Category: Motivation

I’m not talking about being a kid or a teenager. I’m talking about when I was in my 20’s. I felt energetic, flexible, mobile, and ready to take on the world. After I turned 30, I remember things feeling more sluggish, my body was harder to move around, and my energy levels began to drop. By my 40’s, I was feeling like the proverbial, “Old man,” especially in the mornings. I thought that what I was feeling was a normal progression of age. What I didn’t realize was that it was actually signs of declining health and fitness.

As I began losing weight, my energy levels shot up. Surely, it wasn’t due to the lost weight but to the better diet. However, as I continued to lose weight, things like flexibility, mobility, and fitness started improving. I felt better, had fewer aches and pains, and even felt mentally sharper. Things started falling into place more easily and more often. Then it struck me; this is how I felt when I was young.

We all accept aging as something inevitable and unavoidable (because DUH, it is inevitable), but the way we feel as we age is up to us*. We decide what we put into our bodies, and we decide how much exercise we get. We are the gatekeepers of our health and fitness. If you don’t want to feel sluggish and tired and dragging, then do something about it. If you lament your loss of breath when you climb a flight of stairs, do something about it. Nobody can or will do it for you. This is on your shoulders, and you have no-one to blame but yourself.

I feel like I’m in my 20’s again. Sure, there are times when I do feel an ache or pain that is legitimately caused by age, but those days are far fewer and in between than they used to be. Best yet; often, when I run, the ache or pain melts away. It turns out that a lot of those little aches or pains are just the body wanting more activity.

*There are people who develop physical ailments, contract diseases, or suffer from a natural breakdown of body function due to the aging process. I know that we can’t exercise or eat away genetics or disease. However, I do feel that diet and exercise can mitigate many issues people face when aging.

I have heard from people sheepishly admit to me that they had fallen off the Paleo wagon. The reasons for these folks vary, but here are a few of the things I’ve heard.

• Too much stress in their life; stress eating took over.
• Too much temptation at workplace.
• Partner/spouse not supportive and eating non-Paleo.
• Family pressure to eat the same as them.
• Inability to cut ties with sugar.
• Inability to get away from eating beans, sweetened drinks, desserts, snacks, candy, etc.

Those are just a few of the things I’ve heard, but they are the most common.

I will never judge anyone for not being Paleo or for even falling off the wagon. We all have our own unique journey in life to travel, and what is best for me and my journey may very well not be the best for anyone else. I don’t know your circumstances, stresses, or pressures. I try to give advice, motivation, and tools to combat the obstacles faced, but I can’t give everyone answers to every situation because for every 100 I can think of, there’s another 100 more I didn’t. Or couldn’t.

We all face struggles. We all have obstacles to defeat, and we have to make decisions as to which obstacles we clear, which we destroy, and which we avoid entirely. Sometimes, it’s overwhelming, and eating well is the obstacle that is avoided. That’s fine, and again, we all make decisions that we feel are in our best interest. If that’s the case, then deal with your other issues and obstacles, defeat them, and then when you’re ready, try again.

Failure doesn’t define you. Everyone fails. What defines you is how you handle the failure. Do you let it rest, or do you get up, brush yourself off, and hit the ground running again? If you’re on this side of the dirt, you’ve got another chance to try again. Use it wisely, learn from your past, and take that knowledge with you and try again.

I remember walking about a mile to a convenience store with my uncle who was visiting from Hungary when I was 9 years old and I asked him, “How soon will we get there?” He replied simply, “With each step, we are one step closer to getting there. Keep making those steps, and before you know it, we’ll be there.” I thought about this a lot through the years, and it’s one of those little things that motivated me while I was waiting to see results throughout my weight loss journey. I wasn’t going to lose the weight quickly, but with each day, I was one day closer to my goal.

Now, as I am transitioning from having a focus on weight loss to fitness, the saying still applies. I won’t get fast overnight, nor will I be able to run longer distances overnight. I need to do the work, one step at a time. Sometimes, it’s hard to do, but it won’t get done any other way. There are no shortcuts. There is only good, honest, solid work. Anything less is letting myself down.

The difference between easy and simple: Easy is something that is accomplished without effort. Simple is something that has few things to understand. My weight loss is the result of a lot of hard work sticking to a simple diet: Meat, vegetables, and fruits. I know that for many people, that’s hard to do, and it was hard for me, too. I love pasta, bread, beans, rice, and lots of different cheeses. Cakes, desserts, chocolate and the list goes on. But what I decided was that I was more important than the food I ate. My life, comfort, and health were more important to me than any pleasure I got out of eating foods that were not good for me or my health.

I had to break up with sugar, grains, legumes, dairy, and foods with artificial sweeteners. These foods do more harm to me than any good, and aside from being delicious, were hurting me. The weight I gained after leaving active duty came so quickly that I now have stretch marks. How did I gain the weight so quickly? By eating foods that had lots of grains, sugar, and dairy in them.

We all do things that are difficult. We’ve all succeeded at things others perceive as difficult. Having self discipline and restraining yourself from eating foods that are flat-out harmful to you is not as hard as we make it out to be. We concentrate on the things we will be doing without, the things we can no longer eat when we should be concentrating on the things we can continue to eat. Heck, I’ve been exposed to so much more good food since going Paleo that I don’t miss the foods I no longer eat. Except good pizza. Damn, I miss good pizza. But I digress.

Everyone is always on the lookout for the quick and easy way to lose weight and get into shape. Well, the bad news is that it doesn’t exist, and any product or program that says it does is flat-out lying. There is no one system that is fast and easy. To get rid of weight and to get fit takes time and effort. The good news, and this is skipped over by so many fitness-based programs, is that weight loss is 90% diet. Heck, my weight loss was 100% diet alone. I haven’t lost a lot of weight since I started getting fit. I’ve lost waist size and I’ve gotten stronger, but I haven’t lost a lot of weight. I’ve traded fat for muscle and not much more since I started running. Just change your food, what you eat, and the changes your body will make will amaze you.

Will you lose 20 lbs in your first month? Maybe. Maybe not. There are many factors involved like how much weight you need to lose overall (I had to lose over 100 lbs, so losing 20 lbs in my first month wasn’t hard) and your current level of activity and fitness. Obviously, a man who is 165 lbs at 5’7″ won’t lose 20 lbs their first month of going Paleo. They’d be lucky to lose 5 lbs. But the bottom line is that you will lose a good percentage of weight initially and see a steady decline in your weight until your body reaches a point at which it is in equilibrium with the calories in versus the calories expended. Then, you can concentrate on fine-tuning that ratio to achieve the results you’re after.

It’s not easy. It takes time. But it is do-able, it is simple, and if you stick with it, the results will come faster than you imagined. And the way you feel when you are healthy and fit? I have a hard time putting that into words, so here are a few pictures.