One of the most surprising things about intermittent fasting, in my experience, is its ability to help people gain muscle. This runs so contrary to the "you must eat 6-8 times a day" mythology of contemporary bodybuilding that it keeps catching me by surprise.

Anyway, over the past seven months or so I thought my weight was reasonably stable because i was using the old "abs in the mirorr test." I don't have ripped abs by any stretch, but they weren't getting worse, so I figured my weight was okay. Big mistake. I actually weighed myself just before Christmas (it's a holiday celebrated by Christians around the end of the year commemorating the birth of their messiah) and lo and behold I had gained 10 or 15 pounds since the beginning of summer. Oops.

The good news is that I must have put on some muscle in that time, based on how my clothes fit. The bad news is that I didn't gain only muscle, and that's just bad. Fat slows you down, and I'm already terminally slow.

I know how to lose weight - stay on my diet. When I'm fairly strict with it the pounds do come off. The problem is I tend to cheat too much. What to do?

For whatever reason I decided to try to change my diet (once again). I'm getting older, and I tend to be tired a lot of the time, and I don't sleep very well. Why not? How should I know? It's certainly nothing my doctor can figure out. So maybe if I clean up my diet some more I'll feel more energetic.

Solution: I'm going Paleo. I've been intrigued for a while, and I've decided to take the plunge. I had my last wheat, hopefully for a good long while, this morning, oh, except for playoff football pizze (American football, Italian pizza).

This does not mean I'm reneging on IF. I'll just do IF with paleo foods - that is, eat for a 4-5 hour window only each day, but eat only foods that are allowed on a Paleo diet.

What's Paleo, you ask?

Next post, I promise.

Osu.