GrokGrok's Incredible Discovery page

[grokgrok]

When I came to this world of what I used to call, "unhealthy eating", I decided I would sit down and read about this first. I read the first part of Mark's book "21 Day Challenge" and for some reason, I immediately had an epiphany. Mark's reasoning made so much sense to me!

I think the real reason I'm here is because, I can go about a week without exercising and gain more weight than I would like, but why would I want to exercise an hour a day every day of my life just to feel good about my body and my weight?

Sure, when I exercised everyday I lost 60 lbs but I couldn't have any fun. I would be too tired to go out with friends, rock climb with my friends, too hungry to sit under a tree and read a book. Instead I was "recovering" on the couch watching TV and wondering, "When the hell is this 3 hours going to come around? I'm already starving!!!"

I never want to live like that again. I want to know that my body is burning fat whether I'm sitting at work, socializing with friend and family, walking around the block, sittin under a tree reading a book, even eating ribs at my parents house.

I don't want to be hungry all the time. I don't want to sit in the office waiting for lunch and feeling like I didn't get any work done because I'm completely miserable and hungry and worn out.

Today has been day 3 of the 21 Day Challenge. I just had lunch. I had a huge, giant salad of lots veggies, chicken and good fats and while I type this I'm asking myself "why am I typing this? I want to go outside and walk around". I have SO much energy!!

Let me tell you about myself. During 2011 in January for my New Years Revolution, I promised that I would slim down. I worked my ASS off (literally). I spent countless dollars buying Beachbody Products (P90X, INSANITY, P90X2, INSANITY ASYLUM) and don't get me wrong they WORK!!! However, a few weeks off just letting my insane body rest, and I ended up putting some weight back on... This SUCKS!

Then, I watched a YouTube video of Mark talking about the Paleo Diet and how it all works. I wanted to find out more. "How did this work? What can it do for me? Is this like the Atkin's Diet? I don't want to go on a diet..."

The more I read and found out about the Paleo Diet the more I realized that it's not a "diet". This isn't a one time thing, this is for LIFE! This is reprogramming your body to forget about carbs because carbs don't last long. They are the worst fuel ever. Why would somebody drive a car that only gets 4 miles to the gallon when you can go 500 miles to the gallon and save yourself a little bit of headache and a lot of money?!!?! (Horrible analogy, I know)

I'm not keto-adapted, or fat-adapted yet, but I can tell you that this initial hunger; this initial feeling of my body saying, "Hey! You don't have any carbs in your blood. Eat carbs or else I'm going to turn on the fat!!" What I'm going to say is, "Good!!!! Do it! I want you to!!" and when my body starts burning fat and I feel amazing knowing that I don't have to plan meals, count carbs, and have my life back from never ending cardio, I know that I'm going to regret eating carbs for so long. And if this diet backfires, I'll have a good story to tell my future children. :-)

Cheers everyone, and wish me and everyone else starting this challenge a little bit of luck and a lot of willpower until the initial carb withdrawal ends.

Thanks for reading,

GrokGrok (Chris)

[Knifegill]

Welcome!
Some key points:

Some have no trouble at all, but some do and don't know what to do, so I'm just throwing these out there.

Don't be afraid to eat MORE if you are truly hungry and the calories just aren't there.

Get salt if your BP gets low or your heart rate starts climbing. You are dumping salt like mad the first few weeks of this.

Don't be afraid to eat a lot more meat than you think you should. I can easily eat two pounds of meat a day, usually more like one. Doing this two years and the best breakthrough I've made was increasing my protein! Burned fat and added muscle, have a better mood, etc.

Really get ready to embrace animal fat as a source of calories. Decent, chemical-free bacon is a key ally for most. Tallow is my favorite!

Seafood and organ meats will likely give you more spunk and energy than just steaks and chicken legs. Seaweed and shellfish especially come to mind, for their amazing nutritional profiles and traces of iodine. Seek out liver. Eat it somewhat regularly until your body tells you to stop, which it very well might after a month of loading up any missing vitamins in your body. I ate it twice a week for over a month before my body said to slow down on it. Chicken liver has a mild flavor - but I like beef liver better, it gives me more energy.

Don't bow to the sweet potato gallery until you're sure you are well-fat adapted. It took me SIX WEEKS to learn how to digest fat in large quantities. I mean, the squirts were normal at first until I dialed the fat back and increased gradually. But now I get 60%-70% of daily calories from fat easily and it all digests.



And if you have any trouble, plenty of people here have probably shared common experiences and can help you.

[grokgrok]

Knifegill,

I took some of your advice and went on a grass-fed shopping spree. I bought about 5 lbs of grass-fed ground beef, wild salmon, and 1 lbs of grass-fed ribeye.

I'm pretty sure I ate around 1 lb of the ground beef and an entire bowl of squash and zuchinni that I sauted in the beef fat.

It was delicious and I never thought I would ever be able to eat like this in my life, but now my belly hurts. I think I might have over ate.

Got any tips for not over eating? :-/ I still want to do my PEMs later tonight...

Thanks

[Knifegill]

Unfortunately, I rather enjoy the feeling of a bloated stomach. To help avoid overeating in the long run, and for other reasons, I switched to only eating once a day for the most part and it's been amazing. Now I get to stuff myself for one or two hours with about 2500-3000 calories, and enjoy it.

But if it hurts, you could try eating two meals and half your food at each. Play around. Do what works for you, since you're already miles ahead of the game simply by eating whole foods and focusing on a relatively complete nutritional profile.

[Crabbcakes]

But if it hurts, you could try eating two meals and half your food at each. Play around. Do what works for you, since you're already miles ahead of the game simply by eating whole foods and focusing on a relatively complete nutritional profile.

Yup. It seems a lot of us go through phases in the beginning where out bodies crave stuff that is missing, so you might just be in Primal-lovin' heaven and eating heavily until you find your balance (emotionally, because now you get to have all kinds of "forbidden" stuff, and physically while the body adapts to new fuel and takes care of deficiencies). I did fat chunks of butter daily for a few weeks until the body calmed down. Knifegill knows his stuff - don't be afraid of playing around with the quantity and timing. Primal is all Real Food, so you can't go wrong.

I agree with him, btw, about not hopping on the sweet potato train here (at least, not yet). You will soon meet those denizens of the MDA who got religion in reference to sweet potato carbs. Ignore them for the nonce until you are well and truly low-carb and fat-adapted and settled.

Welcome to the forum! I look forward to reading more from you!

[grokgrok]

So, today is Day 5.

BTW, thank you for all the comments so far. It really does help, especially for a newbie like me. I always have more questions probably more so early on. This is kind of a permanent trial run for myself so I can answer questions for my family to get on the diet. I think it might be very beneficial to them.

Today, I bought some Ketostix just to make sure I'm doing something right and releasing ketones. It turns out, I'm in between the moderate to heavy levels of ketosis. I'm pretty happy about that. I plan on checking each day and hopefully the level goes down in the next couple weeks. I guess the more it goes down in the next couple weeks the more keto/fat-adapted I am which is definitely something I'm looking forward to.

I didn't feel very energetic today. I woke up and sat around, ate, and watched movies on Netflix. That's when I read the next day of the 21 Day Transformation and it said I should try to do something at 55-75% of my max for some exercise. So, around 5pm today I said, "Alright, Mark... fine, I'll go exercise..." So, I put on my shorts, tied up my running shoes and drove to a really cool crystal blue lake with a loop around it and began walking / jogging. I really wasn't all that energetic, so I was amazed that I had the energy to actually leave my house. So, that was cool.

So everything is sort of going to plan. I'm trying to move around everyday, even if it's just walking around my apartment complex a few times, or doing some PEMs. I'm definitely in Ketosis which is nice and expected. I would have been pissed if I wasn't. Although, I don't think I have Keto stink. I guess it's different for everybody. I bought some grass-fed ribeye (ate it today) but I'm really looking forward to the wild salmon. I'm going to eat the crap out of it on a giant salad for lunch or dinner depending if I get hungry at lunch time. We'll see.

Anyway, it's around 9:45pm here and I would like to drink a couple glasses of water and maybe take a lap or two around the apartment complex before I fall asleep.

Night everyone!

[grokgrok]

Day 6!!!

I never told anybody this:

I moved to Columbus for my girlfriend at the time and eventually broke up. I was hanging out with her and her friends and didn't get a chance to meet my own friends. When we broke up, I sat on my couch all day everyday. I had a really bad temper, eating crappy food and went on a downward spiral to what I know now was serious depression.

Eventually, when I hit rock bottom, I told myself I need to get out of this hole that I'm in.

I decided that I'm going to change my life around. I need to start doing things. So, I went on a couple weight loss programs. I bought a few Beachbody programs and lost a LOT of weight. But, I was eating 6 meals a day. If I have to spend an hour just to make breakfast, early snack, lunch, and mid afternoon snack just to get through my day. Good god, this will be unsustainable.

After a couple workout programs, I was still depressed. I was just depressed and moving around. I was exhausted and ended up saying, "whatever, this is crap. I'm not working out an hour or more and waking up at 6am just so I can make enough meals for my day. I'm not doing this for the rest of my life."

Some good friends from high school and college moved here and we hung out pretty regularly when I wasn't exhausted from working out. But, I felt like my depression leaked out into my social group. I felt very reserved and introverted. The only time I felt like I could have a good time was using alcohol. I know that sounds horrible.

There were times when I felt really amazing and outgoing. I felt like myself and I was sober but I didn't know how to reproduce this feeling time and time again.

I recently joined a kickball team. Even on my team, I didn't want to talk to anybody. My mind was really hazy, I was too in my own head, sort of talking to myself.

HOWEVER!!!!

Today, on Day 6. I was walking to the kickball field listening to my IPod and dancing and smiling up to the fields. I saw someone on my team and started having a really fun, playful conversation with her. I felt like a new person. I was opening up to people. I was just having a great time.

I kicked a homerun, our team had a great time, we won 12-1 and I walked off the kickball field dancing to whatever music was on my IPod.

I feel pretty freakin' awesome!!!

I can't wait to become fully keto-adapted so I can stop worrying about if my breath smells or if my sweat is freaking people out or whatnot.

Damn, it feels so good!

[grokgrok]

Day 16? Already?

I can fast pretty long but I still get slightly hungry. I skipped breakfast and lunch today and I was slightly hungry all day, but I didn't think I was very cranky and still had energy to get work done so I think that's a pretty good sign.

I'm still pee'ing out Ketones. The last couple days I drank a couple beers with some friends but today I was still pretty hard in Ketosis. Beer doesn't really have THAT many carbs. I drink and brew some heavy beers and I think the most carbs I've been a beer have was around 20-25 carbs. If PB maintenance is around 100-150 carbs per day, I think a few beers on occasion shouldn't hurt.

I'm still looking to pee no more Ketones so that I'm in adaptation. Some days I feel lethargic, some days I feel like I can work for hours. Today, even though I only had caffeine and water all day, I felt like I was working hard and well.

One of these days I need to lift or sprint. I've only really been walking so I'll need to change the exercises up a bit.

All in all, I'm still working at it.

[grokgrok]

Day 22 --

I'm not longer peeing Ketones, but I felt hungry the last couple days. It got worse each consecutive day. Today, I had to eat breakfast, lunch, after lunch snack and dinner. I think my body is asking for nutrients pretty bad because I've been IF'ing as long as I could the past 3 days. But also, I drank a couple beers with friends this week so, maybe I kicked myself out of Ketosis.

Anyway, we shall see.

[grokgrok]

Day 25 --

The first week or so going Primal I've noticed that my face looked a lot better. My acne cleared up and my complexion looked so much better.

These past couple days I've started having break outs. The only I've changed is I started eating a ton of nuts. I kept eating nuts like crazy. I think that might have something to do with it.

So this week I'm going to greatly restrict my nut intake and see if my face starts clearing up.

We'll see.