adopted at any one point in our evolutionary history is “the best”? After all, it was the advent of agriculture that increased life expectancy and allowed for the development of written language and all that comes with that (sluggish brain function much, PBers?). This is not to sy that loads of problems did not also come with agriculture, but there you have it–the increased reliance on grains is both good and bad.
If the PB works for all y’all out there, more power to you. But this weird “caveman” language obviously has me confused. I know that it is mostly just a shorthand kind of concept, but I find it odd. And, of course, abbreviating Priml Blueprint all over the place makes me crave peanut butter. oops.
That is all.
Pat, just to clarify, I don’t think anyone here meant to imply that anyone who follows this plan is a freak, or that the diet in and of itself is wrong or bad (I certainly didn’t mean to imply any of that, and I really apologize). What I should have said is that the diet is a problem FOR CHARLOTTE, and that the diet MENTALITY is problematic, and that mentality can lead many of us back into disordered eating. It seems to be a way of life for you, and one that is working for you, and if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it!
Coming in late, but I wanted to say that the excerpt from Cara’s email resonated with me so strongly it’s almost painful.
After two decades of dealing with disordered eating, the scales are gradually falling away from my eyes and I see a lot of these “diets” – Paleo/Primal, Master Cleanse, IF, caloric restriction, the various detox diets – as little more than opportunities for those of us who feel insecure or out of control to use extreme food and exercise documentation and regimens to regain some sense of power and control over our bodies.
If any of these ways of eating/living work for you, I’m glad. But I think there’s something inherently emotionally unhealthy about obsessively chronicling every calorie, macronutrient gram, and ingedient that enters your body.
And yes, I agree that this is especially a problem for women. We make up the overwhelming majority of compulsive and emotional eaters. We crave sweet foods more than men. We’re more likely to be working a “second shift” – caring for young children or elderly parents in addition to working a full-time job outside the home – which means we don’t have as much time to de-stress, eat healthfully, or exercise. It also means that we’re more likely to take a shortcut to comforting ourselves when we feel tired, stressed, and overwhelmed – we binge eat (usually carbs) and medicate with food.
Cara, I work every day on trying to trust my body and listen to it. It’s one of the hardest things I do. I recommend you check out one of Geneen Roth’s books and try to endure the New Age-y tone to get to some of the experiences and advice she relates in her book. I wish you both the best of luck.
Just to add my 2 cents. I think the problem that you are having is too much too soon. I’ve been incorporating more and more primal aspects into my diet, but slowly. after six months I no longer need to eat carbs most days, but do eat whatever I want 2 meals a week. At first I had to have toast with breakfast, after 3 months or soI don’t even crave it. I used to need yams near the end of the week, but no more. I still eat what I want 2 meals a week. Sometimes its pizza, sometimes its bread with dinner, sometimes its dessert (Ok, there is always dessert with both meals a week.) Maybe this is bad, but, before I ate carbsa dn processed food all week and then still ate those crap meals on the weekend, so if you end up eliminating 5 days a week of carb eating to just 2, I think that is progress. This was a little rambling, but I hope it helps.
I was on the PB diet for a month, and thought I was going to die.
LITERALLY, I was so fatigued and lethargic that I thought it was the end.
Then I quit the diet and just went to eating healthy, and haven’t looked back.