Day 7

Today I am 1 week in and feeling great. The goal of today’s post is to accurately update you on what changes have occurred in the first week of following the doctor’s orders.

1) Energy. This has been the biggest and most thrilling change for me. After nearly 6 years of feeling constantly worn down and fatigued, I am just bursting with energy. I am finding it easier to get up in the morning and a lot easier to focus in class. My mood has improved more than I thought it needed to, and I feel motivated. It is hard to express just how thorough and exciting this change in energy has been!
2) Physique. Slow and steady wins the race. While not expecting a huge change here, I definitely did feel my clothes loosen up on me at the end of the week. Lets compare some measurements from today to day 1

Weight: 207 lbs (- 5lbs)
Chest: 40.5” (- 0.5”)
True waist: 37” (- 1.5”)
Midsection (widest part): 40” (- 2.0”)
Hips & buttocks: 44” (- 1.25”)
Thigh: 24.5” (- 0.5”)
Calf: 14.75” (- 0.25”)
Bicep (flexed): 14.25” (- 0.25”)
Neck (at collar): 15” (- 0.25”)

Those are some pretty big changes for just 1 week of sticking to the plan! Although I don’t expect to see that big of a change every week, it is a nice boost to my motivation.

3) Cravings. This is perhaps the most surprising change to me. I no longer crave the foods that are bad for me. I don’t need grains or sugars or any of that stuff anymore. I still get hungry (quite often, I might add) but it is not a particular craving, and when I eat a piece of fruit or some vegetables, I am very content. If you are reading this and thinking, “it’s too good to be true”, I agree with you. I feel like I am getting away with robbery here!

Day 6

So what does a guy who can’t eat grains fill up on? I used to love making breads and pastas and homemade pizzas. Heck, I still love that stuff, but I owe it to my health to give this diet a whirl. I eat a lot of food on the anti-inflammatory “diet”! One of the first things that really hit me, was how much food you need to eat throughout the day when it isn’t calorie rich, carbohydrate dense food. A simple comparison is a plain bagel to steamed broccoli. 1 plain bagel used to fill me up pretty well and get me going for a while at about 254 calories. You would need to eat roughly 6 cups of broccoli to get a similar caloric intake (264 cal), but with broccoli you get lots of potassium and fiber and other nutrients that you can’t find in a bagel. Now I don’t sit down at one meal and eat 6 cups of veggies, but my portions are larger than my meals where on the typical diet. It is important not to eat once you are full!


Typical daily shopping list of consumed goods:

5 small zucchini
½ lb mushrooms
8 cups of spinach
4 carrots
4 celery stalks
½ lb broccoli
3TBS extra virgin olive oil
4 pieces of fruit (I should eat more)
1 omega -3 egg
4-8 oz wild salmon or wild game (venison or elk)
1-2 oz dark chocolate
½ cup raw almonds and walnuts
Tons of spices!
Lots of water and green tea

This is what I ate most of the week cooked into several different forms, including raw. It was a very delicious week, and everything just tasted fresher and less dense without the grain/sugar/preservative triad that finds its way into most of our food. I have to say it, “eat real food people”!

Day 5

Two days of core work and two days of jogging got me motivated to work on a specific muscle, the gluteus medius. In the majority of people, this muscle is neurologically inhibited, under-used, and weak. It is a very important muscle for stabilizing the hip and can easily spotted as the muscle that keeps the hips perfectly level as you step down stairs. I usually pass a number of muscle tests for the glut med, but I wear down quickly and I have some chronic hip issues. For about as long as I can remember I have had very tight adductor muscles, which elicit some soreness, and don’t respond well to stretching. The adductor muscles are on the medial side of the thigh and bring the leg closer to midline as well as helping out in a few auxiliary processes. After studying some anatomy books and a gait analysis book, I hypothesized that my tight adductors may be compensation for weak glut activation. So I followed this 40-minute glut routine:

10 minute warm up on treadmill

Clams (4 positions on each side) for about 12 minutes

Tri-planar squats, making sure to load my heal and gluts for about 10 minutes

Double leg, and single leg glut bridges for about 5 minutes

Cool down stretches.

This is not a sweat breaking workout, but it is mentally tough to focus on only letting one muscle do all the work without compensating, especially when it is a weak muscle. You definitely feel the burn throughout, but it doesn’t quite count as a cardiovascular work out.