Paleo food log 10/8/10

1 cottage 12% + 2 carrots + 1 bell pepper
1 nectarine + 55gr Walnuts

PWO protein shake

1 lamb sausage + 2 chicken wings + 1 cup vegetable coconut curry

Asado meat + salad (lettuce, bell pepper, mushroom, pear, bacon, EVOO)

Mango + heavy cream shake

Paleo food log

I'm going to use the blog as a paleo food log for now.

Aug. 9th:

4 eggs scrambled + 4 strips of bacon
2 carrots

3 lamb sausages + 1 cup vegetable curry in coconut milk
1 nectarine

1 Mango
Protein shake PWO

3 slices of ham with parmesan cheese and lettuce
60 gram mixed nuts

1 Pork chop + salad (lettuce, bell pepper, pear, sunflower seeds, EVOO)

Variety is the spice of life

I'm almost three weeks in the experiment. I have eaten the same thing for the past 21 days - nothing more or less. It still isn't hard. The only thing in the menu that I'm really bored with is the broccoli for lunch. I think I can have steaks and eggs every day for the rest of my life. The fruit shake also, even though the heavy taste of coconut milk will get old.

My weight is creeping very slowly downward. Latest reading was 83.8 Kg.

If you want to see how important variety is, look at pictures of Tiger Woods wife.

Scale obsession

I've been tracking my scale weight on and off for the past couple of years and almost daily for the past 5 months. Sometime in September I bought a Tanita scale that is more accurate and also gives a body composition readout. Most nutrition experts are against tracking your weight on a daily basis as your weight can change substantially from day to day and should not be an immediate indicator of how your nutrition plan is doing. Most people recommend a weekly scale check. I do a daily check so that I gather many more data points, which I can later use to asses larger trends. One thing I've noticed since the beginning of the experiment is that my weight fluctuations are smaller. The daily change in weight this month has been mostly between +0.1 and -0.3 Kg, while in the past I have seen many days where my weight moved 0.7 Kg in both directions. Spotting trends, even small ones, is much easier when the noise level is low. Sadly, the body composition readings are much more noisy and that has not improved much with the experiment. daily fluctuations of 0.5% BF are common and only very long term trends are easy to spot.

Why all this talk about weight? I broke the 84 kilo barrier today! 83.8 Kg. I've never been this light in recent history. It doesn't really matter and it was predictable (nice part of the experiment), but it was nice to see.

I'm saving money doing this experiment. I'm not eating out and not eating at the cafeteria at work. Maybe I should use all this saved money to buy myself a Withings scale? It's a scale just like my Tanita, only connected to your home network. It logs your readings in a sexy web page, works with an Iphone, and even tweets your weight if you wish.

Will power. I has it.

Did I break down and participate in the dark chocolate feeding frenzy that was occuring around me?
Nope.

Week 1 update

It's been a week. I've been 100% compliant with the plan. I ate the same four meals everyday for the past 7 days and nothing else. I haven't skipped a meal or changed it in any significant way. The funny thing is that it isn't hard at all. I'm not struggling. I'm not hungry. I'm not too bored with the food yet. The fact the I don't have to make any choices regarding food is very helpful. I've been obsessing about food for the past couple of years, so not having to think about it and make any choices is turning out to be a good thing.
Overall, I'm feeling healthy and strong. I've had a couple of very good sessions at the gym, where things that ought to be hard felt easier than expected. I'm adding a graph of my weight for the first week. The green line plots body weight and the blue is body fat %. You can see a steady decline in weight. The rate is about -1 kilo per week. This is great. It will probably get slower as the month progresses. My body will slightly adjust to this intake level. The BF% reading are all over the place. It is very hard to see any short duration trends with this metric as the measurement is very noisy. My understanding is that it is highly influenced by hydration state. I take the reading at the same time of day with the same liquid intake, but there are things beyond my control (weather, gastric transit time) that affect hydration. Hopefully, by the end of the experiment it will be noticeable and significant.

Dinner day 4

Tuna salad. Not the most photogenic meal out there. Here's the recipe if anyone wants to recreate this masterpiece:
- 1/2 tomato
- 1/2 cucumber
- 1/2 pepper (any color works. I like red or yellow)
- 1/4 onion
- 1 can tuna (~100 gr drained from the canola oil)
- salt & pepper
- 1 tbsp olive oil
- 1 tbsp tahini (sesame paste)

mix it all together and you get this (sans macbook):