MET Part 3 – a couple small setbacks

My athlete’s been working on metabolic efficiency and has been progressing nicely. I got to chat with her on a nice easy run on the trail today and see how the last week went. She had a couple small setbacks, but nothing we can’t bounce back from.
1) There was a local Mardi Gras parade which turned into some drinking and eating
2) Valentine’s Day dinner and some other eating out where choices were healthy, but not completely metabolically efficient choices.
3) Fish and Chips to celebrate the start of Lent (although that tradition is new to me)

However, the scale had her 1.5 pounds lower than the week before so even with non-ideal eating a few meals, she still lost weight. Total lost over ~3weeks is 4.5 pounds (which is about a 3% body weight loss!)

She also had some questions about the eating plan. I’ll try to answer them here:
1) Can she eat too many nuts? Snacking on peanut butter and nuts is easy, but what is too much since they are a lot of fat (even though healthy fats)?
–> Yes, you can eat too much, but you’d have to eat a lot of nuts. The Loren Cordain of the Paleo Diet recommends those trying to lose weight eat no more than 4oz of nuts per day. Two (2) tablespoons of peanut butter is a little more than one ounce. 1oz is also about 22 almonds. So you’d be eating a lot of nuts to exceed four 1oz servings per day. Also, if you are combining sources of protein with your healthy fats, you’ll probably eat fewer nuts. 


2) Is it bad to eat a lot of fruit due to the high sugar content?
–> I’m assuming this question comes from the potential high insulin response from eating sugar. Fruits do have sugar (some more than others) but that is a source of your carbohydrate while you are not eating whole grains. Fruits also have fiber which of course you need. So if your snack or meal consists of a fruit (and/or vegetable) and healthy fat and lean protein, you shouldn’t experience the “insulin spike.”


She’s still working on eating more vegetables in her diet, but she the weight loss is great and she still hasn’t had a bowl of cereal or oatmeal in the last three weeks!

Also want to share a neat website I found regarding food nutrition content: http://www.nutritiondata.com