Not Just a Man's World

I recently stumbled across an excellent Methuselah guest blog  providing a way to transition to the Paleo diet which I thought was worth sharing with you.

I can usually make a decision and set to it with gusto, rarely suffering setbacks (though my recent cutting diet did suffer from a weak moment).  However, when I transitioned to the paleo diet, I had already been through two attempts to transition to low-carb diets. 

These are my experiences, including the errors I think I made.

Attempt 1: Going low-carb at dinner only

We had been reasonably low-carb for a while through habit (and some sort of instinct), but the main carbs that we did have were not ‘clean carbs’ (fruit, extra vegetables, yoghurt etc), although we have always eaten plenty of these things as well.  

Breakfast was a big bowl of porridge with condensed milk and dinner included a small quantity of brown rice or wholewheat pasta.  At some point  we decided to strip the grain carbs out of our dinner and swap condensed milk to cream (to remove the sugar at breakfast).

Within two weeks I was limp and exhausted all the time, my weight training was suffering and my cycling efforts were pathetic.

The error:  Keeping in one huge carb hit every morning and not increasing our clean carb intake at dinner in the form of extra vegetables.  We were expecting our bodies to become fat burning machines, but still reminding them about potential carb energy stores in the morning – maintaining neither message consistently throughout the day.

Attempt 2:  Anabolic diet

After putting me back on an even more reduced dinner grain for a few months to help me pick myself up again it was time for attempt two.  I’ve previously talked about using an anabolic diet for body composition, and this seemed to make sense.  We worked it as six days with low carbs (our only carbs were high-fibre vegetables like broccoli, spinach and cabbage) and one day eating as many carbs as we could lay our hands on.

To make it easier to keep to this diet we allocated one kitchen cupboard as the carb cupboard where all carb sources were stored (flour, sugar, tofu, jar sauces left over from our pre-anabolic days, gravy granules, flapjacks – I shudder to think what we ate back then).  Six days a week we were not allowed to open the cupboard, on the seventh day we could use food from any cupboard in the kitchen.

On the anabolic diet the body gets a consistent message to use fat as the primary energy source during the week and then gets to spend a day replenishing the glycogen stores in the muscles ready for the week of weight training ahead.

This seemed to work much better.  I included plenty of fat sources during the week, increasing the egg, cream and cheese intake (especially brie, I’m very partial to a big piece of brie), and was stronger for it.  There was no adjusting period when I felt weak.  Whether this was because I had been on an even lower rice/pasta quantity, or if it was because we had increased the vegetable and fat content, I will never know.

The error:  We gorged on anything and everything we could on the carb day.  Starting off with a big bowl of porridge and cream (or golden syrup), followed up with two jacket potato meals, a meat and pasta meal, cakes, custard doughnuts… anything that was available.  I became an expert pancake maker in this period of my life.

Attempt 3:  Let’s do paleo properly

Finally the message sunk in.  We were eating paleo six days a week, but goodness only knows what damage we were doing to our bodies on the seventh day.

To start with we kept the anabolic diet but cleaned up the carb sources.  Between meal snacks were swapped to fruit salads with yoghurt or cream, cream was used with the porridge and only potatoes were used for dinners (and in much smaller quantities). 

But then we did some research into the gut and realised we had to really get rid of even the carbs perceived by the general media as healthy – the oats, milk and potatoes.  So we had a carbohydrate amnesty.  We got the bin and dumped the contents of the carb cupboard into the bin.

All the changes after that were positive.  In particular I noticed:

• We weren’t as bloated at the end of the carb-up day.
• My periods were lighter and any remaining cramps that I used to get went away.
• I felt healthier than ever before, with more energy.
• I slept more soundly.

These days we still have the carb cupboard, but you wouldn’t recognise it.  It’s a desolate waste ground mostly containing the week’s fruit and a small bag of sugar for visitor tea and coffee.

So to summarise 

In my experience, the biggest error we made throughout was to try and go low-carb without doing it properly and without taking the paleo approach from the start.  As soon as I took a more holistic approach I stopped having problems and ceased to have cravings for the old foods. 

Methuselah’s advice makes sense to me, having been through these issues.  If you struggle to transition then I  do recommend taking it step by step as he suggests, but if you are able then just go for it – all the way.

Related posts:

1. What diet is best for losing weight?
2. Impact of diet on the menstrual cycle
3. Low carbohydrate diets
4. Lessons learned: low-carb diet for endurance exercise