After researching low carb diets, granted it was only online research, I came to the conclusion that low carb diets could very well be beneficial to people’s health. I already have a naturally suspicious mind and the fact that the people telling me low fat is the healthy way all have a vested interest in agriculture did tip the scales a little more. It seems to me that we’ve been duped, though perhaps unwittingly, by nutritional science. I came to the conclusion that you could scientifically prove either side of the debate and thus it becomes a matter of common sense and belief. I personally don’t put much stock in evolution as how we arrived on the planet but I do put a lot of stock in evolution as a way of explaining how our bodies work compared to how they did thousands of years ago. In other words species don’t evolve from other species, the vast majority of the time anyway, but they do evolve within their own species. This concept makes the most sense to me.
So I combined my beliefs with what my body would want me to eat if it had evolved to eat a certain way. I read many articles about what humans ate before civilization began, when most scientists would agree we did most of our evolving. The articles agreed with my own common sense when they pointed out that grains were simply not available and what the hunter-gatherer would have eaten would have come from animals (meat, dairy, eggs) or whatever they could find that was edible (wild vegetables, fruits, nuts). It is around this concept that I built my diet.
Let me explain the diet in detail. I allow myself how ever many calories I want to eat, allowing my body to tell me when to and when not to eat. I don’t count carbohydrates, I don’t have a number that I try to stay under or anything like that. However all of the carbs I eat come from one of the groups I mentioned earlier (meat, eggs, dairy, vegetables, nuts, and fruits). I have not added fruits into the diet just yet but they will come in at a later time and will be somewhat of a rarity. I am liberal with what constitutes as dairy also, allowing things like cream cheese and sour cream into my diet. I’m pretty sure that my overall carbohydrate intake is below fifty grams a day and would guess it is fluctuating somewhere around 25 grams a day. I eat eggs, bacon, sausage, and cheese for breakfast, vegetables or string cheese for snacks, and either a ton of vegetables and cheese or meat and vegetables for dinner. I have not really felt the need for more meals than this. Though one thing I’ve noticed is I have to keep track of how much water I drink or I won’t get enough, my body doesn’t seem to want it as much until I’m actually drinking it. That’s pretty much it though. I’ve just completed the first week and I’m going to share my experience so others might know what to expect.
In a lot of ways it reminds me of fasting. I’ve fasted on several seperate occasions and they have all been relatively similar. The first few days of fasting you feel rotten, I compare it to a hangover. I attribute this to your body switching to using the stored energy in your body for fuel. After about the first 4 or 5 days of fasting the rotten feeling dissapates slowly leaving you pretty much feeling okay, though very hungry. With this diet that same rotten feeling is here, usually only in the morning and not as intense as when fasting. After breakfast it goes away but it does make me not want to eat sometimes. I attribute this overall yucky feeling to the same thing as when it happens while fasting, just to a lesser degree since you are still feeding yourself. Also it seems to be lastin longer as on day 8 it is still there. It makes sense that if your body is only doing a small amount of stored energy burning compared to fasting there would be a longer adjustment phase. I expect that once my body adjusts completely this yucky feeling will vanish, I just hope it happens soon.
One big difference I have noticed is that my cognitive abilities are not impaired on this diet as apposed to while fasting. While fasting there is a definite mental fog and you really lose a lot of processing speed. That is not the case with this diet, though I would guess that in the mornings my cognitive ability is dampened slightly until the general hangover feeling dissapates with breakfast. Also there was a feeling of clarity that came after eating a lot of string cheese last night that I have not experienced while fasting, I really can’t explain it other than maybe my mind really likes string cheese as fuel. The feeling of extra clarity went away after about 20 minutes but it was pretty wonderful while it was there.
After one week I think I’ve lost a little weight, though I haven’t stepped on a scale at all, just appears that way to me. I also am not craving carbohydrates like I expected I would, and have in the past when I tried a low carb diet. This lack of craving might be due to my increased ability to control myself but I simply don’t know for sure. In time I hope to find out the intricacies of my own body’s reaction to this diet, and will post as ideas come to me. Perhaps you have a theory? I would love to hear it!
Tags: carbohydrates, diet, evolution, low-carb
