Cholesterol Results

So my cholesterol results are in. Here they are:

At first glance you will notice the significant jump in total cholesterol. It is due largely to increased LDL. Should I be worried? I'm not.

1. LDL isn't as simple as being the "bad cholesterol." There are two main types of LDL, and one of the types is thought of as neutral while the other is considered a sign of heart disease. Those following the paleo diet have increased LDL but it is mainly the neutral version. I'm confident my LDL health has improved, even though the number is way higher. I may have my LDL tested directly (standard testing only calculates LDL, doesn't measure) and analyzed for type.
2. My VLDL and Triglycerides are rock bottom.
3. My TOTAL/HDL and LDL/HDL ratios are better than "optimal." Several studies have shown these ratios are much more important than HDL and LDL numbers individually.
4. My HDL improved by 13%. This is amazing considering that my weekly exercise was dramatically lower than all previous tests. Exercise is shown to increase HDL levels considerably, and the paleo diet more than made up for that.

So I'm pretty sure I've been genetically blessed with excellent cholesterol, at least at this point in my life. However, look at my trends over the last 5 years. HDL was flat. LDL, VLDL, and triglycerides were all increasing at a steady and scary rate. Aging?

Anyone would say that 3 out of the 4 standard categories have improved significantly. The debate is over LDL. More on that later.

Diet at 6 months

Due to higher priorities, I decided to stop my detailed diet tracking at the end of this week. I've reached the 6 month mark and have been diligent in my tracking. My spreadsheet is well past 3,000 rows. I'll publish all the data soon enough and you statisticians can crunch some numbers for me.

I'll get my 6 month blood work done this week to close the loop on this phase.

Here has been one of my favorite "Paleo" meals: MEATZA (pizza with a ground beef crust). Email me for the recipe.

Diet Month 2

I apologize for my lack of updates this summer. I just came out of a 4 week stretch where my daily schedule was:

• Wake up at 6:00 - eat, exercise (some days), go to work
• Work 8-5:00
  
• Family time from 5-9:00
• Work from 9:00 pm to 1:00 am.
• Repeat
  

Thank goodness I was on this carbohydrate restricted diet, otherwise I would have died from exhaustion.

Anyway, here are the stats from my first 70 days of restricting carbs and keeping track of everything. In week 5 I loosened the reigns of my severe carb restriction and added peanuts and veggies back into my diet. I've become addicted to dry roasted peanuts which is where the majority of my carbs are coming from.

The observant among you will notice my continuous calorie increase since week 3. This is consistent with every other diet I've been on. The willpower to resist eating only lasts a couple of weeks (a month if I'm really motivated). But this time I didn't care. I let my body and mind tell me how much to eat. An insightful friend commented that maybe the urge to eat is my body telling me it doesn't want to lose any more weight. I never thought of it that way before.

The graph below is amazing. My body weight is not rising at all with all the food I'm eating. In fact, my body fat is continuing to go down. I've been lifting weights 2-3 days a week and getting noticeably stronger. I'm sure I've added a pound or two of muscle mass in the last 5 weeks while my overall weight has stayed the same.

So far everything I believed going into the diet has been validated. I think the most obvious point I've demonstrated is that the nutrition establishment is wrong in their mantra "calorie in = calories out." The TYPE of calorie matters. If the establishment was right, I would have gained 12 pounds since week 3. Time will tell if my other health assessments (aside from weight loss) are positive from this diet.

Diet: Phase 1

Phase 1 is complete and went extremely well. I lost 13 pounds with very little effort, no restriction of calories, and no perceivable negative side affects.

I track calories IN very accurately. Calories OUT is an approximation. I use the estimated resting calories burned for a person my height and weight with an office job, which is about 2,000 calories a day. I add any exercise I get like biking to work, lifting weights, softball, and basketball. So you can see I've been burning about 500 calories a day through exercise.

I estimate about 7 lbs of my weight loss is simply water weight (the weight dropped in the first week). But there is a discrepancy in the remaining 6 lbs. According to my calorie counting I should have lost 1.1 lbs. Where did the other 5 lbs go? Either I'm more active than I'm giving myself credit for, or the type of food I'm eating is raising my basal metabolic rate (BMR).

If you starve yourself or eat a very low calorie diet your body will naturally reduce your BMR very quickly. I don't believe my body is doing that.

I will say that tracking every calorie has made me aware of how much I ate previously. Many times in the first month I wanted to eat more but I was aware of how much I had already eaten so I decided to skip the snack I was contemplating. Also, my limited food selection prevented me from overeating. One other observation I've had is that since fats are more calorie dense than carbs or protein the volume of food I'm eating has dropped dramatically.

Diet: Week 1

Week 1 was pretty dramatic.


My observations include:

• First three days were tough as my body adjusted to ketosis - burning fat for fuel instead of carbohydradtes. I felt fatigued and hungry often.
  
• The body retains a lot more water weight on high carb diets so most of the weight loss was water
• In days 4-7 I experienced no hunger or fatigue
• I'm targeting ~150 g/day of protein. Too much protein is hard on the kidney and can get converted into other things. Suggested protein ranges vary, but for athletic and active males my size I do not believe 150 g/day is excessive.
  
• I'm learning a lot about the make-up of foods as I go. Sometimes I don't look up the nutrition information prior to eating. I ate broccoli on day 1 only to be surprised later by the amount of carbs it contained. I ate quite a bit of chicken on day 7 and was surprised by the amount of protein.
• I had a full physical on day 8 and blood drawn on day 9. Results to follow.
• By the end of the first week my cravings for sweets dropped dramatically. I can attribute some of that to the fact that my mind knows I'm in this for a full year.
  

Randy's Dietary Experiment

As I mentioned earlier, I decided to make an exercise and diet lifestyle change. The origin of my transformation was exactly one year ago when a good friend told me about the book he was reading on nutrition. He presented the basic concept that dietary carbohydrates are quite bad and he was trying to cut way back. Then, in November that same friend decided to really commit to this lifestyle change and the results were pretty impressive. Finally, this past March we discussed it more and I decided to do more research.

The bulk of my research has been:

• The book Good Calories Bad Calories by Gary Taubes. The book provides a very detailed history on the evolution of nutrition and challenges some widely accepted ideas. The book was eye-opening and very convincing. The biggest point of the book is that carbohydrates, not fat, are the ultimate dietary evil. The book reads like a textbook so it is hard to swallow, but I highly recommend it.
• PaNu - a website written by Dr. Kurt Harris with a rather simple set of rules for the proper diet. He provides medical answers to a lot of common questions.
• Mark's Daily Apple - a website written by Mark Sisson a fitness and nutrition expert. He has many different opinions than PaNu, but the same main points.

I have struggled with weight my entire life. I was very heavy until 17, and after losing 50 lbs in a summer I have fluctuated +/- 15 lbs since then. I've had the discipline to lose weight the conventional way (low calorie, low fat diets) many times but my diets never gave me long term success.

Reading the book Good Calories Bad Calories completely changed my perspective on nutrition. Like most people, I was taught to avoid fat, eat fewer calories, increase fiber, reduce sodium, and try to eat whole grains, fruits, and veggies. Now I believe that the human body was designed to operate burning fat for energy instead of carbohydrates and that carbohydrates in basically any form are detrimental to my health.

I understand this is a major change in philosophy and defies countless nutrition "experts" out there. But the evidence is there. If you actually look, I believe the research points to improved health when carbohydrates are removed.

So what is my plan? For one year (I started May 17), I will meticulously record every calorie I eat, my weight, my waistline, and my exercise.

• Phase 1: Minimize carbs, shooting for less than 20g per day. Duration: 1 month
• Phase 2: Less than 100g carbs per day (probably less than 50g). Duration: until I reach my desired weight (which I haven't decided yet, but likely less than 180)
• Phase 3: Experiment - adjust carbs, calories, exercise, etc. as I see fit. Duration: remainder of year.

I will also compare my blood tests from May 2009, May 2010, and May 2011.

I will provide updates on this blog weekly (roughly) and try to answer questions as I learn more. Notice I don't plan to restrict calories at all. For exercise I am eliminating long cardio workouts like running. Instead, I will lift weights and play basketball a couple times a week aside from my normal levels of activity.

Riverbank Run 2010

The 2010 Riverbank run was my 6th consecutive year, but it was a much different experience. My goal at the beginning of training was to break the 2 hour mark, but my plans changed.

The early stages of my training went as expected. I started slow, built endurance and speed, and muscled through the bitterly cold months of January and February. However, my training went downhill fast in March. All of my running suddenly felt very labored and my legs felt tight and weak. Each run was worse than the one before and by early April I knew I was doomed.

So decided not to worry about my speed and just enjoy the race. And enjoy it I did.

With no specific time goal Derek and I just lined up and ran whatever speed felt good. We cruised at 8:50-9:00 miles for most of the race and chatted with each other to pass time. At mile 13 we started to agonize but I got our minds off running by giving Derek a riddle to solve, which took him 2 miles. The funny part was that Derek never solved the riddle, the guy running next to Derek blurted out the answer before Derek got it. After that it was just a short sprint to the finish line.
My 2010 time was the worst of my 6 years, but I was happy that my average pace stayed below 9 min/mile. Derek outdid me at the end a can now claim his first legitimate road race victory over me (he beat me in the 2006 Detroit 1/2 marathon but I had run a full marathon 7 days before).

Final Times:
Randy - 2:18:57
Derek - 2:18:46
Jason - 2:46:47
Darren - 2:33:33
Marv - 2:33:31

I have decided that for the indefinite future, I am going to stop doing endurance sports. I've done a fair amount of research this year on diet and nutrition and now I want to test my theories on my own body. My new dietary approach is not compatible with distance running so I will get exercise in other ways.

I will soon fill this blog with lots of information on my new diet because I plan to take it very seriously and I will document it very scientifically, presenting my results on this blog. For now, I'm enjoying a week of glutinous eating before I cut out some major foods from my diet. Unless I've discussed this with you in the last few months you'll be surprised what I plan to eat and what I plan to eliminate.

Part of me is sad that my running career is done but I also feel a tremendous amount of relief, and I am excited to begin this next phase in my life.