You can thank Reader Forest for this little gem. Hope you weren’t eating!Welcome to Dueling Diets! I’m your host, Crazy Charlotte. Today I’ll be pitting the Primal Blueprint a la Mark Sisson against the Engine 2 Diet a la Rip Esselstyn, all as part of my “Striving for Perfection” Experiment this month.
I’m going to be honest with you. This has not been the best Experiment. Physically and mentally I would have been a lot better off with my original plan of kickboxing. And yet I’m still glad I’m doing this. Why? Because this is quintessentially how I think. I like extremes. I like to do things all the way. My mother loves to tell the story of 18-month-old Charlotte screaming bloody murder for 45 minutes straight until I learned how to buckle my sandals all by myself. I’m still that girl but now in big girl panties. Some would look at that 18-month-old and think “Now there’s a lifetime full of frustration ahead of that one.” But if this blog has taught me one thing, it is that I am not alone in the way I think. My brand of crazy’s got company.
Perfectly Primal
So back to the dueling diets. First up was The Primal Blueprint. Why oh why, many of you asked, would I attempt a lifestyle that had made me so miserable the first time around? It was because, due to the way I imploded during my Primal Experiment, I wasn’t sure if the epic fail was due to the diet not working for me or me not working the diet. I hadn’t gone “full primal” and so I was left wondering if I simply hadn’t given it a fair shot. This idea lingered in the back of my head as I read all kinds of wonderful success stories about people for whom this diet has been a Godsend and as I read Mark’s Daily Apple and I pored over the latest diet research. So when Mark Sisson approached me about giving it another go, I was interested.
He advised me to start slow to avoid another elephant-poop level implosion and so for three weeks I did mostly primal (lots of fat, fish, nuts and veggies at every meal plus a couple of servings of dairy.) I gained about a pound a week. I was not happy but kept plugging away at it because everyone says it takes three weeks to get your body adjusted to burning fat for fuel instead of carbs. Finally, after watching the scale go upupup and my mood go downdowndown, I told Mark that I had two choices: a) to go Full Primal (take out the dairy and add meat) or b) quit. For the record, I want to say that he was nothing but kind and supportive. It was me pushing me, not him pushing me.
So then came my Week-O-Perfect Living. I went full primal. SAAANNNNDDAAAALLLLLS!!! I did it. One week of perfect primal living. And I gained two pounds. That was it for me. I’d given it a full 4 weeks and had nothing but 5 extra pounds, a bucket of tears and some additional crazy issues to show for it. I quit. The Primal Blueprint doesn’t work for me. For realz this time. (Which is not to say that it doesn’t work for anybody. There are lots of Primal success stories out there – check out Son of Grok for a great PB blog.)
Vigilantly Vegan
Next up, Perfect Vegan. Like the Primal Blueprint, I’ve done vegan before. I did okay on it until I decided that a life without brie and scrambled eggs wasn’t worth living. Not to mention that I don’t tolerate processed soy products well and they’re hard to avoid as a vegan. But for my week of Perfect Vegan living, I bought a package of the evil but supertasty Spicy Black Bean Gardenburgers and prepared to stink out the Gym Buddies (they’re so forgiving!).
This week was a lot easier for me to stick to, mostly because if given the choice between giving up meat and giving up carbs, I’ll ditch the meat in a heart beat. I discovered I still hate soy milk but Heather at Heather Eats Almond Butter (who also gained weight on the Primal Blueprint) clued me into coconut milk and I might have a new love. The one hitch is that the Engine 2 permutation of vegan is that it is low fat. I thought this would be totally horrible – and I’ll admit that counting out my 5 almonds a day made me want to tantrum – but it wasn’t as bad as I’d thought. In the end, my weight stayed stable. I didn’t drop any of the Primal poundage like I’d hoped but at least for the love of little green apples I stopped gaining.
Conclusions
A recent study in The New England Journal of Medicine looked at dieters on several different popular diets. Their conclusion – and this will surprise no one – is that despite all the hype, it doesn’t really matter much which diet you pick as long as you cut your calories. I know, the whole “eat less” thing again. The key is to find the diet that helps your body live with the calorie restriction the best. And that apparently can differ from person to person.
I think I gained on the Primal Blueprint because it gave me a free pass on the nuts and avocados. I can literally eat my way through a 35-serving jar of raw nuts (thank you Super Target!) in one week. That’d be, uh, 5 servings of nuts per day. I can eat a whole avocado in a few bites as a snack. It’s hard to cut – or even maintain calories – with that kind of excess. The Primal Blueprint promises that you can eat all the fat you want as long as you don’t have carbs but I think they weren’t counting on butterballs like me. (My other theory is that some women have hormone issues that the Primal Blueprint isn’t equipped to handle but I don’t have any research to back that up. Just a bitter woman hunch.) Conversely, I think the Engine 2 Diet worked for me because it reined me in on the fat and I also liked the food choices better and so felt less deprived than I did on Primal.
However, neither diet did what I wanted them to. And that’s probably because there isn’t a diet out there that is designed to melt off a bad self-image. I am so grateful to all of you who commented on my Bad Thoughts post or sent me a personal e-mail on the topic. You all had some great ideas for stopping repetitive bad thoughts and were so generous about sharing what worked for you. (I LOVE YOU GUYS!) For my benefit, I’m going to summarize them here:
– Art therapy (for me it’s drawing but it could be anything you do with your hands that takes your mind out of it’s thought holding pattern.)
– Picture a stop sign or some other image
– Replace the bad thoughts with positive ones
– Refute the negative assertions
– Practice saying kind things to yourself in the mirror
– Write kind things about yourself on paper, use the paper whenever the bad thoughts attack
– Cognitive behavioral therapy
– Relaxation techniques like yoga, meditation and/or guided imagery
– Acupuncture and/or massage
– Anti-anxiety or anti-depression medication
Here’s what I learned: I need to start listening. To myself. And stop listening to other people. The hard part of that lesson is that I don’t trust myself. Most days, I don’t even really like myself. It’s funny how it all goes back to that self respect thing. I think that random diet gurus know my body better than I do. That’s just silly. I’ve got to learn to start listening to what my spirit is telling me and to start treating myself with some dignity.
So now I’m curious about you. I know that some of you have been through this process and come out the other end. How did you finally get off the diet coaster and figure out what really worked for you? Which diet/lifestyle plan have you found works best for your body? Are you a primal wunderkind? A vegan vigilante? An everything-in-moderation mama? And for the rest of us still caught in this wasteland (waist land?), do you want out as badly as I do?
Hey Charlotte,
Do you think that it’s possible that this blog is your enemy…God forbid, I know. What I mean is, when you are consistently trying something new to lose weight/tone up/lean out, it must be hard on your body to adjust. I would really think that it would take some considerable time for our bodies to adjust to changes in our diet, so when it’s a constant change-up, I’d have to think the body would rebel…either by gaining drastically or losing drastically. I have absolutely no scientific evidence to support this point, but if I look at training my body the same as I train my children…consistency is the key girl! Just a thought!
aboyn3girls – interesting point (and one my therapist has brought up several times) but I have two issues with that. 1) Everything I’ve read actually says that changing up your workouts/diet is the BEST thing to do. You want consistency in your commitment to your healthy lifestyle but you actually do want to change up the details quite often to avoid plateauing! 2) In regards to the mental aspects, on one hand I think doing this blog sometimes indulges my unhealthy obsessions but on the other hand it’s SUCH good therapy for me to get it out there. YOu know?
So many questions, so not wanting to leave a huge comment. I am working off getting off the rolercoaster precisely by listening to my body not the diet gurus. And I am loving it mainly because I have never had so much respect for my body before, even when I was 10kg lighter.
Blogging keeps me constantly thinking about it, which I agree is both a form of therapy because it challenges me to learn from my experiences so that I have something to post, but can also be bad, because at times, it’s all I think about (and read about!).
Hi Charlotte,
I would sure love to be off of the diet coaster. I’ve been working really hard lately to listen to my body, but I have such an all-or-nothing mentality that is hard to beat. I successfully followed the south beach plan for 8 months (whole grains, lean meats, low-fat cheeses, nuts) and my body really loved that lifestyle. I felt healthy and found lots of great substitutions for foods I craved. Then the holidays rolled around and my head got in the way of what my body really wanted…and I’ve been fighting it ever since. It’s so strange how when I KNOW what my body wants it feels impossible to just DO sometimes.
I tried the low-carb thing for a while, everyone kept saying it was the best way to live and how carbs were evil etc. It didn’t do much for me, and I never noticed any bad effects from carbs in the first place. I do know I feel best when I’m not eating sugar though, so try to do that. We all have to find the thing that works for us.
I read the book “Intuitive Eating.” I still have some hard days, but the book changed the way I think about food. The book is about listening to your body ect.
Oh, Charlotte! Even though you are not listening to advice, being a doctor, I’m habituated to lack of compliance in people, so I give advice anyway 🙂 At least I’M listening.
DO NOT DO EATING EXPERIMENTS! You have been eating long enough to know what’s best for you by now. I don’t feel screwing around with your brain chemistry by drastically changing what you eat is a good idea. Your stability is more important than any blog.
Love you buddy, and this stuff worries me.
I think I’ve found something that works for me for now (I accept the fact that I’m 21 and my metabolism could change in the future), and it’s just eating what I want, with a few big categories either removed (soda) or minimized (HFCS, sugar).
read this a few times and end up back at DrJ’s comment too.
(cringes a bit and feels uncomfortable)
we love the great FITNESS experiment.
I think I’d have the same problem with going primal; I can pack away the nuts and other high fat foods like nobody’s business.
We do need to listen to what our bodies tell us. Take care of yours!
It’s funny…the one “diet” that made me gain the most weight was the one that got me over my body issues. I tried Intuitive Eating and really focused hard on accepting the body I had, but after a 20 pound gain, I decided IE just wasn’t for me. I’m glad I did it though, because when I finally got serious about losing weight it was so much easier because I didn’t have the body image issues getting in my way. I’ve still got 20 more pounds to go, but I’ve learned to accept (and dare I say, dig) the thighs I’ve got. Now I mainly focus on work outs and just try to watch my food portions a little more closely. It seems to be working and most of the time I’m happy with that.
Just my 2 cents. 🙂
Primal (ok, mostly primal) is working great for my husband and I. In 6 weeks I have lost 12.5# and he has lost 15.5#. My blood pressure is normal for once and I don't have that gnawing hunger and urge to binge I used to have with low-fat high-carb. We eat some nuts and avocados, but not a lot. A serving or two daily. That may be part of the difference. Also, you are already a lot thinner than we are. My husband and I are both likely insulin resistant.
That said, eat the way that feels right for you. This has by far been the "easiest" "diet" for us to stay on. We both had that aha! moment which never happened on other diets.
R&T Mom
Primal (ok, mostly primal) is working great for my husband and I. In 6 weeks I have lost 12.5# and he has lost 15.5#. My blood pressure is normal for once and I don't have that gnawing hunger and urge to binge I used to have with low-fat high-carb. We eat some nuts and avocados, but not a lot. A serving or two daily. That may be part of the difference. Also, you are already a lot thinner than we are. My husband and I are both likely insulin resistant.
That said, eat the way that feels right for you. This has by far been the "easiest" "diet" for us to stay on. We both had that aha! moment which never happened on other diets.
R&T Mom
Primal (ok, mostly primal) is working great for my husband and I. In 6 weeks I have lost 12.5# and he has lost 15.5#. My blood pressure is normal for once and I don't have that gnawing hunger and urge to binge I used to have with low-fat high-carb. We eat some nuts and avocados, but not a lot. A serving or two daily. That may be part of the difference. Also, you are already a lot thinner than we are. My husband and I are both likely insulin resistant.
That said, eat the way that feels right for you. This has by far been the "easiest" "diet" for us to stay on. We both had that aha! moment which never happened on other diets.
R&T Mom
My problem is that I fall victim to black and white thinking: “Hunger is an on/off switch (and mine is broken).” “There’s one perfect way of eating out there for me.”
I am trying to approach eating well as a lifelong relationship that I slowly work at improving. Rather than a continuous cycle of deprivation and overindulgence. It’s hard. But I have seen improvement recently since I gave up my food journal and started doing yoga and meditation (thanks to February’s Experiment!)
I’ve always had extreme mind-body disconnect. Which I am slooowy fixing. It takes time. I think we fear our hunger above all things. I think we need to face it, look at it gently and curiously. Without judgment. Then begin to slowly unravel it and identify all its different faces. Not sure if that makes any sense whatsoever!
But I am moving forward. I am at a Happy Weight for me (and it’s on the lower end of my healthy range incidentally) and I am trusting myself and eating intuitively and not gaining weight. It’s awesome.
I have the love/hate myself dichotomy too. What, I said “too” as in tacitly implying that you love as well as hate yourself? I could very well be mistaken as to whether or not this case applies to you also, but part of what my therapist and I have talked about is that maybe I think negative about myself and strive for perfection because, well, maybe I secretly think I’m pretty close to it or that it’s at least attainable for me (not attainable, but to be as perfect as imperfectly possible….problems of language over behavior really)? That is I regard myself so highly that anything short of an imaginary imperfect perfect is viewed as failure. When I eat too much (and by too much, I fear i just mean the amount my nutritionist actually recommends I eat) the term I most often whip myself with is “weak.” I feel “weak” that I ate X or “weak” that I cut my workout from 3 to 2 hours. it blows my mind how “normal” I appear to outsiders. I have a pristine diet, yet the occasional indulgence, imbibe alcohol now and again, workout every day for at least a couple of hours, am slim and muscular, but if they only knew how much I think about food, how much I love being SUPER hungry for meals because then I’ve EARNED them/have an excuse to eat, how much I hate my hair (scraggly puft comment was mine; thanks for answering!!!), and how I could use band-aids, nay, nerd candies to cover my ta-tas instead of a bra should I wish (my last bra I bought in the target little girls section, not even an XL, just an L, and I’m five feet four and a half!) this was long, I apologize, and I wrote it more and more hastily as I free thought (hence the increasinly poor grammar etc.) but please feel free to type any thoughts to me/for me! I would just email, but I am uncomfortable with disclosing “real identity” over the net. My boyfriend, who just witnessed me typing ferociously, just informed me I have a girl crush on you, haha.
Thank you so much for that list of ways to combat negative self image. I definitely need to use a few of those.
I don’t think I could stick to either of those diets. I am a middle of the road omnivore. I needs my meats and I needs my veggies. I’ve been trying to keep my calories down, but strangely enough, I’ve stopped loosing weight. Frustratingly, my caloric intake is under 1500 calories a day. I’m thinking at this point, what i eat is getting to be as important as how much I eat…which goes against every study out there, I know. *sigh* Maybe I just need to cut out more, or burn more?
Great Post! Im glad that you won’t be trying the Primal again. I don’t think all plans work for everyone and this poost re-proves that. I am going to try the raw diet next week for 7 days… but i predict i’ll be cranky without jelly beans :p
The only thing that has ever worked for me is just eating basically whatever I want (within reason) mindfully and in moderation. To lose, I have to count calories. To maintain, my body pretty much knows what it needs and asks for it, I just have to run it through the common sense filter. If I’m craving a burger and fries, I probably need some fats and protiens. If I’m craving ooey gooey desert, I probably need some fruit. I CANNOT do anything that involves eliminating just about anything from my diet. If I can’t have carbs, that’s all I want. If I can’t have fat, dancing cheeseburgers follow me around all day.
On trusting yourself – my job has forced me to get better at this, but I’m still working on it. I like things supported by math and logic, not magic and intuition. I, also, like things that are black and white.
i have to agree with the Miz and Dr. J.
I’ve been thinking for a while now that you seem to know intuitively what works for you. Yet–like many of us–seem to think there is still a magic answer out there. A magic diet combo that will let you stay at your personal “happy weight (not the Self mag one).
I think where you should be searching instead is why your body tends to gravitate to a certain weight. It seems everyone has a weight to cling to. I’ve read much of your blog posts and I have to say—you seem to lose some weight when embarking on an impossible to stick to diet, then return to a 5lb gain–seemingly your “fit charlotte” set-point.
Anyway, those are my thoughts. The demons seem to be from within–not food. I think we can all relate to this. Let’s start talking about why we’re so hard on ourselves!
p.s. I enjoyed the multiple alliteration employed in this article. chance or theme? When is the great fitness magazine coming out 🙂
ugh, thanks for that picture. My stomach is a little funny from eating too many cucumber slices and I have a weird taste in my mouth (maybe I didn’t wash them well enough? ew)
I feel like that dude on the roller coaster. :-8
[fixed typo; shaking head over self-proofing skills, or lack thereof]
I’m a moderation-in-everything, eat-to-the-blood glucose meter mama. My body seems to like it best when I eat a combo of protein + carb at my meals, eat smaller meals throughout the day, and get plenty of water and tea. (And exercise!) I don’t have any “forbidden” foods, but I tend to steer clear of refined/processed starches and foods with lots of sugar and little nutritive value. I still have to be careful about “portion creep,” and I think I always will…about the only thing I can eat to excess without bad impact is non-starchy vegetables. But I’m content with my new way of eating, and it’s helped me become much healthier. But of course, what works best for me may not work best for everyone else, either physically or ideologically (I’m not vegan, for example).
Charlotte,
I was so interested to read the summary of your dietary challenge. I was the same way on the PB diet – I think it was the Costco sized bags of raw nuts and avocados that did me in. You cannot tell me I can eat as much as I want of anything, because I WON’T stop eating it.
I think I could definitely do the Engine 2 diet if it weren’t for the low-fat factor. Otherwise, it’s pretty much how I eat these days. I will eat dairy occasionally, but I’m feeling much better without it.
It took me a while to figure out what works best for me, but I can easily maintain my weight on whole grains, veggies, AND fat. I eat so much nut butter, it’s almost embarrassing. I also eat meat but not a lot, and red meat is very rare in my world (no pun intended). I know Mark Sisson would cringe, but I eat at least 2 huge bowls of oats a day, not to mention other grains. I do stay away from bread for the most part, but otherwise complex carbs are my friend. That being said, I cannot do much fruit. Fructose goes right to my belly…literally.
Thanks for the shout-out, and you are totally right about listening to yourself. We are all different. What may work for some does not work for others. Only you know what works for Charlotte. So listen. 🙂
PS – Sunshine Burgers in Garden Herb. Soy AND dairy free. Delicious! Look for them in the freezer case at Whole Foods.
Hello. Please don’t do anymore diets 🙁 They aren’t good for your mind whether or not they are good for your body.
I wrote to you a while back about my own eating/exercising issues and shortly thereafter went into therapy and tried eating intuitively. That sure backfired, and I’ve recently come out of a 3 month long pattern of extreme 10,000 calorie a day binge-eating disorder.
What I’ve found is that all my issues stem from me needing control over my food, and when I give even the best-intentioned diet/self help guru or plan this control over my food, the disordered part of me just runs rampant.
So basically I’ve just taken various aspects I liked of diets I’ve done and amassed my own diet to suit my body and likes. This way I get the organization and regiment I very much crave in my eating habits, but without the mental freak-out and consequent body damage. I just make sure to get enough calories and macronutrients for what my metabolism needs.
I say this as someone who’s been vegan for the better part of a decade, and as someone whose known a large number of healthy and happy vegans: veganism adopted for the sole purpose of weight loss is Bad News. I have literally never seen it end well! The problem is that when you adopt a very different and somewhat restrictive diet, the only way to truly thrive and maintain your health is to spend some time working hard on learning how to get enough, not worrying about getting too much. Enough calories, enough protein, vitamins, minerals, etc. This takes practice, knowledge and skill, and adding in a bunch of extra restrictions–some of which are directly opposed to health goals –really sabotages you. New vegans can have a tough time: they have to learn new recipes and figure out how to replace a lot of key staples. If you jump in without knowing what you’re doing–or focusing on the wrong things–you can end up with a really bad food pattern (and serious health problems).
Remember, with all diets: what you leave in (or add in) is just as important as what you leave out. If not more so.
A little late to the comments game but here is my two cents – the only way I have been able to lose weight and keep it off is by exercising and having that exercise be for a goal.
In 3 days, I will run my first marathon. After that? I already have a “spring training” plan to increase my speed for my next marathon.
And in the summer I will need strong arms (among other things!) to improve my surfing skills, so off to the gym I go.
Doing things like this makes my diet easy – I basically follow weight watchers because it allows me to keep track of calores (via points) and to keep a record of what I eat. I also WANT to eat healthier because I know it will help in my training.
So I guess what I am saying is that for me, the whole 90% exercise, 10% diet axiom rings true.
This vegan agrees with the other vegan. Going vegan was never about restriction for me at all. I felt *relieved* because I wasn’t a part of something I find deplorable, and I took plenty of time to transition. But for weight loss–bad, restrictive news!
Charlotte,
Thank you for the link!I am definitely one of those people that going primal was a godsend for. I havent mnaged to overdo avacados in anyway 9i eat a whole avado per day) watching nuts is something i have always had to do though. They are calorie dense and are a trigger food. My friend wasn’t losing an weight going primal either. One day he told me that he only had “2 handfuls of nuts per day”. lol I put him on a “nut quota” of 10-15 buts per day and bam weight came of. He has lost over 50#’s so far. Love your blog as always… keep up the good work!
The SoG
I just found your blog, and this was post was so apropos since I'd been writing about some similar things. I love your writing, and I love the insights! It was fascinating to read about your experience with Paleo, I'm still trying to figure out what to eat and how.
I wrote about this post today over at my own blog, and I added you to my reader. Thanks for the great blog!