Weight Loss Update

I am proud to announce that a week of eating better, and small amounts of fun activity with the kids at the pool resulted in a weight loss of 5.1 lbs this week.  I am pretty pleased with this number for my first week back to being healthier.  It is certainly motivation for continuing on this journey.  

My basic eating plan involves cutting out processed carbohydrates.  No sugar, no bread, no pasta, etc.  The idea is to essentially replace the carbs with fat as a fuel, with the goal being to train the body to burn fat instead of carbs for energy.  The premis stems from a paleo/primal way of thinking that builds off of how humans would have eaten prior to 10,000 years ago.  When men were nomads rather than settlers, growing crops did not happen, yet, experts say these humans were some of the fittest and healthiest in the history of mankind.  

Hoping to avoid any sort of religious debate, we are all well aware of the hunter/gatherer era when humans ate what was available from nature, without the need to grow their own food, process it, or alter it.  Nature does a pretty good job of offering quality food choices.  The plan I am following is the one outlined in "The Primal Blueprint" as written by Mark Sisson.  I like that it is relatively simple and easy to follow.  There are no points to calculate, no food to weigh, and no logging of food.  Eat what you are comfortable eating while avoiding processed carbohydrates.  Now that is not to say you cut all carbs from your diet.  Fruits and vegetables contain carbs yet these are to form the base of the eating plan.  From there, focus on protein, then add healthy fats for fuel and filling.  Of course, there are more specific rules and guidelines, but I will admit, I haven't reached the point of going full out with this.  But I am trying to follow the basic rules, and clearly it has produced some significant results.

Now, I know some of you are thinking that any new diet will produce similar results in the first week. That the weight loss is due wholly to "water weight" than any true weight loss. I did some looking into this because I've often wondered about what "water weight" actually means.  I found some answers here.  I did some double and triple checking just to be sure, but the info on "water weight" seems to be quite sound.  I liked this site because it discussed low carb diets specifically.  It does seem like the first couple of weeks will result in significant weight loss due to "water weight;" however, I was encourage to read also that low carb diets can be effective at eliminating cravings for unhealthy food as quickly as two weeks into the diet, and that this substantially reduces food intake and can lead to steady weight/fat loss.  

I'm going to stick with this for a while at least and I'll continue to update you on my progress.  It would be interesting to let you know that I weighed myself Saturday morning prior to taking a "free day" before my official weigh in Sunday morning.  Between Saturday and Sunday I gained over 2.5 lbs back due to my off-plan eating Saturday.  Reading the article on "water weight" has helped enlighten me as to why that likely was.  By the way, the 5.1 lbs was the weight on Sunday's weigh in, after the "free day."