Category: Scoop

This is another in the series of posts about questions I receive from readers.

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I’m asked often by people who have been reading this blog for a while, “Do you ever get tired of writing about Paleo?” Well, the short answer is NO! The long answer is what follows.

I started this blog to get all my exuberance and excitement off my chest without barraging my friends and family with nutrition info. I needed an outlet for my new-found energy, and this blog was it. While it initially began life as a blog called The Fat Marine, it evolved into PaleoMarine as I evolved from a fat Marine to a fit PaleoMarine.

While I’ve been on this journey for a year, I only started the blog back in January. In that time, if anything, I’ve felt a greater responsibility to post at least once a day; sometimes more. This sense of responsibility comes from the emails, messages, comments, and phone calls I get from people who want to try to lose weight and to get healthy. These people have come to rely on my motivation, my inspiration, and the information I post. It is for these people that I keep going.

Now, after a year, I no longer feel the need to get as much off my chest, yet I find posting here a comfortable way to expound on thoughts that come to me throughout the course of the week. It is also an outlet for me to make statements based on things I either read or see throughout my daily travels.

I hope that my constant posting brings value and helps people. I hope it continues to inspire and motivate, and at least, I hope it’s entertaining.

This is another post in the series of questions I’m asked often or statements made to me.

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I’m often told by people who meet me after I’ve lost the weight that, “It must be easy for you to stay fit. You’re a former Marine, after all.” Well, not so much.

I didn’t stay fit after I left the Corps. As a matter of fact, I ballooned to over 312 lbs in just a few years. I gained weight so quickly, in fact, that I have stretch marks on the sides of my stomach area and on the outsides of my thighs. I went from being fit to sitting in a chair at a desk all day without changing my eating habits. Coupled with my slowing metabolism after I turned 30, the result was a morbidly obese Paleo Marine.

I stayed overweight for nearly 15 years before I took back my health, attacked the source of the problem, broke up with bad foods, and undertook a healthy lifestyle. It wasn’t easy, but it was’t as hard as I’d made it out to be ahead of time in my mind. It turned out that it was better than okay; it was actually great! I enjoyed everything I ate, it made me feel full, I lost my cravings for snacks, and best of all, I lost weight at a steady rate and my health greatly improved.

The funny part is that, with my current diet, it’s actually not that hard to stay fit. All I have to do is eat the awesome and nutritious whole foods I eat, and I will not get fat unless I just eat tons of it.

So, it’s not the fact that I’m a Marine and I exercise all the time that has allowed me to get fit and to stay fit. It’s the fact that I have adopted and embraced the Paleo lifestyle that’s allowed me to get fit. Anyone can do that, even Airmen*.

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Of course, I am kidding. I have as much respect for all members of the Armed Forces as I do for my fellow Marines. But, I wouldn’t be a Marine if I didn’t post a lighthearted dig at another service every now and then.

This is another in the series of questions I’m regularly asked.

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Aside from actually feeling healthy, being more mobile, having more stamina, no longer being diabetic, no longer having non-alcoholic fatty liver, and being able to run up stairs without being winded? I would have to say the food.

Everything I eat is delicious and filling. I only feel hungry when it’s time for another meal, and I don’t get snack cravings. I don’t feel bloated or tired after eating anymore, and I find myself eating smaller portions to feel satisfied sooner.

There are the additional bonuses of eating foods that are organic and eating meats from animals that were treated ethically and without drugs and hormones. I’m not a vegetarian, but I want the animals I eat to have been treated properly in their lives before becoming my food. I am, after all, what I eat, and I don’t want to eat foods that are pumped full of drugs and antibiotics.

Don’t let all that ethical or organic stuff turn you off or away. These are benefits for me and may not matter to you. That’s okay. Just eat whole foods and you’ll be much better off in so many ways. There’s no arguing that generations past were healthier in terms of weight and fitness. Sure, we have medical science that has helped us conquer communicable diseases and we’re making progress in curing many maladies and conditions, but there is no substitute for good nutrition.

Eat right, and your body will thank and reward you.

This is a new one for me; I was able to type some of my blog entries today on my lap. Using a laptop. Go figure!

In the past, my stomach was too large to allow me the freedom, flexibility, and let’s face it, the room to place a laptop on my lap with the ability to actually type. This is another new sensation to me, one that people who have never been as large as I was take for granted. Here’s a picture that shows why it was so impossible for me before.

The number of new experiences for me as a thinner and more fit person doesn’t seem to be ending as I’m finding new things to enjoy. I look forward to each new discovery and sensation as a healthier person thanks to Paleo and Whole30.

I am often asked if the diet I’m on is for weight loss. This misconception comes from the common colloquial use of the word, “Diet” which people would define as a temporary eating regimen whose goal is to lose weight. However, the original (and first) definition of the word Diet is:

The kinds of food that a person, animal, or community habitually eats.

Only in the past 70 years has the second definition come into use:

A special course of food to which one restricts oneself, either to lose weight or for medical reasons.

Sherry and I adopted a Paleo lifestyle (notice I rarely say “Paleo Diet”) after completing our first Whole30. We did so for many reasons; chief among them was to get healthy and to lose weight. We had high expectations but little faith, yet we put our faith into the science of it and followed the rules. We were rewarded with results beyond our expectations, and a year later, combined we have lost over 175 lbs (I have lost 110 lbs while Sherry has lost 65 lbs). That’s the weight of an entire grown man!

One major thing we decided when we adopted the Paleo lifestyle was that it was a change we were making for the rest of our lives. It was not a temporary eating plan. We changed our relationship with food and said goodbye to those foods that were harming us and keeping us from being our best selves. Since starting Paleo, we’ve found ourselves being more concerned with the quality of the foods we’re eating. We tend to buy more organic foods, and buy meats that are drug-free and ethically treated. The Paleo lifestyle is more than just a way of eating, and we find ourselves learning more and more about healthier ways to live.

I am not advocating anyone go all-in on the lifestyle, but I am advocating the diet portion of the lifestyle. The science is solid, and the results I’ve seen, that Sherry has seen, and many of our friends and family are experiencing have shown me that with a mere change in diet, we can improve our health and lose weight. Our bodies want to be thin. Our bodies want to run efficiently. Eating good, natural, whole foods allows our bodies to run lean and mean. Give it the right fuel and you will get a healthy, lean, and thinner body.

I’ve been asked this question a lot lately: “How goes the exercise?” I’ve thought about it, and here’s my answer.

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Yesterday, I posted about not needing exercise to lose weight. That is true. Exercise IS good for you, and I have never, nor will I ever dispute that fact. However, it’s no secret that I’m not a fan of it, and I don’t like doing it. With that said, I’ve accepted the fact that for me to continue losing weight and getting the body shape that I want, I have to do something more than what I’ve been doing. Therefore, I’ve begun with push ups.

Why push ups? It’s one of the exercises that can be done to strengthen your core, arms, and back. Also, I have a pulled muscle on the right side of my back that hurts terribly when I do kettle bells but doesn’t hurt when I do push ups. So, for now, I’m stuck with push ups and planks.

I will be adding some other exercises like crunches and what we in the Marines called Mountain Climbers, but that’s about it for now. I have said before that I’m easing gently into this exercise thing because 100% of the times I’ve tried in the past to get back into it, I’ve injured myself. I’m not allowing that to happen again. Also, have you heard I don’t like exercise?

I have been able to increase my number of push ups, and on some days, I even do them twice. I’m not doing push ups to failure. I’m not interested in strength or bulking. I just want flexibility and fitness. So far, I’m pretty pleased with the changes I’ve noticed in the past few weeks, and I’m looking forward to continuing the trends I’m seeing.

So, short answer is: it’s going well enough. It hasn’t killed me yet, so it must be making me stronger.

The last major trip Sherry and I took was to Vancouver and Seattle, and it was a completely new experience traveling while thinner. Our last trip overseas was in 2014, and I weighed over 310 lbs. Sitting in the seat on the plane was tight, walking all over Budapest and Vienna was hard for me to do, and in some ways, I think our enjoyment of the cities was hampered by my weight. I was limited in the amount of activity I could do each day.

In Seattle and Vancouver, the opposite was true. We did so much each day, we couldn’t believe we were getting it all in. On our first and second day, I was literally running from place to place as I was so filled with energy and excitement that Sherry literally had to chase after me. She was laughing most of the time because it was such a contrast to our last major trip.

On Monday night, we found ourselves planning our next major overseas trip: Spain. I am really looking forward to it, not only because I have yet to visit Spain, but because we are once again traveling with our good friends Kenny and Elaine with whom we went to Hungary and Austria with in 2014. We’ve done some smaller trips with them as well, and it turns out we travel well together. The main difference this time will be the fact that I’m over 125 lbs lighter than I was on the previous trips. I’m really looking forward to all aspects of it now, as well as the walking, hiking, and exploring.

It’s funny. When people find out I used to weigh over 310 lbs, they get excited and want to know how I lost the weight. When I say the word, “Paleo,” the reaction I most often get is what I can only imagine the reaction would be if I told them, “I have a third eye on the back of my head.”

The name Paleo has some baggage; mostly from our learning about cavemen in school. When I say I eat a Paleo diet, I’m sure lots of people are wondering where I get the mammoth meat from, or if I run from sabretooth tigers. Others, still, think it’s a fad or a craze and that I’m not only denying myself entire food groups, but that I’m eating things like raw meat and grass. OK, I will admit that I like my steaks medium rare.

It’s a shame, because eating Paleo is really eating healthy. It’s avoiding foods that have incredibly high carbohydrate content which is where the fat in our bodies comes from. It’s also focused on eating foods that don’t have additives, chemicals, or drugs (for the meat), and ethical treatment of animals is also taken into consideration by many who live Paleo.

Sherry and I have been at it for a year now, and we can’t be any happier with our diet. Sure, it’s challenging sometimes to find foods in restaurants that are Paleo, but it’s not as hard as you might think. What is amazing to me is how challenging it is to find simple foods like nuts in the grocery store without it having some sort of wheat, soy, or sugar additive.

I’ve had people ask me if Paleo is like Adkins, and I usually tell them, “Mostly,” but not exactly.

Compared to Paleo, there is some overlap between the foods to include (meat, vegetables, and fats) and the foods to avoid (grains), but in the end Atkins is a diet for weight loss, while Paleo is a diet for health. –Paleoleap.com

I’m sure you’re saying, “Ok, so what about the specific differences?” I’ve got that answer for you as well:

Accordingly, Atkins is focused primarily on macronutrient ratios, while Paleo is focused primarily on food quality (eating plenty of nutrients while avoiding toxins). Paleo can be low-carb, but it doesn’t have to be. –Paleoleap.com

Sherry and I have adopted the lifestyle and we have lost weight, improved our health, and we have not suffered nor have we been hungry. Heck, we’ve been enjoying the food and all the new flavors! We’ve even found restaurants locally that cater to Paleo clientele, and the food there is simply inspiring!

Do I miss pizza, pasta, and bread? Honestly, not anymore. I did for a while in the beginning, but now, it’s not something I crave or miss. There are so many other things I eat now that are delicious and satisfying that those other things don’t factor anymore.

If you’ve been looking past Paleo because of it’s name, I implore you to give it a chance. Do some research, read some sites, and look at the science of it all. It’s not hard to understand, and it’s not too complicated. The information you read can change your life. Heck, it might even save it. It saved mine.