Month: June 2017

My wife and I were talking about how much our lives have changed since we adopted the Paleo Diet, and one thing she reminded me of is that preparation is key to success. Not just preparation in the kitchen, but preparation in planning the meals, in getting rid of non-compliant ingredients, planning ahead for dinner parties, for what to eat when going to a work lunch, or for me, what to eat on drill weekends when all the foods present are carb-rich and unhealthy. Having healthy alternatives, or at least a plan to mitigate the damage from non-compliant foods is essential to success on the Paleo Diet.

Through preparation, we mitigate the costs associated with the Paleo Diet by planning our meals carefully. Sherry then cooks on Sundays and packages all our meals for us to use throughout the week. I then make sure to have enough lunches for myself to eat and one extra in the event I’m working late.

Before we started our first Whole30, Sherry prepared our kitchen by getting rid of all the non-Paleo ingredients and foods. We also read as much as we could about the foods we could eat and purchased a bunch of the ingredients to have on-hand. We made sure to buy only the amounts of meat and vegetables we needed to control cost. While eating the Paleo Diet may seem to be expensive, when you factor in the amount of food you can make and for how long those meals stretch over the course of the week, it actually ends up saving us a lot of money. We also take into consideration all the meals we no longer eat out (lunches and dinners) and the savings is actually quite substantial.

Planning for dinner parties is something we’ve been fortunate to not have to do too often because the friends with which we have dinner parties are also on the Paleo Diet. For those rare occasions where we are attending a dinner party of non-Paleo people, we either bring a side or snack that is Paleo compliant, or we limit the amount of food we eat and try to choose the most Paleo-friendly options available.

The same goes for any work-related lunches or dinners. Fortunately, those tend to be at restaurants where choices can be made and options tailored to ensure non-compliant ingredients are left out. Almost every restaurant has a meat and vegetable option as well.

As for me, like I said in a previous post, for my drill weekends, I pack RX Bars and other Paleo snacks to make sure I have energy through the day of my drills.

A little preparation goes a long way toward the success of people adopting the Paleo Diet. It’s not something you can just go into without planning, and it’s not something you can do without doing some research. Do the work, and your health will be rewarded.

Being successful in adopting a new diet takes the following:

1. Make the change permanent.
2. Change your mindset about what is acceptable food.
3. Change your perception about what food is for. It is fuel.
4. Never allow cheat days, or what I call them, sabotage days.
5. Find many data points to track, not just the scale.
6. Avoid sweeteners, even if they are artificial and zero calorie.

I will explain each one of these individually.

Make the change permanent.  It’s not a temporary diet, but a change in lifestyle forever. You have to go into it with this mindset or you’re doing it for nothing. You have to change your relationship with food; look at it differently. That means you have to change your mindset about what is acceptable food and change your perception about what food is for. Food is, first and foremost, fuel. It’s what gives us energy. In our culture, it has become the center of our social lives and celebrations. Heck, we even mourn with food. Social gatherings will always have food present, and it’s a tough situation to be tempted by all the foods present at these get-togethers, but you have to limit yourself to one normal serving of acceptable foods and then leave the food table. For me, this is probably the most difficult aspect of adopting a healthy lifestyle.

Never, ever allow cheat days. I call them sabotage days. Cheating is defined as gaining an unfair advantage over a competitor. By eating foods that are not in your diet, you are not gaining an advantage over anything. To the contrary, you are damaging any progress you’ve made and endangering your ability to stick with the diet. Every sabotage item or meal is like taking a hammer to a brick. Sure, one whack may not do much damage, but repeated strikes will eventually cause the brick to fall into pieces. Each sabotage meal breaks your resolve and your ability to stick with the diet. It’s a slippery slope.

Find many data points; not just a scale. We all like to track our progress when we adopt a new diet, but something we aren’t taught is that our weight does not gradually drop in a linear fashion. A graph of typical weight loss will look more like stairs descending. For some people, it’s hard to stay motivated through plateaus. The good news is that there’s typically a lot of other improvements in health going on while one’s weight is stagnant: clothes are fitting looser, waists getting smaller, improved energy levels, and even improved health. Blood tests are a good measure of your body’s health changes while you are transitioning from unhealthy to healthy. People who focus on the scale alone will be unhappy a lot of the time they are on their journey, and it can make them want to give up.

Avoid sweeteners, even artificial sweeteners that claim to be zero calories. The way sweeteners act on the brain is exactly the same way sugar affects the brain. It causes cravings and makes it harder to make it from meal to meal without a snack. Our brains equate sweet with sugar (duh!) and our craving mechanisms are enabled when we have something sweet.

Losing weight is not hard. It’s not easy, either, but with preparation and discipline, anyone can lose weight. You just have to want it and put the effort into it.

I’ll be brutally honest (because I am nothing but honest when I talk about health and fitness): it wasn’t that hard. It wasn’t easy, but it wasn’t that hard, either.

The plan is simple enough. Avoid sugar, artificial sweetener, grains, legumes, dairy, and soy. The execution of the plan is easy enough, too: just eat meat, vegetables, and some fruit. Nuts are good for snacks in-between meals if you’re delayed (at least they’ve worked well for my wife and me).

What people perceive as difficult is no longer eating foods that are bad for you: bread, pizza, pasta, sweets, rice, beans, kolaches, etc. People focus a lot on the foods they can no longer eat, and they tend to fixate on that point. They fixate on it too much, in my opinion.

Was it hard? No. Was it easy? No. Is it do-able? Absolutely. Tomorrow’s post will go into the steps it takes to be successful in adopting a Paleo Diet and lifestyle.

I’m in the National Guard, and the military is known for it’s high-carb/high calorie foods. Even the food they serve us in the dining facilities (affectionately known as D-FAC’s, or “Defacts”) is very unhealthy for us. The military is typically at least 20 years behind in nutrition science, and they still believe that whole grains and low-fat are better for us than whole vegetables and meats. The last lunch I had on drill weekend was two slices of ham lunch meat and two apples. Everything else was carb-heavy and I just wasn’t willing to eat it.

To get through, I usually take some RX Bars with me in my ruck to drill. This allows me to eat one late morning, one at lunch time, and one in the mid-afternoon to keep my energy levels good. It also gives me freedom from having to eat food that is not good for me.

I also take some other Paleo snacks with me to eat either at lunch time or throughout the day, as necessary. This drill, however, I’m on a Whole30, so the challenge will be to eat something Whole30 compliant. My plan is to take some food with me. While the RX Bars are not technically allowed, they may be my only option. I may also take some smoked meat and some dried fruit or vegetable. I haven’t yet decided.

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I edited the above because RX Bars are very Whole30 compliant. On top of that, there are a host of Whole30 compliant snacks I was unaware of until my wife emailed me the list. You can find these items on the Whole30 website.

The biggest hit my quality of life has taken since adopting the Paleo Diet has been in the drinks department. I used to love my iced tea with artificial sweetener or coffee with sugar and cream. However, since I no longer use any sweeteners, sugar, or dairy, this greatly limits my drink options to unsweetened. While some are okay, none are just great; at least not to someone who used to really enjoy sweet coffee.

My go-to drinks are now coffee and tea. The coffee I drink is always black (without sweeteners or dairy) and the tea I drink is without any sweetener as well. For coffee, I drink light or medium roast as they are naturally sweeter. I always drank dark roasts, mistakenly thinking they tasted better. I have since learned that the lighter roasts yield a sweeter product, and since I don’t imbibe sweeteners anymore, I can taste the natural sweetness and flavor notes in the coffees better. I now know the difference between a fresh or not-so-fresh bag of coffee grounds, and I am much more sensitive to the flavored coffees (some are better, many are worse).

The same goes for tea. Since I drink it all without sweetener, I can taste much more of the tea itself. Some are naturally sweet and delicious (Very Blueberry; I’m looking at you!), while others that I loved really miss out on not having sweetener added to them (Constant Comment; you disappointed me). However, nothing compares to PG Tips with lemon in it. PG Tips tea is simply the best black tea on the planet, bar none. It’s simply perfect whether you drink it hot or cold. I prefer mine with lemon in it, and we keep pitchers of it in the refrigerator at all times. It’s a favorite in our house; there are riots when we run out of PG Tips.

Coffee and tea contain caffeine, and this is considered okay on both Whole30 and Paleo. That’s a good thing, because I drink quite a bit of coffee and tea throughout the day. Probably more than I should, but I can’t drink plain water.

I will be experimenting with water that has cucumber, lemon, and maybe even some other fruit to give a slight flavor to the water. I will be using natural additives; nothing powdered or commercially packaged. I am hoping that this helps, as I’d like to cut down a bit on the caffeine eventually. But for now, it’s coffee, tea, and me; best buds forever.

I’ve been plateaued again for quite a while. Sure, I lost 3 or 4 lbs back in April and early May, but my weight has been jumping between 166.4 and 168.9 lbs for weeks. Then, Sherry and I started a Whole30, and within 4 days, I was down at least 2 lbs to 164.9 lbs. I also made it through the weekend without gaining any weight, which was a first for me in a long time. My weight cycle is typically weighing the heaviest on Mondays with the lightest on Fridays. Then, through socializing and enjoying the weekend, I typically gain about 1-2 lbs only to start the cycle again on Monday.

I know that the 1-2 lbs is mostly water weight due to the increased sugar or salt intake of the weekend, but the fact remains that my weight yoyo’s about 2 lbs throughout the week. It’s important to note that this is considered normal, btw. However, I have been hoping to make some progress by losing a little more to make my goal, and it wasn’t happening. Until this third Whole30. Now, I’ve reached my goal, and I’m looking for some bonus weight loss over the next few weeks.

That’s what it was like the first time I saw my thin face in the mirror. I know, it didn’t happen overnight, but I guess I hadn’t paid much attention to the changes my face had been going through as I was losing weight. One morning, I looked into the mirror to shave, and it struck me; the face looking back at me was a face from my past. It was my former face; my thin face.

My wife and I were talking the other night, and she was saying that it’s still strange for her every now and then that I am as thin as I am now. When we met, I was nearly 300 lbs, and she’d never known a thin E.J. (me). She’d seen photos of me when I was younger or when I was in the Marines, and she said she’d pause to look at them every now and then, but she said it was like looking at a ghost from the past and not looking at me. Now, she says, I look like I did in the photos she would look at.

Now that I’m back to my pre-fat weight, I feel strange when looking at photos of myself when I was overweight. I remember being that person, of how I felt, of how hard it was, and all the other negative aspects of it. There were very few positives about being that unhealthy and unfit, and I think back to how much pain I was hiding, both physical and emotional. I never want to go back to being that person.

I am pretty happy with where I am with regards to my health and fitness right now, yet I try to keep improving myself all the time. I am working on increasing my speed when I run, and increasing my max push ups. I would like to weight a few lbs less than I do right now, but in the grand scheme of things, I’m at a good weight and I am what people describe as “Thin.” I like seeing my ghost in the mirror. He’s a ruggedly handsome guy.

I, like (I think) everyone else on the planet, love tasty food. It’s built into our brains:

1. If low on energy, acquire tasty food
2. Get nourished
3. Repeat when low on energy

The problem with our modern times is that the vast majority of our food is engineered to be especially tasty and is (for most of us reading this blog) very easily acquired. That means that we don’t expend the same amount of energy we used to acquiring the food we used to fuel ourselves. This is a part of Paleo that also makes a lot of sense to me: we need to expend energy daily to offset the intake of calories.

On the days I don’t run (which right now is every other day), I tend to eat a little less. On the days I run, I eat a little more. What doesn’t change, however, is the food itself; it has to be delicious and filling. Fortunately for me, Sherry has taken on the duties as our chef, and she finds some of the most amazing foods to make and for us to eat.

I never stopped loving food. I still love pasta, pizza, bread (oooooh, sour dough, I’m looking at you!), and chocolate mousse. However, I’ve learned to live without daily, weekly, or even monthly exposure to those foods. I may have each of those once a year or less, and you know what? Somehow, I’m perfectly okay with it. I’ve survived.

How did I learn to live without pizza? I learned to love other foods that are just as delicious but better for me, my body, and my health. I eat a lot more steak now. Brisket, pulled pork, sausage, smoked chicken, and vegetables like asparagus and Brussels sprouts have come into my weekly diet.

You can be a foodie and be on the Paleo Diet. It’s easy! Heck, there are so many amazing recipes and foods available that you’ll exhaust hours finding and pinning them all (I know my wife does!).