Paleo Diet for Athletes - review (Page 9)

Decided to give this a try, seeing as how many people have had such a good experience with it.

It's my first day.

I'm struggling.

Tired.  Hungry.  No, HUNGRY.  No focus or motivation.  Oh, did I mention I was HUNGRY??  Probably doesn't help that this also causes my caffeine intake to go down, as I'm drinking tea instead of my usual Diet Pepsi.

I prepped food most of the day yesterday to last a week... at this rate, the food won't last through Wednesday.  Until then, I'm just hangin' on... it's going to get better, right??

I just got the book last week and started reading it.   From what it sounds, the first few weeks are painful.  I haven't gone cold turkey, but the difficult part appears to be adjusting to the diet while continuing your training. 

For me, I started something simliar for the last two weeks, I did high protein low carbs but did not cut out the dairy and I lost 5 pounds.  That's after not losing anything after 8 weeks.  Realized my carb intake was way too high, but my calorie intake was low (not too low).

Anyway, I'm taking this week off (and going hunting with friends) so not a good time to commit yet.  But, from my partial attempt so far, it's very promising. 

Send an update after a week and let us know how you're doing. 

Jellyroll

So... checking back in here. Y'all will be happy to know that I didn't end up chewing my arms to nubs. Hee.

I'm 5 days into this and things have basically settled back to normal.  The wild hunger and cravings have mostly subsided and I'm feeling much more even-keeled than I did the first few days.  I've been 100% Paleo so far.

That said, I'm feeling just as good as I did before.  None of The Awesome that I'm supposed to be feeling like.  I've dropped just a touch of weight, but not not enough to be meaningful.

I'm going to give this a little more time, but unless I start feeling drastically better than I did before, I think I'm going to add normal breakfast foods back into the diet -- oatmeal and greek yogurt.  Still keep the processed crap out, and eat mostly Paleo the rest of the day.  The benefits for me would be two-fold:  a big reduction in food prep time on the weekend and a smaller breakfast that actually feels more substantial and would fill me up more.

Thoughts? If I wait this out for another few weeks, am I going to notice more appreciable changes?

Just checking in again...

It's been about 2 weeks now.  I'm feeling normal -- both hunger-wise and energy levels -- but not any better than I did before I started this.  I supplement longer workouts with gels/gatorade type stuff, but otherwise am eating pretty clean.  I've had one cheat day, and while the food felt really heavy in my stomach, I didn't feel all too badly afterwards (it wasn't awful... just bread/cheese and pasta).

I haven't really lost but a pound or two, and measurements are only marginally better... but it's only been two weeks, I suppose.  I had expected more, I guess.

The diet has become routine to a certain extent, but you know what I'm missing most?  Not grains or dairy or anything specifically, but I'm missing the convenience of how I used to eat.  Dinner is probably the hardest -- by the time I get home, I've likely been away for 14-15 hours, I'm ready to eat and I want it NOW.  I'm sick of meat and vegetables and fruit.  I want something easy, like a microwave burrito or to quickly boil up some pasta.

Any ideas to make things easier?  I already grill up stuff beforehand and have fruit/vegetables portioned out ... and that makes breakfast and lunch easy.  But for dinner I seem to have little appetite for the same thing that I've been eating all day.  It just seems like my food options are so limited since this diet cuts out so many things.

I did Paleo for a month, and had a week where I was traveling.  Breakfast was mostly fruit and eggs of some sort.  I did Panera salads for lunch, almost every day (and yes, I was SO SICK of salads by the end of the week).  For dinner whenever I could, I tried to hit up a Chili's/Applebee's/steakhouse kind of place and get just a cut of meat and vegetable sides.

I tried to keep snacks onhand when possible -- almonds and bananas were portable, so that's what I had.

Definitely more difficult out on the road -- takes planning and forethought to end up someplace where you have a few choices of what you can eat.  Good luck!

For those of you who are following the Paleo diet, what do you recommend eating for your 300-400 cal/hour intake during your long training runs/saddle time or during an IM???

I just started last Saturday and so far, so good!  I even ate out at a restaurant on Sunday night and was able to stay true 100%.  I am giving it a fair shake for six weeks and see if there is any appreciable difference.

Hi all.  I'm on Day 2.  I'm also less than 7 weeks out from Ironman CdA and in the middle of peak training.  I can think of a million better times to start a new eating plan, but I'm desperate.  I've continued to gain weight during training (just as I did with Ironman Arizona back in 2009) and I can't keep on this way.  Especially with doing Arizona again later this year.  Right now I only fit into a couple of my tri shorts and am sloooooow.  So...here I go.

I'm really worried about the 2 week adjustment period with lots of fatigue and generally feeling lowsy.  But maybe that will get lost in the background noise of ironman fatigue?  I'm hoping this has a big payoff a couple months from now.