On Dieting

This post may be a bit long, but I just wanted to write a bit about my experiences in changing around how I eat and maybe someone else can gain something from it as well.

As I mentioned in my 2011 Goals post in the past few years I’ve gotten more interested in trying out various changes to my diet to see if they make a difference and also just because.  Who knows why, just to try maybe.  I tend to avoid fad diets that give you little nutrition and prefer to focus more on the more holistic lifestyle change type things as they seem more sustainable and healthier.  I tend to go on and off these diet changes as I feel like it and maybe that’s why I keep changing it around.  Just to keep things new.

This started out with just recording what I was eating and guesstimating the caloric content.  This actually worked pretty in making me watch what I ate because well…I would hate to drink that soda then have to write down the 160 calories I wasted on it.  I’m actually pretty sure it drove some people crazy because I can get a bit OCD sometimes about these kinds of things.  I believe this was a good exercise to start with because more than anything it made me more aware of the “cost” of eating certain foods and since I tend to eat certain foods more I got pretty good at guesstimating without looking stuff up all the time.  Sure I may be off by 500 calories at the end of the day…but isn’t that better than not knowing at all?

The next diet that actually piqued my interest was after hearing about how a New York Times food columnist lost weight.  Mark Bittman’s Vegan before 6 approach was interesting to me for two reasons:

1. I’ve never tried being vegan before.
2. I can eat whatever I want for dinner which is actually generally my largest meal (I know I know, but sue me it’s how I grew up)

I tried it for about 3 months and found that it’s amazingly hard to be a true vegan.  My breakfasts always consisted of oatmeal with agave with maybe fruit.  Lunches were always salad of some sort or cooked veggies and maybe some sort of starch like rice or potatoes.  To be honest, I like meat and was pretty hungry by 3 or 4.  There aren’t many pastries or breads to eat because they tend to contain butter, eggs, or honey.  Then I found hummus and pita.  Apples and peanut butter were also great.  After the initial adapting phase I got used to it.  Near the end of my experiment I happen to have a blood panel done.  The results were pretty good.  BP good, fasting glucose levels good, cholesterol awesome (I had more HDLs than LDLs and an overall low score), but considering I’ve never done a blood test before (at least that I can remember) I couldn’t say it was directly related to my diet.  But I wouldn’t discount the diet completely either.  Either way it’s not a bad way to eat since you have dinner to curb your cravings, but still a bit difficult if you’re not prepping your own breakfast and lunches.  Again milk, egg, honey…they show up everywhere.

Finally to my most recent venture inspired by the very popular Paleo Diet trend right now.  I remember hearing about this maybe a year ago and thinking that it was interesting…but alas I am Asian and love my rice, and so was not ready to embark on the experiment.  Now that it’s gained a bit more traction and there’s a bit more study around it I’m ready to give it a shot.  At the very least I can have my beloved meats (sorry animal lovers…I like my meat).  Paleo itself is a pretty strict diet, but I’ve found many people do paleo spirited diets.  I say in the spirit of paleo because they allow small cheats like the occasional milk product or legume.  In the interests of being flexible, which ultimately leads me to stay sane and stick to it more, you’ll find me eating in the spirit of paleo with the occasional total cheat meal/day as I come from a family of carb eaters.  We loves our man tou and butter.  I’ll be posting my daily intake so as to be honest to myself on my eats page and just for record keeping.  There is no greater motivation than to see your track record and to aim to do better than you did the day before.