Paleo Challenge: Week One Complete

Monday marked the end of week one of my Paleo Challenge, which I started on April 26th. And so far, so good. Having a goal in mind of going for 30 days really does help with completing the challenge and avoiding the splurge foods that normally might derail me if I were to say "I just want it tonight."

The one real fault I had over past week was when I ate a couple of Johnsonville sausages with dinner - there were probably some wheat or other carby fillers in those things. But it didn't seem to have bothered me at all.

I'm very pleased with how I feel. Fatigue has been at a minimum and hunger has not been an issue at all. Like I said in an earlier post: I've been in that nebulous "mostly paleo" mode for a while now so the big changes didn't happen. But I have had some little headaches as I came down off the sugars I was allowing myself to take in.

And the other positive is that I'm feeling fitter - the diet plus a few good sessions of Mark Sisson's Primal Blueprint Fitness regimen have worked wonders. My abs are feeling tighter, my arms are getting more defined, and the workouts in general are going more smoothly.

Can't wait to see what the next three weeks bring!

Comments

Caffeine and Cortisol - a 30-Day Experiment

No Caffeine for Me! Today, I began upon a 30-day experiment to reduce my cortisol levels by removing coffee from my diet. The goal is to see how it might be affecting my cognitive function and my belly fat. Cortisol is a hormone that is related to stress . At a very basic level, cortisol is created as a response to stressors in our environment. Back when we were still chucking spears at deer and chasing down antelope, cortisol was helping to preserve our lives by giving us quick energy by signalling to our livers that it was time to engage in a process known as gluconeogenesis. This process is basically the breakdown of amino acids, the building blocks of protein, into glucose - one of the two monosaccharides (the healthy one) that our bodies use for fuel. Picture this - you're walking across the street, enjoying the day, when suddenly some inattentive driver tries to turn and doesn't see you. Your heart rate speeds up, and you get a little burst of speed to quickly sprint o

More on Journaling: So many tools...

Journaling was long a habit that I wanted to pick up but just never did. And it was never because I didn't believe in its worth, it was that I just never built the habit or found the proper method that worked best for me. I'd start it for a while, be enthusiastic about it, and then lose the habit when something else came up and interrupted me. That's all changed for me now, as I look forward each morning and night to journaling in my newest tool I've found. But that search has clued me in to a ton of great journaling tools that might help you as you're looking for that great push to get you into the journaling habit! The Five-Minute-Journal: This is obviously the one I've adopted . It's simple, it's quick, and it does the trick. I won't expand into stuff I've already talked about with this in the two posts I've done on this fantastic tool. But let's talk about some of the other aspects of the Five-Minute Journal.

Low-carb/Gluten-free helps with ADHD in study

The ADHD Research Centre in Eindhoven, the Netherlands has some interesting things to say about the treatment of children with ADHD: Diet can do it. Medscape, a website affiliated with WebMD , reports on a study by the Centre where groups of children with ADHD symptoms and behaviors were tested on their reaction to an elimination diet. The study included 100 children with ADHD, all of whom were checked for allergic reactions to foods before the study began. Half were placed into a control group, half into a test group where their diet was limited to "mainly rice, meat vegetables, pears, and water, complemented with potatoes, fruits, and wheat." And all the children were monitored by their parents for behavior changes. Now here's the interesting part: after 2 weeks, 41 of the children in the test group were showing no changes, so the diet was limited even more to rice, meat, vegetables, pears, and water. Notice what was left out: gluten and fructose via the wheat and

Jamie Fellrath | Practical Mindfulness

Search This Blog