Category: Scoop

This is a very personal subject. The reason for that is because we all find motivation in different places and for different reasons. I can’t tell you how to be motivated any more than I can you what your favorite color should be. What I can do, however, is tell you what motivates me and how I found that motivation.

When I was overweight and unhealthy, there was no single moment that caused me to change my eating habits. There was no single incident that made me decide I needed to get healthy and lose weight. There was a straw that broke the camel’s back moment, but that wasn’t the only reason. It was something simmering inside me for a long time.

I hated how I looked. Whenever I’d see myself in the mirror, I was disgusted by what I saw. I hated that I used to be thin and fit, and what I saw looking back at me was an overweight, unfit man who had given up on being healthy. It bothered me, and I despaired over it.

I hated how I felt. I was always tired, out of breath, and sweating. No matter how cool it was, I was always sweating. I couldn’t climb a staircase without getting winded. When my wife and I were on vacation or day trips, I would have to take breaks often. My size kept me from being able to partake in certain activities that we otherwise might have enjoyed.

I hated how I made others feel. I could see the look of despair on people’s faces when I boarded a plane and people would be hoping I wasn’t sitting next to them. I would notice people looking at me with disgust when eating in restaurants as I stuffed my face with unbelievable amounts of food. I would see people stare at me as I pushed a cart at the grocery store with all the 2 liter bottles of Coke and bags of Dove chocolates.

I hated being told by every doctor and health professional I ever made contact with that my lifestyle was unhealthy and that I was in poor health. I needed to lose weight, and I was reminded of this every time I went in for anything at all.

Most of all, I hated that I had given up on myself, on health, on fitness, and ultimately, on living a long life. I began realizing that I might not ever get to meet grandchildren; to spoil them, hug them, and love them. Worse yet, they would be denied having a grandfather.

One morning, I got up, and I couldn’t tie my shoes without holding my breath because my gut was so large. Right then and there, I realized something had to change. Fortunately, my cousin had discussed Whole30 and Paleo with me, and my friend Matt had also discussed eliminating sugar from my diet. The rest, as they say, is history.

What motivated me first and foremost was wanting to lose weight for my wife and for my kids. I felt that life was ending for me soon, and it scared me. I didn’t want to leave my wife and kids at a young age. I wanted to be around for them, for whatever they needed me for. I wanted to become fit so that I could start having adventures with my wife. She always wanted to be able to share experiences with me; I was denying her that. A simple thing like taking dance lessons was out of the question for me.

I was further motivated when I lost enough weight to begin exercising. I was able to finally run, and lately, I’ve taken up mountain bicycling. I enjoy both greatly. Then, there’s my military service in the National Guard. It was always something I felt was unfinished: my military service. I wanted to complete my 20 years, and the prospect of being able to get back into the military via the National Guard was a motivator to me as well.

Today, I am much healthier, lighter, fitter, and in the National Guard. With some luck, I will be around a lot longer for my wife, kids, and friends. What motivated me to get to where I am today may not resonate with you, but hopefully it encourages you to find your own motivation. When you do, hang on to it, treasure it, and honor yourself by feeding off of it to reach your goals. You are the only person who can do that for you.

If I had the ability to make you listen to just one thing I say, and to follow through with it, I would say it is this: CUT GRAINS. In every form, grains are not our friends.

Sure, drinks/foods with added sugar are bad, but many of those tend to be grain-based. Most meat (with the exception of bacon and sausage) tends to be sugar-free, and most vegetables are better for us than any grain.

With that said, if you only listen to two things I say, I’d add “Anything with added sugar” to the list.

Cutting grains and anything with added sugar will yield you the most impact on your health and weight. Just cutting out sodas alone can help you lose around 2.5 lbs a month. The more sugar you cut, the more weight you will lose. Give it a try.

I am asked this question pretty regularly, and my answer is very specific: It depends.

It depends on a lot of things. Here is a list of considerations when trying to determine the appropriate portion size for you:

• Your weight/overall health
• Your level of physical activity prior to/coming up after the meal
• How hungry are you?

Let’s take these individually.

Your weight. Are you overweight? Do you need to lose weight? Do you need to gain weight? Even with the Paleo Diet, you need to be careful to not over-eat. If you are underweight, you obviously need to eat more. But, to figure out the right portion size? Keep reading.

Physical activity. If you ran 5 miles before your meal, you can probably safely have that extra slice of bacon or the extra egg. Contrary to popular belief, you don’t burn fat when you exercise. You are burning energy. What you are trying to create is a deficit of calories over a period of time to keep your body from storing excess energy. If you know you are going to be running after a meal and need some energy, bump the carbs a bit. I usually will have an apple or some almonds 30-45 minutes before a run to help with energy during my run.

How hungry are you? This is my guide. If I’m hungry, I need to listen to my body. If I’m not, once again, I need to listen to my body. There’s nothing worse than over-eating or not eating enough. There is a big difference between hunger and cravings/appetite, however, and you need to be able to recognize the difference

In the end, you know what the right portion size is. Experiment. Eat smaller and smaller portions until you find the right size. Also, put less on your plate than you think you need. My wife and I also use the small plates for meals, now. It’s easy to go get more if you need it, but if you’re like me and tend to clean your plate, don’t load up. You’re just asking for trouble with a loaded plate.

Wow.

This is not the 1,000th post on PaleoMarine.com: that happened a few days ago. But only now am I recognizing the fact that I’ve posted over 1,000 times here.

That’s quite a milestone.

I’ve been a blogger since the 90’s, before MySpace, back when Napster was still a thing. AOL was still being used by most people, and ISP’s were finally starting to connect people to high-speed Internet. I began blogging on a self-hosted server, and after transitioning it a few times, I finally settled on WordPress.com where it’s been since.

This blog started in the fall of 2015 when my wife and I finally decided to do something about our health and weight and did our first Whole30. Afterward, we adopted the Paleo Diet with some stints of doing Keto. Nearly three years later, we have successfully kept the weight off, we are both fit, and I’m even in the National Guard.

1,000 posts of my opinions, experiences, tips, recipes, and mind hacks. That’s a lot of info to digest. I recommend you not try to read it all at once!

So, here’s to another 1,000 posts! I hope to be able to provide value, knowledge, and my experience to help others get healthy, get fit, or to lose weight.

I wrote a post a few days ago about my opinions and experiences with diets I’ve tried. I thought some more about it, and those were all diets I succeeded with. Some more, others less, but I feel that those four were pretty good plans to go with. What I realized is that I should have mentioned other diets I’ve tried and did not experience as much success with. While I am about to do that now, I want to stress that there are plenty of people out there who have succeeded with the diets I am going to be discussing below. If you’re one of those people, then great! I have always said on my site that what works for me may not always work for anyone else: that’s why I recommend people find a diet or plan that works for them and then stick to it. It’s the “Stick to it” part that is the most important.

So, without further adieu, here is the list:

Calories In/Calories Out (CICO)

This is the most basic diet in the world. The premise is rooted in solid science: Eat fewer calories than you expend. The problem with this is that not all calories made alike, and the makeup of the food will make CICO easier or harder on you depending on what you eat. For example, 100 calories of apples is a lot different from 100 calories of chocolate in how full you feel and the nutrition you gain from those 5100 calories. Add to the equation that apples are harder to digest, and thus, your net calories are actually below 100 calories total. My experience with CICO was that I was always hungry and I snacked a lot. When I ate food, I was never satisfied, and I got hungrier and hungrier as the days passed until I would break and then eat everything in sight (and then seek out even more). The end result was that I would lose weight initially, but then not only gain it back, but an additional 5 lbs or more. This is, in large part, how I reached 312 lbs.

South Beach Diet

This diet seemed to make some sense when my doctor told me about it nearly 20 years ago, but it was based on the low-fat premise which we now know is completely baseless. On this diet, I lost almost no weight. The food was okay, but nothing spectacular. To be honest, it was mostly pretty bland and Sherry and I both fell off this diet very quickly.

Atkins Diet

This is actually quite similar to Paleo, but with allowances. It’s the allowances that got me into trouble. It gave me a false sense of security, and in a strange way, it made it okay for me to binge here and there on grains when I should have been avoiding them like the plague. Also, Atkins is big on fruit, and while Paleo is perfectly fine with fruit as well, I should have cut back a lot on the fruit and stuck to more meat and vegetables instead. This diet failed for me because it wasn’t rigid or firm enough to keep me from the sugar-filled or grain-filled foods.

I might do this again with some more diets, but these three are diets I tried and didn’t succeed with and thought I’d give my thoughts on these as well.

It doesn’t matter how good the food is in terms of nutrition if you eat too much of it. That’s precisely what I’ve been doing: eating too much.

This morning, I’ve managed to over-eat again in terms of calories. Sure, the food I ate was perfectly Paleo, but the amount? Not so much.

I’m going to do my best to manage that for the rest of the day, but now that I’m not expending as many calories due to not being able to do the ruck marches and PT coupled with me sitting most of the day, if anything, I should be eating fewer calories. Yet, here I am.

My weight is up right now: 180 lbs. That’s a full 3 lbs up this week from the lowest, and 15 lbs higher than my goal. I have a lot of work to do to get my weight back down, and it all relies on me eating properly (which I haven’t). Like most people, I too struggle with portion sizes and portion control.

My plan is to make sure my portion sizes are reasonable, and when they are too big, to split the dish before I eat so that I am not tempted to just finish clearing my plate. This is probably the biggest reason I overeat: learned behavior.

As a kid, like most others, I was told to clean my plate regardless. There were many days, in my childhood, where I just wasn’t hungry, yet I was told to clear my plate. And clear it, I did. That translates into a life-long obsession with clearing my plate, no matter how full I am. When I did my first Whole30 and went Paleo, I was able to overcome this because my wife was very strict with portions. Now, since I control my own portions, I tend to put a little too much on my plate, and due to that learned behavior, I will clear my plate no matter what.

So, it’s back to eating boot camp for me. I need to re-learn the right-sized portions and I need to stick to them.

It happened. I’ve been pushing myself far too hard during this AT, and I pulled a nerve in my right lower back. This has resulted in me now being given a medical order (known as a temporary profile) to sit out running, push-ups, sit-ups, or any stretching. I asked the PA how long this pain will last; he said it could be a few weeks up to a few months.

That’s unacceptable to me.

Of course, there’s nothing I can really do to force my body to heal, but I’ve learned there are a few things I can do to help it heal faster.

Avoid stretching. As much as it feels like it’s alleviating the pain, it’s actually stretching the nerve and causing further inflammation which could extend the amount of time it takes to heal. Instead, I have to use a foam roller.

Foam Roller. I will sit on the foam roller with the affected side (right side for me) and roll back and forth with right my leg crossed over my left knee. I will do this a few times a day for five minutes. This is supposed to help the inflammation subside.

Cold packs. Although heat feels good, again, it’s not actually helping things. I will continue the cold compresses. I have some ice on my lower back right now, and it does feel good. I just hope it helps reduce the inflammation quickly.

Ibuprofin. Any inflammation that’s going on could be helped with ibuprofin.

In the nearly three years I’ve been exercising solo, I’ve avoided injury. This is my first sports injury in many years, and I have to admit that I don’t like it at all. I really want to get back to my running and mountain biking.

I have to remember my own advice when it comes to exercise: don’t overdo it. I’m in the Army National Guard, and I am on my Annual Training (AT) right now. Part of AT is doing physical training (PT) every morning. As an older soldier, and as an NCO, I have to put in extra effort as I am an example to my soldiers. I have to maintain my appearance, height, weight, and PT scores when I am tested. What I also need to do is to be careful to ensure I remain injury-free.

I didn’t do a good job of that last point this past week. While I didn’t sustain any injury, per se, I did overdo a sprint which resulted in my thighs becoming very full of pain. Every step I take is now painful on the tops of my thighs. This is such a strange sensation, because the rest of my muscles feel fine; it’s just the tops of my thighs.

As the days have been going on, my thighs are healing ever so slowly, but the fact remains that I shouldn’t have pushed as hard as I did. I didn’t have the, “You ran hard” pain. I had the, “You ran way too hard and tore muscles” pain.

It’s possible to train hard without injury. You have to know your limits, push up against them, and then back off. Pushing past those limits should only happen in emergencies. This incident was nowhere near an emergency. It was something silly: pride.

I was racing a Captain, and I didn’t want him to beat me. Let’s not count the fact that he’s about 15 years younger than I am. I just wanted to at least keep up (which I did) and not get beat (which I did, but barely). The cost wasn’t worth it, though.

I hope to be pain-free by next week. We have some ruck marches and a lot more runs coming up. I need to be able to perform at a higher level than I have been able to this week due to the pain in my thighs.

This is my reminder to you to be careful when you exercise, and when you do, if you push, don’t push too hard. The pain afterward will be far more detrimental than any perceived benefits.

I’ve tried Whole30, Paleo, Keto, and Intermittent Fasting (IF), and I thought it might be a good idea for me to do a quick write-up about my experience and feelings about them. Note: Bear in mind that these are my opinions based on my experiences. Your own may vary and may even be 180 degrees different from mine. My experience and opinion doesn’t invalidate your own.

Whole30: This is the best way to get away from sugar. It’s not easy, and it’s not designed specifically to lose weight, although weight loss is common among those who do a Whole30. It is great to teach you about the benefits of whole, natural foods and also great in getting you away from grains, dairy, sugar, beans, soy, and alcohol. However, there’s a cost: the first week or two can be especially difficult with many experiencing flu-like symptoms for up to two weeks. It’s also a very different way of cooking, and you have to change your relationship with food. Once you complete a Whole30, chances are you will feel better, have more energy, sleep better, and generally feel more mental acuity.

Paleo: This is how my wife and I eat 98% of the time. To us, it seems to be the most natural progression from Whole30, as it feels like Whole30 Light. There are a few natural sweeteners allowed back in the diet, but you have to remember to use them in moderation, and to continue to eat well. The emphasis on the Paleo Diet is not weight loss but eating better, more natural foods. Once again, many people (Sherry and I included) experience weight loss on Paleo, and I lost a total of 150 lbs after one round of Whole30 and then going Paleo. It can be difficult to get used to at first, and ingredients can be expensive, but more and more stores are carrying Paleo-friendly ingredients, and as the diet’s popularity grows, the prices for Paleo-friendly foods continues to decline.

Keto: This is a great diet, but it is the most difficult to get into out of the three listed so far. This diet is where you force your body into ketosis (not be be confused with ketoacidosis which is very bad). Ketosis is the process in which the body stops using carbs for energy and starts using lipids as energy. It is a very effective diet, and while it was first used to treat epilepsy and to reduce seizures, it is also very effective for weight loss. It can be difficult for some people to get into ketosis, however, and it is difficult to maintain ketosis. It requires a strict adherence to the diet, and in tracking macronutrients. It has recently become a little easier to get back into ketosis with the use of exogenic ketones, but this is controversial, and some people don’t believe that they are effective. Regardless, the few times I tried the Keto diet, I lost a lot of weight and I felt great. There is a burst of energy you feel when you are in ketosis, and while I liked how I felt, it was difficult for my wife and I to track and maintain the right balance of macronutrients to remain in ketosis. We stopped doing keto and went back to Paleo, although we do allow some keto concepts into our diet now.

Intermittent Fasting: This is something I dabbled in, and to be fair, I didn’t do long-term. I tried it, but I didn’t give it the same chance I gave the previous three. It’s not really a diet, per se, as much as it is a schedule for eating. I have read many accounts of IF working, and I don’t doubt its efficacy and as far as I can tell, it holds up well scientifically. However, I feel that it’s quite difficult, and I personally felt that Whole30, Paleo, and Keto were all much easier to adhere to on an eating schedule I’m accustomed to and that fits in well with my family, friends, and co-workers.

So there you have it: three diets and an alternate eating schedule. Do some research, and once you find one that makes sense, give it a try. That’s what I did, and I am much healthier, lighter, and more fit now because of it.