Primal Journal (sbhikes) page 11

[sbhikes]

I downloaded the fitness e-book that Mark offers. I was surprised to see that the strength exercises he recommends are a lot of the same ones we do in the core fitness class I have been taking. I guess I'm on the right track.

Yesterday there was a different person teaching the class. She did different exercises. I thought it all felt too easy. Didn't feel like it was doing anything. But today every muscle in my back and stomach are sore. Guess it did something after all.

On a somewhat related note, I notice that if I hold my stomach in, my abs flex and I can see a nice line going down each side of my stomach. However, if I just relax, my stomach sticks way out. When you measure or assess yourself, is it based on holding in your gut and flexing those abs or is it based on the default stomach sticking out? Ha ha. I try to take all my pictures with my stomach relaxed, figuring that's closer to what I really look like.

Ate two sweet potatos at dinner yesterday. The boyfriend, bless his heart, thought I would like potatoes to go with my burrito innards since I don't eat tortillas. How sweet! I only needed one potato but ate them both. They are really extra tasty for some reason. I wonder what makes them different. They are almost too good, some kind of easy to overeat quality exists within them. They're small and from Trader Joes and look like yams, but the package called them sweet potatoes. They're orange on the inside.

[sbhikes]

It seems like I'm improving very fast in my core fitness class. I still suck at it, but it amazes me how much I can feel my muscles already. Perhaps that is a benefit of consuming a lot of protein.

I continue to do my bulletproof coffee morning fast with a can of fish after my lunchtime workout. Then dinner. I hope this will continue to work for me. It's getting harder. I feel hungry. Well, not so much hungry as I feel like eating, especially something sweet. I get a hankering for dried fruit or dates or chocolate or even sweet potatoes.

[sbhikes]

Yesterday when I came home from work I was pretty darn hungry. My boyfriend was stuck at work in a meeting. I started waiting for him but that just led me to eat snacks to try to curb my hunger. One thing I ate was a date. Wow, the blood sugar spike from just one date made me feel like crap. So I went ahead and made dinner without him. Then I started to feel guilty so I only put half the food on my plate. Good thing I did because he walked in the door the second I sat down. So there was food enough for the both of us. Maybe I should eat half all the time. I probably always eat twice as much as I should.

[sbhikes]

On my weekend hike I felt amazing. Some people report not feeling any more energetic than usual on this diet. I could have said the same thing after a month or two. Five months of this, however, and I do feel quite like Superwoman these days.

I have felt inordinate cravings for sweets lately. Not good. I think it is because I've felt a bit hungry after work and there have been dates in the fridge. Eating one or three makes me feel pretty awful. But each day I want more of them. I should not eat dried fruit, I think.

I've been wondering where the weight loss has been occuring lately as I continue my rather reduced eating of late. I think I found the answer: my breasts. They are shrinking. I suppose I shoudl feel bad about that, but I like the way it feels to have smaller ones. Not so much bouncing around.

[sbhikes]

I forgot to write that I bought some pemmican from us wellness meats. I was totally impulsive and ordered the big bulk 8lb package. I have never tried it. I sure hope I didn't make a terrible mistake. I hope I can cook with it or doctor it up if I don't like it as is. I got the plain kind with salt.

[sbhikes]

For two weeks I did bulletproof coffees for breakfast and canned fish for lunch. I was so hungry yesterday I ended up buying some scrambled eggs at the cafe yesterday. Last night I woke up hungry at 2am and was hungry when I got up at 6. So this week I think I will eat a real breakfast. I have enjoyed the weight loss and the feeling of not needing to eat much, but I think I need to eat more for a while.

I impulsively bought 8lbs of wellness meats pemmican bars. I have never had them. I sure hope I like them...

[Lex26]

For two weeks I did bulletproof coffees for breakfast and canned fish for lunch. I was so hungry yesterday I ended up buying some scrambled eggs at the cafe yesterday. Last night I woke up hungry at 2am and was hungry when I got up at 6. So this week I think I will eat a real breakfast. I have enjoyed the weight loss and the feeling of not needing to eat much, but I think I need to eat more for a while.

I impulsively bought 8lbs of wellness meats pemmican bars. I have never had them. I sure hope I like them...

Hey sbhikes!

I saw your post on the calorie restriction forum by paleobird. That's the next step I'm taking since my weight loss has stalled. Have you been putting it into action and seeing any results?

Also, I have a hunch that your erratic energy and hunger levels are tied to the coffee. We were just discussing this on Ecks' journal. Try withdrawing from the caffeine for a month and see how you/the weight scale feel. I find eating breakfast really important. Even if you can skip it technically without hurting your metabolism, I think it's the easiest meal to control because it's at the beginning of the day and it's usually just you. I'm more stressed/willing to use food as a procrastination tool later in the day. You also never know when lunch and dinner are going to happen and who you'll be eating it with, so - as I see it - there are more opportunities to screw up eating the right thing if you concentrate on lunch and dinner. If I do skip breakfast, it really ends up being a late breakfast/lunch which is fine if I'm at home all day.

[sbhikes]

I have been drinking too much coffee. My bulletproof coffee is decaf (which the bulletproof executive guy says is actually worse) but then I've been having two more full-strength regular brewed coffees at work later. That's too much coffee. You could be right that it is affecting me negatively. I think my energy feels fine, but the hunger was getting to me.

I was hungry instantly after eating my breakfast. I made it to lunch okay after my workout though. I think reduced calorie, whether with IF or bulletproof fasting is a good thing. But maybe it shouldn't be done every day indefinitely. I thought it was having a positive impact on me. It feels like my clothes are looser and if I look in the mirror I think I look slightly better. But the scale has not moved.

My US Wellness pemmican was waiting for me on the porch. I quickly unpacked it and hid it in the freezer as well as I could hide it. I don't want my boyfriend to laugh at my big mistake. 40 bars! They're really BIG bars, too. What was I thinking? I'm afraid to taste it. I will taste it tomorrow.

[sbhikes]

This will be my 1000th post on MDA. I need to get a life.

I have been upping my carbs over the last couple of weeks. I think I have decided it does not work for me. I started by making sure to eat at least one small sweet potato each day. A couple times I also ate a second sweet potato after going for a hike as a late lunch. It seemed by doing that I had more energy, so it was good in that way.

But the sweet potatoes became too looked forward to. They led me to dates. I'd eat a couple dates when I came home and was hungry before dinner. The dates made me feel like crap. Huge insulin spike and then a huge headache later. But I kept eating them after work. Just 3 dates, but enough to make me feel bad.

The dates led me to want to eat Lara bars. Lara bars are primal, right? So I bought 2 Lara bars yesterday and ate them both because after I ate one I wanted the other one. I didn't even like them. They don't taste like real dates at all. They're gross. They taste like packaged food.

Even after the Lara bars, I ate more dates with dinner. Nuts, too, because they taste good with dates. I realized I am not in Ketosis anymore. I don't feel as good as I do when I'm low carb. That is probably why even though I haven't been eating many calories I haven't been losing much weight. So it's back to low carb for me and that Chacotaco guy can eat my shorts. He's wrong.

[namelesswonder]

It could be that you're not ready to introduce the carbs or that it would take some time to adjust to the increased carb load. I'm intrigued by that argument (I know what thread you're talking about), but don't have any personal experience with it, just massive sugar cravings. I guess that means you're "metabolically deranged" as they put it. Join the club!