Category: Scoop

It makes me sad when I read Facebook and see people I went to high school with or served in the Marine Corps with talk about their glory days of “Back then.” They make it sound as if those days long past were the pinnacle of their lives. For some, they readily admit that their lives have gone down hill since then. That really makes me sad for them.

I’ve prodded a few of these folks to tell me why they think things like work, school, marriages, even the birth of their children and other accomplishments don’t match their past experiences, and one thing struck me: many of these people see the past as their glory days because of the physical condition they were in. Whether it was the former high school athletes or the former active duty Marines, the thing they miss the most is their physical conditioning.

When I ask these very same people why they don’t just eat right and exercise, they tell me that it’s no use: they can never get back to their former perfect selves. Well, that is true. No matter how much I’d like, I will never have the body of my 21 year-old self. I may be able to run farther, faster, and be physically stronger, but my body looks older. My skin, my hair, the wrinkles; heck, all of it. I’m just an older guy now. And that’s perfectly okay with me. But back to the issue: why do they think they can’t get back in shape and get fit?

A lot of it has to do with the diet and fitness industries telling us time and time again to eat low-fat, grain-rich diets and get more exercise. People of my generation tried that, and the vast majority of us failed. Sure, there are some who can, regardless of their diet and exercise, stay thin. Those people are very fortunate, and quite rare. The rest of us pack on the weight when we eat lots of carbs and don’t get any exercise. The good news is that can change.

I hate reading about another classmate or Marine losing their life due to health problems that were either caused by or exacerbated by being overweight. This is something that is completely fixable and avoidable. I started at age 48, and I am now 50 and in the best shape of my life. I will turn 51 this year, and 51 year-old E.J. (that’s me) could definitely kick 24 year-old E.J.’s butt, both figuratively and literally!

My glory days are right now. I am happier now than I’ve ever been. I have an amazing wife who loves me, two great kids I adore, and a network of family and friends who make my life worth living. I am serving our community, our state, and our nation in the National Guard, and I am surrounded by motivating soldiers who keep me on my toes. To think that my life would be the postscript to any glory days in high school or the Marine Corps is laughable to me. They were, if anything, the prologue to an exciting, love-filled, and adventurous life. It may not have been the easiest road, but I wouldn’t have it any other way.

I kicked the sugar dragon.

Seriously.

Whether the sugar came in the form of grains, alcohol, or soft drinks, I quit them. Using that one crazy trick, I’ve been able to live a much healthier, fuller life.

Want to lose weight?

Let’s start with drinks. Stop drinking sodas. Stop drinking fruit juice. Stop drinking energy drinks or vitamin water. All of these things have sugar in them. If you saw just how much sugar was contained in some of these drinks, you’d be shocked. In some cases, the sugar content is so high, it’s almost to the point of saturation.

Next, let’s move to savory foods. Things like bread, pasta, pizza, chips, crackers, and just about anything in the center aisles of the supermarket have lots of sugar in them. Take a look at the nutritional information sometime. Why some foods have sugar in them (and as a second, third, or fourth ingredient) is because when fat is removed from foods, it tastes bland, so they have to replace it with something to make people think it tastes good. Enter our enemy: sugar.

Finally, there’s the easy to identify sweets: desserts, candies, donuts, and treats. The vast majority of these are full of sugar. What’s interesting to me is that American desserts are so over-sweetened as compared to the desserts of other cultures. I remember, at the height of my sugar consumption, my mother made some traditional Hungarian pastries for me, and I commented to her that I thought she didn’t add enough sugar to it because it wasn’t sweet. She replied to me that it was sweetened as she always had made it, and suggested that I ate too much sugar and was desensitized to sweetness. I scoffed at the time, but I think she was completely right. When eating the very same pastry this past Christmas, I found it to be plenty sweet; almost too sweet for me, now.

My crazy trick to losing weight: cut the sugar as much as you can. Some doctors go so far as to say that sugar is a toxin to humans. While I won’t go that far, I do believe that it is the root of our obesity epidemic. Coupled with the horrible advice recommending low-fat and grain-based diets, it’s a perfect storm for poor health.

Kick the sugar dragon. Life is amazing when you don’t have it on your back!

Another full night of sleep! That’s great news. It meant that my weight stayed the same, even after eating a pretty full dinner the night before.

Breakfast: Poached eggs, ham slices, and a waffle made of sweet potato. I know it sounds weird, but it was tasty and filling.

Lunch: A really delicious and spicy Paleo Jambalaya that Sherry makes. It has shrimp, sausage, and chicken in it and served over spaghetti squash.

Dinner: A bowl of butternut squash soup. This was a standard-sized soup bowl. I easily could have eaten another bowl because it was so delicious, but it did fill me up.

I’m going to start taking pictures of my meals starting tomorrow morning. I hope I remember! I will start showing what my serving sizes are.

As for my weight, it was the same today as yesterday. I will take that as a win!

The secret to losing weight is that there is no secret. We know how to do it. We’ve known for hundreds of years, even. Broken down simply, it is eat fewer calories than you take in. But, calories are not all created equally. Food that is easy to process will be stored more easily than food that is difficult to break down in our bodies. For that reason, it’s important to take in quality calories. That’s where whole, natural foods come in.

Can you eat wheat right off the blade? No. It gets stuck in your throat. I tried it as a kid, and I had wheat stuck in my throat for the most part of a day. It was an unpleasant experience, to say the least. It should have been a warning to me.

If you can eat it with nothing more than cutting and cooking, it’s most likely okay to eat. If you have to process it like wheat, rice, or sugar, chances are it’s not good for your body. But why would that be the case? Because our bodies were made to digest foods readily available to us: meat, vegetables, and fruits.

When we process foods, we make it much easier for our bodies to extract energy from. This is a great thing if you are running a marathon, but not so good if you are living anything other than a very active life. That means your body will extract the energy from the food with little effort and then need something to do with the excess energy. Our bodies take that extra energy and store it as fat. The more extra energy you put into your body, the more it stores it. Our bodies don’t want to be wasteful, so they hold on to every bit they get their “hands” onto.

So, to take it a step further, it’s not good enough to just eat fewer calories than  you expend because it’s difficult to limit calories alone. Calories in/calories out (CICO) diets fail the majority of the time because they don’t address the most difficult part of such diets: cravings.

Cravings come from the brain sending signals to the body to consume food to acquire energy. The problem comes in that sugar doesn’t suppress or even satisfy cravings; it actually intensifies them. So, the more cravings you experience and satisfy with sugar, the more cravings you will get. It’s a vicious cycle. It explains why I would literally be planning my next meal as I was eating one.

The secret I found was low-carb/high-fat (LCHF). By eating whole, solid, and good foods, I was able to lose 110 lbs in a year. I didn’t have to starve myself, and cravings went away within a week or two of starting my first Whole30.

If you’re looking for an easy way to lose weight, I hate to break it to you, but there is none. The multi-billion dollar diet industry isn’t in it for helping you. They are in it for the dollar. They sell ease and comfort when in reality, their products fall short of the promises and will leave you worse off than when you started. The truth is it takes some serious perseverance, motivation, and dedication to a healthy lifestyle to lose weight and to keep it off. Notice I didn’t say a fitness plan. That’s not necessary for losing weight. But the exercise industry won’t tell you that, either. They want you to try to sweat it all off. If you’re like I was, over 150 lbs overweight, there’s no amount of exercise that will get rid of that without changing one’s diet.

So, the secret is: eat good, whole, natural foods and avoid sugar, alcohol, grains, dairy, and soy. It works. And honestly, it’s no secret. It’s just not making anyone rich, so the info isn’t as easy to find or is often discredited.

I got a lot of sleep last night, and I felt great when I woke up. I had a friend come over to help me build some shelves for Sherry, and it was a busy day full of running up and down stairs, painting, drilling, cutting, and otherwise doing general construction. It turned out to be a good time, though.

Breakfast: Sherry made us two eggs sunny-side up and three slices of bacon. No fruit or veggies on purpose. With coffee.

Lunch: Sherry made us quite the dandy lunch consisting of two apple and chicken sausages, some red cabbage, and some zucchini. It turned out very well, and was delicious and filling.

Dinner: This was a surprise from left-field that was absolutely incredible. She made a chipotle and onion shrimp served with spiralized zucchini. It was probably one of the tastiest meals I’ve had in a long time. My friend, who doesn’t normally like vegetables, raved about how delicious the food was, and he said his wife needs the recipe. The coolest part: Sherry made it up tonight! I hope she will be posting this recipe to her site, soon. It’s worth trying!

I felt good all day. Even though I was running up and down stairs and active for a very long time, I felt really good. I got to bed very late due to playing video games, but Sherry let me sleep in, and I got enough rest.

That’s what I told myself one morning as I looked in the mirror and stepped out of the shower. I remember it as clearly as if it were this morning. I wanted to cry. The big guy looking back at me in the mirror looked old, tired, and completely out of shape. I didn’t recognize him. The eyes were there; the same eyes I’ve looked at since I was a kid. But the rest of the guy was someone else completely.

I had to make a change.

But with what I knew at the time, I didn’t think there was any way I could make the changes necessary to help me lose weight. With the education I received from public schools, the military, and all the ad campaigns through the years telling us how to lose weight and get fit, I was left a fat and unfit guy in his late 40’s with no prospect of making a meaningful impact on my unhealthy weight.

I was taught, “Low-fat! Eat more grains! Calories in/calories out! Get more exercise!” I tried all those things, and they all failed. Miserably. Each time I lost weight, I would eventually fall off the wagon and regain the weight I lost and then some. None of these “Sure fire” methods were working for me. Something was wrong with me; I was convinced of it.

So, I had resigned myself to an early death due to my unhealthy weight. I figured there was no use in fighting it any longer. I just didn’t have the energy to do it anymore. And then I learned about Whole30, the Paleo Diet, and the low-carb/high-fat diets.

That’s when everything changed.

When my cousin Sarah, a physician assistant, told me that I could lose weight and get healthy just by changing my diet and without exercise, I was skeptical. But, she told me what she did and how much weight she lost and how much healthier she was, and I have to say, the evidence was compelling. I trust her, so I decided to look into it some more. The more I read, the more I found that maybe there was something to this low-carb/high-fat diet, and that it would be worth giving it a shot. Sure, I’d have to give up some of my favorite foods, but I’d still get to eat other favorites, so what did I have to lose besides some weight?

A year later, I found myself 110 lbs lighter and starting to run as I began the process to enlist into the National Guard. Throughout the process of losing weight, I felt like somehow I had unlocked a cheat code to life (Cheat codes are codes used in computer games to allow you to make fast/easy/immediate without doing a bunch of work). I literally felt like I had hacked life. How else could I explain eating bacon and eggs for breakfast, sausage and veggies for lunch, and steak or ribs or pulled pork or lobster and veggies for dinner every now, never experiencing cravings between meals, and still losing weight steadily? What’s more, is that my health had improved remarkably. I was no longer diabetic, no longer had fatty liver disease, numbness in my feet had gone away, circulation in my feet improved, and my blood tests repeatedly came back normal. All because I changed my diet (and nothing more).

I want to say it again: All I did was change my diet.

Some people say that low-carb/high-fat diets are restrictive. They are, by definition, restrictive of sugar. That includes any source of sugar, whether that’s grains or certain fruits. So yes; these diets are restrictive, but they are not restrictive in a way that also restricts you to certain foods. As someone who follows the Paleo Diet, I avoid anything with added sugar, grains, legumes, soy, and alcohol. I can eat literally anything else, and there is more I can eat than I cannot.

Most people worry that being on a low-carb/high-fat diet means they can’t eat tasty and enjoyable foods. Well, they couldn’t be more wrong! I eat some of the tastiest, and most incredible food I’ve had in my life since going Paleo! My wife has made it her mission to find new and exciting, delicious foods for us to eat so we never get bored eating the same things over and over again. The downside is that I often have to lobby pretty hard to get her to repeat dishes that I really like. The Chipotle-Chorizo Meatloaf is a dish I could eat forever!

I wish I could go back into time and give myself the low-carb/high-fat talk when I was 24. It would have saved me a lifetime of difficulty with my weight, and would have kept me far healthier than I was. It would have allowed me to do so much more physically, and to really enjoy more outdoors with my kids.

You don’t have to live fat anymore. You don’t have to feel helpless. There are diets out there that you can adopt long-term that allow you to eat delicious foods that you make (no need to buy a subscription or packages of foods) and that fill you up and keep you from getting between-meal cravings. Look up Whole30, the Paleo Diet, Keto, low-carb/high-fat, or Atkins. Any of these will really, honestly, and truly go a long way to getting you healthy, and as a bonus side-effect, will help you lose weight.

Not much sleep again last night. My plan was to remedy that in the evening. Otherwise, still feeling great, still feeling energized, and still feeling strong. I wasn’t able to run the day before due to attending a funeral, but my plan was to run after work and before friends came over for dinner and TV watching (our Friday tradition).

Breakfast: Two eggs sunny-side up and two slices of sugar-free bacon. No fruits or veggies by choice.

Lunch: Sherry’s amazing Whole30 chili. I can eat this stuff for every meal for the rest of my life. It’s delicious, and satisfying.

Dinner: We decided to take our friends to a new local favorite: Nadia’s. The food there is all natural and made from whole foods, and it’s a great place to go to get a healthy meal. I had the Kafta kebab and some shawarma served with some grilled vegetables and a green salad. It was tasty as always, and filled me up. I almost felt I ate too much.

The following morning, my weight was at its lowest all year: 168.3 lbs. I’m down almost 10 lbs in two weeks! I know, I know: you’re not supposed to be weighing yourself during a Whole30, but I do. It has been teaching me a lot about how my body reacts to certain foods in type and volume. This was surprising for me, however. I thought it would take me much longer to drop this much weight on this Whole30. I’m pretty happy about it!

I am not a person who snacks. I never really was, but during the holidays, I developed a pretty bad habit: I’d go to where Sherry had cookies and brownies stacked up in boxes, and I’d eat some whenever I felt like it. Why? Because she made them, and it was the holidays.

The end result was I developed a bit of a sugar craving problem that I am taking care of with this Whole30. The other side effect is that I had to deal with some cravings between meals. Most of these, I can get rid of by taking my mind off of eating by drinking some coffee, tea, or water, or making my mind busy by writing another blog post, doing some work, or reading an article or book. Anything that engages my mind normally takes my mind off food.

But for the times that the aforementioned strategies don’t work, I have some tricks up my sleeve to sate the cravings: nuts. I particularly like almonds or cashews. Raw, unsalted, nuts. I grab a handful (6-8 nuts) at a time and I eat them one at a time. I completely eat one nut before eating the next, and continue until they’re gone. I find that typically by the time I’m through the handful of nuts, my cravings are gone for at least another hour or more.

I also like freeze-dried blueberries, and I’ll eat about 3-5 of these. For whatever reason, the small amount of these little freeze-dried blueberries typically does the trick for me. I’ve also been known to grab a cooked slice of bacon and eat it slowly. That little bit of protein and fat goes a long way to making the cravings go away.

Day 9 was an interesting one, to say the least. I had fewer hours of sleep than I normally prefer, yet I felt energized and wide awake. Also, my weight was at its lowest again for the third day in a row, and considering I ran last night and did my push ups, my muscles feel remarkably good.

My meals for the day were:

Breakfast: Two eggs sunny-side up and two slices of bacon with coffee. I know, the photo shows ham and eggs. It’s a photo I took a few months back because I got right into my food before I could snap a photo. I think it’s a pretty picture, though.

Lunch: Moroccan lamb roast with mashed cauliflower. This is a new recipe that I really enjoy, and I hope Sherry puts it into our rotation. I can’t say enough of how much I like this dish!

Dinner: Sherry and I went out for dinner to a local Mexican restaurant and had a grilled snapper dish that was served on a bed of spinach with grilled vegetables on the side. It was amazing! Best of all, it was completely Whole30 compliant! We left satisfied, and it was absolutely delicious!

It’s a treat to be able to go to a restaurant and eat Whole30 compliant foods, but if you look hard enough, typically you can find at least a few dishes on the menu of restaurants that actually prepare their food from scratch.

 

I don’t know what motivates you, but I know what motivates me. I love my family, and I love my friends, and doing anything that hurts them goes against everything that is important to me. When I realized that my being overweight and unhealthy was affecting more than just me, it made me really take a look at my priorities. It had never occurred to me that being overweight and unhealthy was being selfish.

It’s not that my being overweight was affecting anyone directly. Well, unless you consider friends having to wait for me when we vacationed together and I needed to catch my breath anytime we climbed stairs or a big hill. Or unless you consider friends and family needing to make sure they picked places for us to go that could accommodate someone of my size and lack of fitness. Or of course, unless you consider the fact that I wasn’t going to live much longer being as unhealthy as I was, and I was going to impact them negatively through an early departure.

There’s a cute movie called, “Blast from the Past” with Brendan Frasier and Alicia Silverstone (with an amazing supporting cast that includes Christopher Walken, Sissy Spacek, and even Nathan Fillion). In one of the scenes, Troy (played by Dave Foley) is explaining to Eve (played by Alicia Silverstone) that Adam (Brendan Frasier’s character) defined what a gentleman is.

Troy: You know, I asked him about that. He said, good manners are just a way of showing other people we have respect for them. See, I didn’t know that, I thought it was just a way of acting all superior. Oh and you know what else he told me?
Eve: What?
Troy: He thinks I’m a gentleman and you’re a lady.
Eve: [disgusted] Well, consider the source! I don’t even know what a lady is.
Troy: I know, I mean I thought a “gentleman” was somebody that owned horses. But it turns out, his short and simple definition of a lady or a gentleman is, someone who always tries to make sure the people around him or her are as comfortable as possible.
Eve: Where do you think he got all that information?
Troy: From the oddest place – his parents. I mean, I don’t think I got that memo from mine.

This sticks in my mind, because I was taught by my parents to be a gentleman. It was a “Thing,” so to speak, and it was a goal to which I was expected to aspire. To that end, I was to always be kind, courteous, and to consider other people’s comfort above my own. It was my duty, as a gentleman, to make sure people around me are as comfortable as possible. It was being considerate.

When my health and weight impacted others in negative ways, it was incumbent on me to change that. It was unfair of me to expect others to continue to cater to special needs that were created through my lack of caring about myself. While I was being defiantly content with being overweight, I was negatively impacting my family and friends.

Ultimately, it was the love for my family and my friends that caused me to seek out information about getting healthy and losing weight. It was my desire to be around as long as possible for them that I undertook what has become the most important journey of my life: staying healthy. That decision led me to places I never expected (enjoying running and joining the National Guard) and has made my life richer.

It wasn’t easy, and the changes didn’t happen overnight. But looking back now, it does seem easy. It feels like the changes occurred overnight. It’s the weirdest thing. Going through the process felt like it was taking forever, yet now, being in maintenance mode, it feels like I am where I am supposed to be, and that the 20 years I was overweight were more difficult than my life is today.

Find your motivation to get healthy, or to stay healthy, and draw upon it when you need it. In those moments when you are tempted or are having problems with motivation, think about your motivators. For me, it’s thinking about those I love and how my health affects them. Whatever it is, use it and cling to it. Sometimes, it’s the difference between success and failure.