I just don’t get it. I use The Dirt toothpaste, and I love it. Aside from the fact that it’s Paleo, I like that its flavor is very subtle and doesn’t overload my tastebuds with artificial or overwhelming sweetness. I feel that it aids in keeping the cravings between meals at bay, and helps me taste natural sweetness that can be subtle in many foods.
Due to the recent success of The Dirt, their shipping of orders has been delayed, and I ran out of my favorite toothpaste. I was forced to try other natural or Paleo-friendly toothpastes, and they ALL have xylitol in them. Why? I don’t want nor like the overwhelming sweetness in these toothpastes.
I am looking for recommendations for toothpaste that don’t contain xylitol. Does anyone out there have any unsweetened toothpaste recommendations?
For some people, staying motivated in a new lifestyle is difficult. I read about it or hear about it on Facebook almost daily. Everyone who sets out with the best of intentions to get fit or healthy often faces moments of doubt and weakness. I have faced down these doubts and had to learn to push through them.
How I get through them may or may not work for everyone. We all have our reasons for wanting to get healthy (mine have been posted here often) or wanting to get fit, and as varied as those reasons are, so are the motivations behind them. Further, the way we face down the obstacles to our success is as unique as we are. I use my determination and set my mind on a goal and I don’t quit until I reach it. I am very single-minded when it comes to my goals, and I will easily forego any distraction to reach my goal. This doesn’t work for everyone, however.
Some people analyze the obstacle and formulate a detailed strategy to overcome it. Others pretend the obstacle isn’t there and keep pushing onward. Then there are those who let the obstacles get the better of them and feel crushed under the weight of the pressure to succeed. Regardless of the method, people who successfully stay motivated persevere and get past the difficulties and harness the success instead of concentrating on the challenge.
In my experience, success has come when I set my mind to a goal but allow myself to fail. Heck, I expect it. I tell myself that I will lose a certain amount of weight by a certain date, yet there’s this little voice in the back of my head that says, “And if you don’t make that date, it’s completely okay. Just keep working until you do.” It seems to work for me. I’ve met a few goals and passed the date on a few others. The one thing I never did was quit.
Another thing that has helped me is to focus on the many different data points that are all measures of my progress. Most people look to a scale to gauge their progress in a healthy lifestyle. This is a mistake. There are so many things to consider, many of which will provide feedback when other areas are stalled. Some of these are:
Your body measurements (waist and shirt sizes). When your pants begin to feel looser, you’re making positive progress.
Your blood work/physical results. It’s hard to argue with improving blood chemistry.
How you feel. Eating healthier and exercising has positive effects on the body and the mind.
Your appearance. Your body will begin to reconfigure. Three months after I began running, I have started noticing my body getting leaner and the loose skin I have from my weight loss is getting tighter very quickly.
Look for the positives and harness them. The positives are your successes, and as long as you keep your mind on them, you will find it easier to keep yourself motivated.
If all else fails, fake it. When I first started running, I disliked it. After a few runs, I had an internal dialogue with myself and I decided that I needed to change my attitude about running to become more successful at it while I was building the habit to run regularly. I decided to fake it until I actually liked it. The crazy part? It worked! I now enjoy running, and often I find myself smiling while running when I realize how easy it is for me now.
Find your motivation. Work on it. If you find yourself demotivated or lacking in motivation, talk to someone. Talk to a friend, family member, or reach out and talk to someone online. Heck, feel free to message me! Don’t wallow in it, and don’t let your doubts or lack of motivation consume you.
Like many older people, after I had reached a certain age, I thought it was too late for me to consider getting healthy or fit every again. I made the classic mistake of confusing health and youth, incorrectly equating youth with health. To be honest, when I began my own journey to get healthier and fit, I was incredulous yet hopeful. I had hoped for the sort of results I eventually got, but I held out little real expectations of success. Little did I know I would be one day be looking back at what I’ve accomplished for having stuck to Whole30 and Paleo.
I know how you feel. I was there. I was the fat guy sitting in the chair wondering how life had passed him by and how he would never feel healthy or fit again.
Don’t make the same mistake I made. It doesn’t matter what your age is: you can do this. My neighbor who is well into his late 60’s recently started the Paleo lifestyle, and he’s down over 30 lbs in the past six months and is feeling great. He says his standard of living has improved immensely since starting. I write about how much more I can do now and how much richer my life is as a result of me losing the weight and getting fit, so I won’t belabor the point.
It’s in your power to make the changes necessary to get healthy. You just have to want it badly enough. The keys are in your hands. The switch inside you can only be flipped by you.
There’s a feature on Facebook that has been a great motivator in my weight loss journey: the “See your memories” feature. This past week, the picture on the left is what popped up as a memory.
What a huge difference.
I remember feeling happy, whimsical, and really enjoying taking the picture. I wasn’t always the sad fat guy. In fact, in terms of how I felt as a person and about myself, I was pretty happy. I was able to drown out the difficulties and challenges with being fat quite successfully, and the photo on the left is the embodiment of that success. What was hiding, however, was the fact that I pushed myself to be the happy guy by ignoring or looking past those difficulties and challenges until I was unable to do so any longer.
I’ve written about my reasons for changing my lifestyle to get healthy and fit on more than a few occasions. The tl;dr version is that my body was beginning to show the detrimental effects of being morbidly obese and I was tired of feeling that way. I had to make a change, and I was fortunate that my wife was willing to make the changes with me. Together, we have been successful and have come a long way from where we began a mere fifteen months ago.
Many of you are just starting your weight loss and/or fitness journey. I recommend you take some full-body photos of yourself now. I know it’s difficult to do, and you don’t want to see them now, but trust me. When you lose the weight, they are great motivation to keep going, to keep eating right, and to keep exercising. When you see how far you’ve come, it will give you extra fuel to keep going.
Some people think these pictures are too much information. I don’t. I see them as proof, motivation, and a record of my hard work. I’m proud of the progress.
I started blogging a little over a year ago, but today is officially the day that I made this site the primary source for my Paleo lifestyle and journey. I made the announcement on Facebook that all my posts here would be cross-linked to my Facebook profile page for PaleoMarine and not my personal Facebook page.
In that time, I’ve lost about 65 lbs and started running. My waist went down 6 inches and my shirt size from XL to M/S (depending on the shirt). The biggest change has been that I am now a runner. I run every other day, and soon may even add recovery runs to those off days. I’m also in the process of joining the National Guard.
This blog has allowed me not only the ability to talk about my Paleo lifestyle and fitness journey, but has also helped inspire others to get healthy. I’ve helped old friends and made new ones find a lifestyle that works and has been successful in bringing them to new levels of health they thought were unattainable. If that’s the reward for posting every day (as close to every day as I can!), then I’m grateful and happy!
I look forward to the new year and all the changes it will bring in my health and fitness. I am hoping to bring my run times down and increase my distances. I am adding sit-ups to my fitness plan as it’s part of the Army’s physical fitness tests. I hope to lose a little more weight to get down to 165 lbs. There’s no timeline on that, but it’d be nice to hit it sooner rather than later.
I recently found Dr. Andrea Dinardo’s Blog and it is full of a lot of great information! There was one thing that stuck out to me as being incredibly profound and important as it relates to getting healthy and fit: Focus on what is right.
A lot of us get to the point where we realize we need to diet and lose weight to get healthy and do some exercise to get fit. That’s kind of obvious. What many of us fail to do, however, is to also focus on what’s right. Using my example, here are the things I felt were right and that I was able to harness in my journey to getting fit and healthy:
I had great information from my cousin Sarah and my friend Matt. This information was like having a road map out of a strange and foreign city.
I had the love and support of an incredible woman who took on the journey with me and helped hold me up when I was weak.
I had the motivation, dedication, and perseverance to succeed.
So often, people focus on the things that are wrong and get lost in the details of how wrong things are. It’s easy to obsess over what’s wrong. For some reason, our brains are like a marble in a funnel that turns tighter and faster as it gets to the bottom. Focusing on what’s wrong seems to be a magnet for a domino effect of more negative thoughts.
I’m not saying ignore what’s wrong. Once you’ve identified what’s wrong, formulate a solution and then focus on what’s right and build on it. It’s easier to build on what’s right than to cover up what’s wrong.
When I graduated USMC boot camp, I weighed 138 lbs.
There is a difference in how Marines motivate each other and how civilians treat motivation in the workplace. I learned this first-hand as a young Marine who worked part-time off-base at a store in Irvine, CA.
Marines are challenged by any new Marine who is attached to the unit. If that Marine starts to out-shine the others, the Marines see that as a challenge. They look into their own motivation and find it lacking and raise their level to meet that of the new Marine. Marines won’t let another Marine out-perform them and carry all the weight. If the new Marine raises the operational pace, the rest of the Marines will match it. We rise to the challenge. It’s drilled into us and we are trained to perform this way. That’s why the all-in attitude is something I can take on with relative ease.
Civilians treat challenge from new colleagues in an entirely different way. If the new employee starts by working hard and out-performing the rest in the department, someone (or sometimes even a few of them) will take the new employee aside and tell them to slow down and not make everyone else look bad. You see, it’s easier to slow down the new guy than for everyone else to step it up and match the new person’s operational pace. (I want to add that not all civilians do this. There are many fine people out there who work hard and accept a challenge by stepping up to meet it. However, these people seem to be rarer than they are in the Marine Corps. Again, just my personal observation.)
On this blog, I talk a lot about discipline, determination, motivation, and perseverance. These are concepts I didn’t learn in the Marines, but were taken to a new level of understanding through boot camp and NCO school. Anyone can learn these concepts, but it’s up to you to truly embrace them and use them. These are my secret weapons. These are the tools I used to be successful in regaining my health and fitness. You can harness these same tools. You just have to want to do it badly enough.
Nobody changes anything about themselves until it becomes apparent that the change is necessary from either a practical or survival standpoint. Alcoholics and drug addicts describe this as hitting rock bottom; the point at which they realize that either they make a change or they will die without. As a person who had an unhealthy relationship with food and didn’t have enough self-respect to care for my health and fitness, I had to hit a certain rock bottom of my own.
I made a change in my life because I felt I needed to. I was ready. Everything about the way I felt and the way I was living was leading me to an early grave. My weight was phenomenally high and my fitness level laughably low. Something needed to happen quickly. I had come to the realization that the change needed to be immediate and severe.
When you get to a point where a severe change in your lifestyle is better than any other alternative, you know you’ve dug yourself a pretty deep hole. I was so far under that looking up, the sky looked like a period on a black sheet of paper. I knew it was going to be a struggle to climb out, but I set a goal for myself to accomplish it with no regard to any obstacles in my path. I would not sabotage myself, and everything I did would be to the benefit of my progress.
I adopted an all-in mindset that those who have never been in the deep hole of despair can never understand. Advice from well-meaning friends and family fall upon deaf ears when they haven’t ever been in a hole so deep. Some may have advice that may even be helpful, but in my experience, most of it isn’t realistic for the situation I found myself in. How could it be? Regardless of the math, losing 10 lbs is much easier than losing over 100 lbs. It’s not just 10 x 10 lbs. It’s an exponential factor of difficulty. I know: I did it.
When you hit your rock bottom, you will know it. You will FEEL it. You will feel the fire growing within you to make a change. That fire will grow and consume you and push you to make the changes you need to make, no matter how untenable you think those changes may be. You will do what it takes, and you will reach your goals.
Will you get healthy and fit? Not until that switch inside you is flipped. The dark and secret truth about that switch: only you can flip it. The question then becomes: how long will you go before you flip the switch, and is your body able to hold out that long before irreversible damage is done?
Sherry is done with her first week of her 2017 Whole30. Me? I failed accidentally early on and have decided to eat the majority of my meals Whole30 compliant (and all of them if they are with her) but I will stick to my Paleo food. I’ve not been eating enough again, and I need to fix that more than any other bad habit right now.
Ok, well it’s been a short week, but I’m feeling a lot better. Way less swelling, more energy, and generally feeling more like myself. Down within a couple of lbs of my pre-holiday weight now – and not suffering too much from lack of sweet.
All in all, not a bad place to be.
Here are some of the dishes we enjoyed this week:
Paleo Tex Mex Casserole – a perennial favorite. We have this one about once a month or so and it’s still really good and filling
Slow Cooker Butter Chicken with Indian Style Cauliflower – wow, this one was really good, and I think will be one of our new favorites. As a slow cooker dish, the chicken is really easy and the flavors are pretty awesome. The cauliflower is pretty simple too but the spices really blend well
That got your attention, so I’ll explain, because I know this is going to be a little controversial. Skinny people who have never been overweight used to try to give me advice all the time about losing weight and getting healthy. They reasoned that they never got fat, so whatever they are doing must be the right way to get skinny. Only they were, at best, half right. I want to add that they aren’t all wrong, either, but they didn’t know how to approach the subject with me, a fat person, in a way that resonated with me. They didn’t know how to get through in a way that made sense to someone who had serious issues with diet and exercise. They also had no idea about the challenges a fat person has to go through to get back to a healthy weight.
Some people just stay skinny despite the food they put into their bodies. My mom’s husband is one of those guys. He can eat endless amounts of food that are horribad for you and he stays thin. His cholesterol levels? Not so good, but his weight and body fat percentages are impressive. I am not one of these types of people. If I overeat or eat bad foods, my weight balloons along with my pants size.
A good friend of mine told me recently that he ignored (literally, with hands on his ears at times) people who would try to tell him how to eat, what to eat, or how much to exercise to get to a healthier weight. He said that these people were either naturally thin or had never been fat. They didn’t know what they were talking about in terms of weight loss because they never had to LOSE weight. They have been maintaining their entire lives. He said he only started asking me questions about my lifestyle after he watched me lose over 100 lbs in one year.
I understand fully what he felt. I felt the same way. Had my cousin not been the person to tell me about Whole30 and Paleo, I would likely have passed up on both. Only after listening to her did it click to me and make sense. Only hearing it from her, someone who struggled with weight even as an athlete, did I listen and take it to heart. She walked the same walk I walked. She knew the difficulties, the challenges, and the pain. She understood.
I’m a formerly fat guy. I once weighed over 312 lbs. For a guy who is only 5’7″, that’s horribly unhealthy. I know how I got that big, and I know what it took for me to get down to 174 lbs. It wasn’t easy, but it wasn’t nearly as hard work as some of the skinnies made it out to be. You see, a lot of skinny people believe that all it takes to get thin is to eat sensible portions and exercise a lot. If that worked so well, I would have never gotten as large as I did. At least, not as quickly. I know what it took for me to get down to a healthy weight, and what it took for me to want to get fit. I can’t say the skinny people were 100% wrong, but the way they go about giving advice and the advice they give wasn’t always on-point. At least not for someone like me: used to be skinny, got fat, and needed to get skinny again.
I’m not saying I have all the answers. We are all different, and what worked for me may not necessarily work for you. But there’s a better chance that what I did can work for you if you are a person who used to be thin and is now fat. Heck, my wife was never a thin person and she is now by doing the same thing I did, so if you’ve never been thin, it may work for you, too. But I want to be clear: I don’t have all the answers. What I have are some tips, ideas, and information that is helpful and may get you the same results I had (or better). And this is all coming from a guy who, at one point in his life, was so overweight that he thought he was going to die and there was no way out of that fat misery. I was wrong. So very wrong.
For some people, staying motivated in a new lifestyle is difficult. I read about it or hear about it on Facebook almost daily. Everyone who sets out with the best of intentions to get fit or healthy often faces moments of doubt and weakness. I have faced down these doubts and had to learn to push through them.
There’s a feature on Facebook that has been a great motivator in my weight loss journey: the “See your memories” feature. This past week, the picture on the left is what popped up as a memory.
I recently found 
Nobody changes anything about themselves until it becomes apparent that the change is necessary from either a practical or survival standpoint. Alcoholics and drug addicts describe this as hitting rock bottom; the point at which they realize that either they make a change or they will die without. As a person who had an unhealthy relationship with food and didn’t have enough self-respect to care for my health and fitness, I had to hit a certain rock bottom of my own.
Paleo Marine 