As the title states so far, so good! In this short update I wanted to go over some of my typical daily food intakes, the challenges and benefits.
Generally I have stopped the known intake of refined sugars & artificial sweeteners, processed Salt, margarine, bread, cereals, oats seeds and beans. And limited potatoes & cheese.
For sweetening I use stevia in baking and honey occasionally in herbal tea.
Typically Breakfast consists of
- Camomile Tea
- Grilled Bacon or smoked Mackerel fillet
- Two egg omelette with a couple of mushroom and tomatoes, a sprinkling of fresh or dehydrated spinach (I also add turmeric powder into the egg omelette), fried in Coconut Oil.
- cup of water
I don’t tend to get hungry any more early mid morning but I do snack from about 10:30 to 12:30; snacks consist of
- Banana
- small pot of mixed nuts (Pistachios, Almonds, hazelnut) sometimes a sprinkling of raisins.
- small pot of grapes, or strawberry with the occasional prunes when required!
Lunch tends to be between 12 to 2pm; this is typically
- Base salad mix of lettuce, tomato, cucumber, spinach, with this a have a few pieces of cheese, of ham, or chicken, or beef depending what’s available.
- Natural Yogurt
- any of the snacks left over.
Afternoon, if I still have snacks left I’ll finish those off along with a tangerine. On my way home I have a apple, the for evening meal tends to anything from
- Meat and vegetables with Sweet Potato ; or
- Baked Sweet Potato, salad, chicken
- Stir fry of chicken, peppers, etc.
In general I use unsalted butter in the Sweet Potato and sea salt.
Probably too often we treat ourselves to a dessert of fried Banana (or paleo banana cake) and Ice cream (yeah I know!) I am rubbish at drinking water but try to take in 1lt per day, I have around 4 or 5 coffees and 3 to 4 teas per day on average.
So how has this affected my weight so far? I have generally monitored my weight daily to try and plot and understand the effects of the diet, fluctuation between morning and night is around 1.2kg, in June I stated that I was a regular 96kg (211 lb), now on a bad day I will be 96kg, now more often the weight is around 94.5 kg (208 lb).
Whilst the weight hasn’t fell off like it did initially, I feel that my health has improved and I don’t seem to have been hit by any major or minor illnesses (touch wood!). One of my main concerns was cholesterol, my levels initially were high bad, so I have booked to get this checked again and will feedback the results.
So what of the problems? Going out for meals, I tend to stick with steaks but do have chips (home made fries) & salads. more often than not I usually find that the day after my gut just feels not quite right, I think this is due to the sauces and fats used to cook with, and probably the Ale or wine drunk with the meal. On the subject of Alcohol, I’ve never been a big drinker so maybe a 1/2 bottle of wine or one or two pints per week is about average.
So is this Paleo? probably not at the moment, I am still yet to study and fully understand the diet but my main aim was to cut out the initial listed foods and to not crave them, I feel this has been achieved.
The only addition to this is intermittent fasting, I tend to do this on a mid week day, my last meal the evening before is around 6:30pm, on the fast day I tend to start eating around 10:30 to 11:30 and this is about my limit without getting hungry. On a fasting day I am almost guaranteed a weight loss of 1/2 kg, this is usually absorbed by an increase of the same on a weekend!
Still not started exercising yet but it is planned, honestly!
If you would like to know more or have any suggestions please let me know.
Prepare to Survive 