Month: May 2018

When I first approached my wife about doing a Whole30, she immediately responded with a forceful, “No.” I asked her to elaborate a bit more about why she didn’t want to try it, and she told me that she needed variety, flavor, and satiety in her foods. She felt that anything that aided weight loss and promoted good health had to be boring and consisting of nothing more than tuna, chicken breast, and salad. I took what she told me and did my research and came back to her. “The food on Whole30 is actually pretty decent. Here; take a look,” and I showed her sites devoted to Whole30 recipes. She was surprised, but still a bit skeptical. “Ok, we can try it. But if the food stinks, I’m off of it.” I agreed, and onto Whole30 we went.

We have thrived on Whole30, Paleo, and Keto largely due to the variety of recipes that were available to us in cookbooks and online. The recipes were all delicious, they were filling, and they allowed us to eat something new and different at almost every meal until we built up a list of favorites we now like to go to. Of course, Sherry is always on the lookout for new recipes for us to try, and we still find new favorites almost weekly.

I still see people starting diets and posting on Facebook or Twitter photos of salad with tuna or chicken breast on them, touting their “Healthy meal.” When I see that, I want to cry, because I know how bland and boring salads can be after a while, and eating bland and boring diets are a large part why so many people fail in adopting healthy lifestyles. They just don’t understand how important the role of food variety plays in our ability to stick to a healthy diet.

Picture if you will, a warrior in a post-apocalyptic wasteland filled with danger and treachery at every turn. Nearly everything in his environment is trying to kill him or otherwise defeat him. The choices he has available to him are typically choosing the lesser of the evils. It takes all his inner strength to keep going amidst the hardships and horrors that abound around him.

I’m not going to sugarcoat it; the first week to three weeks (depending on a person’s level of addiction to sugar) is pretty rough. That’s the portion of this lifestyle where I can see people jumping off the wagon, so to speak. This is where the biggest changes happen, and they all come at you in quick succession: needing to eat specific foods while eschewing others, controlling portion, resisting temptation, and forming new and healthier habits. This is the wasteland that must be crossed before entering into the veritable jungle of good food and healthy living.

There are no shortcuts or quick fixes that I can offer you to make it easy. It’s not easy. If it were, nobody would be obese or overweight, and we’d have a handle on our weight and health. The reality is that we don’t, and as a society, we have great difficulty in cutting the cord from our sugar addictions and eating right. With all the contrary information we’ve been fed over the years, it’s no wonder people have a hard time finding the truth and the path to success in losing weight and getting healthy.

The key ingredients for me have been a respect for myself, respect for the process, and trusting in the diet. Food prep remains an important part of my continued success, and running keeps my heart healthy. The inner strength that people talk about is, to me, the culmination of many years of military training, many years of being unfit, heavy, and out of shape, and an overwhelming desire to get healthy and to stay that way. There’s also the unsavory side of where inner strength comes from: difficulties, failures, and mistakes I’ve made.

It’s incumbent upon everyone to find their inner strength and to draw from it. We all have motivations, and reasons for wanting to get healthy and to lose weight. It’s different for each of us, but what it all boils down to is that your inner strength comes from different aspects of your past, and it’s up to you to harness those strengths, to get past the weaknesses, and to draw upon what we’ve learned to succeed where we failed before. You’re worth it, and your health is worth it.

In adopting a healthy lifestyle, one of the hurdles to get past is to think of it as a short-term process. It’s not undertaking a temporary diet; it’s changing the way you eat for the rest of your life. There is no end date for this diet or lifestyle; you’re in it ’til the end.

I am often asked by people, “How long are you going to do that for,” or “When are you going to start eating normal food again?” Normal food? The stuff with all the sugar and grains in it? I will never eat those ingredients without being very careful of the amounts I eat. I do eat cake, pizza, and other foods I typically avoid from time to time, but I make a habit of not eating them at-will. I only imbibe those foods at special occasions or holidays.

The end game for me is to live a healthy life, or at least as healthy as possible. I know that there’s already damage that has been done through years of not eating right and not taking care of my body as I should have, and then there are genetics, but outside of those, I’m doing everything I can to keep my body healthy. I have every intention of doing this for the rest of my life, because it’s something I truly believe in and it makes me feel better physically and emotionally.

To be truly successful at getting healthy and remaining healthy, you have to commit for life and to make it something that you can do indefinitely. That’s why Whole30, Paleo, and Keto have worked so well for me; they are easy to adopt long-term.

I used to feel like there was no way out of obesity. When I weighed 312 lbs (at 5’7″), I felt like life was passing me by, and that there was no way out of the sentence that was obesity. If it wasn’t for Whole30, Paleo, and Keto, I’d still be wallowing in that misery.

I was miserable because it hurt to tie my shoes, I couldn’t walk more than a few hundred meters without getting exhausted, and I always felt hot. Not to mention my failing health including fatty liver disease, Diabetes, and poor circulation in my legs, I was getting myself into a dire situation. I was also miserable when I had to try to fit into a seat on an airline, was seated at a booth in a restaurant, or had to otherwise fit into a normal space.

But something wonderful happened: I was introduced to Whole30 and Paleo, and I took a leap of faith. I decided to commit to it with all my heart, and to give it all the effort I had to give. I wouldn’t allow anything to get in my way, and I was determined to see it work. And it did.

The most amazing thing I learned was that health and weight loss are a product of what we eat, not of the physical activity we participate in. This was my barrier to getting healthy: I couldn’t imagine the amount of physical exercise that would be necessary for me to lose 150 lbs. Fortunately, I was mistaken, and eating right took care of the weight and my health for me.

Obesity doesn’t have to be a sentence. It’s a condition you can reverse by eating healthy, natural foods and by cutting carbs and sugar out of your diet. It’s not easy in the beginning (the sugar dragon will fight you tooth and nail) but once you are past the withdrawls, it gets much easier, and the benefits become apparent almost immediately.

Sticking to a healthy lifestyle demands a lot of discipline, motivation, and perseverance. There are temptations at every corner, and often, there’s not much available that is healthy. I’ve been in those situations many times: lots of food, but either few options, or even occasionally, no healthy options at all. What’s a guy who is trying to live healthy to do?

I either mitigate through very small portions, or I abstain completely. I don’t do this because I have superhero discipline or because I am more motivated than others, but because I have respect for myself, my body, and the process I’m going through to live healthy.

I have put in the work, as they say. I have spent a long time getting to where I am today. To reverse that, to put it into jeopardy, or to otherwise sabotage that time and effort would be disrespectful to myself. I just can’t do it.

I see people posting on Facebook talking about how they are trying to lose weight through diet and exercise, and then I see them (literally within hours or days) posting videos of recipes that are FILLED with sugar, grains, and other foods that are not in line with a healthy diet. It makes me scratch my head in wonder.

If you want to really make a difference in your health either by losing weight or getting fit, respect yourself and commit. Don’t do anything that contradicts your goal, and don’t do anything that sabotages your progress.

One of the most daunting aspects of any diet is that it takes your entire culinary world and throws it into chaos. Everything you are doing gets thrown topsy-turvey, and you have to not only change what you eat, but how you make it, how often you eat it, and possibly even when you eat it.

I know. I get it. It’s a lot to take in. It’s scary, and it is a large part of what turns people off from making lifestyle changes that could help them reach their goals and get healthy.

One of the reasons I love Whole30 is because the rules are simple enough that it doesn’t take a lot of planning to make it successful. At it’s most basic levels, if you eat meat and non-grain or non-legume veggies, you’re good. On Paleo, the rules are very similar, but allow for some more natural sweeteners. Keto eschews the sugars and fruits, but allows dairy. In the end, all of these are actually quite simple once you learn the rules, and it’s not too difficult to follow along.

Changing your eating habits is challenging. You have to cut sugar from your life completely, and regardless of which route you go in the Low-carb/high-fat world, the first week to three weeks will be difficult as your body breaks its addiction to sugar. Some refer to this as the Keto Flu, Whole30 Flu, or Paleo Flu depending on which diet you’re adopting. It’s painful, and you quite literally feel like you have a flu. The good news is that once you’re through it, you feel better than you did before with more mental clarity, more energy, and reduced or eliminated hunger and cravings. I wouldn’t have believed it myself if I hadn’t experienced it first-hand. Kicking sugar was a life-changing event for me.

Avoiding foods I’d enjoyed my entire life took a lot of discipline, but after a while, focusing on the foods I could continue to eat that I’d enjoyed my entire life while not thinking about those foods I could no longer eat helped me get through the cravings and allowed me to discover even more new foods that I now rank among my favorites. Pizza is great, but I found alternatives that are either just as delicious or more so. It comes down to focusing on the positives and avoiding the negatives.

Fitness is good, but not necessary to lose weight. This is one of the biggest points I try to make to people who have physical limitations or are otherwise predisposed to not being able to partake in physical activity (some people just hate it; I get it). You don’t have to become a gym rat or a runner to lose weight, and honestly, this was my biggest hurdle for many years. I just didn’t want to become a “Workout Person” to lose weight. Little did I know I’d become a runner and a National Guard soldier years later.

Yes, it’s all or nothing: either you adopt a new, healthy lifestyle, or you doom yourself to repeating the same mistakes you’ve been making with your diet and nutrition. You can’t continue to eat the way you do now and expect different results. You have to make the change, and you have to commit to it fully. Once you make your health a priority, the rest falls into place nicely.