Primal Eating

I have updated the «The Diet» page. I paste exactly the same thing I wrote there. Just to make a cheap post LOL 😉 No, really. People might see this post first, and it’s a good one. All the links aren’t displaying, but lok up! See «The Diet»  thing? Click on that, the same post is there but the links are working in there. Here I go:

 

What tha heck do you eat, anyway?

I follow the ways of «Primal Eating». It means, I choose to eat the way our ancestors ate many, many years ago.

50 years back from today, people actually fried and prepared food WITH FREACKING LARD. And not a single fuck was given those days about it.

200 years back from today, people actually made their own bread and pasta from SCRATCH.

About 7,000-10,000 years ago, people discovered that they could plant seeds and agriculture was born. We started to eat grains (wheat, barley, rice, etc.) and legumes as staple foods.

That’s 10,000 years! A long time, uh? But you’ll see, human beings (with our same DNA, not some weird ape-man Neanderthal thingy, but actual humans) have been around for… wait for it… 200,000 years ago!!! Meaning, we survived as a species for 190,000 years without eating grains and legumes regularly.

Let that one sink for a minute. For 95% of our history, we didn’t eat any grains or legumes regularly. No bread, no pasta, no rice. And once we started eating those (for only 5% of our recent history), several crappy staff started to happen, including growth retardation in children, decreased muscle and bone mass in adults, kidney stone formation, decaying of teeth, shorter people, etc). <— PubMed article. But, somehow, even as we grew sicker and sicker, you can still imagine healthy people 500 years ago (around the time that guy Columbus was alive), especially in America (the WHOLE America, americans. Not just you). Maybe the rest of the world was «healthy» too?

But then, we managed to screw things up even more. 200 years ago, we discovered the joys of INDUSTRY. And food started to be sold in a box. Candy was not a treat you baked for a birthday, it started to come in a bag, ready to grab, pay and eat. Then, some guys were not happy just selling soap and invented a Franken-oil. And that was about when the shit hit the fan.

We started to get fat as fuck and started dying like flies. Just a few years ago (looking at the big 200,000 years picture), scientists were FORCED to come up with an explanation and a plan. Politics, ya’ know. Some dude did a little manipulating of data (drama queen, needed attention) and bam! It was the fat all along! We blamed saturated fat (the exactly same fat that we were eating from animals since 200,000 fucking years ago ¬¬’ Are you fucking kidding me?) and we were told to eat a lot of new oils from veggies and flowers, and make the new-eats-from-the-last-5%-of-our-history (grains!) staple foods. The pyramid food was born.

Luckily, this worked like a charm. Today, everybody is healthy and thin and muscular and lives for 100 years. Epic fail, anyone?

Since things were getting worst and worst, scientists sit down and came up with a logical explanation. Their advice cannot be wrong, of course, so it had to be YOU. YOU weren’t listening. YOU are a pig AND a sloth. Their advice was perfect, but YOU are such a failure that can’t follow simple directions. You buy this crap, and keep tracking your calories, and follow the «My Plate» guidelines, eating your oatmeal for breakfast, doing aerobic exercise 20 minutes/3 times a week, but still you fail at losing fat. And feel miserable about it.

Is it your fault? Or is it theirs?

OPEN YOUR EYES.

What is this «Primal» non-sense, anyway? It’s about rewind time the best we can, and eat the foods we ate for the first 190,000 years of our history. And move/exercise the way we did back then. Doing this stuff has some terrible side effects, tho. Like you start to lose fat. You might even start to look good naked. You might got more energy. You might lose sight of your doc, since a lot diseases stop hanging around you. You also might become a zealot. And start lecturing people about the bread they’re eating. And give disapproval looks at other people’s plates. Did I mention start looking good naked?

I try to emulate that way of eating/exercising the best I can. I could never do it exactly that way. For example, bananas might not be the same bananas from 200,000 years ago. We have chosen some species, breed them to make them sweeter and yellower and stuff. Just about a couple of hundreds years ago, all carrots were PURPLE. Yes, purple. They weren’t very popular either. We grew them to be orange (even now, some carrots still have some purple around the leaves at the top, have you noticed that?) Back then, we would hunt a boar for 30-60 minutes, and then carry it to camp. And that was work. The rest of the day we pooped and fucked. Today, we got 9 hours workdays. We used to walk barefoot like a hobbit, we have shoes now (wonder what that does to our feet bone structure…).

Still, I got some slack. I do eat cake at birthdays, have some bread or pasta here and there, and I freacking love alcohol 🙂 But I do my best to eat primal every single day. What are my eats?

– Meat (chicken, beef, pork, ham, fish, soylent green) and a side salad.

-Meat and a stir-fry of veggies.

-Omelets, hard boiled eggs, scrambled eggs.

– Coffee, teas, water, sparkling water. Diet soda on special ocassions.

-Fruits, 1 piece or so everyday.

– Whey protein.

-Splash of whole milk on coffee, cream to coffee and meals, butter.

-Honey, sometimes. In beverages, desserts or dishes.

-Cheeses and nuts as condiments.

-Lard, olive oil, grapeseed oil.

-The ocassional potato.

That’s it, in a nutshell. If this is the first time you read anything like this, click all the links and read the websites <— specially this one. I’m here to answer your questions too. I think you just hit the jackpot.

 

DIET: You’re doing it wrong!

Yes, I’m a Paleo/Primal advocate. But I’m not a zealot. I hate it when people get their megaphone out on the Internetz and start to lecture people with the Bacon Gospel.

This work for me. I’m pretty sure you’ll do it more than fine on it too. But I lost half my weight with a conventional low cal/low fat diet. Whatever rocks your boat.

So, I’m not here to tell you to eat more  fat and yada yada yada. Actually, do whatever diet/lifestyle you want! But please, just one note: be sure it’s working.

I don’t care why you eat what you eat. I’m sure you’ll have a lot a excuses for your «diet». Really, even if you are a level 15 vegan (only eats things that don’t cast a shadow) and you look great, hey, good for ya! The same for other paleo folks, or The Zone folks, or the Weight Watchers folks.

Just do whatever you are doing, ONLY if you are getting results. If it’s working, don’t change anything!!! If it’s not broken, don’t fix it!!! But please, please… if you’re still not seeing any results after 3 months of staying on track on your diet/lifestyle… reconsider trying something else. I’m not saying that you must try MY THING. Because what worked for me might not work FOR YOU. What I’m saying is: if it’s not working after 3 months (plenty of time to see at least some results) make a change. Don’t get into the insane loop of doing the same thing over and over again and expect different results.

Now if you excuse me, I must go to bed and guard my bedroom with a baseball bat all night. I just watched the first 2 episodes of «American Horror Story» and I’m really hearing things in my house. I’m afraid that the BDSM ghost leather guy might show up here. Or the bleeding twins. Or Jessica Lange *shudders*. I’m not afraid of mistake an old lady for a hot redhair, because that kind of shit happens with alcohol anyways. Yeah… it happen to a friend of mine. Yep, uhu… to a friend of mine.

Healthy guts: splenda and sauerkraut

I had been thinking about gut health for the last few days. Part of it is because the muscle building program I’m following, the Hollywood Physique. In this program, you’re suppose to have a «cleanse» before the actual exercise and eating program begins, in an attempt to aid (or better said, to fix) an impaired digestion and absorb better the different nutrients your body so desperately needs.

And of course, we all have heard about lactobacillus. You know, that healthy bacteria living in your guts, helping with digestion, nutrients’ absorption and killing evil bacteria. And, supposedly, it also helps you losing weight! I remember looooong ago seeing in the Discovery Channel how this bambi-looking  thingy (some sort of deer, I guess) actually ate his momma’s POO in order to get some of that bacteria into its system. Yeah, nasty stuff. Anyway, I’m not licking anybody’s poo to get some lactobacillus into MY system. Trust me, I got quite a handful of kinky fetishes, but that is NOT one of them!!!!!!!!!!

You can also buy yogurt  and other dairy products, but from what I read, most of the good bacteria is already dead by the time you actually eat it. There are some supplements on lactobacillus, but they’re more expensive than a sample of the Pope’s crap (yeah, Holy crap!) and the box only has 10 pills. So, for a month’s worth, I have to spend THREE LITTLE FORTUNES to get the pesky eff’ers in me. Not. Gonna. Happen.

OH! I I recently discovered Splenda kills the good bacteria in your guts. I was always afraid on googling «Splenda side effects» because I love the stuff. But I stumbled on the info and…. crap. So, since I’m an Splenda whore (probably getting the max amount permited every day!) I probably don’t have many lactobacillus in my guts right now. I mean, 5-6 cups of «something» a day with 5 tablets/25 drops of Splenda on EACH cup?

I began to worry when @YumYucky called it «Splenda-shit» in a tweet. Like I said, I didn’t want to actually google it and learn about the bad side of it. But I guessed that cutting down in the stuff was not a bad idea. I started to drink my teas Splenda-less. It took a while, but it is doable. The coffee was a different animal. I started to have it black just a few days ago, and amazingly I already adapted! The first cup was…ugh. Instant coffee. No sweetener. I had to tweet «Instant coffee with no splenda tastes like jockstrap water LOL». Man, it was like a tsunami of gay bots replying to me, I barely made it alive!!! (That’s the second word I banned from tweets, unless you want a bot tsunami. The first word to never tweet? IPad, duh)

Aaaaaaaaand that’s a rap on this post’s introduction. (Really, Rein, all that was just the intro? Yes, it was). I searched for a cheap way to get lactobacillus into my digestive system, and keep it paleo/primal friendly. Enter – I bet you guessed it from the title- sauerkraut! I found this sauerkraut recipe on one of my favorite paleo recipes sites, Paleodietlifestyle.com. And get more confident after watching this video on tha tube:

A few hours ago, I did the whole drill. Shredded half a cabbage, and set something like that video shows. Smaller tho, since I’m the only one who’s going to eat it, probably. Tune in next week, I’ll post the results and pics of what I did!

Primal Stuffed Chicken Breasts (with broccoli)

I’m an ass. I purposedly cooked this dish to post it here, and took pics of the whole process. But I forgot to take a pic of the finished dish! *sight* Anyways, the first time I did this was an instant hit. The family didn’t even protested at the lack of potatoes or rice. It’s a winner! You’ll be making the meat and the side dish at the same time too, so there less mess to clean up afterwards!

Now, I understand that not all people reading this blog follows the Paleo/Primal lifestyle. But I do encourage «normal» folks to try this dishes once in a while. I’m not trying to convert anybody here,  but this is a very delicious savory meal to try. Not EVERY meal has to have starch, ya’know? Also, if you find the amount of monosaturated fat in the recipe threatening, please do uso EVOO or some «light» version of the ingredients I used. Heck, change whatever you want from the recipe =)

OK, so, how do you begin this things again? Oh right, the ingredients list (serves three hungry paleotards people):

– 3 chicken breasts (or one and a half? I mean, one whole chicken has 2 «half» breast, right? 3 of those).

– 1 cup of finely diced red bellpepper

– 3/4  cup creamcheese

– Bacon, a lot of it

– 2 Tbsp lard

– 1 whole big broccoli. I used some cauliflower as well because the broccoli I had was kind of small.

– Spices! I used garlic powder, fresh black pepper, cumin and salt.

The actual procedure (it takes about 1:30 hours, cooking included):

We’ll need those chicken breasts flat. We will want to roll them up as you would roll a carpet before storage it (or something like that). So take a big piece of plastic film, your favorite kitchen hammer (I bet they have another name but I don’t know it) and pound away.

The idea here isn’t making the breast super thin; it’s more about making it the same thickness all around. The plastic film protects the meat; otherwise you’ll end up with a lot of grounded chicken breast. You can reuse the same film for all the breasts.

Place the creamcheese in a microwave safe dish and nuke a minute or so, until tender. Add the bellpepper.

And mix.

Spread the stuffing into the chicken breast…

Roll them up the best you can (it doesn’t have to be perfect, will be putting more stuff on top anyway), and place them in a oven rack (I was using a toaster oven)

Then put the sliced bacon on top…

And place in the oven at medium heat.

Place the «cookie sheet» underneath it. The creamcheese will ooze. You’ll want to catch it on something.

Cut and wash your broccoli in big chunks (bigger than bite sizes). Pat dry.

In a mixing bowl, add 2 Tbsp of lard.

Add any spices you like, and mix.

Coat your veggies in the lard mixture..

And if you feel like it, get a real mess by mixing it with your hands!

And after the chicken has been roasting for 20 minutes, add the veggies in the cookie sheet. Mix well with any droppings from the chicken, and roast everything for another 40 minutes.

After that, just eat!

I scare the crap out of myself

OK, a little intro first. This community, the weigh loss/health community is mainly dominated by women. There, I said it. The men are minority. And the men who actually hit goal weight, yet keeps on blogging, are a minority inside the minority. And the men who struggle with muscle gain, BUT having our minds already fucked up by previous fat gains (we started blogging as fat dudes), are even less. I think I can count 4 guys like that in my reader. Me included.

So, you’re a dude.  You were fat, but you lost the extra weight. Now, time to bulk because non of us wants to be just skinny, we want to look more muscular as well. And to look muscular, you need to lift weights and eat a little bit above maintenance – or a lot above it. Just eat more, but don’t start to get fat again. Simple, on paper.

I had lost a lot of weight, and now I’m what a like to call a «Skinny Fuck». In my mind, my legs are normal; in the mirror, I see straws. In my mind, my arms are a little bigger than average; in the mirror, I have straws for arms. I have «Twiggy» written all over my face. I hate it. My height is 5′ 61» (1.71 meters) and weight 132 pounds (60 kilos first thing in the morning after peeing).

And still, yeah, I keep on weight training. I add one more rep almost every workout. I get stronger. A stronger skinny fuck.

But the idea of eating over my calorie «confort place» scares the living crap out of me. I’m skinny, yet I don’t own a pack of six abs. Maybe, if I flex, a some sort of 4-pack? So I’m torn between wanting to eat above maintanence for muscle gain, and wanting to undereat for fat loss. One day I feel on one team, the next I feel on the other team.

So, now that summer is almost over, I said fuck it. Let’s eat more, and exercise less. Yes, I said LESS. Less cardio, same weight lifting, more sleeping and naps. And let’s eat a lot, but real food, #primal foods. (Wait, did I just add a hashtag there? WTH?)

I had write this very same post before. Then, a few days later, I panick about growing a belly again and go back to low cal. I hope, the story doesn’t repeat itself. Stick to a plan other than low cal, goddammit!!

So the actual plan: weights 3 times per week. Bodycombat 1-2 times per week. Swimming 1-2 times per week, but not for calorie burning; only for technique purposes. Eat more than I do now, only real food. Meat, veggies, fats, fruit and eggs.

OK. Here I go.

Oh, no! What did I do yesterday?

Oh no, you didn’t…

Yes I did, and I’ll do it again!! =) Not today… but soon…

Sweet Xmas!

Dude, I think I ate my house!

People came over my house for Christmas, and as the host, I decided I was going  to make the foods as Paleo-friendly as I could. I tried. I didn’t work out LOL

I did prepare Deviled Eggs (they were a hit!) and Chiken Wings. Oh and Sausage & Bell Peppers appetizers. But I also bought chips. And cake. And Christmas cookies. And milk chocolate with almonds. And I ATE. I also inhaled Turkey with Potato Salad. Oh, and rum. Lots of rum. I almonst became a pirate from all that rum – I certanly started to speak funny, pirate like, and had some walking issues after all that booze!-.

I ended up going to bed at the sweet time of 7 AM. Gosh. 4 hours later, I had to wake up for a trip to the in-laws. Worst. Hungover. Ever.

Over there, there was sugar time. More cookies. More potatoes. Fried goods. And more alcohol.

All that time, I just repeated to myself «It’s not about what you do one day, it’s how you stick to your goals the rest of the year». Yeah, I didn’t buy it either, still felt guilty while I shoved all that food down my throath! But now, it’s over. Well, until next Friday, when the party will continue 😛

So, today I’m back on track. I’m currently following the Paleo Diet 80% of the time, and also doing Eat Stop Eat, wich requieres me to just take a break from eating one or two times a week.

Ugh, just realized I have to pay my gym membership today… for the whole 2011. Dammit!

Pros and cons of Intermittent Fasting

In case you have no idea what Intermittent Fasting (IF) is, here’s a little remainder: there’s quite few ways to do it, but basically you fast for 16 hours – that includes the time you spent sleeping – and eat your meals in the 8 hours window you got left.

For example, you skip breakfast and lunch and start eating at 4 PM. Here you can go in two different ways: eat ALL your calories for the day (and that’s a lot of om nom nom’s, you can do this daily) until 12 AM; or just eat what you normally eat after 4 PM, resulting in a calorie deficit (just don’t do it every day, the «Eat Stop Eat» approach says do it 2 days per week).

So why on Earth would someone eat in this hippie way? Well..

THE PROS

– Insulin is kept at minimum during your fasted hours, resulting in the use of your body fat for energy. Insulin is highly anabolic (meaning «anabolic» as taking the chemical energy from food and transforming it into real tissue), so fat burning is impaired as long as insulin is high.

– You give your pancreas a rest during your fasting hours. This might be of extreme importance for diabetic people… Go check that link, insulin-dependent dude goes paleo and IF and keeps his diabetes without medication now. Interesting read!

– Insulin sensitivity goes high. That means that when you do eat, your pancreas need to work less to do the same job.

– Growth Hormone (HGH) goes high during the fasted state. This hormone helps to repair your body and build muscles. When 4 PM arrives, and you eat again, your body is on «give me the bricks to build muscles faster» mode on.

– During a fasted state, your sympathetic innervation gets more stimuli. Fat cells have that innervation. Do the math.

– Since all the blood that used to be in the digestive tract now has a break, circulation increases in other tissues. One reason why stubborn fat is stubborn, is its poor vascularity. Now you are able to take fatty acids away from those cells and into the bloodstream.

– And muscle tissue is spared during the fast (for more than 48 hours actually), provided that you are involved into some kind of resistance training regularly. If you don’t lift weights, I don’t know what happens. But still, we’re talking just 16 hours here.

OK, enough with boring biology. Plus, this guy explains it much better in this article than me and knows a lot more about it anyway. But there are some practical pros as well:

– I love to cook. But I don’t like to cook after I hit the gym, had dinner and all I want is to hit the hay. The day is over and you just want to chill or sleep or whatever, but you still need to cook your lunch and pack it, maybe breakfast too and pack it if you are like me, because if you don’t cook ahead you end up eating vending machine crap at work.

Doing IF I don’t need to cook or plan anymore. I won like 1 hour of time everyday.

– You get to eat lots of stuff that are banned in the «normal» way of eating. 5 strips of bacon and 4 whole eggs with 2 cups of whole, full fat milk and coffe for breakfast? No way, José, unless the breakfast is at 4 PM. You actually try to add more calories (as in extra bacon) just to meet you calories for the day.

– Also, you get to experience full, and I mean FULL errr… fullness. Like you binged big time, but when it comes down to calorie counting… you still need another 500 cal snack just to hit maintenance calories!

– Oh, and I use my lunch hour to take a full hour power nap at work =D

OK, OK, too good to be true. Everything that has a good, shiny side has a dark, evil side as well. Here are the cons from my point of view:

THE CONS

– You do get hungry while fasting. You miss lunch. You try to keep ocuppied or fool the guts with green tea and coffee and the like. It usually works like a charm, but sometimes it doesn’t. You’re never in real hunger pain, but it bites.

– It’s really hard to eat all your calories in just a few meals. There you have this yummy, high calorie, zero guilt feast in your plate but when you reach fullness, you still have like half your plate to eat. And you must force it down your throath. They say you get used to it and eventually like it. It’s getting easier for me, but I still struggle.

– I stopped eating lots of veggies and fruits. You just reach for high calorie density foods, so you can meet your target calories. I can’t afford to get full on spinach and not eating all the other stuff.

– You look great in the morning. Pants almost falls off if you don’t use a belt. You look thinner, and you have a smaller waist all day long… until you eat. Since you eat a lot of food in one sitting, I swear you go up one size of jeans automatically. You need to unbutton your pants after the «breakfast». Be warned, do not look at yourself in the mirror just to check on your «abs» after eating. After my meals, I look PREGNANT LOL. Sure, it comes down about an hour after but still…

So there you have it. Just another piece of info you can use (or not) while trying to make this puzzle all toghether. I’m not saying this is the only way that works. It’s just A WAY that’s is getting pretty popular right now, is based on science, and worth a shot. Maybe you might wanna skip breakfast and lunch if you have a fancy dinner in this Italian restaurant, or maybe start eating at 4PM if you know you’re gonna go out and have quite a few drinks. Or have some peace of mind when life get in the way and you skip a few meals and you go all nuts because you didn’t eat your proteinz and aminoz and teh bicepz are going all catabowlik. As everything in life, take it with a grain of salt =D

Intermittent Fasting follow-up

The last dog I owned lived in the backyard. We fed it him once a day, a huge bowl of dog food and water was available to him all day long.

My current dog, an Akita with the charming personality of a 15 years old teenager boy going through a complex puberty, eats all day long. If we catch his bowl empty, we refill it. Everytime some family member gets home, after jumping his enourmous body into us (and that includes a 69 years old woman), he runs to his bowl and eats out of stress, LOL.

My point being, some dogs eat just once a day, and they not die out of starvation. And you shouldn’t either, since you are also an animal. OK, sure, we have a soul and when we die we go to heaven… or hell… or end up here back again… or just disappear… whateva is what you believe. But your body, your meatsuit, it’s just a mammal. A fancy ape, nothing else!

The intermittent fasting approach says that you skip breakfast and lunch, and after a 16 hours fast, you get to eat the breakfast and the lunch and all your meals and calories in that 8-hours window, from 4 PM to 12 AM. You can have just one big meal, or three, or eight, or twenty; no one cares. Really, we won’t be looking. As long as you eat ALL your calories planned, you should be allright. You can do it low-cal to lose weight, high-cal to put on some mass, or just mantain your weight.

When you think about it, if you track your meals on one of those websites that counts calories and macronutrients and the like, and if you eat all your calories in the 8-hours window, guess what – all your stats remain the same.

But the big thing, the greatest thing about  this approach is the freedom. Freedom, baby! Because, let’s face it. If you are reading this, your life probably revolves around food. You read about food, you might blog about food, and think about food, food, FOOD all day long!! After dinner, you need to plan your meals for the next day. Pack lunches, get some idea for breakfast, thow something out of the freezer for tomorrow, pack healthy snacks for work so you don’t end up eating candy from the vending machine… all of that while still manage to do the things from that extra-large to-do list of yours. It’s demanding. So maybe you should try this other, more relaxed way.

My day starts with coffee. I had said before that I’m not a breakfast guy, so I’m happy that I’m not shoving down my throath a 4-egged ground beef &veggies frittata that early just for protein’s sake (and even happier about not having to cook it the night before!). Mornings are usually filled with work, so I don’t get time to get hungry. If I do, more coffee or white/green tea or even just plain water does the trick. I don’t encourage smoking, but yeah that helps too.

Now, lunch time. I’m used to eat at this hour, so I get hungry sometimes. But it’s not a OMG-I’m-starving hunger. It’s more like it to be in my head, like I’m suppose to be munching at this time so I felt some ritual missing. But you know what’s better than eating on your lunch hour? Napping on your lunch hour =) Power naps FTW!

After the nap, all feelings of hunger are gone. Drink some more tea during the afternoon, and before I know it, it’s 4 PM. Time to eat! Sometimes is just a convenient, double serving protein shake, other times is a sausage and 4 scrambled eggs… it varies. This breakfast I’ll eat while still at work.

After I get home, I eat something light because I usually workout at this time. So a cup of whole milk and maybe some deviled eggs are devoured, and to the gym I go.

After I got back, and that PWO hot shower had me all relaxed and stuff, it’s time to sit at the table and get serious about it. I probably need to eat like 1,200 calories still. All of them, free of guilt. Good.

I’m trying to stick to low carb/paleo/primal, so I might had an avocado for an entree, then lots of dead animals with buttered veggies, mayo, you name it. And fruits like bananas, pears, kiwis, etc. At this point I’m pretty stuffed, so I drink some mint tea to help my belly. And before going to bed, I might attack the deviled eggs once again. Then sleep, rinse ad repeat.

During the 16 hours fast, I do feel more energetic. I call it the «low-carb peppy time». People on Atkins reported it, sure as hell people on Paleo/primal reported it, and intermittent fasters also reported it. I think is the low-carbish time. Anyway, you feel more awake.

When I think of the animal world, every critter needs to relax during and after they eat. Sometimes hunters make a kill but don’t eat it right away. Nope, they take their prey somewhere else, where they will not be bothered by other animals who might try to steal it or kill them while they eat. And to nap after they fed! Ever felt sleepy after lunch? I think that food in the belly triggers a napping switch. That makes sense, since you’re not suppose to engage in physical activity during digestion (wait a full hour after a meal before going for a swim!).

Now, for the bad part. You might get the carb flu at first. The wha? Flu-like symptoms people get the first days when going low carb. You might do normal carb intermittent fasts, but you’ll be low carb for 16 hours anyway. I didn’t get any, but I ditched sugars long ago and starches during the August primal challenge. If you do eat starches and the ocassional daily treat, you’ll might go throught an adjusting fase. Maybe you will not. Who knows, right? There’s only one way to found out 😉

This thing doesn’t ask anything hard on you. It might look like something really hard, even horrible, but really, it’s just wait until 4 PM to eat. You don’t need to infiltrate the mafia as a double agent here – now that would be a hard thing to do.  It doesn’t requiere a lot of planning, actually you’ll find yourself planning less.

Some branches of this intermittent fast community will say that you don’t even need to count calories or watch macronutrients ratios, because everything just falls in place. Me? Do I still count calories and watch macros ratios?

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Well of course I do!!! I mean, I don’t eat like I’m some kind of hippie!!!

Holiday’s binging

OMG. I ate the world. Since I had a 4-days holiday, because of the 200th Chilean independence day, I thought it was OK to perform a little experiment on myself.

You can read that as «I’m going to eat everything in sight from friday to monday». And of course, we aren’t talking primal/paleo food here. And the results were… unusual. Not at all what I expected. Oh, the important part: I ate everything in a 8-hours window, you know, the intermittent fasting way. So, let’s review what tha heck I was eating this last 4 days…

«Empanadas de horno»

At 600 kcal each, this puppies are loaded with carbs and fat. They are baked, but the fat content in the dough makes up for the flavor. The filling is chopped meat, onion, spices, a piece of hard-boiled egg and an olive. I can eat 3 in just one sitting.

«Empanadas fritas»

The wicked sister of the above empanada, it’s smaller so you can think you’re eating less. Of course, I ate like 8 in one sitting. The filling is the same, but this evil SOB’s are deep fried.

«Choripán»

It is what it is. A sausage, and bread. My «serving» is two of these (after all the empanadas).

«Alfajores»

Finally, we got to the sugar! This pastry evilness if filled with dulce de leche and some coconut too. I had like a whole truck of these.

«Asado al palo»

It doesn’g get more Paleo than this. Just stick dead animal on some huge iron sword-like thingy, and stay by the fire for hours, rotating it endlessly. Drink during the activity liberally.

Wine

I drank buckets of wine. It was good. Chilean wines are famous for being good (at least, that’s what we believe). Buckets.

«Sopaipillas»

Deep-fried dough and hot salsa. Do I need to say anything about this? Calorie galore.

So, to the results of this immoral orgy of calories and bad eating!!!!

I think I look puffier. I believe it’s the carbs. But the thing is, my all-natural caliper (grabbing my belly fat with my hands) shows readings of leaner-ness. And after eating 4 days like this, but using the intermittent fasting method, I lost 2 pounds since last week. Yeah, you can read that again, I LOST 2 POUNDS since last week. And I’m trying to stop losing weight!

So, I got two options. One, this is actually a body recomposition thing; or two, I’m dying. Nah, that last one would give me other symptoms, right?