Category: Scoop

One of the best things to happen to me has been meeting my wife. That I was able to convince her, after all the evidence to the contrary, that marrying me is a good idea, is nothing short of a miracle. Nearly 17 years later, I celebrate every day that I am married to my best friend and adventure buddy. She’s my favorite person, as I am fond of calling her. The reason I mention her is that because without her, it’s unlikely I’d be here. I mean, I’d be here, but I wouldn’t be the healthy person I am today.

When I decided to embark upon this journey to a healthier lifestyle, I knew very quickly that I was unable to do it without my wife. It’s not that I was unable to cook for myself; I am actually a pretty good cook. It’s not that I don’t have the discipline; I can be as stubborn as any person when it comes to reaching a goal and resisting temptation. It’s also not because I didn’t have enough desire to do it; I most certainly did. It had to do with the fact that being in a partnership, being half of a team, I wasn’t able to think of just myself. I couldn’t embark upon such a momentous journey without the buy-in, and of course, the help of my other half.

Doing something as huge as a Whole30 and then adopting the Paleo Diet was not something that I could undertake alone without affecting my wife. As my friends can attest, when you change your lifestyle so drastically, it effects everyone. My friends are amazing, and they go to great lengths to prepare foods that are Paleo-friendly (and even Whole30 compliant when we’re on a W30) for Sherry and I (because our friends are AMAZING people!!!). When you live with someone, they are affected more directly, and consistently with every meal. I couldn’t, in good conscience, do something as drastic as a Whole30 without her there with me.

Then, there’s the meal prep. Once I convinced my wife that we needed to be in this together, and she agreed, she began investigating the lifestyle in great depth and concluded that meal prep is key to success. The term “Meal prep” is short for meal preparation, and refers to preparing meals ahead of time and storing them for later use. In our case, meal prep primarily falls into lunches and dinners, but every now and then (and this week, thank fully), it extends into breakfasts. She spends hours in the kitchen on Sundays to make our lunches and dinners for the week which allow us to have Whole30 compliant meals that would otherwise take a long time after work to prepare, and would be impossible to find for lunches. Now, we have delicious and filling Whole30 compliant foods for lunch and dinner all week, and as I said earlier, this week, I even have a breakfast casserole (made with eggs, pulled pork, and apples).

I have heard from many couples about their desire to live a healthier lifestyle, and every now and then, I hear one half of a couple lament that their partner won’t join them on the journey. I encourage them to do the best they can with the situation. It’s not impossible to go it alone. I know people who have, and it’s worked for them. I have a friend whose husband is quite healthy, yet she had issues with weight gain. His diet was already pretty good, but hers always included sweets, snacks, and fast foods. She changed her lifestyle and became far stricter than he, and she was able to get healthy and lose weight without him having to change a thing. It’s possible to do. I just recognized that it wouldn’t be as easy for me, and that my changes would adversely affect my wife if she didn’t join me.

One aspect of our teamwork that I see as a key to our continued success is that we watch out for each other, and we are always trying to be our best selves while also being a good example to each other. When one of us is feeling weak or vulnerable to temptation, the other stands firm, and bolsters the other’s strength. When one of us is feeling down, or feeling like the process isn’t working, the other will offer words of encouragement, a shoulder, or a hug. We’ve been in this together now for over four years, and while most of the time we’re on the same sheet of music, so to speak, it’s in those moments of weakness where our teamwork swoops in and saves the day.

Can you do it alone? Yes. Is it easier to undertake a new lifestyle with your partner’s buy-in? I believe so. But remember: their support doesn’t always have to mean that they do the exact same thing as you. When I did keto for a while, my wife had to back out and she did Paleo. It worked for us; I was able to lose the weight I wanted to while ketoing while she continued on Paleo. She helped with my keto meals, and I helped when preparing meals to make hers Paleo. It was a logistical nightmare for us, and eventually I switched back to Paleo, but it was something we made work when we had to.

As with anything, in a relationship, communication is key. Talk to your partner and lay out the reasons you’re contemplating making a lifestyle change. Be sincere. Be honest. Your spouse, husband, wife, partner, and best friend will most likely support you. If not by eating the food you’re eating, at least through emotional support.

This is something I don’t remember bringing up on my blog, but after losing over 100 lbs back in 2016, I no longer snore. This is a big deal, because I was a prolific noise machine in my sleep. I also had medically verified (via two horrible nights doing sleep studies) sleep apnea which was scary because I would stop breathing for long periods of time. It was bad enough that I was prescribed a CPAP which I used for a long time to help me get a full night’s sleep and rest.

When I began my health improvement journey, the last thing I expected to fix was my sleep apnea. I thought that once you got it, that’s just how it would stay: present and always needing a CPAP to sleep with. When my wife told me that I stopped snoring at night, it was amazing and coincided with my feeling better in the mornings. My mental clarity was likely due to more than the physical result of eating better, but also the result of getting more oxygen while I slept.

I no longer snore. This is a big deal for my health, and for my wife’s health. I no longer wake her up in the middle of the night with my snoring. I wear a Garmin 945, and it measures my O2 levels while I sleep, and I am consistently greater than 96% through the night, which is considered excellent/normal.

Then this morning, I see this story in CNN about how losing fat from your tongue is suspected as helping reduce the effects of and even eliminating sleep apnea. This is a case of science finally catching up to and verifying my own experience.

I mention sleep being important all the time, but quality sleep is super important. As you lose weight, and as your body sloughs off the fat, your sleep will improve, which in turn helps you sleep better, which in turn helps you lose weight easily, and the cycle continues.

If you snore and/or have sleep apnea and you’re overweight, there might be a cure. Just lose the weight.

This is an article where I will say things that I have never, would never, and will never say to someone to their face. It’s something I think to myself nearly anytime someone tells me that they tried Whole30, Paleo, or Keto and nothing happened. Before you go off on me, I am well aware of and know that all our bodies are different and that our genetic makeup plays a majority role in how efficacious a specific diet will be for us. However, there are a few key things I hone in on when they tell me about their forays into Whole30, Paleo, and Keto. These can be summed up as a lack of full commitment to the diet in both lifestyle change and diet.

These people say things to me like, “Well, I did Whole30 but it didn’t work for me. I just couldn’t get past not having my Diet Cokes, so I still did those, and I never lost any weight or got past the first week.” Or one of my favorites: “I just can’t live with a diet that is so restrictive.” Restrictive of processed foods, sugar, and (here, I’ll admit) grains and dairy. However, there are so many foods a person CAN eat, I don’t see the problem here. Besides, the “Food groups” myth has been debunked for a long time by many sources. Google it.

More things I hear (and yes, I know this post is beginning to sound like I’m a Negative Nancy and snarky, but I hear this stuff every day. Every. Single. Day.) I don’t solicit it, either. People who find out I lost a lot of weight are initially excited because they think I have some cheat code to losing weight. In many ways, I believe that I do, but when they find out that there’s work to be done in changing behaviors, habits, and food content, they immediately put up walls and don’t even want to consider it. For those who have tried, I wonder how hard they tried. How honest are they being not only to me, but to themselves? How closely did they actually follow the diet? Did they actually give the diet a chance to work? Did they get enough sleep? Were their portion sizes reasonable? How often did they cheat? Nothing happens in a day or three. Nothing happens when you sabotage yourself consistently by cheating here and there. It takes weeks or months to get solid progress. It takes discipline. It takes being honest with yourself with what you’re doing and how you’re doing it.

If you want to get healthy and lose weight, do yourself and everyone around you a huge favor: do the work. Be honest with yourself first. Do what the plan says. Don’t change or modify the diet. Get enough sleep. Add in some movement/exercise. But whatever you do, don’t sabotage yourself or your progress with cheats, and don’t settle for anything other than 100% of your effort. Anything less does you a disservice and is just wasting your time.

Discomfort? Yes. Pain? Definitely not.

“But you said that weight loss and fitness comes with discomfort and pain!” Yes. Weight loss AND fitness come with discomfort and pain. Weight loss alone doesn’t have to be painful. Will changing one’s lifestyle cause discomfort? Sure. But not pain. Getting fit, on the other hand, will most definitely involve pain. I’m experiencing that right now, as my legs burn from the last two runs I completed in the past three days. Today will be another rest day to give them more time to recover, but I’ll be back to running again tomorrow. But you know what’s crazy? They hurt far less today after last night’s run than they did yesterday. And I know from past experience that they will hurt less tomorrow, and on the morning after tomorrow night’s run, they will hurt even less as my body begins adapting to running.

Weight loss is accomplished primarily through diet. Yes, burning calories will create a caloric deficit which leads to weight loss, but that can be done through diet when you cut out high-calorie foods, or dense caloric foods like grains. Fitness, on the other hand, is only improved through exercise.

When I lost my first 130 lbs, I did it all through diet alone. I couldn’t believe how easy it was. Sure, I experienced the Whole30 Flu in the first week of my first Whole30, but afterward? Nothing. No discomfort, no false hunger, no appetite beyond normal, “It’s time to eat a regular meal” hunger. I was losing steadily and consistently 10 lbs a month and I was doing it without going to the gym, without running, without yoga, or anything at all. Friends I knew who were into health and fitness couldn’t believe my results were from changing my diet alone. The thing is, I didn’t see it as changing my diet for a short-term weight loss. I saw it as changing my lifestyle. This was something that I was going to do for the rest of my life.

The fact that I slipped back and re-gained a good amount of weight is testament to the fact that humans love food, and that allowing ourselves to eat off-plan is a very slippery slope that can very quickly get out of hand and out of control. Like any drug, sugar is addicting, and if you let a little in, it will take hold of you and make you crave more. Even this morning, as I write this, I find myself wanting something sweet. It’s been four days now on this Whole30, and I still have the cravings. Yesterday after lunch, it was the same. I finished a chicken breast that Sherry made in the Instant Pot with apples and walnuts served with mushroom caulirice, and about 20 minutes later, I wanted a dessert or something sweet. I instead made a hot cup of tea with lemon which sated the appetite and got me through the worst of it.

If that’s the only discomfort I’ll have while losing weight, I’ll take it! But for me, there’s more to this. I have to run to get back into shape for the military. Today, more than ever, my fitness is extremely important, so it’s a responsibility I do not take lightly. I’ve been pushing slightly harder than I normally would, knowing that I have training coming up that will require me to exert myself physically, and with the world scene being what it is, my very life and the lives of others may depend on my fitness. So, I endure the pain of pushing myself not because I’m doing so to lose weight, but because I need to strengthen my body.

So, if you want to lose weight, you don’t need to suffer a gym. You don’t need to get out on the street and run. You don’t need to contort yourself with Yoga, or spend 5% of your annual income on a Peloton. All you need to do is make some good decisions on the food you are going to be eating by doing some meal prep and then using discipline and make more good decisions when eating. It doesn’t get simpler than that.

What is my plan for losing weight and getting back into a high level of fitness? It’s pretty easy. It includes:

• Strict Whole30/Paleo Diet (transitioning to Paleo after W30 is complete)
• At least 7.5 hours of sleep each night
• Exercise every other day for first week or two, transitioning to 6 days a week (letting each body area rest for a day after a workout)
• NO SABOTAGE (that’s what I call cheat meals/food items/alcohol)
• Be patient and trust the process

Doing those fivethings have helped me lose 130 lbs in one year, and over 150 lbs total in the past. Now, after a year of allowing myself to stray from this plan, I find myself heavier and out of shape (to be fair, I got out of shape due to two unrelated injuries three months apart from each other) and needing to lose the weight and get fit again.

The good news is that this plan works. It works surprisingly well. I say surprisingly because I was honestly surprised to see the weight loss rates I experienced on my first Whole30. I couldn’t believe that I was losing weight as quickly and as steadily as I was without doing any exercise. My entire life, I’d been fed the mantra that you have to sweat fat off to lose weight. My own experience was going against everything I’d ever been taught about weight loss from grade school to the Marine Corps.

I thought I might be sick, or something was wrong with me, so after a month, I had a physical. Everything not only looked normal, but vastly improved from a few months before. My blood sugar was normal. My liver enzymes were normal. I had gone from being a diabetic with fatty liver to having results that appeared to be from a healthy person. The tests were repeated, and the same results came back. Another physical three months later confirmed the first two. Fast-forward a year, and I was given a rigorous physical to join the National Guard, and passed the high standards for military service with flying colors.

The Steps In Depth

Diet

My method for lifestyle change starts with Whole30. All the information you need about Whole30 is available on the website, so I won’t go into it here. But I recommend you look at it there. Literally everything you need to start and complete a Whole30 is available, free of cost, at the Whole30 website. That’s what my wife and I did, and we trust in Whole30 to reset our appetites, to retrain our brains for proper portion sizes, and to reset our bodies to break any sugar addiction we may have regained.

The Paleo Diet is what we do long-term after completing a Whole30. The main difference is that The Paleo Diet allows you to have food items made from whole ingredients that mimic non-Whole30 compliant foods like cookies, pizza, etc. Whole30 works to not only reset your body chemistry to a baseline, but to also break you of craving certain foods. The Paleo Diet is good for cutting out the foods with added sugars, grains, and legumes, but some people can find it leads them back to eating foods that contain sugars or other non-compliant ingredients. Paleo bread is rarely as good as wheat-based bread (except when it comes to soda bread!), and some people craving a slice of bread can be lured into cheating.

Sleep

Why is this so high on the list? Because it’s the secret weapon that ensures that your body will lose as much weight as it possibly can. What most people don’t realize or know is that our bodies actually lose weight while we sleep. While you may lose water weight when exercising at the gym or on a run, your body doesn’t actually process that exercise and lose weight until you are lying in your bed, asleep. The more sleep you give your body, the more time you give it to lose weight. I have found that in the past four plus years, that whenever I hit a plateau, it was almost always caused by a lack of steady sleep. When I fixed that, the weight loss trend continued.

Exercise

This step isn’t necessary. I know that it’s not something you expect to read on a health and fitness blog, but it’s true. I lost 130 lbs in one year without a single step of exercise. Not a single drop of sweat was expended to exercise, yet I lost weight steadily, consistently, and safely. How? By eating right. Nothing more, nothing less. I was actually very insistent about not exercising for that first year because I wanted to see if it was possible to lose the weight without exercise to prove it not only to myself, but to those who read my blog. When I added exercise to my plan, I lost an additional 20 lbs.

No Sabotage

This is what I call cheating. Cheat days, cheat meals, etc. I’ve read other diets and blogs from other fitness gurus and experts who say that cheat days and cheat meals are okay. THEY ARE NOT! They set you back and put you at jeopardy of failure. It’s like what they say about heroin: NOT EVEN ONCE. I have learned the hard way, more than a few times now, that once you start to let yourself cheat, it snowballs. I am now 40 lbs heavier than I was a year ago because I allowed myself to eat a meal here and there, or to have a few drinks here and there which escalated into a much less healthy lifestyle. Like a drug addict, I thought I had it all under control until I didn’t. It took me feeling incredibly uncomfortable in my dress uniform to realize the damage I’d done. You have to remain vigilant and just say no to those temptations that come along.

Patience

This is another secret to weight loss and fitness that nobody talks about. You hear things like, “Do the work!” and “You have to work hard!” but nobody acknowledges that these changes take time. Sometimes, a long time. When I undertook a healthy lifestyle back in 2015, I lost 20 lbs in the first month. You’d think that I was ecstatic, but truth be told, I wasn’t. I couldn’t SEE the change. Sure, the scale was rewarding me with smaller numbers, and yes, even my pant size changed slightly, but I was so heavy that 20 lbs was a drop in the bucket. It would take another four months before I looked in the mirror one day and the face looking back at me was a face I hadn’t seen in a long time; my face. My not-so-fat face. You can’t get fit in a week, and you can’t lose significant weight in a month. The more weight you have to lose, the more patient you need to be, because you didn’t pack it on overnight. Losing it will take longer than it took to put it on because our bodies are stubborn and optimized for survival. Your body will do everything it can to hold onto the fat stores.

There are other things within these steps, like food-prep, portion control, discipline, determination, motivation, perseverance, etc. They are all important, but in themselves, won’t do anything for you. Follow the five steps, and you will find success. Decide to start. If you have already undertaken a healthier lifestyle, commit to it 100%. No sabotage. There is no finish line, but the road gets much smoother when you’re doing the right things.

What a weird title, I get that, but hear me out. I’m not wrong, here.

We humans are programmed to avoid pain and discomfort. Our brains, the incredible super-computers that they are, ensure that we find solutions that involve the least amount of discomfort in any endeavor we set out to accomplish. The most incredible part to me is that we don’t even know it’s doing this. At incredible speed, we find the path of least resistance, much like a bolt of electricity does.

It should come as no surprise that it’s hard to take on a new diet, a new exercise plan, or a drastic change in lifestyle that brings along with it pain and discomfort. When we do encounter the discomfort, we recoil instinctively. Our brains go into troubleshooting mode and quickly works out solutions to extract us from the situation causing the discomfort. It does this relentlessly, as it’s been a great survival tool that has allowed humans to exist for millions of years despite the various harsh environments we have survived in.

While this has been a key to our success as a species to thrive on this blue marble we call Earth, when it comes to getting healthy and losing weight, it works against us. When you start planning on changing your diet and start cutting out grains, legumes, alcohol, and anything with added sugar, your brain cries out, “Don’t do that! It’s not natural! We need all that food!” Why? It’s not because it’s true; it’s because you know that it will cause discomfort and it will be difficult. The same holds true for when you begin planning an exercise regimen. Your brain starts feeding you doubt and dread. It remembers the last times you tried, and it remembers the pain and discomfort, so it does everything it can to subconsciously dissuade you from continuing on your course of action.

Did you ever notice that the dread before exercise is always worse than the exercise itself? Ok, maybe not for the first week or two. I’m currently experiencing quite a bit of discomfort in my legs that haven’t run in over four months, and it’s pretty dreadful. Then again, I push myself pretty hard, and my first run back was three miles instead of being careful and slow and going with a brisk walk or a jog. But I digress. Once you’re already in the swing of running, say after three weeks, it’s still common to experience dread for undertaking a run. I experience it almost every time I’m about to run. Even after three solid years of running, I still found myself dreading runs. Not until I actually started running did that dread go away, replaced by something much better: a feeling of accomplishment and success.

Almost immediately after starting on a run, I would already feel better. The dread and doubt would melt away, and it was quickly replaced by a burning desire to not only finish my run, but to actually push myself to get better. To get faster. To get stronger. That dread I had morphed into determination.

They say the hardest part of any change is the first step. Whether that’s actually cooking your first healthy meal or donning the running shoes and going out for a brisk walk or a jog. Regardless, our brains are masters at talking us out of doing things that are difficult.

Sunday was Day One for me. Today is Day Three. I already feel better. I’m doing “The Work,” as my cousin Sarah says. I’m eating right, I’m getting enough sleep, I’m hydrating, and I’m exercising. I even gave my legs rest yesterday by taking a rest day. It’s a formula for success I’ve used more than a few times (this is my sixth Whole30 in four and a half years), and I know what I have to do for it to work. Now, I have to use a skill I’ve never really talked about: patience.

I have to trust the process, and keep doing the work. I have to keep eating right, and I have to keep exercising. Now, don’t let the exercise part throw you off. I lost 130 lbs in a year before without a single drop of sweat in exercise. This time, however, I’m throwing it in there because I have to. I’m in the National Guard, and I need to be ready for some very physically grueling training I will be attending this year. But if I had to, I could still lose the weight without exercise because of one simple truth: weight is lost in the kitchen and strength is gained through exercise. I’m not exercising to lose weight; I’m exercising to get back into top shape for my job.

I had a nice conversation with a fellow Marine last night and he asked me about my weight loss. I told him that I’d lost over 150 lbs before, and that I’m currently in the process of losing 40 lbs. He asked what procedure I had, and when I told him I did it all through diet, he was astounded. It’s quite a common reaction from people when I tell them what I accomplished without anything more than changing my diet. I chose, what I believe, is the healthier option. Sure, it requires more time to lose the weight than a lap band or other procedures, but I’ve known people (two, to be exact) who died from complications of weight loss surgery. I won’t ever go through elective surgery for weight loss. Besides, from others who have explained to me what recovery is like from those procedures, my method actually is the less painful method.

With that said, choose discomfort. Choose to change your lifestyle. The best part of all this is that the discomfort and pain are temporary. After a few weeks, when your body starts feeling better and your mental clarity improves, you’ll wonder how you ever existed on the high-carb, sugary grain-filled foods of your past. Are they delicious? Of course they are! But they are also killing you, and keeping you sedentary and bloated. Nothing important or worthwhile happens without some kind of discomfort or pain.

Yesterday, January 5th, was Day One for me. Sherry and I needed to do another round of Whole30. Let me back up and tell you the story of how I got here.

Back in August 2019, I attended an Assessment and Selection process to enter a new special unit in the National Guard. During that process, I injured my Achilles Heel pretty badly, and it left me unable to run for four months. This caused me to start gaining weight. To continue some sort of physical fitness program, I began lifting weights which seemed unaffected by my heel injury. All was going great until November 2019 when I entered a kickball tournament and work and in a hilarious looking (but very painful) accident, I kicked the top of the ball and did a flip in the air and landed on my right shoulder. This injured the shoulder and then took away my only source of exercise: weightlifting.

This led to depression. I’d been doing some sort of exercise weekly for the past three years, and the loss of all physical activity led to a serious bout of depression for me. There were days I would lay in bed in the morning under the covers not wanting to come out. I was gaining weight, and I was unable to stop eating foods that were non-Paleo. This escalated dramatically in December, and it began affecting me psychologically too much to ignore any further.

My Achilles Heel had healed enough that I was able to start running again yesterday. I ran three miles, and although my pace was atrocious, I consider it a win for the following reasons:

• I ran. This is something I hadn’t been able to do since the first week of August last year. I was sore, but it was a stiffness and not an injury-related pain.
• I ran three miles. This is my minimum training distance, and although it was slow, I did it.
• I was back to exercising again.

The next thing I had to tackle was the diet. I was eating unhealthy, and in the past four months, I’d gained (this is hard to write) 30 lbs. I’m 45 lbs heavier than my lowest weight back in 2017, and I’d been struggling since then to get back down to 160 lbs. I accepted 170 as a new normal, and I felt good at that weight. Now? I feel horrible. It’s not just a matter of how I look (which is also horrible), but literally how I feel in my own skin. I forgot how bad it feels to be heavier, how doing normal things become more difficult.

I’ve decided to use this as a learning experience. It’s putting me back a bit into my past, and helping me once again fully understand and experience the weight loss aspect of this blog. I’ve read about fitness experts who have gained weight to better understand what their clients go through. I’m no expert, and I’d be lying if I said I was doing it for any other reason than my own lack of discipline and depression.

So, we’re caught up. It’s January 6th, 2020. I’m on Day 2 of a Whole30 that will likely be more of a Whole60 or Whole90. The very first time I did a Whole30, I lost 20 lbs in the first month. I doubt I will make the same loss this time, as I have over 100 lbs less to lose, but I do have at least 35 lbs to lose, and I need to lose them fast. This time, I’m doing one major thing differently, however: I’m exercising.

The first time I did a Whole30, I did without any type of exercise at all. I didn’t walk, stretch, or do anything more physical than walking normally. This time, I’m running, and if my shoulder allows, I’ll be adding weightlifting back into my routine. This week, I’m only going to exercise 4 times, but next week, I hope to up that to 5 or 6. I’m sticking with a day of rest between workouts this week, but next week I’m going to start rotating exercises to isolate parts of my body, giving each area a day of rest between sessions. This has worked well for me in the past, and I’m hoping for it to work again this time.

As for what I ate this morning for breakfast, it was my usual: two eggs sunny-side up, and two slices of low sodium and sugar-free bacon. I am drinking my coffee black as opposed to the almond/coconut milk creamer I’d added to my routine for the past few months. Those 20 calories per drink really add up and I’m certain contributed quite a bit to my dramatic weight gain.

So, here we are. Day One of getting back to feeling great. Day One of getting back into a regular fitness regimen. Day One of regaining control of my appetite. Day One of working toward getting back to normal. I hear people say, “One day, I’ll start eating right,” or “One day, I’ll start regular exercise again.” Stop it. Decide to make that Day One. Pick a date, and stick to it. I originally picked today, January 6th to be Day One, but yesterday morning, I felt that I’d had enough of the bad diet. I wanted to get going immediately, so a day sooner than scheduled, Sherry and I started our Whole30, and I started running. Although my legs are sore this morning, I’m glad that I did. That soreness is a constant reminder to me that I’ve started the process to taking back control of my appetite and that I’ve begun the process of getting fit again. And you know what? It feels GREAT!!!

It’s been a while. I haven’t posted since November due to a bunch of things going on.

1. Achille’s Heel injury. Still ongoing. It’s finally healed enough that it looks like I can start running again very soon. As in this coming weekend soon!
2. Shoulder injury. This one is pretty serious. I’m supposed to have a CAT scan for it soon. This has halted all my weightlifting (much to my chagrin, and honestly, a big source of my emotional distress).
3. Holiday eating. This has been somewhat out of control. I have basically been eating anything I haven’t for the past four years, and I’ve gained some weight.

However, it’s looking great for me now.

1. Sherry and I are starting a very strict Whole30 again on January 6th, and we will be hitting it just as hard as we did on our first Whole30 over four years ago.
2. I am starting back into my strict fitness plan. I will go easy in the beginning, but I will be doing something every single day (except Saturdays or Sundays).
3. My motivation is back. I’m ready to eat well and exercise. Even though I have to be careful with my shoulder, I can start doing other exercises to start getting myself back into the shape I was in prior to these two injuries.

I hope everyone had a Merry Christmas, happy Hanukkah, a joyous winter holiday, and a Happy New Year’s Eve!

Starting January 6th, I will be back with my daily posts about my diet, exercise, fitness, and the mindset I have going into all this and how I keep myself motivated. I hope to see you all here then!

You may or may not be aware of a documentary called Game Changers that touts veganism and plant-based diets. I’ll make this short, because you should watch this video. It says it all.

tl;dr: Meat-based diets are optimal for humans. Period.

As you may have noticed, I haven’t posted here in a while. I have been depressed for the past few weeks culminating in not wanting to get out of bed yesterday morning. I literally laid in bed and even pulled the covers over my head and wished I could just stay in bed forever. It’s been a long time since I actually felt depression like that. I thought about the source, and it came back to the fact that I’ve been unable to exercise and I’ve been gaining weight due to the holiday season and eating and drinking more than usual.

I could have laid in bed. I could have allowed myself to continue to wallow in that depression, as comfortable as it can be. The thing I never have seen mentioned about depression about the strange comfort the feeling has. However, I knew that I needed to snap out of it, yet I found myself frozen under my covers. I tried and tried, until finally, my legs moved, and I was able to get them out from under the covers and onto the floor. Step one was complete. The rest came much more easily, and with each successive step, it got easier.

Of course, seeing myself in the mirror only made me second-guess the decision to get up: I looked bloated. A weekend of bad food decisions left me literally bloating with water retention, and I could see it in my gut and in my face. It made me angry. And sad. And I felt the initial pangs of defeat. But I shook it off and continued with my day, determined to do some form of exercise. Something.

I worked all day thinking about it. I decided that even though my shoulder is still sore (but healing, finally), and the doctor told me no running or weightlifting, I’d ride the stationary bike in my gym. After a dentist appointment, I got home, changed into my workout clothes, and hit the bike. For 40 minutes, I pedaled and sweated while watching YouTube videos of vehicle maintenance. My legs were sore, but not as sore as I thought they’d be. I sweat a lot; more than I had in weeks. Maybe even months.

It was glorious.

After my shower, I sat in my home office at my computer, and it felt great. A huge burden was lifted off my shoulders: I was finally back in the game. I had eaten all home-made meals, and Sherry told me that everything we ate that day was even Whole30 compliant. Although I’m not on an official Whole30 right now, I’m sticking to the Whole30 principles for the foreseeable future. Sure, there will be the occasional holiday meal here and there, but otherwise, it’s 100% W30 food for me.

I need to get back to my “Fighting weight.” I need to get back into great physical condition to get through some Army schools next year. I need to recover from these stupid injuries and remember to be more careful during activities in the future. But I got through the worst of it yesterday, and I feel like I have momentum now, even if it’s just a day’s worth.

To me, the hardest part of doing anything involving delayed gratification or great effort is the first step. Yesterday morning, it was literally the very first step of the day that was the hardest for me. It took a lot of effort, but once I got through that first step, the second step came more easily. And then the third, and so on. I know how difficult it can be emotionally when you don’t look or feel the way you want to. I know it all too well. And I know how comfortable it is to not do anything while also hating the fact you’re not doing anything. But trust this: you will feel so much better when you become an active participant in your health and fitness. The sense of accomplishment for every little victory will fuel your further successes. Just remember to look for those victories all over and not just on a scale.