Yesterday marked roughly the halfway point of our Whole 30 journey, so I thought it’d be a good idea for us to weigh in and take vitals. I was pretty sure I’d be dropping weight, considering the way my body looked, and the fact that many of my clothes have been fitting strangely. Sure enough, we’ve both lost close to 5lbs over the course of the last 2 weeks!

Sarah – 155lbs @ 21.4% body fat
Luke – 175.5lbs @ 6.9% body fat

How have we been feeling? Not too bad. Some mood issues on both sides I’d say, but all in all good.

However, considering how fast I’ve been losing weight, I’ve put the possibility on the table of me not completing the rest of this Whole 30 with complete rigidity. Why? Because I don’t want to look like a pre-pubescent girl, that’s why! I feel that is my right.

I’m going to weigh in again this coming Monday before making the final decision on that. Even if I decide not to stick to the guidelines, I’m still going to be eating all my Whole 30 approved meals, but I’ll just add in other, more calorie dense, non-Paleo foods to bump up my total calorie intake. I’m all about being a lean machine, but I don’t like the idea of losing muscle. I worked too hard for it over the past 10-12 months to waste it all.

But don’t worry… Even if I don’t completely stick with the program, Sarah has assured me that as long as I still cook and eat what she’s eating, she’ll stick to it like a champ… The other law she set down was that I couldn’t talk to her about what it was that I was eating.

I can see this going something a little like this…

I let Sarah in the front door. She walks in with a smile, and a bag full of veggies for what we’re about to cook…

Sarah: Oh my God, you won’t believe it. Avocados are only 69 cents at Kroger right now.
Me: Praise Baby Jesus, this is most joyous news.
Sarah: I knew you’d be excited, so I went ahea-….what is that on your neck?
Me: *quickly slapping at neck* What? Nothing. Must be shaving cream. Man I hate when I forget to wash off the shaving cream! It’s probabl-
Sarah: Wait, is that ice cream!?… Have-…have you been cheating on me!?
Me: WHAT!?…NO!…no, no way, never… Well. I mean, I thought we had an open Whole 30 relationship?

Cue tears and yelling…

But we’ll see. I don’t want to cut back on the lifting or cardio, because that kind of defeats the purpose I think. I’ll update you on that here shortly.

But in closing, how about some food porn from the previous couple weeks (with links to recipes where applicable. Just click the picture)…

So this quick post is to fulfill a request made by a couple of female readers (Jess & Sio) that my partner in crime for this go of the Whole 30 post her stats. Surprisingly enough, I didn’t have to twist her arm as much as I thought I would, and she was happy to share her numbers with me (and thus with you…don’t worry I told her I was going to put this on here).

But first a little bio…

Sarah is a 24-yr. old student working on receiving her doctorate at MCV… and she is a recovering P90x-aholic.

Or was.

I say was because, just as she was beginning to stop using some of the stupid, yet mildly entertaining, catch phrases of the cult leader Tony Horton, and speak and act like a normal human being… she relapsed. The sad truth of it is, not only did she relapse, but she fell into an even worse drug: the cardio-intensive spin-off from P90x known as “Insanity”.

All jokes aside, having seen some of the Insanity series, it looks 100% legit as a vehicle to making you a cardio-machine, and Sarah is currently a little over halfway through the 60-day program.

Previous to the Whole 30, Sarah has been eating relatively “healthy” by most standards. While she will sometimes eat Paleo-compliant meals, sugar, grain, and dairy have all been a large part of her diet up until this point.

Enter pure Paleo goodness from October 31st until Thanksgiving to rock her world. As I stated above, she was kind enough to agree to share her stats to let you know how the Paleo-ness affects a physically active female. So here you go:

At the beginning of the Whole 30: 160lbs @ 21.8% body fat (very healthy levels for a female)

I’m just as interested as you to see how her body reacts to the naturally low carb diet, and I know she’s super stoked. We’ll keep you posted as things progress.

I figure you guys have had enough time off from me babbling on about Paleo this and Paleo that…. So I don’t feel bad telling you that I’m doing another Whole 30. Yes, the super strict Paleo eating guidelines that I did back in April/May of this year, and I plan on telling you all about it…. again.

However, there are a few things this time around that will be a little different:

1. Technically, it’s going to be a Whole 4-2+25

I feel like I’ve got to be honest here. It’s not a hard and fast “Whole 30”…. Halloween is one weekend on which I will not concede the alcohol. I’m sorry, but if I’m going to dress up like a jackass (and I will, and like it), I will be drinking accordingly.

Other than the alcohol this Halloween weekend, I will be eating (and not drinking) exactly as dictated by the Whole 30 guidelines.

2. More carbs

Last time around most days I consumed very low amounts of carbs, and while it worked well for me the first time, I’m trying to take a different approach to this whole “strict” Paleo thing. I’ve been reading a really interesting book called The Perfect Health Diet that promotes the average person eating roughly 150g (600 calories) to maintain the necessary glucose levels in your body. While I’m not done with the book yet, it’s been an awesome read, and I’m thinking come spring I may try to do a month of the Perfect Health Diet (basically Paleo with some modifications) with all the blood work like I’ve done for Paleo and GOMAD before.

As far as quick and dirty book review/recommendations go, I’d still recommend The Paleo Solution
if you’re trying to get the basics of Paleo down (and why it’s good for your body). But if you really like to dig down and know about how the things that you eat affect your body, and why you should/shouldn’t eat certain things, ratios of macronutrients, etc… I’d definitely recommend Perfect Health Diet

Anyway, I digress… More carbs = more sweet potatoes. Done.

3. More cardio

On my previous Whole 30, my basic routine was 3 days a week of lifting for strength; and that’s it… Nothing else.

This time my routine is much, much more cardio intensive (which isn’t hard since I wasnt doing any), plus I’m still lifting 2-3 days a week on top. So we’re talking 5-6 days of working out compared to 3, and many more calories being burned.

4. Less weight available for the losing

You know how I do. I like to weigh in and get some hard numbers before doing anything like this, and while I may not be going balls to the wall and getting blood work this time, I made sure to weigh myself and take body fat measurements with the fatinator-5000 so I can see some numbers to prove the results.

Weighed in at 180.2lbs, which wasn’t really a surprise: my body loves to sit at that weight like a fat kid at Cici’s. However my loosely Paleo eating habits seem to have been paying off, keeping my body fat at a very good 7.6%.

What I’m interested in seeing, is where my body fat goes this time around. Last time I started just a little below 10% and dropped down almost 2% to settle a little under 8. So if I’m starting at 8, and with the cardio, will I end up… dead? That’s not the level of cut I was envisioning.

Anyway, it will be interesting to see how my body responds this time.

5. Partner in crime

I’ve suckered somebody into doing this thing with me. Now I can share cooking duties, shopping, expand my recipe base, and just have more fun and support. She’s someone who’s just as determined as I am, and one of those “if I say I’m going to do it, then I’ll do it” people, so I’m happy to have someone with the same mindset along for the journey this time around.

So let’s do this thing!…. Again… ish.

I haven’t done a foodish post in a while, or at least it feels like it’s been a while, so I thought I’d share something for peeps who are either doing Paleo and looking to try something new, or considering it and don’t know what to cook on day 1.

Anyway, you’ll be amazed to hear that I’ve come up with a recipe that actually tastes like food. Sure, I may have pulled a few ideas from other peeps, but the overall idea is mine and I feel pretty good about that whenever I eat it….Yeah, that’s right, I’m getting all domestic up in here. Mr. Mom 2 casting call, here I come (No but seriously, it’s called “being an adult and taking care of your own damn self”… I’m still working on it). Below is what the final product should look likeish:

Look awesome? Of course it does. It was awesome. I call it Luke’s egg and asparagus sandwich. So here’s what you’ll need…

Ingredients:

• 4 grass-fed beef hamburgers (sometimes I hand-roll these badboys, but often I buy them pre-hamburgerfied)
• Asparagus… we’ll say a pound, since I have no idea.
• Eggs
• Coconut Oil
• Olive Oil
• Sea salt
• Black pepper

OPTIONAL:

• Cumin
• Red Chili Powder
• Cinnamon
• Paprika
• Cayenne Pepper

I’d start with the asparagus:

Put a couple of tablespoonsish, I guess, of coconut oil into a skillet, and heat that sucka’ on medium. Break off the bottom of the asparagus (….stalks?) by hand, and then throw the good part into the skillet/pan/whatever with the coconut oil (if you’re unsure which part is “the good part”, then you’ve made a huge mistake in attempting this endeavor. Immediately abort mission and call your local Chinese restaurant or Papa John’s). At this point, I’d sprinkle on some salt and pepper. I heat them on medium for a good 5-10 minutes, and then I drop it down low like Beyonce and put a lid on it for about 10 minutes… When the 10 minutes is up, your asparagus is done. (depending on how you like your asparagus)

While that asparagus is doing it’s thing, the hamburgers are a piece of cake:
All the “optional” spices listed I like to sprinkle onto both sides of the burgers, but if you’ve only got salt and pepper, just give a generous dusting of that, and you can still pull this off. So yeah, put some olive oil into a cast iron skillet (if you’re a man about it) and set it on medium. Once this comes up to heat, throw the burgers in there, and cook them to your desired temperature. Pull the burgers out, but don’t turn off the oven or remove the skillet. Time for the magic….

Scrape up all the black crap that’s in the pan from the burgers and bring it to the middle of your pan. Now take 2 eggs, that’s right, one for every two burgers, and break them over the crispy black crap in the middle of the pan, and scramble them up… This shouldn’t take long at all, since the pan is already nice and hot.

Now, using the hamburgers as buns (I know, it’s genius and I wish I could take credit for it, but I can’t) divide the scrambled eggs onto two burgers, split up the asparagus and put on top of the eggs, and then top all THAT off with the other 2 burgers and… Voila! Paleo-palooza 2011 just happened in your mouth. BOOM.

Thank me later. I’m hungry after writing that, time to go grub…. OH, and make sure you turn off the stove. That’s huge.

On Friday I stated that I was going to go on a creatine cycle, which I started yesterday. I decided it’d be a good idea to do weekly measurements, so I went to Gold’s and weighed in and measured the body fat to see where I was at. I haven’t weighed myself or measured the BF in a while, so I was interested to see where I was at, considering I’ve been eating roughly 80% Paleo compliant foods. Yeah sure, some alcohol here and there as well as a milkshake or two, but as far as during the week, and all the foods that I prepare myself, they’ve been Paleo legit.

So here’s where I stood yesterday morning, weighing myself in the morning before I eat or drink anything to keep the results as accurate as possible:

181.2lbs @ 7.1% body fat

I’m pretty ecstatic about that. Keeping to my regimen of heavy lifting, with some yoga and core work on off days, I would not have been too surprised to see my weight go up a little after slacking up a little bit on my diet. However, if I did the math right, it looks like I gained over 4lbs of muscle… or water, or something. Anyway, it’s not fat. So that’s cool.

I’m interested to see how the weight changes on this cycle of creatine, since I’ve never been real scientific with my previous cycles. I’d just take the recommended doses, eat an assload of food, lift weights, drink water, and weigh myself here and there to prove to myself that I wasn’t consuming $40 per pound kool-aid mix.

So next Saturday I’ll do the same, and for at least a month continue to measure. I’m not putting a hard date on when I’ll stop, but we’ll just feel it out.

Friday’s workout (since I was being lazy yesterday and didn’t post it):

• Roll out/warmup
• Snatch – 5 x 1 @ 135lbs (Slightly more than 60 kilos, thanks very much Hitler)
• Clean – 5 x 1 @ 150lbs


The good news? This is 25lbs over the competition weight. The bad? This almost ripped my fingers off.

• Farmers Walk
• ~60ft @ 115lbs per hand
• ~60ft @ 155lbs per hand
• ~60ft @ 205lbs per hand

Today I made the decision to start a creatine cycle. I’ve used creatine probably 5 or 6 times in my illustrious weight lifting “career”, and have almost always received good results from it. Now I will say, there have been a couple times where I’ve taken it and had some undesirable side effects (short fuse, namely), but it helps me out in the gym, and there actually are a few studies that back up the hype.

What is creatine?

I don’t really know. As far as I can tell, it’s a powdery substance, that grows in the forests of the Adirondacks in many exotic flavors such as grape, fruit punch, and razz-a-ma-taz. No but seriously, creatine is a substance that is naturally produced in our bodies out of a handful of amino acids as well as naturally found in meat and fish, so we’ve already got it floating around.

However, there have been studies to suggest that supplementing with creatine increases ATP production (energy) and subsequently delays muscle fatigue for short spans of time…. Yeah, I pulled all that together from several sources, and don’t really know what I’m talking about, but if you read through some of the articles and studies cited below, you’ll see I’m not full of it.

An interesting thing about creatine, is that it also draws water into the muscles, so I’m pretty much guaranteed to gain weight. But as I stated yesterday… I don’t care about that anymore. Bring on the weight, and bring on the delayed fatigue. Time to train my face off for this strongman shindig.

If you’ve been following this for any length of time in the past few months, or even just took a random look a post or two, you’d know that for a while there I was pretty Paleo-centric: Paleo this, Paleo that, blah blah blah.

Well I’m still eating fairly clean by Paleo standards, with a few things that I wasn’t eating before that I’ve incorporated back into my diet without any visible negative side effects (it’s embarrassing to admint, but Kaola Crisp is my jam… Look if there isn’t a maze or cartoons on the back, chances are I don’t like it. But hey, it’s gluten free).

Anyway, now that I’m stabilizing my diet and getting into the long-haul Paleo groove, I’m looking for the next thing to try. Not that I’m going to walk away from my current diet, but I’m interested in a couple other things that I’ve read about in regards to the Paleo-style of eating:

• Intermittent fasting
• Clean weight gain

What do you think about me giving either one of those a solid 30-day strict, blood tests before/after, weight/bodyfat measurements throughout, theyoking.com-style college try? I’d stlil be eating Paleo-friendly foods, but the amount or timing would be strictly regulated (depending on which one I was doing). I’ll write more about each in the future, and am open to suggestions for other things to try, but the above two are diet strategies that I’ve read a bit about and am highly intrigued by.

Like I said, I’ll come back to this again in the future, but just wanted to get some initial thoughts on it if anybody has any….

Oh, yesterday’s workout posted below. I think coach must’ve missed me over the weekend, because he poured on the leg work. It was a good workout, and felt great both during and after:

• Roll out/warmup
• Power snatch – 3×5 @ 105lbs
  –superset with–
  High box jumps – 3×5
• Back squats
  • 1×5 @ 135lbs
  • 1×5 @ 185lbs
  • 1×5 @ 210lbs
  • 3×5 @ 250lbs


Weird picture. I look like one of the those poor chumps in the photos from "The Ring"... No weird phone calls yet. Just telemarketers, dammit.

• Trap-bar deadlifts – 5×8 @ 275lbs.
• One-legged Romanian Deadlift – 3×8 @ 35lb kettlebell
  –superset with–
  Hanging leg raises w/ pause – 3×6

So this may seem like a bit of a shot out of left field, but I’ve been meaning to put these up for a long time now, and somebody requested them just yesterday. So I’m, finally, putting this stuff out there for those of you who are interested in trying GOMAD.

GOMAD before blood work

GOMAD after blood work

These are the results of my pre-GOMAD and post-GOMAD blood work. Similar to how I did the Paleo thing, I got my blood work done the morning of day 1, and then got blood work done immediately after. It was supposed to be exactly 30 days, but I ended up getting so sick on day 28 that I had to cut it short. Did I get sick from the milk? I don’t think so. I’m pretty sure it was the plague. “Black Death”, if you will… I honestly almost went to the emergency room (I’ve never been that sick in my life).

Anyway, feel free to ask any questions regarding my experience and these tests, and I’ll do the best I can to hook you up with at least a half-assed answer.

I’m pretty excited about this post, because it finally brings to a close my Paleo write up. I’m not real sure what my hang-up has been with this…. I think my recent stalling on the front squat in the gym has brought my motivation down a few notches.

No more of that though. Time to finish this thing and move on.

So as I stated in my last post, I didn’t feel quite right simply regurgitating things I just read on Wikipedia acting like I knew exactly what I was talking about, so I scheduled an appointment with my doc and we had a nice little conversation about my blood tests and what exactly my takeaways should be from this.

In The Paleo Solution Robb Wolf busts a few chops when it comes to doctors, but I have to say my doctor does not at all fall into that mold. She was actually very supportive of my trying out the Paleo diet, and said she herself was very interested in seeing where things went with the bio-makers.

When we sat down and talked about it this past Thursday, she shed some light on a few things, but there is also some confusion still out there that I don’t think can be answered unless more thorough studies are done, and realistically none of that seems really worth the time or money.

According to doc, overall, my blood work came back better. She was particularly impressed and happy with my LDL-P score dropping over 300 points. Evidently LDL-P is a better, more accurate marker than LDL-C, and I’ve read a thing or two out there that seems to corroborate this.

There were a few oddities though: even though all markers came back as healthy, many things moved a little in the wrong direction: HDL dropped, triglycerides rose, and small LDL-P (the bad LDL particles) rose by over 50% which is opposite of what is desired, and what supposedly should happen while on Paleo. However, doc didn’t seem too worried by any of that and said that everything was still in the very good range for most everything (said my triglycerides were so low it practically blew her mind). She suggested I come back in after 6 months or so and run the tests again to see if things start to balance out.

Alright, so I have PDF’s you can download to view the actual blood tests (before, after), but I also wanted to break everything down into a table for comparison:

	Pre	Post	Difference
Total Cholesterol	213	199	-14
LDL-C	130	130	0
HDL-C	77	62	-15
Triglycerides	29	34	5
Non-HDL	136	137	1
LDL-P	1495	1154	-341	http://www.lipid.org/newcommunity/groups/orca/topic/–2010-07-05.htm
HDL-P	34.6	33.4	-1.2
Small LDL-P	243	372	129
LDL Size	21.6	21.4	-0.2
LP-IR Score (Insulin Resistance)	8	15	7	I’m considering putting in a prayer with Jesus Christ (a question for Robb Wolf) to see what his thoughts are on the relevency of this test. My doctor didn’t seem all that worried about it, and she said even though my score almost doubled, that it’s still so low that I shouldn’t be worried about it.
Glucose	78	92	14
BUN	21	17	-4
Creatinine	1.13	1.09	-0.04
eGFR	89	93	4
BUN/Creatinine Ratio	19	16	-3
Sodium	137	143	6
Potassium	4.4	4.6	0.2
Chloride	98	103	5
Carbon Dioxide	24	25	1
Calcium	10	9.6	-0.4
Protein Total	7.1	6.9	-0.2
Albumin	5	4.8	-0.2
Globulin	2.1	2.1	0
A/G Ratio	2.4	2.3	-0.1
Bilirubin	0.6	0.5	-0.1
Alkaline Phosphatase	63	70	7
AST	24	22	-2
ALT (IU/L)	18	18	0
Hemoglobin A1c (%)	5.6	5.7	0.1
TSH (uIU/mL)	2.39	2.75	0.36
C-Reactive Protein (mg/L)	0.1	0.11	0.01

 

As far as health, the blood work is obviously the most important thing to look at, but as far as what most people actually care about (ie – losing weight, looking good), the Paleo diet definitely made some big plays for me.

Overall I lost 8lbs., going from 186 to 178, and my body fat dropped from 9.6% to 7.8%. Not bad at all for someone who ate as much as he wanted, whenever he wanted. An interesting thing as well, is that I seemed to lose much of the weight from that “spare tire” region. On my body, fat tends to collect on my lower back especially, and if you look at the pictures it seems that that is where most of it came off from.

Hey, I won’t complain.

So where do I go from here, now that the Whole 30/Paleo challenge is over? Well considering it’s been 2 months since the end of that, I’ve noticed that while my eating habits have definitely slackened up a bit, that when I buy food from the grocery store and cook, I’m still cooking almost 100% Paleo (and even Whole 30) approved recipes. It really is a piece of cake to cook and eat good food after you get into the habit of doing it, and that was really what the Whole 30 was all about: creating better, smarter, cooking and eating habits.

Now where the problem comes in is when you’re out and about on the town. That’s still a battle for me, and one which I have yet to figure out how to win. There are obviously better choices: like picking the gluten-free bread over the gluten-deluxe, but it’s still hard to say no to certain things when you start to make exceptions…. Like milkshakes. Especially the ones at Crossroads…. Damn I love those. (NOTE: I recommend going to the one in Forest Hill. Somehow, I always get served by the same guy at the one at VCU, and he always has this look on his face that says, “If I didn’t need this job, and it wouldn’t take away my freedom, I’d probably murder you”)

Anyway, I may try to do another Whole 30 sometime in the near future. I absolutely notice a difference in the way I feel when I’m not eating properly, and not getting enough sleep.

Overall my Paleo challenge did great things for my body, mind, motivation, and brought me into a more regimented (read effective) lifestyle. I hope to get back to that, and while it might not be as super strict as it was for those 30 days, I’d like to get myself to a happy medium that I can maintain over the long haul.

NEXT UP: something awesome that I’m excited about. I’m tired of talking about front squats and Paleo all the time, so now I’ll have something else to add to the mix… Be on the lookout.

 

Or maybe I do? Depends on who you are and what your definition is I guess.

We define it around here as “bullsh*ting”, and that’s not what I’m going for here. I’ve been reading up and trying to write a post on what exactly my blood work numbers all mean from my 30 days of strict Paleo (which ended almost 2 months ago, which really makes me feel like a slacker), but I started to realize that I don’t really know what I’m talking about.

This pretty much sums up my knowledge of cholesterol

So I went ahead and scheduled another doctor appointment to sit down with my doc and have a chat about what all these numbers really mean, why some rose and some fell, and what exactly I should takeaway from all of it.

Again, to emphasize what I’ve said before, I’m not an expert on most anything at this point. I’ve learned a ton over the past year or so, but it’s one of those things where the more you learn, the more  you realize how little you actually know. Having said that, I’d rather not be a blogger who runs around snowballing people just for giggles.

So the good news? I’ll finally finish up the Paleo wrap-up, and have all my information based off of the reading I’ve done, and more importantly, the opinion of a medical professional who’s livelihood is dependent upon keeping me alive.

I guess there’s really no bad news to follow that up with…. Awesome.