Transitioning to a 'Winning' Lifestyle - Diet

Part 1 of  5

TL;DR

Focus on the five elements of winning:  Diet, Exercise, Activity, Stress, and Sleep. 

Winning

I want to cover a few elements of transitioning into a lifestyle where you constantly win.  What do I mean by constantly win?  Where every day you have things that you view as success, where you are often in first place, and you hit goals you set with relative ease and pleasure.

What are the qualities of a person who is wining at life?  Let’s take the maxim that a great life may include things like happiness, health, longevity, energy, satisfaction.  To what extent to you feel happy now?  How is your general health?  Are you on the path to a life of longevity?  Is your energy level where you would like it to be?  How satisfied are you overall?  These are big questions we ask ourselves often, and may often see a need for improvement.

When thinking about these maxims, there are five changes we can make that may improve those areas.  I do not think this is a complete list, but I find that these five areas may be our best way to live a long healthy life.  I want to discuss a very basic transitioning plan for each of these items, so as to promote success and not failure.  This is not the guide that immediately puts you in the race, but trains you and educates you so you understand the elements and can apply them when you are ready to stand tall at the starting line. 

When you do all of these items and are ready to start, take a look at Robb Wolfs 30 day total transformation.  Armed with the knowledge you have gained during a transition phrase, the jump to full Paleo land will be easier and hopefully result in success.

And so the list includes Diet, Exercise, Activity, Stress, Sleep. 

This first post will focus on Diet. 

Diet

You are what you eat!  No but really, more and more research is showing us how important our diet is for life and health.  We are seeing trends in diet being associated with more and more diseases, cancer, and obesity.  We see people improve their energy, happiness, and mental health with dietary improvement. 

By simply eating healthier foods, I was able to reduce risks with Type 1 Diabetes with more refined blood sugar control, reduce my BMI from overweight to normal, remove allergies associated with eating (congestion, stomach issues, heartburn, headaches), and feel happier and way more energetic.   I am never tired after I eat (no this is not a joke!).  I haven’t taken Tums in over 2 months (used to take them often).  Keep in mind, your mileage may vary.  Everyone experiences their own unique set of  benefits when making this change.

Often times when searching about Paleo and people who have switched to this lifestyle you find one of the following observations pasted on PaleoHacks.com or some other popular forum:

1. I am 3 weeks in, loving this diet.  I lost 12 pounds and have more energy than I could imagine!
2. I am 3 weeks in, and I hate this diet.  I am lethargic, hungry, unbelievably weak, and feeling generally ill. 

I have seen posts where people have had to been hospitalized and posts where type 1 diabetics have had the best blood sugar control of their lives.  Why such a variation in results?

This is common among other lifestyle changes (veganism, Atkins, ketogenic) and I think is the result of a few observations.  The first being that everyone has a different physiology, so adaptation may differ from person to person.  The second, and I think most common, is changing into a lifestyle without having a well-defined plan that ensures success.  Often times, people end up weak and hospitalized because their macro nutrients out of balance.  They get sick because they are not getting enough fat or protein.  They may not understand what is okay and good to eat, and focus too much on eating foods that do not make you bulletproof. 

When eating a standard American diet, we unintentionally end up terribly addicted to sugar and refined carbohydrates, that we exhibit many withdrawal symptoms common with smokers who are quitting.  This term is commonly referred to as the low carb flu.  If you have already begun your transition into Paleo and are hitting roadblocks, check out Mark’s blogpost on carb flu. 

So how should you start?  Some folks go head first in, but I find big changes easier to commit to if you go gradually.  Try doing the following over the course of 30 days, so you are ready to go full Paleo.

Day 1 - Start cleaning out your cabinets and go shopping

If you don't have good self control, make it harder to eat bad food.  Throw away pasta, cookies, crackers, packaged foods, ice cream, juice, soda, ketchup, sugar, yogurt, soup.  When you are done, I imagine you'll have some olive oil, some canned tuna, some cans of tomatoes and tomato paste, and some vinegar in the fridge.  Keep it simple!  

Stock your house with Paleo foods.  Start with good beef (grass fed if you can find it), lamb, fresh salmon.  Throw in some pasture eggs or omega-3 eggs if you can find them.  Get tons of vegetables and stick to low carb veggies like asparagus  avocado, leeks, celery, fennel, cabbage, romaine  arugula, kale, spinach  summer squash.  If you love fruit, grab some berries but not too much fruit has a lot of sugar.  Get some good fats to eat like extra virgin olive oil, coconut, avocado oil.  And don't forget spices, grab small quantities whole if you can and grind them as needed.  Spices will keep things from getting boring so switch it up from time to time.  

Day 2 – Remove gluten entirely

Replace your plates of pasta and bread with more vegetables and fats.  Read labels as gluten is in so many processed foods.  Eating fat is so important you need the calories.  Some example good fats are egg yolks, fish oil, coconut oil, extra virgin olive oil, avocado oil.

Learn what gluten is and what it is in.  Read articles on gluten’s effect on your body’s metabolism, weight, inflammation (Google Scholar is great for this).  Some suggested searches are: gluten, gluten weight gain, gluten health)

Day 7 - Cut out sugar

No more soda, fruit juice, sugar in your tea.  Sugar shouldn’t need to be replaced if you were using it sparingly.  But when in doubt, eat more fat! If you are seriously dying not having something sweet, try a small serving of fruit like berries.

Research sugar and its effect on metabolism.  Learn how sugar effects insulin levels and leads to fat storage.  Some suggested searches are: sugar and type 2 diabetes, sugar and fat loss, fruit juice and weight gain

Day 14 - Cut out soy, corn, other grains like oats, and grain oils/vegetable oils

Soy is also in everything, and is anti-nutrient and phytoestrogenic.  Replace tofu and other factory soy meats with grass fed meat and pastured eggs (if you can afford them or find them).   

Ditch other grains and ditch the corn.  Corn is okay maybe every once in a while but HFCS and corn processed crud is in a lot of prepackaged food.  

Ditch the grain oils and vegetable oils.  This stuff is freakishly made and doesn't really do anything good for your health.  Need to use oil in something?  Grab coconut oil or extra virgin olive oil instead.   

Today's homework?  Learn how canola oil is made.  

Day 21 - Cut out synthetic additives and dairy

At this point, you have probably cut out enough stuff to not really need to explicitly cut out synthetic additives.  But this includes things like dyes, aspartame, MSG, flavorings, etc.   If you have been sticking to it, your pantry is probably pretty bare and your refrigerator is full of colorful vegetables, eggs, and meat. 

Dairy is a tough one.  Remove process, homogenized, and pasteurized dairy while you begin your transition.  You may be okay in the future to work dairy back in, but it depends on your ability to process casein and lactose.  Casein causes my blood sugar to spike, which is a sign I probably shouldn't eat dairy (casein has no carbs but 25 grams of unsweetened whey protein can cause a 70 point blood sugar spike).   If you must have some cheese or something, go raw cheese from grass fed cows if you can.

Research how aspartame affects brain function and fatigue.

Day 28 – Remove legumes (things like peanuts, chickpeas, black beans)

I don’t eat them or really miss them.  If you have to eat them, sprout and ferment them first.  If you are trying to lose weight and maintain high energy, remove them.   

Day 30 – Paleo Time!

You are basically in Paleo land now.  Around day 21 you probably realized you lost a bit of weight and your energy seems to be better than normal. 

If you feel flu like and exhausted, you are most likely not eating enough fat.  Log your meals on myfitnesspal.com for a few days and make sure you are eating 50-60% of your calories from fat.  Make sure you are eating enough!!!!

There are more changes on the diet side to take into consideration.  For brevity sake I will list them here:

• Replace grain fed meat with grass fed meat
• Replace factory eggs with pasture raised eggs
• Don’t overcook food, keep meats rare if possible, and cook gently.  I make a lot of slow cooker meals and chili (which is meat well done) but I try to eat some rare steaks and raw tuna a few times a week
• Switch to organic vegetables and organic everything else

Stay tuned for part two, where I will discuss the importance of exercise!

**NOTE**

After you commit to a 30 day ramp-up period, make sure you are actively researching this lifestyle change.  I suggest getting on reddit.com/r/paleo and paleohacks.com.  Start listening to Robb Wolf podcasts and reading marksdailyapple.com.  Buy yourself a copy of “The Paleo Solution” and get the Nom Nom Paleo recipe app for your iPad.  Start writing down recipes you like after perusing the 1000’s of Pintrest Paleo food boards.  If you can, get a good friend to hop on board so you have someone to share your progress with.  No friends interested? Post your progress here and to the other support forums like reddit!  Get jazzed for this!