Okay so it's Apr 30th, but I want Saturday as my binge day, so I started the 4 hour thing today. Just the diet so far, but I'll add more stuff in as I have time to get equipment and such. Also, I'm still living at my brother's for about another week so doing exercising here will be slightly more awkward. I'll do some research or if I'm very nervous phone my naturalpath before I start any supplements I don't know anything about, but nothing seemed that bad in the book, at least not the basic ones.
So here's my thoughts about the diet: It's Fine. Seriously, it will be fine. Eating Paleolithic has been my default for times when I'd like to focus on my diet a little more, eat a little more healthily, lose some weight, that kind of thing. I find the slow carb diet to be pretty much the same as paleo, except with the subtraction of fruit and the addition of a binge day. I normally eat small amounts of red or black rice when I do paleo, (controversy!) which I will cut out for slow carb. Also, allowing me to drink up to 2 cans of pop, and 2 glasses of red wine will make the whole thing a lot easier. I really miss pop and wine when I'm eating paleo, and I like the idea of the cheat day, though I need to figure out the science of it. I've got 5 days though, so that will be okay.
Overall I'm not too terrified of it, I have experience with paleo, atkins and candida diets, as well as briefly attempting to be gluten free to see if it helped my upset stomachs for awhile. (it didn't.) so I feel pretty confident about my ability to stick to it and understand it, but just as a comment,
HOLY CRAP IS IT VAGUE.
I mean, seriously. Tim lists like 6 vegetables or something, and only about 3 or 4 meal ideas in the whole 2 chapters. I'm lucky because I know how to eat like this, but if this was your first foray into the world of high protein and complex carbs, it would be awful. For interest, and to help anyone else who ever stumbles on my blog while doing confused searching, I'll try to be pretty specific in my diet and post general instruction recipes as we go along. (I'm not great with recipes. Once you get comfortable with cooking, amounts start to make sense for most general supper items.)
So I had a huge number of questions, which I will detail for you here with as good as the answers that I've found or assumed. Here's my main problem with the diet laid out in the book: I don't like eating the same thing. Variety is the spice of life, I am a 25 year old girl who likes cooking, likes eating food that tastes good, is perfectly capable of shopping, and has a little extra money to spend on not having to repeat 4 meals for the rest of my life. I know a significant amount about other reduced carb diets, so I already have experience cooking with these restrictions. Also, and this just sounds like bragging, I don't really need to lose weight. So I can use a few more ingredients that would be a little controversial here.. such as almond flour. Which will technically be fine on the diet, but is hard on caloric intake if you're watching it.
1. Squash? Yams? Sweet Potatoes? no. these are too starchy and too sugary. damn.
2. Bell Peppers? Corn? Olives? yes. no. yes. I'm personally going to stick to green peppers, corn is too starchy and sugary (see yams) and olives are just a delight, but are also pretty fatty and salty, so careful. also for some people they're a domino food. I'm looking at you, ex-boyfriend.
3. Lemon Juice? Miso paste? Tofu? I find the info on all three of these confusing. Lemon juice I'm going to leave as a cheat day thing since the fructose. Miso usually contains small amounts of barley or other grains, but also just a smidge mixed with oil makes an amahzing salad dressing, so I may allow like 1/2tsp amounts as long as it's not every day. Tofu.. I'm going with yes as long as you're not concerned about the GMO and estrogen issues. I don't eat much tofu and limit my soy in general, so this problem seems minimal to me.
4. Why no Hummus? chickpeas are pretty calorie dense, so I assume this is just why.
5. Why limit Mayo? this one seems purely caloric too.. though some commercial mayonnaises contain pretty massive amounts of sugar too, so check that. I make my own sometimes, and it's pretty much just eggs and oil and a little mustard, so I can't see it being off the diet for any reason. However, avacado works as a fantastic substitute for mayo in almost everything.
so I have probably a million more questions. I'll let you know as I clarify them.
anyways, here are my initial measurements/weight/photos (blah.)
mid bicep - 9.5 R and 9.5 L (inches)
waist - 30 @ navel (which is not my waist.) 26 @ natural waist.
hips - 36 @ butt, 31 @ love handle area.
mid thight - 19 R 19 L
for a Total Inches of 123. I used the navel and the butt measurements because that was how it sounded like he explained it in the book. maybe men's natural waists are closer to their navels? mine is much higher. no big, as long as I'm consistent.
weight is 114.8lbs in underwear.
here are the photos. warning, these are not sexy. don't get me wrong, I'm great at doing sexy body positions to work with this, but here I was trying to particularly not flatter myself. let it all hang out so to speak.
so, obviously, I'd like to lose a little in the stomach, the love handles, and inner thighs. then I'd like to tone up the butt and arms and core. fat tends to stick to my ribs too, which is unfortunate. Then I'd like to be able to do a headstand and also not get wobbly in yoga poses. which I think are both related to core strength.
so here's my first day in brief:
Breakfast 8:00am - 2 hard boiled eggs. ate 'em while I walked to the c-train. gross, and I friggin love eggs. breakfast will be my struggle, I hate it, I hate eating that early, especially within a half hour of waking up.
10:00ish - drank some green tea, 2 cups. drank a further one glass of water. this is a big deal for me.
1:00pm - lunch. ate out, as I am wont to do for lunch - 6oz rare steak with a garden salad, Diet Coke and a further glass of ice water. picked the dried cranberries out of the salad, and ate it dry due to the Kraft-y-ness of the balsamic dressing available. (sugar sugar.) Steak was delicious, though.
3:00pm - 2 tablespoons of almond butter, straight. cup of anise tea. I think I probably have candida because I've been a candy freak the last couple of months, so I feel absolutely starving by now.
6:45pm - Dinner. Spinach and dill salad with green peppers, avacado, pine nuts and a sesame oil and chinese dipping vinegar dressing. Topped with a quick-marinade (garlic salt, dill, sesame oil) tilapia fillet, and fried white wine and hot paprika mushrooms. Everything was tasty. I feel like I'm dying of hunger, but have experienced this on paleo and the candida diet before, so I'm not letting it get to me. sugar addiction is showing it's fangs. should be gone in about 3 days or so if I keep off the crack.
9pm - a cup of bengal spice tea and a glass of Barefoot Merlot. I oversteeped the tea (herbal) and it got REALLY sweet, so I need to check the ingredients on it. it could just be the cinnamon. I'll let you know. Wine made me feel better, and less sugar-craving, so yay.
12pm - bedtime. drinking as much water as I think I can handle without waking up to pee in the night.
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