A Change in Plans

If you may recall, I'm supposed to be doing gettinstronger.org's Deconditioning Diet.  Well, guess what?  I have decided to discontinue it.  It was getting to time consuming and I think I was becoming a little to obsessed with food as a result of starting the craving log(which I haven't used in several weeks).  I just wasn't liking how this "diet" was making me feel and it took me away from one of the original reasons I went "Primal" in the first place; learning to really listen to and be in tune with my body and not always be obsessing over food.  Just eating when I'm hungry, stopping when I'm full, and what my body's supposed to eat.  What it's really telling me it wants.

I had better luck not being so hungry simply following the Primal Blueprint way of eating than with this Deconditioning Diet!  So, I think it's time to return to the basics of a Primal/Paleo lifestyle with a few tweeks (thanks to Healthy Skeptic's Chris Kresser to hopefully clear up my skin issues).

There's a blog post (more of a podcast, really) on his website about clearing up skin conditions by healing your gut.  It's a rather good post which talks at length about the brain-gut-skin axis and the importance of having a healthy gut lining and flora.  Did you know that the is considered by many scientists to be like a second brain?  80% of your serotonin receptors are in your gut, not your brai!

Anyways, back to the reason I brought this up in the first place, my eczema.  In this podcast, Kresser has what he calls his "Gut Healing Protocol".  It's basically a Paleo/Primal with no dairy, nightshades, FODMAP foods, minimal insoluble fiber, and lots of choline rich foods (bone broth in particular).  I think the Paleo part is pretty self-explanatory.  It's been well documented that eating grains with their anti-nutrients that attack the lining of the small intestine and lock onto nutrients making them harder to absorb, can not be good for one's digestive health.  Also, eating processed foods and too many unnatural simple sugars is also not good for ones health (diabetes, etc.),

No diary makes sense for me because of the lactose and casein issues I have.  The only exception on this rule is Ghee or clarified butter.  For those who don't know how wonderful or what ghee is, it's butter with all the lactose and casein removed.  I recently got some and have been using it to help my coconut oil last longer.  No nightshades (potatoes, tomatoes, peppers, eggplant and mushrooms) also make sense because of the small amounts of neurotoxins that can build up.

However, FODMAP was an acronym I'd never heard of until I listned to this podcast abd whose meaning escapes me at the moment.  But, apparently fruits and vegetables with excessive fructose, fructans (still don't really understand what those are), and polypols can cause gut problems for some.  We shall see if such is the case for me.

Another thing I've started to notice is that I'm being increasingly drawn to a more strict Paleo diet.  I'ver been following (for the most part) Mark Sisson's "Primal Blueprint", a less strict version of the Paleo diet, for almost a year and it has helped me out a lot with loosing 85 pounds and keeping it off.

However, some skin issues have come up, mainly ezcema that I'm wondering if a more strict Paleo diet will help cure.  I've gotten a steroid cream from the doc which I use twice a day and I also use a moisturizing lotion from Kiss My Face once a day.  My ezcema has improved quite a bit since using these, but I can't help but wonder if cruching down on my diet hasn't helped as well.  

I hope things continue to improve and clear up over the coming months and that I can move towards an even healthier lifestyle with this switch to a Paleo, as opposed to "Prima" diet.

Sayonara

The Decondition Diet: An Update

A couple of nights ago, I had a craving for a 72% cocoa dark chocolate bar with peppermint bites and completely craved.  Ate the whole damn thing (41 g of carbs) in one sitting!  I didn't even like it very much yet I continued to chomp until the bar was gone.  What the hell?  What cues set this off?  Was I bored because I had to wait outside for the bus?  Disappointed because I didn't have enough money to buy a book on writing I wanted at Barnes & Nobles or was it a food "reward" for having actually lost 2 lbs since I last weighed myself?

More than likely, this chain of events got set into motion by a combination of all of the things mentioned above.  After all what leads to a craving is often more complex then people realize.  And, if you want to deal with one, you've got to look at ALL the cues involved.  Most people don't.  They simply look at the food itself (in my case that dark chocolate bar) and that usually doesn't work in the long term.  Sights, sounds, smells and even hormones play just as big a role.  Just eliminating whatever is being craved may work for awhile, but expose one little trigger and that craving might come back full force!

This is why it's important to look at the big picture and deal with everything that goes on during an "episode".  I'm hoping the Deconditioning Diet talked about in my previous post will help me do just that.  Hence, why I created a Craving Log-to help me notice patterns surround my episodes.  One that I'm starting to notice is I tend to "crave" dark chocolate when I'm tired.  This probably has more to do with the caffeine content and not so much being hungry (most of the time) and yes, I have caved several times this week.  Actually that's the reason I'm extending phase 1 of the diet another week.  Hopefully this will allow the cravings to dissipate enough that I feel comfortable moving on to phase 2.  More on this later.

Sayonara