Barrett Garese

Paleo Update #2

Today marks the one-month mark, as well as the halfway point of my paleo experiment. Here are the highlights so far:

I’ve been very good at sticking to a paleo diet with about 85-90% accuracy. I still have the occasional coffee (though I’ve been drinking mostly green tea) and I still put half and half in that coffee. For the most part though my diet has consisted of meat (sometimes up to two pounds a day), veggies of various sorts, and fruit on days where I weight-train.
I’m eating a metric fuckton of food. When you take out all of the calorically dense, processed foods a standard American diet prioritizes, as well as ‘“sports supplements” like protein shakes, you end up doing things like eating two full pounds of meat a day just to hit satiation.
Good meat is not cheap. Good eggs aren’t too bad, actually.
I’ve also severely cut down on - but not entirely eliminated - alcohol from my diet. I’m preferring red wine, but have had a couple beers over the past month as well.
With all that, I’ve lost weight - going from 171 pounds to 161 pounds.
For the first time in my life, two days ago I was able to see the outline of four individual abdominal muscles. Yes, this is total vanity. Yes, I still think it’s cool. Shut up.
I think I’m gaining muscle. At the very least I’ve been making strength gains, upping most of my major lifts over the past month. I’ll have to measure at the end to be sure, but it wouldn’t surprise me to find that I’ve put on a couple pounds of additional muscle.
I’ve been poorer than I’d like at maintaining a workout schedule. I was shooting to average 5-6 days a week with three of those days being weight-training at the gym, and the other two split between krav maga and surfing. I’ve actually been averaging around 4 days a week. It’s not bad per se, but it’s not what I would have liked. I’m going to try to fix this over the next month.
I’m sleeping better and waking up better. I find I don’t need caffeine in the morning like I used to.

Overall, I’m pretty happy with the progress. I’m curious to see how far it’ll go, but it’s definitely worth sticking with over the next month. We’ll see the results on 9/9 - which by total and complete coincidence is my birthday. Paleo results or not, there will be gelato on that day I assure you.