Great progress (IMHO) on a version of the Paleo Diet in only 21 days

About 21 days ago I decided to get myself back into shape. The plan was to use all the knowledge that I had gained in about ±20 years of religiously studying weight training, human performance and nutrition in the trenches + all my formal training as a biologist to undo all the damage that I managed to do in about 3 years. Two things sparked this:

1. A few months before, I had been coaching a good friend of mine, Reza (thanks bro!), who was unbelievably motivated to get back into peak shape. My tips were spot on, but he was the one that put in the hard work and ended up losing 9 kilograms of weight while getting very fit at the same time. While my buddies and I were discussing his transformation with him, I caught myself saying: “Imagine if I only took my own advice…”. It bothered me for about a month before…
2. I took a photo of myself to see just how far I had fallen. What a shock that was! At that point I was still believing those people that said: “You’re not fat, you’re just big…”. Yeah right. I was fat. And I needed to change it. This had clearly become a health risk!

As I ran through my theories of the optimum diet, I very quickly realized that I should go back to an ‘ancestral’ diet. After all, I was doing exactly the opposite at that point. Also, my PhD research centered around genome-scale evolutionary biology and I knew that our genome is adapted for the diet our ancestors ate (it has changed very little since then). Now while I agree with most the ‘paleo crowd’ about what our ancestors ate, I disagree with most on how it should be implemented in this day and age:

1. Paleolithic scenarios were highly unpredictable, and their were no guarantees of any meal, and therefore
2. There is NO golden macronutrient ratio that one can consume day in and day out and still call it ‘paleo’, and
3. We should reconstruct plausible Paleolithic scenarios and base daily eating patterns around those, e.g.
   • intermittent fasting (lean times)
   • low carb, high protein days (exceptional hunting)
   • higher carb days, eating mostly fruit (based on a day of poor hunting)
   • nutrient timing, e.g. high carb (mostly fruit) breakfasts, low carb dinners (based on successful hunts)
   • and more…
4. Fruit should be a big part of our diets – spinach never fueled a hunt, but we can live off fruit for weeks!

Anyway, you can read more about those on my blog. Here’s what I have achieved thusfar:

Wow! Was I nervous taking these photos. I don’t trust what I see in the mirror anymore. I was so nervous that in the ‘relaxed’ photos, it looked as if I was facing a firing squad These ‘posed’ ones look acceptable :-p

Day 0 125kg/275lbs!!! The photo that snapped me back to reality!	Day 21 117kg / 257.4lbs Not bad progress. Not lean by any measure, but not bad. Just what I needed. Now I’m stoked! I can do this!!!!

All in all, not bad for 21 days! 8 kilograms lost, and it looks like its virtually all fat. I did minimal exercise, concentrating on getting into the swing of proper eating. I did 20-30 minutes of weight training twice a week (complex movements – no ‘beach work’ yet) and also 20 min of cardio (moderately intense) twice a week. Now, anyone can achieve similar results. The more you have to lose, the quicker it will come off. But one must be strict for those 21 days. The honest truth is that its dead easy. With the amount of fruit I eat, I am never hungry – ever. I will be strategically adding more fasting days though, and then that will change a bit

Next update will be in 14 days! Wish me luck until then…

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