Month: May 2017

When I did my first Whole30, I made sure I slept a minimum of eight hours a night. At the end of my 30 days, I had lost a solid 20 lbs. I kept my sleep pattern up for the next year, and lost an average of 10 lbs per month. Then, once I hit around 175 lbs, I let my sleep numbers drop to about 6.5-7 hours a night, and my weight loss stopped. I had also allowed a post-dinner treat (called a dessert) to also come back into my diet which didn’t help matters. My weight hovered between 175-177 lbs for five months. After eliminating the dessert and ensuring I got my minimum of 8 hours of sleep each night, my weight loss kicked back in, and in the past month, I’m down 8 lbs to a solid 166.9 lbs. That’s just within TWO POUNDS from my FINAL GOAL!!!

In my experience, the following is a list of factors to successful weight loss (in order of importance):

1. Diet. Eat good foods in the right amounts. Get rid of foods that are not good to you.
2. Sleep. I put this higher than exercise, because you don’t need exercise to lose weight, but you can’t lose as much weight as quickly without sleep.
3. Exercise. Move for 30 minutes. Doesn’t have to be running or hard cardio; just get the heart rate up for 30 solid minutes every day, or every other day.

I can’t say enough how important sleep is to losing weight. Some people think eating small meals throughout the day is the key to losing weight. Others think that drinking lots of water throughout the day is the key. There are those who think eating low-fat is the key. Others calorie count their way through a day in their bid to lose weight. I contend that a good diet (like Paleo!) coupled with exercise and SLEEP is the key.

To the uninitiated, I may appear grumpy. Well, that’s not true. I’m actually quite a cheerful and happy guy. What I also am, however, is blunt. I don’t sugar-coat things, and I don’t beat around the bush. If it needs to be said I will say it. Sometimes, with tact, and sometimes with less tact. I always try to be as nice as I can without watering down the message.

This blog is an extension of me. It’s not my sole means of communications with the world. Like many people, I have Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and others. Even if you were to look at all the social media that I post, it still wouldn’t really give you a really good picture of who I am until you put that together with who I am in person.

The past few weeks have seen me posting here on this blog on topics that exasperate me from time to time. It may seem like I am unhappy or feeling frustrated all the time. Nothing could be further from the truth. Many of my blog posts are the result of an interaction or a conversation and I feel inspired to write about it. I typically don’t post more than once a day unless there’s something important or worthy of an unscheduled post, so it goes into the queue. It’s how I stay on top of ensuring there’s always new content here.

I’m not frustrated, upset, stressed, or even cranky. Heck, I’m actually pretty overjoyed with the progress people I know are making. They’ve changed their lives for the better, and they continue to see positive movement in reducing their weight, getting healthier, and in some cases, even getting fit. That’s incredibly satisfying, and I am humbled when they thank me.

There’s an old saying: “Tell it to the Marines.

This legend ‘Tell it to the Marines’ goes back to 1664, when Charles 2nd was king of England. A ship’s Master returned from a long cruise and told the King a sea story he couldn’t believe. “Fish that could fly like birds?” the Merry Monarch exclaimed. “I have my doubts!” “Nay sire it is true,” said Sir William Killgren, Colonel of the new British Marine Regiment raised that year. “I have myself seen flying fish many a time in the Southern Waters. I vouch for the truth of this strange tale, Your Majesty.” The King thought it over. At last he turned to Samuel Pepys, the secretary of the Admiralty. “Mr Pepys,” he said, “No class of our subjects hath such knowledge of odd things on land or sea as our Marines. Hereafter when we hear a yarn that lacketh likelihood, we tell it to the Marines, for if they believe it, then we shall know it is true.”

I tell it like I see it; no more, no less. I don’t make up my information; it’s based off of what I have experienced first-hand. This may or may not work for you, but it’s worked for me.

Those drinks from Starbucks are anything but good for you, filled with sugar, sugar, dairy, and more sugar. They are literally the antithesis of everything in my diet, and is a symbol of what’s wrong with our American diet. We don’t see sugar for the harmful and dangerous substance that it truly is.

I didn’t try the Unicorn, and I sure as heck won’t be trying the Mermaid. Why? Aside from the fact they are filled with sugar and dairy, they don’t appeal to me. I used to drink my sugar with coffee and cream, but now that I’ve weaned myself from the sugar addiction, the last thing I want is to drink anything that has sugar in it. Not just because it’s not good for me, but because I find any drink with artificial or even natural sweeteners to be far too sweet for my palate now.

One of the strange but welcome side-effects of having cut sugar from my diet is that I can taste the natural sweetness in many foods that I thought either had lost their sweetness or weren’t sweet at all. Strawberries, cantaloupe, raspberries, blueberries, and apples are among the foods I thought weren’t as sweet as they were in my childhood. Then I cut sugar out of my diet and I found that all those fruits (and more!) are just as sweet, if not sweeter than I remembered them to be. Plums? WOW! Even more amazing. All it took was for me to take added sugar out of my diet.

If you find strawberries and other fruits to be bland, it’s likely because your diet is filled with sugar and your tongue doesn’t register the natural sweetness anymore. It’s why Starbucks makes these sugar-saturated drinks. It’s what they need to do to keep you hooked on these liquid fat grenades.

I will pass on these (and the vast majority of) Starbucks drinks, and if you want to be healthy, I recommend you do the same.

We’re going.

I can’t wait!

It’s coming up next weekend in Austin, TX, and this time, we’re going with our friends Kenny and Elaine. Sherry and I went last year, and we had a blast! We not only learned some new things about Paleo, but we found countless food products, ingredients, and even toothpaste that fit into our Paleo lifestyle. I ate a lot of food that day and bought a lot of stuff to take with us. Many of those things have found their way into our daily lives (I’m looking at you, The Dirt!) and I look forward to buying more of some other items we enjoyed last time and stocked up on.

We may also sit in on some panels if we have time and if they are interesting. To us, the best part was finding foods we could eat without sabotaging our lifestyle and health and the many sources of ingredients and products that are available but sometimes difficult to find. Fortunately, as the Paleo Diet gains popularity and momentum, products are getting easier to find. Paleo|f(x) is definitely going to be fun, and I look forward to posting photos and reviews of products we find there this coming weekend!