Tuesday, December 6, 2011

Starting again, but not as part of the Paleo challenge

It's about six weeks after the Paleo challenge, and I'm up to 184 lbs. That's up 22 lbs from my minimum weight back in June while I was training for the half marathon. It's not all bad, as I've been working on putting on some muscle. Unfortunately, it's not clear how much of the additional weight is fat and how much is muscle.

But...I have learned some stuff over the past six weeks. My goal since the middle of the paleo challenge was to put on muscle. From reading the blogs, I learned that I had to eat an enormous amount of protein along with lifting in order to put on muscle. So I bought some protein powder, whey based, and started drinking a lot of milk. One morning I put two servings of protein powder (22g protein x2) in a 16oz glass of milk (8g of protein x2), and I learned what people meant by "my stomach didn't handle it well.  They mean you get gas. Lots of gas. So I ruled out dairy as a source of protein, which also ruled out my atkins bars, which has 20g of protein each, but this was mostly from whey as well.

I then went to get a food allergy test, as suggested by Duncan at the gym. I went to my doctor who did an "IGE" test. I never actually saw the doc. The nurse took my blood and called me with the test results, which said basically that I wasn't allergic to anything.  I was telling a friend about this, and he suggested I go to his naturopath doctor. Long story short, I did. She did the IGG food allergy test, and it turns out I'm allergic to lots of stuff! Including pretty much all dairy (except sheep and goat's milk), gluten of course, beef and lamb came out high, as well as almonds, garlic, and some beans. After getting this I scheduled an appt with her to review the results. In the two weeks before the appt, I figured that I'd be on the kale juice only diet once we met. It turned out not so bad. She said I can still eat meat, but I should completely cut out gluten and dairy, and cut out eggs, beans, and garlic and almonds for the first month. Strange, that's the paleo diet - no gluten, beans and dairy! Go figure.

In addition, she has given me a ton of supplements to take -- Seriphos (to sleep better), which lowers cortisol levels, multi-vitamin, mega-dose (5000IU) of D3, sublingual DHEA to promote the breakdown into different testosterones, Taurine (I was low on taurine, which is an essential protein (Amino acid?). That's about it. My medicine shelf looks like a geriatric!
So today, I started on my new gluten and dairy-free diet. For breakfast, I had about a third of a loaf (about 3 oz) of beef summer sausage [13g of protein], along with a bowl of blueberries with no whip cream :(. For lunch, I had a double burger at the work cafe, with no bun and no cheese. [about 56g of protein?] I just read on the net that 1oz of beef is about 7g of protein. I also had some fries. I know these are bad carbs, but since they don't have gluten or dairy, I ate them. I had a 70% cocoa chocolate bar in the afternoon. No bad stuff, but some un needed sugar. For dinner, I had an 8oz steak, and about 3/4 of my wife's steak, so 14x7g = 98g! of protein. Now I'm finishing a big bowl of blueberries for dessert (still no whip cream). Jen made vegetables for dinner, but they were cooked in garlic butter, which I realized too late is dairy, so I passed on this.  So I made it through the first day with no dairy or gluten! And total protein intake was:

Breakfast 13g
Lunch 56g
Dinner 98g
Total = 167g!

That's almost what I need, which is 1g for every pound I weigh. So good start for the first day. I also ordered http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B001EOKYHK/ref=ox_ya_os_product, which is a plant-based vegan protein powder, made of pea, rice and hemp protein, plus "barley grass, barley juice, spirulina, wheat grass, chlorella, alfalfa, red beet root, broccoli, and chlorophyll." It does have some xylitol, so I hope it is just a small amount and won't give me gas. We will see. This has like 23g of protein per serving.

Unfortunately, I skipped the gym today because my shoulder has been sore. I am hoping getting the gluten out and adding more protein will help reduce the chance of injury! Again, we will see.

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