Paleo Kung Fu

I've been reading The Paleo Diet for Athletes by Loren Cordain and Joe Friel. Obviously, I'm not looking to make diet changes to lose weight, but to increase performance and increase my resistance to getting sick. Essentially, the recommendation of the book is to eat only lean meats, seafood, fruits and vegetables except for certain periods of time before, during and after exercise, when you need to take in more carbohydrates for energy.

I'm not quite finished with the book, but I've been gradually implementing some of the changes. Here's what I've noticed:

1. If I do this, I will need to eat a higher volume of food. Meat and fruit and vegetables are nutritionally dense, but they tend to not be calorically dense. I worked out a sample menu the other day, and I'd need to eat about twice the volume of what I eat now to get the same amount of calories.

2. One of the features of this diet is that you're generally eating foods lower on the glycemic index. I've noticed the impact of this change already; I'm not feeling energy surges and lulls during the day as much as I did before.

3. I recovered really well from my racing and hockey on Sunday. I also slept a lot Monday and Tuesday nights (9-10 hrs each), but I've never felt so good on Tuesday night since I started hockey. I'm not sure if this is a result of the diet or being good about getting to bed.

4. I followed the book's recommendation for pre-workout eating last night before 'cross practice, which is quite a bit different than what I'd normally eat. I don't know if that was it, or if it was the sleep, or something else, but I do know that I threw down in our mini-races last night. My legs felt good and I rode really well. (At least I rode well for our first mini-race. I crashed twice on the second one, so it was harder to judge... but I was riding near the front until the second crash.) When we gathered again after the first race, people were like, "What's gotten into you?"

So, I don't know if it's the diet or what, it seems like it's too early for me to notice a difference, but points 3 and 4 are really what Friel is saying will happen. The idea is that you recover faster (and don't get sick as much!) so you can do high-quality workouts more frequently... and that's how you get faster!