Category: Scoop

Picture if you will, a warrior in a post-apocalyptic wasteland filled with danger and treachery at every turn. Nearly everything in his environment is trying to kill him or otherwise defeat him. The choices he has available to him are typically choosing the lesser of the evils. It takes all his inner strength to keep going amidst the hardships and horrors that abound around him.

I’m not going to sugarcoat it; the first week to three weeks (depending on a person’s level of addiction to sugar) is pretty rough. That’s the portion of this lifestyle where I can see people jumping off the wagon, so to speak. This is where the biggest changes happen, and they all come at you in quick succession: needing to eat specific foods while eschewing others, controlling portion, resisting temptation, and forming new and healthier habits. This is the wasteland that must be crossed before entering into the veritable jungle of good food and healthy living.

There are no shortcuts or quick fixes that I can offer you to make it easy. It’s not easy. If it were, nobody would be obese or overweight, and we’d have a handle on our weight and health. The reality is that we don’t, and as a society, we have great difficulty in cutting the cord from our sugar addictions and eating right. With all the contrary information we’ve been fed over the years, it’s no wonder people have a hard time finding the truth and the path to success in losing weight and getting healthy.

The key ingredients for me have been a respect for myself, respect for the process, and trusting in the diet. Food prep remains an important part of my continued success, and running keeps my heart healthy. The inner strength that people talk about is, to me, the culmination of many years of military training, many years of being unfit, heavy, and out of shape, and an overwhelming desire to get healthy and to stay that way. There’s also the unsavory side of where inner strength comes from: difficulties, failures, and mistakes I’ve made.

It’s incumbent upon everyone to find their inner strength and to draw from it. We all have motivations, and reasons for wanting to get healthy and to lose weight. It’s different for each of us, but what it all boils down to is that your inner strength comes from different aspects of your past, and it’s up to you to harness those strengths, to get past the weaknesses, and to draw upon what we’ve learned to succeed where we failed before. You’re worth it, and your health is worth it.

In adopting a healthy lifestyle, one of the hurdles to get past is to think of it as a short-term process. It’s not undertaking a temporary diet; it’s changing the way you eat for the rest of your life. There is no end date for this diet or lifestyle; you’re in it ’til the end.

I am often asked by people, “How long are you going to do that for,” or “When are you going to start eating normal food again?” Normal food? The stuff with all the sugar and grains in it? I will never eat those ingredients without being very careful of the amounts I eat. I do eat cake, pizza, and other foods I typically avoid from time to time, but I make a habit of not eating them at-will. I only imbibe those foods at special occasions or holidays.

The end game for me is to live a healthy life, or at least as healthy as possible. I know that there’s already damage that has been done through years of not eating right and not taking care of my body as I should have, and then there are genetics, but outside of those, I’m doing everything I can to keep my body healthy. I have every intention of doing this for the rest of my life, because it’s something I truly believe in and it makes me feel better physically and emotionally.

To be truly successful at getting healthy and remaining healthy, you have to commit for life and to make it something that you can do indefinitely. That’s why Whole30, Paleo, and Keto have worked so well for me; they are easy to adopt long-term.

I used to feel like there was no way out of obesity. When I weighed 312 lbs (at 5’7″), I felt like life was passing me by, and that there was no way out of the sentence that was obesity. If it wasn’t for Whole30, Paleo, and Keto, I’d still be wallowing in that misery.

I was miserable because it hurt to tie my shoes, I couldn’t walk more than a few hundred meters without getting exhausted, and I always felt hot. Not to mention my failing health including fatty liver disease, Diabetes, and poor circulation in my legs, I was getting myself into a dire situation. I was also miserable when I had to try to fit into a seat on an airline, was seated at a booth in a restaurant, or had to otherwise fit into a normal space.

But something wonderful happened: I was introduced to Whole30 and Paleo, and I took a leap of faith. I decided to commit to it with all my heart, and to give it all the effort I had to give. I wouldn’t allow anything to get in my way, and I was determined to see it work. And it did.

The most amazing thing I learned was that health and weight loss are a product of what we eat, not of the physical activity we participate in. This was my barrier to getting healthy: I couldn’t imagine the amount of physical exercise that would be necessary for me to lose 150 lbs. Fortunately, I was mistaken, and eating right took care of the weight and my health for me.

Obesity doesn’t have to be a sentence. It’s a condition you can reverse by eating healthy, natural foods and by cutting carbs and sugar out of your diet. It’s not easy in the beginning (the sugar dragon will fight you tooth and nail) but once you are past the withdrawls, it gets much easier, and the benefits become apparent almost immediately.

Sticking to a healthy lifestyle demands a lot of discipline, motivation, and perseverance. There are temptations at every corner, and often, there’s not much available that is healthy. I’ve been in those situations many times: lots of food, but either few options, or even occasionally, no healthy options at all. What’s a guy who is trying to live healthy to do?

I either mitigate through very small portions, or I abstain completely. I don’t do this because I have superhero discipline or because I am more motivated than others, but because I have respect for myself, my body, and the process I’m going through to live healthy.

I have put in the work, as they say. I have spent a long time getting to where I am today. To reverse that, to put it into jeopardy, or to otherwise sabotage that time and effort would be disrespectful to myself. I just can’t do it.

I see people posting on Facebook talking about how they are trying to lose weight through diet and exercise, and then I see them (literally within hours or days) posting videos of recipes that are FILLED with sugar, grains, and other foods that are not in line with a healthy diet. It makes me scratch my head in wonder.

If you want to really make a difference in your health either by losing weight or getting fit, respect yourself and commit. Don’t do anything that contradicts your goal, and don’t do anything that sabotages your progress.

One of the most daunting aspects of any diet is that it takes your entire culinary world and throws it into chaos. Everything you are doing gets thrown topsy-turvey, and you have to not only change what you eat, but how you make it, how often you eat it, and possibly even when you eat it.

I know. I get it. It’s a lot to take in. It’s scary, and it is a large part of what turns people off from making lifestyle changes that could help them reach their goals and get healthy.

One of the reasons I love Whole30 is because the rules are simple enough that it doesn’t take a lot of planning to make it successful. At it’s most basic levels, if you eat meat and non-grain or non-legume veggies, you’re good. On Paleo, the rules are very similar, but allow for some more natural sweeteners. Keto eschews the sugars and fruits, but allows dairy. In the end, all of these are actually quite simple once you learn the rules, and it’s not too difficult to follow along.

Changing your eating habits is challenging. You have to cut sugar from your life completely, and regardless of which route you go in the Low-carb/high-fat world, the first week to three weeks will be difficult as your body breaks its addiction to sugar. Some refer to this as the Keto Flu, Whole30 Flu, or Paleo Flu depending on which diet you’re adopting. It’s painful, and you quite literally feel like you have a flu. The good news is that once you’re through it, you feel better than you did before with more mental clarity, more energy, and reduced or eliminated hunger and cravings. I wouldn’t have believed it myself if I hadn’t experienced it first-hand. Kicking sugar was a life-changing event for me.

Avoiding foods I’d enjoyed my entire life took a lot of discipline, but after a while, focusing on the foods I could continue to eat that I’d enjoyed my entire life while not thinking about those foods I could no longer eat helped me get through the cravings and allowed me to discover even more new foods that I now rank among my favorites. Pizza is great, but I found alternatives that are either just as delicious or more so. It comes down to focusing on the positives and avoiding the negatives.

Fitness is good, but not necessary to lose weight. This is one of the biggest points I try to make to people who have physical limitations or are otherwise predisposed to not being able to partake in physical activity (some people just hate it; I get it). You don’t have to become a gym rat or a runner to lose weight, and honestly, this was my biggest hurdle for many years. I just didn’t want to become a “Workout Person” to lose weight. Little did I know I’d become a runner and a National Guard soldier years later.

Yes, it’s all or nothing: either you adopt a new, healthy lifestyle, or you doom yourself to repeating the same mistakes you’ve been making with your diet and nutrition. You can’t continue to eat the way you do now and expect different results. You have to make the change, and you have to commit to it fully. Once you make your health a priority, the rest falls into place nicely.

I hear this a lot from people who tell me that they are too busy to do food prep. The problem is that food prep is one of the most important factors in success when adopting a new lifestyle and being successful when taking on a new diet. It’s how Sherry keeps us on the straight and narrow with the least amount of effort.

Anything worthwhile takes time. Anything of value takes time and effort. Your health, your weight, and your physical well-being are all worthwhile pursuits, and you have to take it seriously, make the effort, and take the time; nobody will do it for you.

You have to make your health a priority, if not THE priority in your life. I know, there are things like spouses, partners, kids, work, family, friends, etc. Those are all priorities that we hold dear to us, and those are the things that make life worth living. But without taking care of your health, you are severely limiting your ability to engage with those priorities in a truly limitless and free way. The amount of physical activity I was able to do when I lost my weight was staggering. I became so engaged with life that was able to become a runner, get physically fit, and even go into the National Guard at age 49.

There’s also the fact that you are likely going to live longer if you are not obese and if your heart is healthy. The best way to make that happen is eat right and get some exercise. But they have to be a priority.

My time is important to me, just as yours is to you. But I have made my health a priority, and I schedule life around my runs, my weekends around food prep with Sherry, and my meals to make sure they are adhering to the rules we’ve set for our diet. Without making these a priority, I never would have been able to make the changes necessary to become the healthier, lighter, and more fit person I am today.

Yes, I’m a bit late again today. I’m fixing that; I’m in the process of writing a bunch of articles for the upcoming weeks so that I will be ahead of the curve again. Things have been crazy with my National Guard unit, and it’s been keeping me pretty busy, even in the off-hours.

With that said, the hike yesterday went pretty well. It started off well with me feeling energized and ready. I was also operating on about 4 hours of sleep, however, and I figured that would take it’s toll on me at some point of the 6.8 mile course. I was right; it did.

We kept a pretty decent pace of around 2.5 miles per hour, and my heart rate fluctuated between a low of around 90 BPM to a high of 123 BPM when we were climbing some of the bigger hills. It was a pretty walk, and my legs felt pretty decent until the last two miles. That’s when my thighs started burning, and I began to really feel tired. It took every bit of strength and all my will power to finish strong. I never let the pace drop, and I was determined to get through without taking a break. I did it.

We stopped at the starting point and sat down for what Sherry calls our “Hungarian Lunch.” This consists of foods my grandmother would always bring out to the park when we would go on hikes or adventures: bread (in our case, fathead keto bread), salami, butter, peppers, radishes, and cheese. It’s amazing how simple this little meal is, and made up of very healthy foods that fill you up rather quickly. After finishing our lunch, we headed up to a local butcher who makes some amazing sausages without sugars or nitrites/nitrates, and we bought about 10 lbs to fill up our freezer.

I ended up taking a nap later that morning and found that my legs felt pretty normal afterward. I’m glad that Sherry was persistent in getting me to go out to the park and do some hiking. I think this is something we will start doing more of, including taking our mountain bikes out to some trails.

Today, Sherry and I will be hiking near Huntsville, TX. We will be taking along our own lunch of Paleo and/or Keto friendly foods as well as some grain-free bread that Sherry made yesterday.

I hope to post some photos later and a lunch review.

Today’s post is a bit on the light side because I’m literally writing this as we’re about to walk out the door. I usually pre-write my posts and have them queued up, but since my time in the field at Fort Hood, I haven’t had a chance to sit down and pre-write them, so here we are.

I hope to have something of higher quality back on this site starting tomorrow. Later today, I will post my photos here and also write about our lunch (which I’m expecting to be yummy and healthy)!

When people ask me why I eat the way I do (low carb), I tell them because I am on a low-carb/high-fat diet called Keto. They ask me when I plan on finishing it, and they often ask what my goals are before I can “Eat normally again.” These people miss the point of what a diet is. It’s not temporary; you have to adopt one that you can sustain for the rest of your life.

I eat a Paleo/Keto mix that works well for me. It’s allowed me to maintain my weight very close to my final goal, and while it fluctuates up and down a little, it’s within a range I can manage and that I am comfortable with. It also allows me to eat enough to get filled up, keeps me from getting cravings between meals, and more importantly, is filled with delicious foods that I enjoy.

Most people look at diets as something you do to lose weight. It typically involves restricting something or things from their regular eating patterns, and doing so for a short time until they reach some goal. Then, these people go back to eating the way they always ate (which is the way they got into the problem they are trying to solve: being overweight). What they fail to understand is that if you go back to your old way of eating, the results you get from that long-term diet is the same as it was when you did it before: you will gain weight. Oh, and more will come back than you actually lost.

I try to explain to people that my diet is a life-long commitment, and that I will be eating the way I do for the rest of my life. It’s basically the same rules as a Whole30 but a little relaxed from time to time within Paleo or Keto guidelines. The best part of me is that it works, it tastes good, and it doesn’t leave me wanting more or hungry. Diets are supposed to define what you eat, not the way you eat temporarily.

The night I came home from my five-day drill, my wife took me out for a nice dinner. This dinner was the stand-in for our anniversary which is in less than a week, so we decided to go ahead and allow foods and drinks we usually avoid: bread, alcohol, and sugar. I wondered what the net effect on my weight would be the next day, but the actual result was unexpected.

I ended up losing a pound.

Let’s back up a bit. I started the dinner with some bread and butter. One slice of bread was where I limited myself at first, because I didn’t want to fill up too soon. Afterward, I had a salad that had a nice vinaigrette with bacon and egg on spinach, after which we had some escargot that was served with some puff pastry. I ate not only three of those, but also dipped some bread into the melted butter and garlic. For the main course, I had a filet with asparagus, Brussels sprouts, and sauteed mushrooms. As I filled up prior to the main course, I ate about half of it and took the rest home for the following day’s dinner. We then decided to have some dessert which was Bananas Foster.

As for drinks, I had two martinis and finished the meal with a glass of 5-puttonyos Tokaji.

I fully expected to be up 2-3 lbs as per usual, but this time, I was down a pound. I don’t know how or why, but I didn’t swell or hold water like I thought I would. What did end up happening, though, was that I felt hot through the night and woke up a few times sweating. It seems that my body was having a hard time metabolizing all that sugar and was causing my body to heat up. I was able to sleep in the next day, though, which I think possibly either accounts for or at least contributed to the weight loss.