Ah-ha Moments

You know that one moment - the one that everything becomes clear, the Ah-ha moment?  As far as nutrition is concerned, I've had a few, each one getting me closer to the goal. 

Ah-ha Moment 1:

When I started getting healthy, I read in a Men's Health or some other magazine that some actor - I wish I could give proper credit here, used a simple diet of eating every 3 hours to stay ripped.  There were a couple things I remember still.  First, he ate about 150-200 calories every 3 hours of the day, then one low fat, sensible meal.  This made sense, so I did it. 

I wasn't really great at it though, I had no idea what protein/fat/carbs even were, I just understood 200 calories.  So I went to our grocery store and bought about 100 Michelina's Lean frozen dinners.  I ate about 5 of them a day, then one normal low calorie dinner.  I was a good soldier about timing my meals, and used my phone's calendar feature to note the time of every single bite of food.  Basically I was eating 1200 calories a day and robbing myself of every remaining ounce of muscle I had.  But I didn't care, I was losing weight!


Ah-ha Moment 2:

Starting P90X was obviously a huuuuuuuuuuuuge moment for me.  Bigger than the workouts, perhaps, was the nutrition aspect.  Finally, I understood that I was undereating and worse, not eating more than about 10% of my daily calories of protein.  Ah-ha!  I need protein!  And I want to lose fat, so I shouldn't eat any right?  Well.... not really.

I went on the standard 50% Protein / 30% Carbs / 20% Fat P90X Fat Shredder diet.  I had lost weight, but wanted to get ripped, so I continued to up my protein and lower my fat.  My fat intake was actually often less than 15g.  I was eating a diet consisting of grilled/boneless/skinless chicken breast about 3 times a day; one or two bags of frozen veggies a day and that's it.  No dressing, no oils, basically no red meat.  No fat!

Guess what?  I built some muscle, but the remaining body fat just wouldn't go away, even though I was eating under my maintenance calories, the fat remained.  I honestly could not get my mind wrapped around this at all.  How could I still have abdominal fat if I was eating 100% right?  (Hint: I was undereating fat - more on this later)

Ah-ha Moment 3:

After quite some time of doing the low fat diet, I was struggling with two things.  First and foremost, even after all this time of working out like a madman, and eating right, I still had some fat problems.  But the bigger problem was a personal issue.

After many months of doing this diet and workouts, my old binging problems were making a reappearance.   It started with an ice cream cone here, maybe a "treat night" of 6-12 doughnuts there, then suddenly, I couldn't string together 4+ days in a row without falling off the nutritional wagon.  Things weren't working.  I needed to change it up, but didn't know how.

Realizing that things weren't working was possibly my biggest ah-ha on the list.

Ah-ha Moment 4:

After reading the book "Born to Run" I started to become interested in the barefoot running, which led me to the Primal Blueprint and www.MarksDailyApple.com.  This finally made sense.  I have only read one book faster than I read The Primal Blueprint, which I'll discuss later.

This made everything seem like it fit together.  My carb cravings (which I didn't know the term for what I was having at that time), the tired feelings I would get after big meals, all of it.

The thing is - man is an animal, and yet we eat differently than every other animal on Earth.  For millions of years, we ate like other animals on the planet.  Meat, fruit, veggies and nuts.  Then we figured out farming and grains.  After I read this, I cut out the grains and almost instantly lost some of the extra fat I had compiled.  This started the ball rolling towards where I truly wanted to be.

Ah-ha Moment 4:

I read a review of the book BodyOpus by Dan Duchaine.  It said that book wasn't for people who want to lose enough weight to be average.  It was for people who are average and want to be extraordinary.  This is finally exactly how I've been feeling.  I was tired of working my as off to be average.  I wanted more!

This book is hardcore.  I can't even explain how hardcore it is without more detail than my little fingers can type.  Let me just say, that twice a week, you're supposed to eat every 2 hours, including through the night.  As in, setting my alarm every 2 hours to slam a shake or bar.  Well.... no thank you.  But the idea was right - I just needed a better solution.

After a ton of googling, I kept coming across the words Anabolic Diet.  Finally, I found the book and diet system and devoured it.  I mean it - like I read the whole thing in 2 sittings.  I just kept nodding and saying yes - yes - yes - yes.  It was everything I had learned, suspected, thought about and found in my personal experience.  Someday I'll write up a Cliff Notes version of the book, but for now, let's just say it combines the best of both worlds.  (Hell, all 4 worlds!)

Sunday-Friday - I live in a Primal world, tons of meat, eggs, poultry, fish, and veggies.  Since it's been ages since I've had wheat, rice or corn, this really wasn't that much of a change.  The biggest thing was to add fat to my diet.  A lot of fat.  A lot of oils, animal fat, fish oil etc.  What's strange is, the more fat I added, the more lean I was getting.  Every Saturday I get to carb up.

What's amazing is after about 48 days of doing this diet, I'm leaner than I've been in a while, and better and much more importantly - my carb cravings are almost totally gone!  The Anabolic Diet predicted this, but I didn't believe it, until finally it happened.  It's been a miracle - but look, I'm keeping my eyes on the goal and watching for a return.  B.E.D. doesn't just disappear thanks to a new nutritional approach, but anything that will help my binging, I'll take it and not look back.

I'll keep updating this with my progress through this and deeply encourage anyone reading this to check out the books I mentioned, even if you're just interested in learning about the human body and the way our metabolism works, as well as some amazing nutrition stuff - take my advice, check it out.  You'll thank me fore it!