The First Week

Tuesday is such an awkward day. Starting next week I'll use Monday as my marker points. It's a bit off, but so am I.

Primal Blueprint: WEEK ONE

Weight - 159.8lbs
Bodyfat - Dunno yet! I'll start gathering info like this soon.
Mood - Energized and excited.

I've thrown myself into the Primal lifestyle. Total determination, full embrace of it's tenants. I was already in a place of all natural, healthy food and lots of exercise so the changes weren't too drastic, and I'm a highly adaptable person. I don't really waver or feel temptation once I've set my mind to something which has been an incredible boon in this endeavor.

I've made three major shifts to my life this week:

*I've stopped my overtraining, chronic cardio. No more hour and a half sessions of elevated heart rate in some vague objective of better shape. It seems SO OBVIOUS in hindsight that I was in a toxic cycle of binging on food, withholding, overtraining, then binging again.

*On the subject of binging, I have entirely cut out grains. Good riddance. I was relying way too heavily on the outside energy of carbs; now I eat tons of fat and protein which works like an engine in my body supplying me stable energy at all times. No more huge ups and downs, no more exhaustion, no more pushing myself too hard and eating 4000 calories of grains in binge recovery fits.

*I am loading up on the fats. I still have to remind myself to reach for the half and half instead of the nonfat; it's so against the mob mentality of the world to go for the fattier food, but I like it. My family is concerned for my long term health, people think I'm crazy, but it feels -so- right to pour that butter and bacon grease on top of my broccoli.

These three changes have left me feeling fantastic. I've had my points over the last week where I've had too much fruit or starch and felt bloated, I've had those moments where I look in the mirror and sigh. The negative thoughts are few and far between, and against the contrast of how good I feel every second of the rest of my day it's easy to shrug off those self defeatist thoughts when they come. Besides, most of the time when I feel bad it's because I haven't eaten enough, I haven't eaten enough fat/meat, or I've pushed myself too hard with training.

Boiling down everything I've learned in this first week:

*I'm going to work on letting go of the thinking that tells me things like "you need to go swim laps tonight because you've only worked out once today."

*Most days this week I haven't eaten enough. When I have eaten enough, it's still too much emphasis on the ( healthy veggie ) carbs. I'm going to let myself eat more, and what I'm going to eat more of is protein, fat, and oils.

*I love food. I love food so hard. I feel like this week has expanded an already strong passion for the culinary. I'm cooking complex dishes every day and constantly seeking out new taste experiences.

Photos:

I wish I'd had the foresight to take pictures and gather stats before I set out on the PB, but C'est la vie. I already feel leaner, healthier, like years of stubborn bloat has been stripped away from my body. Through the course of this process I'll attempt to post objective photos despite my body issues and compulsion to post more flattering ones. I'm not happy about the photos, but I haven't ever been very happy with photos. I've avoided them for a few months at least. While not matching with the my dumb, perfectionist desires, I can see definite improvement in the last few weeks.




Yes, the only full length mirror of convenience is in my sister's room. Yes, this means these photos may sometimes have Jonas Brothers type backgrounds. Enjoy.

That's it for this week! I'll have another thorough update on this Primal experiment come Monday, next time with hopefully less self sabotaging thoughts in the photo section.