FINAL DAY of The January Challenge: WFPB Diet & Performance (31/01/22)
Reflections, lessons + announcing my February Challenge!
My report for Monday 31st January 2022 - the final day of my January WFPB (Whole-Foods, Plant-Based) challenge!
This report structure will be a little bit different. I’ll start with my reflections & learnings from this challenge in the form of:
My lessons & reflections from carrying out this challenge,
My improvement points if I were to replicate the challenge,
My practical actions I’m taking into the future even after this challenge has finished.
I’ll then talk about my February challenge, and finish with my ‘experience’ of the day (as I do in all posts).
Reflections from My January Challenge:
Going Whole-Foods, Plant-Based for a month has been a tough, but rewarding way to start the year. As I was already eating a plant-based diet, it’s only meant additionally cutting out dark chocolate, bread, gluten and processed food…
…but in some way, this made it even tougher!
Here are 7 lessons I’ve learned:
The more we cut out of our diet, the more we become attached to what’s still in our diet. Despite having cut out so much these past few years, I had no idea just how much I’d attached to dark chocolate as a source of instant gratification until I tried to remove it completely. It was almost like it was the last reward I had available to me. It was harder to remove than anything I’d done in the past. Why was this the case? Well…
It was never about the chocolate. It was about the sugar. My partner helped me realise this when she called me out after I said I wasn’t so keen on 100% raw dark chocolate. It was the chocolate combined with the (small, but still significant) amount of sugar added to 70% and 85% bars that was what was really giving me the satisfaction. Even craving bread is craving sugars. (And olive bread is a potent combination of sugar and salt!). During this diet, the combination of banana and cacao became very satisfying, as did almond butter.
Having 2,500 WFPB calories is different to 2,500 calories composed of 1,500 WFPB calories, 500 calories bread + 500 calories dark chocolate. I feel more energised. My skin looks great. My body feels strong and light.
It took me almost the whole month to finally feel my cravings for sugar disappear…but they have! First week wasn’t bad because of momentum and excitement. Second week was very tough (my mood was so low relative to my norm!). Third week was a mixed bag (still noticing cravings as a reward for doing something good or to offset feeling bad). It was really in the last 5-6 days where I’ve felt like I’m not even craving dark chocolate/bread. Very curious to see how quickly the cravings come back if I incorporate them back into my diet…
Lost no strength despite removing protein powder, still eating 90-110g of protein per day. This was really good to see. However, I have lost mass overall (both fat and muscle), though picked up my calories in the last few weeks to find a nice maintenance level.
My sleep quality has been better throughout the duration of this challenge - far fewer wake-ups during the night, and feeling more energised in the morning. I think the trace amounts of caffeine when eating dark chocolate at late hours was having a slight impact.
Weighing foods is so important if you’re doing a diet challenge. Even though I’d done it in the past (10 years ago, 4 years ago), and have been using rough approximations on MyFitnessPal every day since 2012, I was actually quite far off when I was trying to do it by sight this time around. Was especially underestimating my oats by about 40g - 100g is actually quite a big bowl. Really good to know.
2 things I would improve on if I were to do this challenge again in the future:
Measuring health markers more accurately. Would love to have seen before and afters of my inflammatory markers, blood sugar levels, and other health markers. Also actually tracking sleep would have been helpful.
More regular meal times. My priorities during the day are my client sessions & my training, which means that my lunch time has to work around it. I won’t eat for 3-4 hours if I plan to run. I won’t eat for 2 hours if I’m going to train. Some days this means I have lunch at 2pm, others at 6pm! There are a myriad of health benefits to regular eating times, so it’s something I may explore further in the future.
5 Action Points from this challenge that I will take with me into the rest of 2022:
Stay honest with myself. No more telling myself it’s ‘dark chocolate’ or ‘olive bread’ I’m craving - it’s sugar, plain and simple.
Protein powder will be reincorporated into my diet, but far more sparingly. Not sure when entirely. Some studies show that 40g of protein in the morning (before 10am) is optimal regardless of when you train - I’m already getting 20g from my oats! Others say immediately after training is optimal. Will do more research and decide. Main thing is I want to minimise it - it’s still a processed food, and not cheap if you want quality.
I like dark chocolate. I’m pretty healthy. What I’d love to is to reintegrate the sugar kick from dark chocolate in a balanced way. I’m currently thinking alternating days, with a focus on limiting quantity consumed. I don’t want to do one/two days a week and then end up bingeing. I’d rather cultivate discipline around how I consume it. And then perhaps, every 3 months, I’ll do 2-3 weeks no sugar at all, just to see how dependent I’ve gotten in that time…
No sugar in the house. To facilitate the above, a good compromise I’ve found is to permit myself to have dark chocolate if I’m visiting my parents, or if I’m going into town to see friends, but to keep it out of the house.
My energy and skin have been so good during the latter parts of this challenge. I want to do my utmost to keep it this way. I’m pretty sure that having less sugar, less often will help. As will making sure I’m filling up on things like vegetables and quinoa.
So, with this in mind, what’s the challenge for February?
February Challenge…SLEEP HABITS!
For the month of February, I’m going to be setting myself a challenge based around sleep. My current habits prior to this challenge:
My quantity of sleep is good - on average 8 hours per night.
However, my sleep timings are generally late, averaging around ranging between 12:30am and 2:30am, and averaging around 1:30am.
This is fine, because the nature of my client work means that it doesn’t matter when I start, and I tend to work later if I need to compensate. However, just because it works, doesn’t mean it’s optimal…
Worse still, my sleeping patterns are inconsistent. As you can see from the range above, I sleep at different times each night. This is not optimal. Consistent sleeping-waking times have many health benefits, reduce the risk of heart disease, and can even possibly lead to needing a reduced number of hours of sleep to feel refreshed.
So, with this in mind, what are the parameters for this challenge?
In bed by 11pm.
Asleep by 11:30am.
Wake up at 7:30am.
Here are some of my initial thoughts:
I have a 60-minute pre-sleep routine that helps me a ton. Unfortunately, I probably need to start doing this by around 9:30/10pm. This will be tough. I’ll talk more about this routine in subsequent posts.
When I wake up, I want to immediately get outside and view morning light. Studies show that this helps us generate an initial cortisol ‘kick’ that sets our melatonin to be released 12-13 hours later to begin making us sleepy. (Source: Dr. Andrew Huberman, Stanford University). I’ll expound more on this during the challenge.
I want to use this as an opportunity to really get on top of time-management. If I have consistent wake-up times, I can also be more consistent with how much I can get done prior to my first client sessions.
I’ll be monitoring (subjectively) my mood, my energy levels, and my focus. I’ll also be writing about when I got in bed, when I slept, and when I woke up.
I’ll be using the Sleep Cycle app to track these…
…because, unfortunately, I couldn’t organise an Oura Ring or Whoop in time for this to track things like heart rate variability. I don’t mind. I wouldn’t have much information to compare it to. But in the future, I may do a similar sleep challenge & integrate more measurements.
Also, I feel like many people don’t have access to these. We shouldn’t limit our ability to improve performance based only on what we can objectively measure.
While objective measures are useful to see whether results can be replicated, if we’re looking at performance on an individual level, subjective measures can be just as powerful, and as an added benefit, also teach us to be more connected with our body and mind.
So, here we go! I’d like to think I can get my SubStacks out more early if I’m waking up earlier…let’s see!
My Experience (31/01/2022):
Reflections on the final day of my WFPB Challenge
What I ate today:
Breakfast (9:30am) - My Oat, Blueberry, Chia Seed, Sunflower Seed, Pumpkin Seed, Cacao & Cinnamon, Almond Milk standard recipe (654 kcal). Same quantities as normal (included on this link).
Post-Workout Shake (3:30pm) - Oats, Cacao, Flax Seed, Banana (487kcal) - Oats (60g), Flax Seed (21g), Banana (88g), Almond Milk (125ml), Cacao Powder (10g)
Post-Workout Snack (3:40pm) - Almond Butter (Meridian brand, 30g), Coconut Water (Innocent brand, 200ml) (233 kcal)
Lunch (3:50pm) - Quinoa, Chickpeas, Salad (552kcal): Organic Quinoa Tricolore (Biofair, 65g uncooked), Chickpeas (Epicure, 100g), Kale (30g), Purple Cabbage (20g), Garlic & Chilli Seed Mix (Good 4U, 25g)
Dinner (7:45pm) - Honey & Almond Butter Marinated Tempeh, Stir Fry & Quinoa with a Cabbage & Mango Salad (1,127kcal): Red & White Quinoa (Merchant brand, 250g), Tempeh (Tofoo brand, 130g), Superbright Stir Fry (Watirose brand, 300g), Mango (25g), Carrots (30g), Purple Cabbage (40g), Broccoli (30g), Honey (1tsp), Almond Butter (15g), Tamari Soy Sauce (1tbsp)
Dessert (8:45pm) - Cacao, Avocado, Banana Mousse (246kcal): Cacao (10g), Banana (55g), Avocado (60g), Cacao Nibs (5g)
Managed to hit ~3,242 calories. Macros: 351g carbohydrates, 137g protein, 140g fat
Some quick observations on the diet front:
Ate more than any other day on this challenge. The reason was that I did a 14.6km run at a pretty intense pace and burned 720 calories in the process. Wanted to get that back.
My dinner was cooked by my amazing partner! Tastiest meal I’ve had in ages - I couldn’t stop eating it. Her honey & almond butter marinate for the tempeh was an incredible (and indulgent) idea, perfect after an intense run. And she made a delicious & nourishing salad mix of cabbage, broccoli, mango and carrots in the food processor.
Can’t believe this was the last day of the challenge. Took me a long time to rid myself of cravings, but it happened! At the moment, I don’t even want to return to dark chocolate or olive bread. But for the sake of my experiment, I know I’ll need to try it just to see what effect it has on me…for the sake of the experiment, of course.
Impact on 6 Life Areas:
The 6 areas are 1. Career, 2. Mood, 3. Health & Fitness, 4. Family & Relationships, 5. Recreation & Screen Time, and 6. General Fulfilment.
Career:
Clients, talks & calls - Couple of client sessions and mentee calls. One call with a TedX organiser who I had been trying to arrange a call with for a while. He said he was available today. Out of a fear of a missed opportunity, I accepted it without being fully prepared and not quite available then in terms of my other plans. I ended up taking the call 3 minutes after finishing my 14.6km run. This was not optimal. Perhaps need to temper my optimism with practicality…
Content creation - Writing practice done (SubStack post).
Business development - No development. Lot of other things to attend to.
Business admin - Emailed a quotation to a school for a talk, and a few other bits and pieces.
Mood/Emotions/Mental Health:
Morning - 9/10. Woke up early and got a walk in as the sun rose (peaceful). Quite a bit of life admin (patient, focused), and then was late to go for my run (rushed).
Afternoon - 9/10. Run was amazing (energised, peaceful, healthy, strong), but only had 3 mins before my TedX call. Proud of how relaxed I was, but a bit thrown by their ‘interview-style’ questions - I thought it was more of a casual conversation pre-applying. That bugged me for a bit, but had to bounce back quickly as I had client sessions. Took a hot-cold shower (invigorating after initial discomfort) which helped me return to a present state, and honoured my sessions (present, grateful).
Evening - 9.5/10. My partner cooked me dinner without telling me (grateful, loved, surprised, overjoyed), and then finished the day with some necessary life admin before getting into my pre-sleep routine.
Physical Health and Fitness:
Run:
Distance: 14.66km
Duration: 1:04:39
Pace: 4:25/km
A pretty full-on session, as I knew I had to get back for the call. My heart rate was fully recovered within 3 minutes, which is optimistic.
Did stretches and managed 19,850 steps.
Relationships: Family, Friends, Partner:
Grateful for my amazing partner for cooking me such a lovely dinner! What a wonderful way to end this challenge - so grateful to her for her thoughtfulness.
Grateful for good friends - had a spontaneous call at 18:45 for 40 minutes. He wanted to check in on me and make sure I was doing well. Very thoughtful.
Recreation/Screen Time:
No more Australian Open - going to miss that, but SO happy that Nadal won!
Social Media/Apps Non-Productive Phone Screen-time:
LinkedIn: 1h9m - post on Nadal.
Facebook: 29m - reading articles mainly.
IG: 9m - replying to a few messages.
WhatsApp (54m - of which 40m for a call)
Total: 4h51m
85 Pickups - 10 x WhatsApp, 10 x LinkedIn used as first app on picking up (checking notifications, should probably remove the red icon…too tempting)
Fulfilment:
Gave today a 9.25/10 overall. Walk in sunrise. Necessary life admin. Great run. Not so great TedX call. Great client sessions. Lovely evening with my partner. Early night.
Parting Notes & Question for You
No parting notes today - hope you’ve enjoyed the reporting on this month! Look forward to sharing my sleep experiment results with you all!
Reflection for you: If you could change one thing about your sleeping schedule right now, what would it be?
We’ve made it to the end of Day 30! Thank you so much for reading - I would love to hear your thoughts in the comments.
Hope that you all have an amazing day. Now for me to eat some dinner with my partner…yeah, this post has come out pretty late!
Until tomorrow,
Kam
Damn, that's a long run - the food always tastes so much better after. I'm looking forward to following your lead in the next challenge (and, equally, to having my Belgian cookies again).