New diet (marked mood and energy results)

So around last Wednesday I decided to give this Primal Diet thing a go.

Seems pretty interesting to me, especially since my Doctor told me I have 2 out of the 3 gluten intolerance genes. When I first listened to this episode I was hesitant, I was following along until he said giving up all grains. Hold the phone, jettison the baby and bathwater. I love my grains. Every day I would have a huge bowl of oats as well as rice for lunch and dinner. I’d just bought Tupperware for both these grains. I mean come on. Anyway for whatever reason I tried to give it a go, I started reading the new book on my kindle, which I subsequently returned since The Primal Blueprint was more what I wanted (the new one focuses on health and fitness for endurance.. I just want the diet). So the reason I wanted to start the diet is basically the results I was really hoping for. I’m actually super happy with the results. I had a bit of a read on marksdailyapple.com which basically had everything I wanted from the book.

Initially I was a little overwhelmed by all these different ideas and themes, but my motivation was that I need to solve these mood crashes I’ve been having as first priority. So I’ve been reading various blog postings on Marks site. I ran out of oats on Thursday morning, the day after my last shift at my new Job, which was the motivation to get this hormone/mood/serotonin/insulin thing balanced out sooner rather than later. So Thursday was when I began the diet. I started reading what do I eat, how do I get my energy etc. The first thing I did was look at the recipe page on Marks blog and got the ingredients for something that looked good.
I made this:

Which basically consumed the next few hours finding and preparing. I’ll admit it did taste awesome but generally I’m more into meals I can make easily. Part of my hesitation to give up grains was I didn’t see where I was going to get all the food I was so used of eating, which leads me to one of the surprises I found with this new diet. I had just got the hang of the stir-fry I made daily. I would make a huge stir-fry with rice, chicken and veggies and have one huge bowl for dinner and the next for lunch. I was happy that I had made a routine of this and was starting to enjoy it. Despite taking an hour of preparation. So out with that plan…

aand my medication timer goes off.. I’m taking all these supplements at the moment as part of this whole diet. Now garlic, which actually tastes pretty good with a handful of walnuts, as opposed to a glass of water which is my usual method.

So the new diet. I have noticed some changes, all interesting and promising, like every new intervention I come across.

• I’m eating way less than usual, maybe half the amount.
• Low general energy from trying to basically eat meat/veggies/nuts.
• Steady energy, like running at 48% steady rather than 80% until the afternoon, then oh shit, here comes the crash. And I’m at 20%, might as well sleep for a bit… interesting I haven’t had those afternoon physiological crashes in the afternoon where I will literally go to sleep around 4pm for a hour
• Much better bowel movements, this is very promising, since dropping gluten all together

As for an eating guide I printed out this page, and highlighted some parts

you need .5 grams of protein per pound of lean mass/per day on average to maintain your “structure”. If you are moderately active you need .7 or .8, and if you are an active athlete you need as much as 1 gram of protein per pound of lean mass.

I use a rule of thumb that 100-150 grams of carbohydrate per day is plenty

Ok, so I can get my protein from chicken, eggs and some from nuts, but I’ve been noticing a distinct lack of energy. I tried to go for a run on Friday and could barely be bothered running. Which brings me to today.