Thoughts on Calorie Counting

One of the great things about following the Primal Blueprint or a Paleo lifestyle is that counting calories is not necessary, or even recommended. Following the Primal Blueprint is supposed to be simple. Eat lots of wholesome foods including animals, insects and plants. Avoid grains, beans and other legumes, most vegetable and seed oils, processed sugars and most processed foods in general. Do this and you will see improvements in health and energy. Heck, you may even lose some weight.

When you look at the big picture, your individual daily calorie or macro nutrient intake really does not matter much in the long run. What is important is your average intake of nutrients and activity level. If you want to keep an eye on calories and macro nutrients, I feel that looking at your daily average over a week is a good minimum time frame to use to see how you are doing. When I was in the weight loss phase of my journey I would log my food intake once or twice a week just to verify that my carbohydrate intake was staying under 100 grams of carbs per day.

 Why less than 100 grams of carbs for weight loss?

 Let's take a look at the Primal Blueprint Carbohydrate Curve:

My Primal Journey

It is time I talked about the "Primal" part of The Primal Transplant.  Primal comes from the fact that I follow the Primal Blueprint and try to live a primal lifestyle.

What is the Primal Blueprint you ask?

From Mark Sisson, author of "The Primal Blueprint" and the Mark of "Mark's Daily Apple":

The Primal Blueprint is a set of simple instructions (the blueprint) that allows you to control how your genes express themselves in order to build the strongest, leanest, healthiest body possible, taking clues from evolutionary biology (that’s the primal part). 

 And...

Our ancestors evolved over millions of years under certain environmental conditions. These conditions (the foods they ate, the amount of sun they got, the sort of movement that was required of them to survive, etc.) shaped their genome. While the world has changed in innumerable ways in the last 10,000 years (for better and worse), the human genome has changed very little and thus only thrives under similar conditions. Simply put, if you want a good future you better listen to the past. And that’s where The Primal Blueprint and Mark’s Daily Apple come in. Showing you how to direct gene expression toward fat burning, muscle building, longevity and wellness, and away from fat storing, muscle wasting, disease and illness.

Mark promises to help us "...to direct gene expression toward fat burning, muscle building, longevity and wellness, and away from fat storing, muscle wasting, disease and illness."  That is one heck of a carrot to toss out in this world of increasing obesity, diabetes, heart disease and food intolerances.  Sounds almost too good to be true doesn't it?  Well... here... let me tell you my Primal story.