My story - why PB doesn't work for me. page 4

[MissJecka]

I think mmsantos brings up an interesting point. Of course PB is not a crash diet but a way of eating healthy foods but I think for a lot of people any kind of limiting what they eat taps into an unhealthy desire to control their body. I saw it with myself when I attempted to count calories. I have friend who doesn't really need to lose weight but she has some health issues she wants to address and I see her stressing out about if this or that is paleo; she wants to do it perfectly. I tell her to relax and just do the best she can, but I'm not sure she can.

There is a fine line between being healthy and becoming obsessive.

This.

I lost nearly 40 pounds using CW calorie-counting methodology. But, it turned into a huge issue when I developed some disordered eating habits. (I have vivid memories of cutting 1/3 of an almond to make sure I hit exactly 1 oz of nuts for my 10am snack. I'd stare at the clock like a horse chomping at the bit to finally eat my next mini-meal. It wasn't a good point in my life.)

I was hesitant to jump into Primal or Paleo because I was scared I'd get obsessed and end up unhealthy-minded again. Even now, I still find my mind drifting and worrying, but luckily I have learned to tame it. Hell, my "dinner" last night was buffalo chicken dip with corn tortilla chips, guacamole, and some cookies because I was at a party and there was literally nothing else to eat but junk. In my old dietary ways, I'd be freaking out and want to purge it all, but I now don't strive for perfection and learn from whatever slips I make. Like someone already said, you don't go to Primal Hell for screwing up once in a while.

However, I don't blame CW on how I got all screwed up in the head; similarly, I don't think the OP should blame Primal or the PB on developing an eating disorder. These things are deep in the psyche, not the fault of a diet or trend.

[sandstone]

Too true, and it's a skill some of us find hard to master!

I forgot to say something as well - I think most of the battle, as far as nutrition is concerned, is to avoid pseudo-food processed junk. I truly believe that things like Frappuccinos, sugary chocolate, Doritos, "insert generic crap-in-a-box here", etc... are what's causing most of the trouble we see today. I just don't feel comfortable putting something like oats, or even white bread, in the same boat as coke, for example.

I would totally agree with this. I've been working in Italy for the last 2 months and the diet here is totally carb based- bread, pizza, pasta with every meal. Now the average person is probably not ripped but in 2 months I cannot remember seeing a single obese person.

Some things I have noted though include:
1. most people skip breakfast, they may have a coffee on the way to work at a cafe
2. Coffee is at worst a latte- I have not seen a single chain coffee shop and certainly not a syrupy whipped cream beverage in sight.
3. They hardly drink sodas- water or wine for lunch, an espresso with desert.
4. Even bread and pasta is hand made daily- no chemicals, preservatives, E numbers etc
5. The snacks are decent- olives, hard cheese, cured meat, dried fish
6. Everyone takes pride in their food, small shops make everything themselves- its about quality not profit.
&. Alcohol consumption is low to moderate

Now if they kept the quality high and cut the carbs down may be they would be in even better shape. I would agree though with the OP that for a lot of people just cutting out the chemicals and processed food (non-artisan bread though I would put in the processed food category, especially as it tends to be consumed in quantity) is 50% of the battle, then controlling grains, carb ratios, exercise etc is the other 50%.

[magnolia1973]

I think that you can be healthy and eat grains and some sugars, as well as dairy, as long as you tolerate them. However, if your goal is weight loss or "getting ripped", you need a lot more control over dietary restrictions.

I would agree though with the OP that for a lot of people just cutting out the chemicals and processed food (non-artisan bread though I would put in the processed food category, especially as it tends to be consumed in quantity) is 50% of the battle, then controlling grains, carb ratios, exercise etc is the other 50%.

The funny thing is I have played around with Paleo treats. I made blueberry muffins that were awesome, dairy and gluten free. Awesome enough that I overate them. Are they better for me than "Hostess Muffins" - hell yeah, but they have the same impact on my weight. I think certain things are just easy to overeat. It's hard to overeat foods with no processing (raw foods), a bit easier to overeat foods with some processing (cooked meats and veggies), easy to overeat processed "good" foods (roasted salted nuts, bacon, coconut and nut flour sweets, whole grain products, sweetened dairy) and we will simply default to overeating 100% processed foods (hohos, twinkies, white flour items, ice cream that is not full fat, sodas, fast foods).

[Wulf]

All your friends are doing it, but they're eating the crap lunches and dinners as well, so at least you're getting 90% of your meals as high quality to offset that junk better.

And when you get older, you'll moderate more and more as you find yourself encountering less and less social pressure, and frankly, you'll just naturally lose taste for the junk as you eat less and less of it.

That is how it's done. And stop eating low carb. This has nothing to do with low carb. Never has, never will. Eat whatever you want provided it's real food. If that's 2 bunches of bananas and a 5 lb bag of potatoes with extra lean chicken breast, go for it. It's food.

Yep, I think the op is pretty skinny already, 155lb at 5-10, and if he's never been overweight before or has a problem gaining weight, he likely already has a fast metabolism that can handle and/or requires a lot more carbs and/or calories than he was getting on his "strict" paleo. Lean = low carb, low calorie, or low fat? Too little of any of those leads to a deficiency which leads to cravings and binges, which are signs you are missing something from the diet, either calories or nutrients. It's likely that since you feel happy and normal on a CW diet, be thankful you have the metabolism to tolerate all the grains and carbs out there in the "normal" diet, because it's a nightmare and a minefield out there for the many of us that can't handle them and are trying to avoid them.

The Paleo and PB way of eating are not the problem here. Excessive restriction and an obsession with the degree of compliance are bound to cause (and ARE) disordered behavior in relation to food no matter which way of eating one is attempting to adhere.

If we were to measure success by the most valuable results of all, such as improved health and quality of life and not what percentage of one's diet is "good" vs "bad", there wouldn't be such a degree of negativity, guilt, and stress involved. ...

Easier said than done, I know. It requires a conscious effort (daily) to take my own damned advice.

Yep, I "cheat" daily. But I also make an effort to avoid grains and carbs when I can, and to marginally improve my diet bit by bit, day by day. It's not all or nothing. It's a continuum of improvement. And certainly not obsessive, which is probably causing OP's derailment.

[itchy166]

The OP says Primal isn't working for her, but then describes how she didn't actually eat Primal. Or did I miss something?

Sounds like a matter of impulse control to me.

[zizou]

Biggest difficulty with primal and diets, is lack of variety. I'm going to most likely adopt a 70/30 Paleo-WAPF way of eating. Hopefully a lot of that 30% will be something my parents will be eating too, as singleing yourself out through diet makes it all that harder to stick to. I'm too young to be worrying about what i eat as much as you sometimes have to with food prepartion, avoiding eating out etc that you sometimes find yourself with a paleo diet. Hopefully in the near future, when im married and start my own family, i will dictate more what everyone should be eating and therefore make it more a part of my life than what it can be now.

[RichMahogany]

The OP says Primal isn't working for her, but then describes how she didn't actually eat Primal. Or did I miss something?

Sounds like a matter of impulse control to me.

+1

[Ayla2010]

The OP says Primal isn't working for her, but then describes how she didn't actually eat Primal. Or did I miss something?

Yes, agree.

Biggest difficulty with primal and diets, is lack of variety. I'm going to most likely adopt a 70/30 Paleo-WAPF way of eating. Hopefully a lot of that 30% will be something my parents will be eating too, as singleing yourself out through diet makes it all that harder to stick to. I'm too young to be worrying about what i eat as much as you sometimes have to with food prepartion, avoiding eating out etc that you sometimes find yourself with a paleo diet. Hopefully in the near future, when im married and start my own family, i will dictate more what everyone should be eating and therefore make it more a part of my life than what it can be now.

Well primal is not a "diet", its just eating real food, and as much as you need. I have never heard anyone else on here complain about lack of variety.

[YogaBare]

Yeah, man. You should have tried harder to stay in our cult! What kind of fucking loser are you, anyway? You're going to go back to eating bread like all the other sick people in the world? You failed paleo, you failed yourself, and I hope your family dies.

Just kidding.

Still laughing...

[Future_PB_Dr]

JoanieL, you have a very mature understanding on this. Needless to say, people take things to the extreme and it becomes a sickness with which no cure but introspection will suffice. Sure, 86/14 isn't perfect, but who wants to live their lives aiming for perfection? It's a slippery slope. If an individual can find what works best for them in terms of health and behavior, they are leaps and bounds ahead of 99% of the population.

"I could have walked away when the pasta helped my stomach ache, but the reality is that there is nothing about Primal with which I disagree."

I couldn't agree more with this. The great thing about paleo (essentially, a LCHF diet) is that the science is there. Yeah, maybe not clinically, due to the fact that no one is going to fund testing for a hypothesis that has presumably already been answered, but, for those of you that have read books like The Primal Blueprint, GCBC, and Why We Get Fat, etc, it's damn near impossible to justify the incorporation of grains into your diets. It just makes sense not to. Yet, again, we must find the elusive medium between what makes sense and what works for us. Sure, 0g of carbs a day may be what our paleo ancestors consumed, but thousands of years of changes in our metabolic machinery certainly had its consequences, and perhaps our own lifetimes may not be sufficient enough to successfully abolish these changes.