Ylliks

Let’s just face it: I’m a large guy. Always have been really (if you don’t count the age 15-19 when I was very serious about basketball). I know that part of this is because of genes, but most because of bad eating habits. I seriously changed a lot of those habits and it shows. I’ve lost around 14 kg in 2 years, due to eating healthier and being more active. But I’ve stalled somewhat in the last couple of months when it comes to the weight loss and despite experimenting with foods it just didn’t feel right somehow.

Then some time ago I stumbled upon the site of Mark Sisson. A former pro marathon runner and triathlete, he wrote a book called The Primal Blueprint where he outlines a lifestyle that promises better health, loss of weight/weight management and a good eating experience. Sounded to good to be true at first to me, but the more I read his site, the more it made sense to me. So I ordered the book, read it cover to cover and decided to give it a month to see if it would stick.

If you want the elevator pitch to what primal living is, it’s this: eat what you want, as long as they are no sugars, corn/grain based foods, legumes or artificial. Move around a lot at a slow pace, do 2 weight-lifting (bodyweight) and one sprint session a week and enjoy. Sisson gets more detailed in his book of course (using his 10 laws) but that’s the gist of it. So how did I fare during this month?

The Good:

• The promise of weightloss was true: I lost 3.1 kg this month. The change in my diet was mostly cutting out the corn/grain based and sugary foods (but not entirely: more on that later) and keeping a food dairy. The latter helped me understand foods more and how you could fill your day with foods that would give you everything you needed.
• No hunger feeling.
• Great recipes for lunch and diner.
• Feeling better. This is of course very subjective, but I seem to sleep better, have more energy and just have that better overall feeling.
• I can still have my Meatless Mondays. Although eating meat is highly recommended due to its protein value, you can still go all veggie or vegetarian if you want to.
• The 80/20 rule. We’re all humans and despite you may strive for 100% success it’s certain you’re going to fall off the wagon at some point. Sissons solution for this is his view that you have to aim for perfect, but you need to get it right at least 80% of the time.

The Bad

• It seems I have the backbone of a sea horse when it comes to sweets and italian pastry, which are pretty much no-no’s in primal living. During this month, I’ve indulged myself in eating chocolate, chocolate covered “pepernoten” and pizza (although I’ve discovered there’s a primal alternative) on a pretty regular basis. If I didn’t I may have even better results, so I’ve taken it upon myself to better myself in this area.
• Social situations make living primal difficult. When you’re out and about with friends there’s often some kind of eating involved. Maybe that’s having a slice of pizza, grab a burger, eat some pasta. All of those are not at all considered primal. You quickly realize that eating primal in restaurants is a tough task. You also don’t want to be a hassle to your friends turning down every option they come up with. Luckily there’s the 80/20 rule, but it can be a bit of a problem
• Breakfast. Most of the breakfast recipes I came across are egg-related. I don’t  mind the occasional egg, but not every morning. Solution to this have been that I skip breakfast (if I’m not hungry that is) on most days I don’t have to work or eat fruit. But it would be nice to have some other form of breakfast.

Miscellaneous

• Part of the Primal Blueprint is the exercising part where you move alot at a slow pace, do 2 weight and 1 sprint session a week. I haven’t implemented that at all. These sessions are designed to take little time but high impact (max 20 minutes) and the book provides evidence that chronic cardio is not always benificial. The moving at a slow pace is highly implemented: cycling to work, going hiking, walking to stores etc, etc. The weight lifting part I’ve done maybe once or twice. The routines are straight forward enough and consist of body weight exercises but as with many weight exercises they just don’t excite me. The sprinting exercise for me is my weekly Spinning session. According to Sisson it’s part of the chronic cardio and should be done sparingly, but I enjoy that way too much to give it up. I do want to change my approach to this though and am planning to give that weight training a second change.
• Primal Community. There’s a large community when it comes to primal living and you can find all kinds of sites who give you tips and recipes for expanding/simplify your experience. This has been of great help.

Primal living goes against common knowledge on a various subjects of what is considered healthy living. This could scare people off. Although for me it still is a bit of a work in progress as you can conclude from my story above, I enjoy primal living extremely. The benefits for me greatly outweigh the downsides for which I think there are solutions I just haven’t found/thought of. I can see myself living this way for a long time.

At the end of next week I’ll be off for a trip around the Yukatan in Mexico. I’m of course excited about the prospect of spending time there and seeing the Mayan cultural sites, but the fact that I don’t speak Spanish makes interacting with the locals a bit of a problem. That’s why I decided 3 weeks ago that it was time to learn the language as fast as I could. Or at least as much so I could converse with people.

To give you a bit of a background I now speak 3 languages well (my native Dutch, English and German) and a little bit of French. That knowledge has helped me on earlier travels, but since I’m now going to a part of the world where Spanish is the main language I do not have a real fallback when it comes to communicating. I looked at different courses, but the traditional ones don’t offer much because even with an increased learning speed it will take you several months to learn the language.

Then I remembered reading an article by Tim Ferriss on how he learns languages quickly. As he mentions in the article it’s not so much about mastering the language but knowing enough about it to put it to good use. So I put his methods to the test to find out if it would work for me.

Pretty soon I started to understand what was being written (Engadget Espanol helped me with that one). When it comes to actually understanding to what is said (I watched some football and basketball with Spanish commentary) it’s another matter. Maybe it’s because of the difference in phonetics or the fast speed with which they speak but I was able to understand maybe 5-10% of what was being said.

Despite that fact I’m pretty impressed with how his method worked. I’m sure that if I have time to put in a little more effort to perfecting my way of working it (which sadly will be after my holiday) I’ll be able to get the hang of it. For now I’m just happy with the way I understand some thing and I’ll just ask them to slow down a bit when they go to fast. And if all else fails: a friend who will join me is an interpreter so he can do the talking for me.

As I said in my last post I find it hard to find inspiration for a weekly blog post. One of the reasons why is the fact that I don’t have a real incentive to write every week. When I do have incentive (for instance when it’s work-related) I usually don’t have that much trouble. So in order to see if inspiration strikes when I have an incentive to write I will have a little experiment next week: I will write a post every day monday to friday of next week.

In order for this to be a bit of a challenge I’ve set up a few rules:

1. Articles have to be at least 300 words: This would stop me from writing a sort of tweet and consider it a post.
2. No writing on how hard this experiment is: So no post about “I have no inspiration today/I find it hard to write today” etc. etc. No, these posts should have a subject not related to the experiment.
3. No multi-parters: It would easier to find one subject and talk about it over a multi post spread. Nothing of the kind.

I know these are not the strictest of rules, but I think they well be quite a challenge for me as it is. If readers of this article have suggestions for other rules (open to interpretation from me of course) you’re welcome to add them in the comments.

I’m wondering how this experiment will work out. To be honest I have no idea. But I’ll soon find out.

About a month and a half ago I stumbled upon a video of Graham Hill and his thoughts on weekday vegetarianism and wrote about it. As mentioned in the post I was seriously considering following that regime for a month to see if it could work for me. So for the month of June I’ve been a weekday vegetarian but with some exceptions. Let me explain.

Of course the main outline was to go completely vegetarian during the week and having the opportunity to eat meat (which I have stated before I love to eat) during the weekends. I added a provision though: if I would find myself in a social setting where eating was involved (say eating out with friends or anything work-related) I would choose at the time. During the month I found myself to be in one of those situations about once each week. And I have to say that I chose the meat option on every one of those occasions (did I mention that I love meat). So all in all I was completely vegetarian for about 4 out of 5 weekdays (with 2 out of 3 meals on the other days being vegetarian as well).

So what did I eat? Well, same as in my first experiment with being a vegetarian I would eat soy based replacements. I also started to eat fruit in stead of bread in the morning. As for dinner I just experimented with vegetarian dishes (some came out better than others). I think this has helped to improve my eating habits towards an even healthier diet and I even lost a fair bit of weight (although, to be honest, that could also have to do with my increased exercise regime).

I have to admit that changing from just a Meatless Monday to weekday vegetarianism was an easy step. As stated before, I will never give up meat entirely (with this lifestyle though, it seems I enjoy eating meat even more) but with the apparent advantages it has I will keep on living the weekday vegetarian lifestyle for the foreseeable future.