Dod Goes Paleo

I've always had a knack for sports. I run fairly regularly (including 2 NYC marathons), swim during the winter season (when my odds of having a lane for myself are higher) and play tennis, where my partners know me for my spotless technique my athletics on court. So it is somewhat frustrating when my wife describes my belly as "under control"... especially since it does look that way. In fairness, I've been willing to push myself doing a lot of cardio, but uncompromising with my eating... I did grow up in France after all!

But it has dawned on me that I can't outrun my eating habits. I had already ruled out anything along the lines of miraculous pills, wacky proto-food or magical sporting accessories; I also thought somewhat unrealistic (for me) to start counting calories or cram any significant additional sporting habit (a day only lasts so long). And so I went roaming about the web, placing my tall order to Mr Google, rewording a few time. Google feels sometimes like it has a life of its own, and I did sense some twist of dark humor when it eventually zeroed in on Nerd Fitness... but it so happens that it's a perfectly legit website, with some interesting nuggets at that. While a lot of it has to do with workout routines and the like, a surprisingly strong emphasis is made on the diet, going as far as stating that "your diet is at least 80% of your success or failure", leaving workouts to a near cosmetic 20%. Nothing scientific there, of course, but it did catch my attention, and I ultimately came away with 2 points stressed by the author:

• Cardio is one of the least efficient methods of burning calories. Shorter, but more intense interval runs would be more beneficial, though still not as effective as strength training. So much for all the running ^^
•  A "paleo" diet is recommended as a great way to trim down by avoiding some foods, but with no real restriction on quantities / calorie count; to make a long story short, if a caveman couldn’t eat it, neither can you. As the reasoning goes, our ancestors strove for most of the past couple hundreds of thousands years as hunter-gatherers, until agriculture developed about ten thousands years ago; so grain-based food, preeminent today, has become common in man's diet only very recently (from an evolutionary perspective), and our bodies haven't yet adjusted to that steady supply of rich food.

I honestly can't say how accurate this is, but the website does have a pretty accurate take down of my own experience, and it promotes the kind of balance I could manage. So I've decided to give it a shot for at least a couple of month, and see the outcome!