February is Paleo Month!

I've spent a lot of time researching diet lately and have really gotten to the point where it's become crystal clear that diet is much more critical than exercise in terms of health and weight management. My thinking has evolved a bit in the last few years, and the Paleolithic Diet is really matching what feels right and has worked for me. It's ultimately based on eating what our long ago ancestors ate and thus what we've evolved to eat. Meats and vegetables in plentiful quantities, but holding the processed foods including grains and sugars. There's lots of info on the web on the diet, so if you're interested you can check it out or let me know and I can tell you what I've learned.

I've applied the principles or varieties of them for the last few months and have felt good, but I needed to focus a bit better and track what I'm eating in order to truly see if this works for me. So, in February I've decided to focus on eating Paleo, and to track it by keeping a log at FitDay.com. I've made the log public, so you can cruise over and check it out any time by clicking the link above and certainly you should feel free to give me static if I'm not doing well.

My intention is not to be 100% strict, so I want to be a bit more explicit on my goals.

• I'm not removing Dairy from my diet although it's not strictly Paleo, but I will try and cut down, specifically on cheese which is where most of my consumption comes from.
• This isn't specifically a low-carb diet, you can have as many carbs as you want from veggie sources, but as I would like to continue with my weight loss goal I want to average under 100 grams of carbs per day for the duration of the month. This should keep me on average in the fat-burning zone.
• Lastly, February is four weeks and to keep up the weight loss progress, I'm going to aim for just over 1.5 lbs per week which is another 8 pounds, putting me at the 210 threshold.

A couple other thoughts, I may play around with a day or two of intermittent fasting, more to see how it feels and whether it will work for me. I suspect it will be difficult with a morning workout, but it's probably worth a try. The key of course is to make I'm consistently getting enough protein to ensure that I'm not losing muscle mass on those days.

Over the last few months, I've noticed a trend of eating well throughout the day but really being hungry after dinner and eating a bunch of food then. I've tried to keep it relatively healthy snacks, but I'm probably eating too much. My suspicion is that I didn't have enough protein in my diet, so that will be another factor that I will be monitoring closely.

Ultimately, at the end of the month I hope to have a better feel for what works for me and to better understand how my actual diet matches the perception I have of how well I'm really eating.