Month: June 2017

Back in April 2016, I felt great. I had lost over 120 lbs, and I was well on my way to my penultimate goal of 175 lbs and my final goal of 165 lbs. At the time, I remember feeling very thin as compared to what I used to be. I took a silly picture, and I remember seeing it and thinking, “My gosh, look how thin I am!”

Fast forward to April 2017 and I happened to take the same photo making the same face, only this time, I was at my final goal of 165 lbs. It’s amazing what a difference that last 30 lbs of weight loss made.

Now, I’m at around 162 lbs, and I’m not sure where my weight loss will end, but I find myself getting leaner all the time. Aside from eating clean, I run every other day which is having a big effect on my overall health.

Stick with it. The payoff is worth the discipline you have to use to get there.

In our society, we have an aversion to saying no to things. We are a polite people (well, most of us want to be, at least) and when we are offered food or drink, we naturally thank the person and accept whatever it is they are giving us. We don’t want to be rude, after all. This is something I had to get past when I did my first Whole30. I was being offered drinks and food at every social gathering, and at first, it was uncomfortable. I would begin to tell them about the changes I’m making in my diet, why I’m doing it, and how I can’t have the item they were offering me. The first few times were the worst. But then something strange happened. Not only did it get better, but people weren’t offended.

Now, I just smile and say, “No thanks.” If they show any hint of disappointment, I add, “But that does look amazing.” Only then will I add anything about my diet and how I can only eat certain foods. So far, everyone has understood 100% of the time and I have received no backlash. Sure, some people kid and tell me that I’m missing out, and I agree with them to a certain degree, but ultimately, my health is more important than a sweet snack.

Smile and say no. It works, it’s easy, and it will keep you on the right track. It works for me, and surprisingly, people are quite understanding about it.

Holy smokes! Where have you been for the past 20 months, cucumber water? You are AMAZING! So refreshing, a hint of sweetness, and you make water a pleasure to drink again.

The one area in which I have felt the biggest hit in quality of life since going Paleo has been with drinks. I drink coffee and tea, but without sweetener, which make the drinks bland to me. Even after 20 months, I still miss my sweet drinks. I’ve had some Celestial teas, and the Very Blueberry is my favorite, but it’s not as good cold as it is hot (and it is quite heavenly when it’s hot!). Cucumber water, on the other hand, is freaking amazing.

I buy a cucumber once every two weeks for the office and I cut it up and put it into a cup of water I drink every day. I am able to reuse the sliced cucumber a few times and it still tastes good. Having a refrigerator in the office does make doing this easy. I will begin experimenting with some other fruits and vegetables as well.

Sherry drinks water with lemon in it all the time. I guess she’s been onto this trick for a long time while I suffered through with plain old water. I don’t know why I haven’t tried this sooner. I think Sherry even mentioned it to me, and I just dismissed it because I thought there’s no way any drink without sugar or sweetener could ever replace my beloved sweet drinks. Boy was I wrong!

My basic cucumber water recipe

• 10 oz water
• 8 thin slices of cucumber

Refrigerate for about 30 minutes to an hour for best results. I reuse the cucumber one more time after the first drink, and it still tastes good. The third time? Not as much cucumber comes through, so I stick with using cucumber slices only twice.

So there you have it! A drink that you can have that feels refreshing and delicious, and a PaleoMarine.com first: a recipe! I know; it’s kind of weak to call that a recipe, but baby steps. We’ve got to start somewhere.

For me, it was a number of things. From my kids telling me they were afraid I would never live to see grandchildren, friends telling me they were sincerely afraid for my health, and family members telling me that I was extremely unhealthy and needed to do something to lose weight ASAP. My doctor told me as much, but his method was to take drugs that limit your ability to digest fats. This didn’t work at all.

Eventually, it came down to my being so incredibly uncomfortable in everything I did that I needed the change to happen. I couldn’t tie my shoes without holding my breath. I couldn’t sit in booths in restaurants. Flying on an airplane was an incredibly uncomfortable ordeal not just for me, but anyone with the bad fortune of being assigned the seat next to me. My health was beginning to decline: Diabetes, high cholesterol, fatty liver disease, nerve damage, and poor circulation in my feet. These things were all happening at once; I went from being relatively healthy for a fat guy to all of the sudden, standing on the precipice of death.

I am too young to die.

That’s what I told myself. At 48 years old, I felt like I was 70. I was slow, sluggish, and easily exhausted. Normal household chores were becoming difficult for me to complete. I began going out less and even getting up to get a drink was starting to become difficult. I had to change my life or I would lose it.

For me, it was a no-brainer. Change the diet.

Then, the craziest thing happened: I lost weight. Not just a little, but a lot. 147 lbs in 20 months total, with 110 lbs of that coming off in the first 12 months. I became a new person. I felt young again. I had energy. I was able to do things I couldn’t do since I was in my late 20’s. It’s as if I had been reborn into a new, younger, and more fit body.

I eat well/clean now, and I run every other day. I do these things because they make me feel amazing. Do I miss pizza, pasta, cake, and muffins? Of course I do! But I don’t miss the feeling of being fat, out of shape, and dying. I much prefer how I feel now. That few minutes of pleasure during eating isn’t worth the 23+ hours a day of feeling great in my own skin.

What will it take for you to change your diet? How close to the precipice will you need to get before you take the necessary steps back away from it and change your life?

It happened without trying. It happened when I thought there was no more to lose. After my run, I weighed myself, and I was surprised by weighing in at 162.9 lbs. Wow! That’s the lowest I’ve weighed since I was around 23 years old, and almost a full 2 lbs less than my last low.

The fact that I’m losing weight means that my body is still reconfiguring, and still getting leaner. I run every other day, and that helps, but honestly, the weight loss kicked back in once Sherry and I undertook our third Whole30. The strict diet and attention to the food we are eating has helped me re-learn portion size control and got me off the dessert habit I’d reacquired, even if it was only a Paleo cookie every other dinner or so.

My goal was to hit 165 lbs. I’m now 162.9 lbs. That makes me very happy, and it makes it easier to run, makes my clothing fit better (although I’m now into small sized shirts and smaller pants which means more visits to the outlet mall for more new clothes), and I even feel better (which I didn’t think was possible).

Every holiday or special occasion in the US has, at its center, plates of food. This is common around the world as well, although different cultures go about it differently. I will not go into how other cultures celebrate with food; I will focus on the US.

We like to have platters and plates of food available for grazing. You know what I’m talking about: plates of food stacked as high as you can without it tipping off the plate, eating it, and then returning to the food table for more. This goes on for hours until either it’s time to go home, or the food is gone. There’s no real reason for eating this much; it’s just something we do at these get-togethers.

I know about this all too well, because I was one of the “Big hitters” when it came to social gatherings. I was the guy who cleaned up plates, asking hosts if there was any more of a certain food left to eat. I could sometimes see the consternation on their faces as I ate at least 2-4 people’s worth of food. At least none of it went to waste; I never threw away uneaten food.

I am perfectly okay with food being at celebrations, but perhaps we need to stage the food and bring it out for the sit-down portion of any celebration. A meal time, like we do for Christmas, Thanksgiving, and Easter. This limits folks to an eating time and teaches our kids that food is not entertainment, but fuel. At special occasions, you can eat special foods with the people who are the most important in your life, but outside of that, food isn’t to be used as a means of having fun.

Even for me, it’s tough to be good at parties when there is an entire table of food in front of me. Even if it’s all Whole30 or Paleo compliant, it is very easy to over-eat (and I often do). Just because it’s good for me doesn’t mean I can have 2-4 times as much food as I normally would in the same amount of time. That’s not good for anyone.

This is just an idea. I’m not sure how it would go over with the people I know. When we do BBQ’s, we typically have some snacks out (healthy ones, mostly) and then we serve a meal. After the meal, the food is pretty much put away, but the fact remains that the snacks are typically out for hours before the meal. Guests come in, grab a plate, and go. Kids are notorious for hovering around the table, grazing and taking in as much as they can fit (and then some more). This isn’t doing the kids any favors and teaches them some bad habits. I know: I was the result of this kind of grazing.

I don’t know that we can fix society or our culture and how we use food to be the center of our social gatherings, but I hope this gives you something to at least think about and consider.

“Most people don’t have that willingness to break bad habits. They have a lot of excuses and talk like victims.” -Carlos Santana 

This quote is so perfect for a health and fitness blog; I can’t believe I didn’t see it sooner. It encapsulates the vast majority of interactions I’ve had with people who come up with the endless “Reasons” they can’t eat right and get healthy. They talk like victims.

In a sense, they are right. We are all victims of horrible misinformation and an effort to mislead us through the education system based on studies funded the sugar, grain, and corn industries. However, science is righting the wrongs of the past and we now know that it is sugar that is the real enemy. Sugar is found in grains, dairy, beans, and soy. Refined sugar made from cane or corn are especially bad to humans. Some doctors even go so far as to call it a toxin to humans.

Living a healthy lifestyle requires us to break bad habits. Those bad habits include eating foods made of grains, beans, soy, dairy, and anything with added or processed sugar. It also requires us to create a new relationship with food and to learn to disassociate food with celebrations and social events. We put too much emphasis on eating at social gatherings, and it is easy to either overeat or eat foods that contain ingredients that are bad for us in large quantities.

Don’t be the victim. Take responsibility for your health, and eat right. Get some exercise. Most importantly, reevaluate your relationship with food. If it’s not making you healthy, kick it to the curb like you would a bad boyfriend/girlfriend. It’s not worth the trouble, your health, or your life.

If you were doing Whole30 and Paleo and following the rules with no sabotage (cheat days), then the chances are very high that you would have lost a lot of weight and your body would be much healthier today.

When I was fat, I would watch others start diet plans. Some would fail, but others would not, and they would become the healthy people I admired and wanted to become. I would think to myself, “I remember when they started. It doesn’t seem like that long ago, and look at them now! If I’d have done it, I would be where they are today.”

It bugged me. A lot. Time moves at the same rate for all of us. We’re all time travelers, only we can only move forward at 1x. We get the same number of minutes, hours, and days every year. What we do with them is what separates us from each other. Do you want success or failure? Do you want to make progress or stay stuck where you are? It takes effort. You have to start. Nobody can do it for you.

Whole30 and Paleo (or Keto). Look into them. Start your new life today. Six months goes by quickly. I’m at almost two years in, and I can’t imagine living my life the way I used to anymore.

Having discipline is important as a Marine or soldier in a combat situation. You have to reach deep down inside yourself to take control of your body in the face of fear to keep from panicking, to keep from making a sound that could give you away before an ambush, or step carefully to keep from walking into a trap in hostile territory. Discipline outside of combat can also save your life. Keeping yourself from eating foods that are toxic to your body and killing it from the inside could very well be the most important thing you’ve ever done.

I miss being able to eat anything, anytime, without any consideration for my health. When you’re young, the body puts up with a lot more abuse, and can sustain that abuse for a while before age catches up to us. That’s why so many people gain weight in their 30’s and beyond: the body becomes incapable of sustaining poor nutrition.

I had to use a lot of discipline to keep from eating like I used to. It took a retraining of my eating habits and a lot of discipline to keep me on my diet so that I could once again be healthy. Now that I’m at my target weight, I use that discipline to stay on-track and to stay away from the foods that got me into a precarious situation with my health.

I’m not saying anyone who isn’t thin or skinny is going to die of weight-related issues, but if you’re obese or morbidly obese like I was, the odds are not in your favor. It is very likely that, at some point, you will begin to suffer from weight-related health issues that will eventually take your life.

Life and death. Discipline can make all the difference. Start eating right and exercise the discipline you’re capable of. Your life is worth it.