In my last post I advocated the millions of years old fad, the Paleo diet. No, I don't know that it's millions of years old, but I do know any other diet has been around 10,000 years or so at the most. I'm busy getting lean while improving my strength and work capacity, so I won't waste time arguing if 10,000 years is long enough to adapt to eating corn flakes and Ding-Dongs.
From my experience what frequently happens is that people start the Paleo diet, and at some point go on a Paleo permutation diet. It's not uncommon for people like me who start out with ample adiposity to develop a deathly fear of carbs. I know that at times I've been in ketosis for weeks if not months, and yes, that leads to rapid and efficient weight loss. Problems really creep in when you look at Mark Sisson's carbohydrate curve and read various authors who point out, correctly, that there is no such thing as an essential carb. Finally, meat is just really good. It's not at all hard over time to eat meat and just sort of forget any vegetables.
So I was happily eating meat, telling everyone how great my diet was, and while not actually gaining weight except when I was drinking a pint of heavy cream a day, I was definitely not looking and feeling great like I did when I first went on the Paleo diet.
If it's not working, figure it out.
One of my real strengths, I'm sure, is knowing that I don't know everything. I decided to find an expert to tell me how much of what to eat, and it didn't take me long to decide on CrossFit Football's John Welbourn. It's a stretch to say I know John, but I did attend his CFFB certification, and I got a good sense of who he is and how he thinks. Now pay attention, this is important. I'm sorry I forgot where I read this and to whom it should be attributed, but here is a huge secret: only hang out with people who look for the truth, and distrust those who claim they've found it. The thing about John is that he wants to know everything, he knows what he doesn't know, and he goes looking for world-class experts to plug his knowledge gaps. He's a prodigious reader on nutrition and many other subjects but he regularly corresponds with Robb Wolf to make sure he gets it right.
Good enough for me.
Here's the short version of what John says about how to lose fat while maintaining strength and power: set calories at 15 per pound of body weight, eating meat, vegetables, and supplementing coconut oil as needed set the macros at 23-25% protein, 25-30% carbohydrates, and 45-52% fats.
So I got a kitchen scale and did that.
I figured out quickly that I tend to get way too much protein while also under-eating. The body, being smart, interprets this as a famine and tries desperately to hold or even accumulate fat deposits.
So I fixed it, mostly.
I tend to come in around 30% protein, 15% carbohydrates, and 55% fat which seems to be close enough to work.
I made this all ridiculously easy on myself, as I have to or I won't do anything. I eat only eight foods now: chicken, ground beef, sardines, yams, acorn squash, eggs, coconut oil, and green leafy stuff. I made a spreadsheet with the macro content of these, except for the green leafy stuff which would require two or three kilograms to make a difference, and enter everything I eat.
If for some reason you feel you need to eat more than eight foods, seven of which count, there are online trackers that will do all this. I tried the one at LiveStrong, but I had to quit when it castigated me for eating too many eggs.
Also, I don't believe in getting uptight about this stuff. As I keep tracking, my macros get closer to the targets, but they never quite get there and it still seems to work. And I have a rule against being hungry. I don't really have a cheat day, but on Thursdays, dead lift and heavy metcon day, I get ravenous, and I eat. I used to work at Abbondanza's Pizza which has the best retirement plan of any place I've ever worked: they still let me go in the kitchen and make whatever I want. So I do. This amounts to a bowl of spinach topped with handfuls of turkey, ham, bacon, sausage, ground beef, pepperoni, and onions and green pepper for good measure. Not exactly clean being some of the worst commercial meats, but not exactly dirty being at least Paleoesque. I'm not going to waste time programming my spreadsheet for a once a week gorge, but I'm sure I come in well over 3,000 calories.
I'm fully committed to fat loss until the contest at work ends in mid-October, and then I'll see if I really want to push my weight down to 165, but I'll take a one day break first. One of my friends has offered to make me gluten-free blueberry pancakes on or about October 18th, and I'll let her do it. I might even stack up twelve, put a Reece's Peanut Butter Cup between each layer, and dump a quart of whipping cream over the whole thing.
Until then, here is
The Only Dessert You'll Ever Need
1. Open your refrigerator and take out half a baked acorn squash. You should have this because you're eating acorn squash and you bake several at a time. It's one of the few good ways you can get enough carbs.
2. You can weigh the squash. At this point in my progress, I'm confident that unless you have a genetically modified monster, you've got 250-350 grams.
3. Scoop out the good stuff and put it in a skillet. I mash it into a cake. There's probably a tool for this; I use my hand.
4. Heat it. I flip it a few times, and I like to intentionally burn some of it. Carbon counts as a flavor when you eat eight thing.
5. When this gets uniformly heated, or has pretty burned areas - whichever comes first, crack four eggs in the skillet and scramble the whole mixture. At this point in my progress, I will bet that four eggs weigh 240-300 grams.
6. Just really stir the crap out of this so that the eggs are thoroughly cooked and you get a homogeneous mix.
7. Dump this in a bowl.
8. Put something more than a tablespoon of coconut oil on it. I don't have a tablespoon. I use a supposed coffee measure I found in my cupboard. Judging from my memory of what a tablespoon is, this scoop is about one and a half tablespoons.
9. Optional. Really it works great without this. Maybe you happen to have some butter around. Not a lot certainly because then you'd admit you eat nine things and you'd have to weigh it. Take enough butter to scare the shit out of your high-carb, low fat friends and then double it. Put this on instead of coconut oil. Actually I haven't tried both at once. It's probably heavenly.
10. Dump a lot of Cinnamon on top. Seriously, use much more than you need.
11. Enjoy while playing Internet chess or looking at your abs in the mirror.
Addendum
I wrote this with my Internet Chess Club client running in the background. Mid-blog I got caught up in arbitrating a dispute in the 45 minute team league where I play and serve as a tournament director. This scrambled my thoughts like the eggs and squash above. This unfortunately is a lighter treatment than I had intended, so feel free to post questions to comments.
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