name that plan

[adelaidesean]

Recently I have, not gone on a diet, exactly, but made conscious efforts to change what I eat, taking into account my age, my weight, my sedentary lifestyle, and the state of our fair globe. There’s no single “hook”: I’ve just cut the really nasty carbs (potato, bread, rice, pasta) almost completely from my daily routine while at the same time avoiding processed food of any kind. I’ve reduced the amount of meat I eat to a small amount for lunch, and I’ve cut dairy to zero. At the same time, I’ve tried to reset various bad eating habits by getting myself hooked on chilli and nuts, along with heaps of fresh fruit and veg, as raw as I can bear it. And I walk about forty-five minutes each day.

The result? I feel a lot better about myself, on many levels, my skin has cleared up, and I’ve lost about seven kilograms. And hopefully I'm causing less damage to the environment by eating more local product, particularly that without hooves.

The question is: what the hell do I call this diet? It’s not vegetarian, but it’s as good as in the evening. But many vego options--the carb-laden ones in particular--are out, along with anything containing those stinky cheeses (that I hated anyway). It makes it damned hard to explain what people should serve up, if I’m going out to dinner, or eating on a plane, or staying anywhere that isn’t home.
 
Eating this way seems pretty sensible to me, so I’m determined to give it a catchy monicker.  The Rational Diet? The Williams Plan?

Any suggestions???

Also: any dietary traps I should avoid falling into?  I'm not sure where pulses fit into this plan, for instance, and I worry about iron deficiency.  This is an experiment I'd really hate to go wrong. :-)

ETA: "neo-paleo" gets one vote in the comments.

Comments

[catsparx.livejournal.com]

Goodonya! I've removed alcohol and sugar from the home, although I'll still have a drink or two when I go out. But I'm finding that even a couple of glasses of wine knocks me around now. I fear my jolly drinking days may be behind me.

[seanwilliams.livejournal.com]

Oh, I'm still drinking. And I have a hot chocolate once a day too (Haigh's, made with zero fat soy milk) so not all my vices have been ditched. :-)

[catsparx.livejournal.com]

Phew! Cos, you know, I'll be spending 12 hours in the air with you...

[seanwilliams.livejournal.com]

Indeed! I'm looking forward to giving you some pamphlets outlining this new cult I've joined... :-)

[catsparx.livejournal.com]

Dude, sounds like you've started one!

[seanwilliams.livejournal.com]

I am looking for disciples, if you're interested.

[catsparx.livejournal.com]

Hmmm... can I get a special dispensation for wheatbix? can't seem to start my day without 'em

[seanwilliams.livejournal.com]

Let's see. The official neo-paleo breakfast is two dates, one dried apricot, and four almonds. That's about equivalent, isn't it?

[catsparx.livejournal.com]

EEK! Nope, no way Jose. Those little things won't fuel my gym routine...

[seanwilliams.livejournal.com]

I used to start every day with three weetbixes and half a banana, and I'd be hungry almost instantly. Fruit and nuts just seem to last longer. It's weird, and probably unnatural...

[catsparx.livejournal.com]

I do eat fruit and nuts throughout the day -- and yes, nuts are particularly good hunger busters. But I dunno. I've tried many variants on breakfast and I always find myself coming back to carbs. Your brain does need a bit of carbohydrate, you know.

[seanwilliams.livejournal.com]

That's what the wine and chocolate is for. :-)

[catsparx.livejournal.com]

ah! So long as you have a properly balanced diet...

[seanwilliams.livejournal.com]

Indeed! Lots of good stuff balanced against a bit of crap. That's what I'm aiming for.

[livelurker.livejournal.com]

Not to deny a man his hot chocolate, but if you're watching carbs beware soy milk, if you check the ingredients, sugar is high on the list (no doubt to make it taste like milk, which is quite sweet)

[seanwilliams.livejournal.com]

That's a good point. I'm keeping an eye on it. One of the things I'm trying to shake off is an addiction to fatty, salty foods, so retaining a bit of sugar worries me less at the moment.

[paulhaines.livejournal.com]

Welcome to my world! The Gawler Foundation would have this close to what they call The Maintenance Diet. (www.gawler.org).

Next step is to cut the sugar.

I'm mostly vegan these days, and I still eat the carbs otherwise I'll get too skinny and fade away. And I still eat eggs.

[seanwilliams.livejournal.com]

Thanks, Paul. I'll check out the Gawler Foundation, see what I'm missing.

I figure sugar is better than fat and salt, so I'm sticking with that a while longer, mainly via fruit and wine. :-)

[seanwilliams.livejournal.com]

Thanks! I'd not heard of the paleo diet before. I'll look into it.

Not sure I can give up the poor animals entirely, but I'm keen to reduce the impact I make.

[seanwilliams.livejournal.com]

Thanks again! I'll definitely check out that blog.

Sadly, I can't apples (curse that damned skin!) otherwise I'd be downing them by the dozen.

[seanwilliams.livejournal.com]

There should be an "eat" in that second sentence. I'm not using it enough, clearly. :-)

[dalekboy.livejournal.com]

Possibly it's worth a visit to your doctor or a dietitian (maybe both) to look for huge obvious issues that you've missed, or little subtle long-term ones.

"Uncle Sean's Common Sense Diet" (TM)

[seanwilliams.livejournal.com]

You're right: I probably shouldn't make this up while I go along forever.

Uncle Danny's Excellent Advice (TM).

:-)

[catsparx.livejournal.com]

sounds like you may be following a palaeolithic diet

[seanwilliams.livejournal.com]

"paleo" sounds so retro. "neo-paleo"? :-)

[catsparx.livejournal.com]

neo paleo sounds very hip

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

*nods* That's what I thought when reading it as well.

Just make sure that meat is raw :)

[catsparx.livejournal.com]

and for authenticity you really should be killing the animal with your bare hands

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

Hunting and gathering would certainly help in exercise and weight-loss. :)

[seanwilliams.livejournal.com]

I'm more likely to be the hunted than the hunter, but it's a nice theory. :-)

[girliejones.livejournal.com]

It's reasonably hard for guys to get iron-deficient - mostly happens for female veggos.

Don't forget to get enough protein (thats where legumes fit in and they have to be eaten with a carb to get the right amino reaction, or somesuch) and you have to eat vit c, I think, to absorb iron properly.

[seanwilliams.livejournal.com]

So many things to remember. :-)

[girliejones.livejournal.com]

yep. Protein and Vit B are usually where I fail

[seanwilliams.livejournal.com]

How do you tell if you're failing? (I could look the symptoms up on the interwebz but I am nervous of getting bad advice.)

[girliejones.livejournal.com]

protein - i just tend to feel really tired, not sleepy tired but lethargic and without energy. Vit B also can feel lethargic but also depressed and I get rashes and mouth ulcers. (if the rashes come with muscle cramps, that's not enough potassium and maybe magnesium - I have a bowel disease so that's pretty extreme symptoms compared to normal bad diet, I spose)

[tikiwanderer.livejournal.com]

I work on a principle of "the reality index" - only eating foods that come with a high reality measure. So for instance a pre-made supermarket burger patty with lots of additives to make it sell well gets a low reality index value, a home-made one or one from the local butcher who has made it fresh that morning with no additives gets a higher one. This is not the same as nutritious: cardboard gets a high reality index value, but cardboard with added salt and sugar (eg McDonalds) gets a low reality index value. It seems like you are also using a kind of reality index in your choices of food and of preparation (local, often raw), and combining that with a reduced-consumer approach (the lowered meat and dairy, and also if you go lower in oil).

I ate pretty much the way you are describing above, but with the carbohydrates and dairy included and with (after the first year) virtually zero meat, from about 1996 to 2007 ish. (The recent change is a result of having to compromise with James' food patterns, plus a need to get back on the red meat when pregnant / breastfeeding).

Pulses are a nice way of ensuring that you get a range of proteins, and of odd little nutrients like magnesium (which no one food has a lot of, so you eat a variety of things to make sure you get enough). Pulses cooked with oil are quite satisfying, even in smaller amounts. How local they are is going to vary. If you're not keen on them, try amaranth (grown in Victoria) or quinoa, each of which you only need to eat small amounts of also.

Reduced consumer impact is like trying to get back to only using one planet's worth of resources. Something like that in the name?

If you called this the Low Impact Diet you could go around telling people to put a LID on it. Or Low Impact Super Happy makes it dietLISHous. I'll stop now.

[seanwilliams.livejournal.com]

Ha! I love your Reality Index best of all. What could go wrong, operating on a philosophy like that?

[nashmeister.livejournal.com]

How about the "Spaghetti and Chips Risotto Sandwich Diet"?

No, wait. I think I've read your first post wrong . . .

;-)

[seanwilliams.livejournal.com]

Mmmm, chips. I remember them. :-)

naming that diet

[(Anonymous)]

u should name your diet the Williams fool-proof food plan

[murasaki-1966.livejournal.com]

The best diet advice I ever recieved was from Mark Twain. "The Secret of a happy life is to eat what you like and let the food fight it out inside"

Having said that, I'm starting the switch to a low GI diet, because I have been diagnosied as pre-diabetic. So too much extra sugar is a no-no, and I need to lower my fat intake (working on that). I need to take "bad" carbs out of the diet and substitute "good carbs" (ie. ones that take longer to break down). Weetbix have been great for this. I no longer have the mid-morning sugar crash since I started having those for breakfast. I'm doing this slowly, and making sure I just cut the amount I'm eating. The other good piece of advice I got was "eat less, move more". Also eat less manufactured food, and more unprocessed foods (but cook them, the body has a very hard time breading down raw food. Cooking was invented for a reason).

Dietry advice is full of pitfalls. Even the nutritionists I do research for at work fully understand how everything fits together. We don't know how the body processes different foods, and in what combinations they work.

Good luck