What a week

What a truly amazing week in life. For starters, we finally got the results from our 30 day paleo challenge, which started this whole adventure in the first place. I was so fortunate to actually win the male challenge which took in to account body composition change and food logging. So for some numbers. In 30 days, I dropped from 192 lbs to 184. Both of these weights were taken at the end of the day and quite off from what I consistently got at home. On my scale I went from 190-179, that's weighing in the buff and in the morning though. Even more importantly, my overall body fat went from 24.4% to 16%! I couldn't believe the amount of change there. I dropped two and a half inches around my waist which translates into almost 2 pant sizes. Im posting pictures below from week one to the final weigh in. I don't really know how much different they look to other people, but I see a huge difference when I look at myself in the mirror. I'm pretty much done with the scale, it's going to lose its importance to me with the amount of muscle I'll be gaining so who knows what the number will end up being. I couldn't be happier with the results, and I'm even happier with how I feel. I'm going into serious marathon training this week and I predict I'm going to have to up my carbohydrates, but I still plan to take them totally from natural sources like fruits and starchy vegetables like sweet potatoes and winter squashes. It's still definitely a work in progress but I'm nothing but excited about what's coming up.


Day 1 of the Paleo Diet


After 37 days on the Paleo Diet







I had a really cool breakthrough on my 12 mile long run this weekend too. I've been trying to figure out what I'm going to do about nutrition during long runs and have bounced back and forth between bananas and Lara Bars, but the bananas often give me heart burn if I eat them during exercise and the Lara Bars work awesomely on long bike rides, but I hadn't really tried them on long runs. Well getting ready on Saturday morning I was faced with the reality that I hadn't planned anything and I also remembered that the week before I had started crashing because I had nothing to eat on a long run. I started rummaging around to find anything that wasn't Gu and finally settled on a container of organic flame raisins. Looking at the numbers, a quarter cup of raisins had almost the same calories as a Gu (Raisins 120, Gu 100) and actually more carbs (32 raisins, 28 Gu). My only concern was, frankly, the fiber. I knew that the possibility of a bathroom break was a real one, but I decided to go with it anyway. 12 miles was going to be my longest run by a couple of miles since the Ironman in May and man was this a good one. It didn't hurt that it was 59 degrees and stayed in the low 60's the whole time, but I felt awesome. I started out at around a 9:00-9:10 pace, remembering also that the week previously I had gone out a lot faster than this to stay with some people, and I know better than that. It was a glorious run, and each mile split got quicker and quicker, such that I ended my 12 mile run with an average of an 8:50 pace, with the last two miles being sub 8:10. The raisins did great, but I did have to take a potty break. I can't say for certain if the raisins were the reason for this or not, but either way, I didn't care, I felt tremendous. So, long story short, I'll be using the raisins again.