"One Ingredient Diet" Results

My one month "One Ingredient Diet" is over. The idea of the diet is to only eat natural foods that are only one ingredient. Such as grass fed steak, not Taco Bell Steak. I did not count calories, or measure fat or carbohydrate intake. I simply ate all natural, organic foods. Food that you could go outside and pick off a bush or kill and eat. This means absolutely no processed foods. No grains, no bread, no cereal, no milk, no cheese, no yogurt... Nothing that has to go through processing to reach my plate.

My theory: There is not one perfect diet for everybody. We are all different. There are people that thrive on high carbohydrate diets and people that thrive on high fat and protein diets. The one common trend to an unhealthy diet is processing. I wanted to see what would happen if I cut out all processed foods from my diet.

I think I did pretty good. I made a couple mistakes early on (I was eating uncured bacon which has brown sugar and salt as extra ingredients) but got back in line quickly. Here are the results...

Average Nutrient Intake:

• Calories: 2191
• Fat: 116.9g
• Carbohydrates: 141.7g
• Protein: 151.3g
• Alcohol: 0g

Weight Differential:

• Starting Weight: 225lb
• Ending Weight: 211lb
• Difference: Lost 14lb!

How I Feel:

• Amazing!
• I have more energy, especially at the end of the day. Some days I am at work from 6:00a.m until 8:00p.m. That makes for a long day, but since starting this way of eating I have plenty of energy to get through the day!
• I am getting fitter. My strength numbers are going up in all the major lifts (Squat, Deadlift, Press, Clean...) and I am getting faster times in all my timed workouts. It is very common to lose some strength while losing weight, but I have seen continual improvement in my workout numbers.
• My bowel movements are better. I know... but your bowel movements can tell you a lot about your diet and health.
  

I lost 14lb in 4 weeks. That is pretty darn good! Caloric restriction, eating fat makes you fat, low carbs? These seem to be the three leading theories for weight loss. The next few days I will examine these theories to try and determine why I saw such great results.

Why do you think I saw such good results?

Posted in: The One Ingredient Diet