I’m done with Atkins and with Paleo! Can’t do it anymore! The last few days even though I didn’t have any actual physical cravings as such I just can’t stop thinking about all the yummy food I want to eat. I don’t mean junk food – I mean real, wholesome food. Honestly if wheat & rice are going to kill me off 10 years early or whatever then fine, I’ll take the tradeoff because I am a foodie! I have shelves packed full of cookbooks that I actually use, I watch food channels on TV and I even want to do some food related road trips! I can’t eat this way for the rest of my life. I feel so much better now I said it!
Week 7 (Week 1 Atkins): -3.4 Lbs
January 23rd, 2012 
Caroline Middlebrook I have survived a full week of the Atkins diet! It appears to have paid off – I have lost 3.4lbs in weight and dropped around 1.5 inches from my stomach. My hips & thigh measurement are about the same. I don’t know how much of this is actual fat loss and how much is water loss – I guess the 2nd week results will be more revealing.
Atkins Diet Error, Starting Over!
January 20th, 2012 Caroline Middlebrook I am so annoyed with myself – today I discovered that I have been miscalculating my carb count all week and that in fact I have had around 26g of carbs a day instead of 20g! The confusion arose from the way ‘net carbs’ are calculated, or labelled I should say. This happened because I read US literature but I am in the UK and use a UK food database online.
The Joy of a Full Plate
January 17th, 2012 Caroline Middlebrook It’s not until I started this whole Paleo thing that I really thought about what makes a meal satisfying. I already know I am somebody who prefers hot food but what else makes a good meal?
Before paleo I nearly always had at least 3 components – some kind of carbs such as rice, pasta, potatoes etc, the protein – meat, fish etc, and in most cases some kind of vegetables though sometimes the veggies were missing :/
Because I don’t like all that many vegetables I have never really been a fan of the traditional British ‘meat & 2 veg’ which is a shame because that would be an ideal paleo meal!
Week 6 Weigh-in & Atkins Starts Today
January 16th, 2012 Caroline Middlebrook No change again this week, though I reported a couple of days ago that I had lost a little under 1lb. Saturday night I went out for a meal and I knew I was starting super-strict Atkins today so I indulged completely – 3 courses including dessert! It was the most sugar I’d had in one go in the whole 6 weeks. When I went to bed my heart was racing. This is a symptom I used to experience on a regular basis, especially at night and I hate it but I never knew what it was and now I do!
Another Attempt at Carb Reduction
January 13th, 2012 Caroline Middlebrook I’m fairly sure I have lost a little weight this week but it’s not much (less than a pound) and I am going out for a meal tomorrow night so that could potentially set me back. Even though the Paleo / Primal diet is not necessarily a low carb diet, when I read about the diet in relation to weight loss the message seems clear – it’s all about insulin and thus carbohydrate intake. Over the last few weeks I have made dramatic improvements to my diet – cutting out entire groups if food with only a few very minor exceptions and yet I have lost very little weight so far. Even though fat loss is a secondary concern – I still would like to drop the bulk of my excess fat in time for the summer!
The Calorie Formula and Significance of Metabolism
January 9th, 2012 Caroline Middlebrook Previously I discussed why calories still matter on Paleo if you have excess body fat to lose. In this post I’ll explain the calorie formula so you can determine roughly how many calories are required per day to lose fat at a fairly steady rate.
How to estimate calorie expenditure
In the past I have always been a calorie counter. I have calculated how many calories I need based on a common formula and then calculated how much of a calorie deficit I would need to lose the target amount of fat. The theory goes that 1 pound of fat contains 3,500 calories which means to lose that fat from your body you need to work up a calorie deficit of 3,500 calories. The numbers work quite well if you work on a weekly basis. 1lb fat loss per week should require a nice round 500 calorie deficit per day.
Week 5 (New Year Week) – No Change :-(
January 8th, 2012 Caroline Middlebrook This week I’ve been trying so hard to keep the carbs even lower than usual in an attempt to undo the Christmas / New Year gains and start losing consistently again and I think it backfired on me. I have been eagerly weighing myself just about every day this week and this morning on weigh day there’s no change from last week’s weight which is hugely frustrating.
Calories do still count on Paleo, Damn!
January 7th, 2012 Caroline Middlebrook I have finally got around to reading the chapter on ‘Effortless Weight Loss’ in the Primal Blueprint by Mark Sisson. I was under the impression based on what I had read previously that all you needed to do in order to lose fat was to stay in the 50-100g carbs a day range. I keep hearing on Robb Wolf’s podcast that when you’re following a Paleo lifestyle that calories don’t matter. It seems that is not the whole story…
2012 Starts Here and Kettlebell Swing Challenge Increased!
January 2nd, 2012 Caroline Middlebrook The Christmas and New Year celebrations are over and now I am back to my as-clean-as-possible Paleo diet & lifestyle. This week I’m low on the carbs, no tubers, lots of protein and daily exercise in the form of my January Kettlebell Swing Challenge.
Tomorrow night I have the first social event of the year – a meal out with friends. I simply can’t bring myself to go off-diet this soon into the New Year and so even though I said I’d always cheat if I was going to eat out, this time I have given my partner strict instructions to choose a restaurant at which I can eat Steak & Salad! I’ll let you know how that goes!
Caroline Middlebrook is an entrepreneur based in the UK. This is her personal blog where she talks about anything that comes to mind!