You Are What You Eat...

I've been following the Primal Blueprint for a bit under 4 months now, and I've had my ups and downs, as far as weight loss is concerned.  At last measurement, I had lost around 7kg, which isn't actually a bad effort over 4 months.  The thing is, I could easily have lost more, as there was a period during winter when I wasn't losing weight.  I actually put a kg or two back on.

I was thinking about why this happened the last few days, and it all comes down to food.  In The Definitive Guide to the Primal Eating Plan, Mark Sisson states that "80% of your body composition is determined by your diet".  So, it should really be no surprise that my weight loss slowed down when I stopped eating lots of veggies, in the form of salads, and switched to eating pumpkin soup and curries almost exclusively.  Initially we'd tried a few vegetable stir fries, which were great, but one thing and another made this difficult, so we stuck to the tried and tested soup and curry.

Now, neither the soup or the curry were particularly unhealthy, so why did I stop losing weight?  I dare say it was mostly a case of losing track of macronutrient ratios.  What the heck is a macronutrient?  Basically, we require three kinds of nutrients to survive, carbohydrates, fact and protein, and these are macronutrients.  A typical diet might consist of upwards of 40% carbohydrate and 40% protein, as fat has been getting a bad rap for so long.  Take a look around a typical supermarket shelf.  You'd be hard pressed to find one without some sort of low fat product.

However, according to the Primal Blueprint Eating Plan, for optimal health, you require 2 grams of protien per kg of lean body mass, and no more than 100 to 150g of carbohydrate.  If you're wanting to lose weight, then carbohydrates need to be kept under 100g.  So, what makes up the rest of the calories?  Fat, preferably saturated fat, or mono unsaturated fat.

It turns out, our bodies are really good at burning fat for energy, and not so good at using carbohydrates.  Too much leads to the excess being stored as fat.  Keep the carbs down, and your body begins to get its energy from fat, either from your diet, or stored body fat.

So, what does this have to do with my poor weight loss over winter?  I imagine that by cutting out most of my vegetable intake, and only eating starchier vegetables (like pumpkin and sweet potato), I unwittingly added too much carbohydrate back into my diet.

Fortunately, now that I'm aware of this, I can be prepared for next winter.  I'm already planning to have a good variety of winter veggies planted int he garden, so hopefully we'll be able to throw together a few more stir fries.  I've also recently taken delivery of The Primal Blueprint Cookbook, which should also give us plenty of ideas for winter meals.

Food for thought...

The last week has been an interesting one.  I've gone back to daily monitoring of my weight, with the proviso that I'm not interested in exact numbers, just that they are going down.  This has been working out fine for me.  I haven't been so worried if my weight has fluctuated, and  just watching a downward pointing line has been quite refreshing.

I did notice one unusual ting over the weekend, though.  My rather impressive weight loss line flattened out on Saturday morning.  Not exactly unexpected, given that I'd indulged in some non-primal food the day or so before.  The plateau continued through Monday, and by Tuesday I'd actually gained weight (not much, but still, that's just not right).

Now, as I said, the plateau on Saturday wasn't unexpected, due to more than a few pieces of bread eaten on Thursday and Friday, but I couldn't explain why it continued for so long, and indeed turned into weight gain.  I looked over what I ate over the weekend, and couldn't fault anything.  I'd been active, and so didn't think lack of exercise was to blame.

So, what was different over the weekend?  Well, I hadn't hadn't had any green tea at all.  I've taken to drinking green tea recently, in an attempt to increase my intake of anti-oxidants.  As it turns out, I started tapering off drinking green tea on Friday (thanks to messing up a cup by mistakenly adding milk, whoops...).  I also forgot to bring some more to work on Monday, and so was left with drinking black tea.

So, is it just a coincidence that my weight loss stopped while not drinking green tea, and started again when I went back to drinking it?  It almost seems too good to be true, but at this stage, that's what it looks like.  I think further experimentation is required.  Perhaps I'll try leaving off the green tea one day later in the week, and see what the weight loss does.