Paleo Lessons - Updated 7/6/14

Review
     Recently I made the switch back to a Paleo-based diet, which you can read about here.  Over the past two weeks or so I've found that a Paleo-inspired diet is my favorite of any diet I've tried in the past several years.  This is, at least in part, due to the flexibility of how a Paleo-type diet can be practiced while still retaining core principles.  This post will serve as a catalog of my observations and notes, lessons learned, and tweaks made that might be helpful to others.  I'll keep updating this post as long as I have something valuable to add on the topic.

6/30/14

• Blueprint.  Paleo-type eating is best viewed as a "blueprint" rather than a "diet."  The "Paleo Diet" isn't perfect, but a layer of common sense, such as that found in an earlier post on keeping things simple, can get you pretty far.  Paleo-ish eating habits are a good starting point to then mold to your preferences and needs.
• Less Is More.  I'd say that over the past few weeks I've been eating about 60 - 80% Paleo, and that number is on the rise.  I started slowly only limiting certain foods and then gradually cutting them out.  However, I'll take my progress where I can get it.  Eating healthy (whatever that means to you) 6 days per week (or ~85% of the time) is certainly better than 50% or less.  I'm also going through some other major lifestyle changes such as quitting smoking and refraining from caffeine consumption.  At any rate, I think I'm off to a good start.
• Calorie Consumption.  In the early stages of this experiment I kept a mental tally of about how many calories I was eating per day.  Naturally, this is not the same every day.  My initial estimate (used only to generate my first grocery list) was about 1800 calories / day.  That is probably more of a baseline estimate for me and my actual consumption is somewhere between 2000 and 2200 calories / day.  Interestingly enough these are about the same figures I get from assorted online MBR calculators for my height, weight, age, sedentary lifestyle but regular physical activity.
• Daily Planning.  In the past I've talked about mobile apps and various tracking tools and checklists to aid in regulating what you eat.  I've found that I don't really need to do that now.  My grocery list provides a "get started" or "close enough" point.  From there I know that on any given day I'll eat about four meals per day consisting of vegetables, a fat source, and a protein source (about 1:1 fatty:lean cuts).  In addition to that I'll eat one serving of fruit and a heap of starchy vegetables.

7/3/14

• Big Breakfast.  Some people recommend this, but it doesn't work well for me.  I tend to feel bloated now and hungry later in the day.  What works best for me is just some eggs or bacon and then an early lunch.
  
• Eating Out.  Much to my delight this isn't very difficult.  Most menus these day have "low carb" will do in a pinch.  If nothing else, default to a burger without the bun and vegetables instead of fries.  I was really inspired one evening when I used eating out as an excuse to get a burger (bun, fries, and all) while 3 / 7 people at our table stuck to their guns and ordered A) a salad with only vinegar and oil, B) some sort of grilled / baked chicken and C) an entire plate of broccoli for each of them. 
  
• Travel.  Similarly, I haven't found too much trouble traveling either.  A lot of common hiking / climbing / trail food staples are pretty paleo-friendly.  For example, trail mix (without peanuts), tuna packets / cans, nuts, dried / fresh fruit, etc...  Regardless of what you think of the corporation, the increasing number of interstate-side Walmarts have also made it pretty easy to drop in and get a few groceries rather than defaulting to a chain fast food restaurant.

7/6/14

• Butter.  My last Paleo post rattled off several articles to debunk the diet-heart hypothesis.  However, heart disease does run in my family.  There is a compromise to be had though.  I don't really miss dairy, and butter was never my fancy anyway.  Ghee or clarified butter is a little bit different situation, but I'll apply the same principles.  It wouldn't be too much of a stretch to substitute the butter for more olive oil (which is generally considered to be healthy among both paleoists and diet-hearters) either as a dressing (olive oil / extra virgin olive oil) or cooking (extra light virgin olive oil).
• Cheating.  

• The thought of a McD's Dollar Menu buffet doesn't really appeal to me anymore, nor does a a half-gallon of ice cream (well, maybe a little).  Recently I was offered free beer and pizza; tan offer I obliged.  After a modest two beers and two slices of pizza I felt like a latex-glove-balloon, bloated with my head and arms sticking straight out.  It was terrible.  I've also found that trying to just eat more healthy food doesn't always work as well as planned, which is why a strategically planned cheat day / meal (ex: Saturday [night]) works as damage control, a planned fracture point.  One also needs to consider the potential guilt (not to mention physical discomfort) after a week of clean eating and then ingesting a ton of garbage.  Critics of cheat days often state that you're only "feeding the (sugar) addiction."  However, if that explicitly true then you should eliminate all sources of sugar -- fruits, vegetables, and starchy roots included -- which, in my experience, has been extremely ineffective unsustainable for (at least my) athletic endeavors.  One potential option is to "cheat" on more Pale-friendly options (such as dark chocolate or white rice or some the recipes here).  For the time being though, I'll apply my fondness of the 4 Hour Body method (1 cheat day / week, 1/2tsp cinnamon before, 8oz grapefruit juice after, and 90 seconds of exercise between cheat meals) and report back on how that works out.