One of my biggest inspirations in health has been my sister. She has been into fitness for a long time now, and has always been the model of health and fitness to me and everyone in the family. She regularly participates in Spartan runs, mud runs, fun runs, 5k’s, and all kinds of other runs. In the past few years, she’s even gotten involved with body building and has won some awards!
This girl is only 2 years younger than me!!!
I hope one day she and I can do some of these runs together. I won’t be doing any body building contests, but running? I can do that! We used to do lots of stuff together as kids; it’d be nice to do so again as adults.
I wish her a HAPPY HAPPY BIRTHDAY, and many more years of health and fitness!
She doesn’t just look good; she hits harder than a Mack truck, too!
Happy Mothers Day, everyone! Mr. Paleo Marine got me a really awesome Mother’s Day gift this year – an Anova Precision Cooker for sous vide. I’ve never tried sous vide cooking before, and honestly I’ve been a bit intimidated by it… anything with a fancy French name sounds complicated in my book. Turns out, there was nothing to be afraid of – in fact, I’ll say that it rivals the Instant Pot in its simplicity, with the convenience of a slow cooker.
After spending some time reading up on sous vide in general and agonizing over what to try first, I decided to go big or go home, and break in the new toy with lamb chops. I’m a big fan of lamb, but I am always afraid of preparing it myself for fear of drying out an ruining a fairly expensive chunk of meat. But it was Mother’s…
When I did my first Whole30, I made sure I slept a minimum of eight hours a night. At the end of my 30 days, I had lost a solid 20 lbs. I kept my sleep pattern up for the next year, and lost an average of 10 lbs per month. Then, once I hit around 175 lbs, I let my sleep numbers drop to about 6.5-7 hours a night, and my weight loss stopped. I had also allowed a post-dinner treat (called a dessert) to also come back into my diet which didn’t help matters. My weight hovered between 175-177 lbs for five months. After eliminating the dessert and ensuring I got my minimum of 8 hours of sleep each night, my weight loss kicked back in, and in the past month, I’m down 8 lbs to a solid 166.9 lbs. That’s just within TWO POUNDS from my FINAL GOAL!!!
In my experience, the following is a list of factors to successful weight loss (in order of importance):
Diet. Eat good foods in the right amounts. Get rid of foods that are not good to you.
Sleep. I put this higher than exercise, because you don’t need exercise to lose weight, but you can’t lose as much weight as quickly without sleep.
Exercise. Move for 30 minutes. Doesn’t have to be running or hard cardio; just get the heart rate up for 30 solid minutes every day, or every other day.
I can’t say enough how important sleep is to losing weight. Some people think eating small meals throughout the day is the key to losing weight. Others think that drinking lots of water throughout the day is the key. There are those who think eating low-fat is the key. Others calorie count their way through a day in their bid to lose weight. I contend that a good diet (like Paleo!) coupled with exercise and SLEEP is the key.
An amazing pen and gouache drawing of me by Redditor /u/Jastyoot.
To the uninitiated, I may appear grumpy. Well, that’s not true. I’m actually quite a cheerful and happy guy. What I also am, however, is blunt. I don’t sugar-coat things, and I don’t beat around the bush. If it needs to be said I will say it. Sometimes, with tact, and sometimes with less tact. I always try to be as nice as I can without watering down the message.
This blog is an extension of me. It’s not my sole means of communications with the world. Like many people, I have Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and others. Even if you were to look at all the social media that I post, it still wouldn’t really give you a really good picture of who I am until you put that together with who I am in person.
The past few weeks have seen me posting here on this blog on topics that exasperate me from time to time. It may seem like I am unhappy or feeling frustrated all the time. Nothing could be further from the truth. Many of my blog posts are the result of an interaction or a conversation and I feel inspired to write about it. I typically don’t post more than once a day unless there’s something important or worthy of an unscheduled post, so it goes into the queue. It’s how I stay on top of ensuring there’s always new content here.
I’m not frustrated, upset, stressed, or even cranky. Heck, I’m actually pretty overjoyed with the progress people I know are making. They’ve changed their lives for the better, and they continue to see positive movement in reducing their weight, getting healthier, and in some cases, even getting fit. That’s incredibly satisfying, and I am humbled when they thank me.
There’s an old saying: “Tell it to the Marines.
This legend ‘Tell it to the Marines’ goes back to 1664, when Charles 2nd was king of England. A ship’s Master returned from a long cruise and told the King a sea story he couldn’t believe. “Fish that could fly like birds?” the Merry Monarch exclaimed. “I have my doubts!” “Nay sire it is true,” said Sir William Killgren, Colonel of the new British Marine Regiment raised that year. “I have myself seen flying fish many a time in the Southern Waters. I vouch for the truth of this strange tale, Your Majesty.” The King thought it over. At last he turned to Samuel Pepys, the secretary of the Admiralty. “Mr Pepys,” he said, “No class of our subjects hath such knowledge of odd things on land or sea as our Marines. Hereafter when we hear a yarn that lacketh likelihood, we tell it to the Marines, for if they believe it, then we shall know it is true.”
I tell it like I see it; no more, no less. I don’t make up my information; it’s based off of what I have experienced first-hand. This may or may not work for you, but it’s worked for me.
I’m not talking about being a kid or a teenager. I’m talking about when I was in my 20’s. I felt energetic, flexible, mobile, and ready to take on the world. After I turned 30, I remember things feeling more sluggish, my body was harder to move around, and my energy levels began to drop. By my 40’s, I was feeling like the proverbial, “Old man,” especially in the mornings. I thought that what I was feeling was a normal progression of age. What I didn’t realize was that it was actually signs of declining health and fitness.
As I began losing weight, my energy levels shot up. Surely, it wasn’t due to the lost weight but to the better diet. However, as I continued to lose weight, things like flexibility, mobility, and fitness started improving. I felt better, had fewer aches and pains, and even felt mentally sharper. Things started falling into place more easily and more often. Then it struck me; this is how I felt when I was young.
We all accept aging as something inevitable and unavoidable (because DUH, it is inevitable), but the way we feel as we age is up to us*. We decide what we put into our bodies, and we decide how much exercise we get. We are the gatekeepers of our health and fitness. If you don’t want to feel sluggish and tired and dragging, then do something about it. If you lament your loss of breath when you climb a flight of stairs, do something about it. Nobody can or will do it for you. This is on your shoulders, and you have no-one to blame but yourself.
I feel like I’m in my 20’s again. Sure, there are times when I do feel an ache or pain that is legitimately caused by age, but those days are far fewer and in between than they used to be. Best yet; often, when I run, the ache or pain melts away. It turns out that a lot of those little aches or pains are just the body wanting more activity.
*There are people who develop physical ailments, contract diseases, or suffer from a natural breakdown of body function due to the aging process. I know that we can’t exercise or eat away genetics or disease. However, I do feel that diet and exercise can mitigate many issues people face when aging.
Those drinks from Starbucks are anything but good for you, filled with sugar, sugar, dairy, and more sugar. They are literally the antithesis of everything in my diet, and is a symbol of what’s wrong with our American diet. We don’t see sugar for the harmful and dangerous substance that it truly is.
I didn’t try the Unicorn, and I sure as heck won’t be trying the Mermaid. Why? Aside from the fact they are filled with sugar and dairy, they don’t appeal to me. I used to drink my sugar with coffee and cream, but now that I’ve weaned myself from the sugar addiction, the last thing I want is to drink anything that has sugar in it. Not just because it’s not good for me, but because I find any drink with artificial or even natural sweeteners to be far too sweet for my palate now.
One of the strange but welcome side-effects of having cut sugar from my diet is that I can taste the natural sweetness in many foods that I thought either had lost their sweetness or weren’t sweet at all. Strawberries, cantaloupe, raspberries, blueberries, and apples are among the foods I thought weren’t as sweet as they were in my childhood. Then I cut sugar out of my diet and I found that all those fruits (and more!) are just as sweet, if not sweeter than I remembered them to be. Plums? WOW! Even more amazing. All it took was for me to take added sugar out of my diet.
If you find strawberries and other fruits to be bland, it’s likely because your diet is filled with sugar and your tongue doesn’t register the natural sweetness anymore. It’s why Starbucks makes these sugar-saturated drinks. It’s what they need to do to keep you hooked on these liquid fat grenades.
I will pass on these (and the vast majority of) Starbucks drinks, and if you want to be healthy, I recommend you do the same.
It’s coming up next weekend in Austin, TX, and this time, we’re going with our friends Kenny and Elaine. Sherry and I went last year, and we had a blast! We not only learned some new things about Paleo, but we found countless food products, ingredients, and even toothpaste that fit into our Paleo lifestyle. I ate a lot of food that day and bought a lot of stuff to take with us. Many of those things have found their way into our daily lives (I’m looking at you, The Dirt!) and I look forward to buying more of some other items we enjoyed last time and stocked up on.
We may also sit in on some panels if we have time and if they are interesting. To us, the best part was finding foods we could eat without sabotaging our lifestyle and health and the many sources of ingredients and products that are available but sometimes difficult to find. Fortunately, as the Paleo Diet gains popularity and momentum, products are getting easier to find. Paleo|f(x) is definitely going to be fun, and I look forward to posting photos and reviews of products we find there this coming weekend!
This past weekend I finally had a full Sunday to do my cooking thing, and it’s been quite a while, so I had lots of new things to try. Recently we’ve had such lovely cool evenings that E.J. and I have been sitting out on the front porch with the Buddy monster and just relaxing – him with his pipe, and me with Pinterest. Pinterest really is a fun way to collect ideas for Paleo recipes, because 1) there are lots of them already out there with wonderful mouth-watering photos and 2) because sometimes you find a mouth-watering photo for something that isn’t Paleo, but it wouldn’t be that hard to adjust. Here are the Pinterest wins I had this week:
Paleo Chicken Pot Pie – This is apparently one of Brendon’s favorite foods, and I never really knew it. I remember tolerating pot pie as a kid – mostly…
I was reading about Drew Carey today. He was a pretty heavy guy in the beginning of his career (he’s also a former Marine) and is now quite svelte at the helm of The Price is Right. His transformation is nothing short of amazing. For me, it’s even more amazing that he allegedly did it through exercise.
He hit the gym 6 times a week with 2-3 days per week doing intense cardio. This star lost a total of 100 pounds and now looks amazing as hosting one of the most popular TV game shows “The Price is Right!”
Ummm… wow. I couldn’t ever do that. First, I don’t have the available time to work out 2-3 days per week doing intense cardio or hitting the gym 6 times a week. Second, my muscles would explode, my heart would have given out, and I probably would have died somewhere along the way.
Weight loss can be done without exercise and without diet pills, powders, shakes, patches, or surgery. I know it can, because I did it, my wife did it, and no fewer than six of my best friends are all doing it. Now my son is also on the bandwagon and has lost over 10 lbs in the past few weeks. We all did it without exercise.
All this weight loss was done without exercise.
Whole30 and/or following the Paleo Diet is all it took. And before you think Paleo is a deprivation or starvation diet (and you couldn’t be more wrong!), it limits only the following:
Refined sugar and artificial sweeteners
Grains
Dairy
Legumes and Soy
Alcohol
Now, I know what you’re thinking because I had the same thoughts when initially looking at Paleo: but I love so many foods with those things in them! Guess what; me too! But I love being healthy, fit, and no longer diabetic SO MUCH MORE! Besides, while most people concentrate on the foods they can no longer have when looking at Paleo, I suggest you focus on the things you can still enjoy that you love today:
Steak
Sausage*
Bacon*
Ribs*
Brisket
Chicken
Lobster
Fish
Shrimp
Vegetables
Fruits
*With no sugar added
Honestly, there is so much out there available to me to eat that I no longer miss those things I’m not supposed to eat. Seriously; the food I eat is so delicious that I honestly don’t miss many foods. And when I absolutely must have something like a chocolate tort or a hot dog, there are Paleo options available that are quite amazing (albeit either time consuming to prepare or with a higher than I’m comfortable with carb content).
Don’t think you have to exercise yourself to death to get the body of a celebrity; you don’t. You just have to eat right. It’s not easy, but it is simple. Take a look at Whole30 and The Paleo Diet. For recipe ideas (and to get a glimpse into the kinds of foods my wife and I eat at home), check out my wife Sherry’s blog.
This is something I get asked pretty often once people become more comfortable with me and feel like they can ask me more personal questions. I’m okay with it, as I’m not the most modest person when it comes to body image. “Do you have a lot of extra skin since you lost so much weight?” Fair question, and it was one of my major concerns when I started on this weight loss and fitness journey. The short answer is, “Not really.”
I have seen many photos and heard accounts of people who had lost 100+ lbs and they have flabs of skin hanging off of them. These people typically lost their weight very quickly, likely a result of either gastric bypass surgery or a lap band. These people will lose weight very quickly, and as a result, the skin doesn’t have time to shrink over the lost body mass.
Since I lost my weight naturally and without the aid of surgery or other outside sources, my loss was at a slower, albeit rather steady pace. I lost about 6-10 lbs/month on average which, while it seems very vast, in the grand scheme of things, is considered a healthy and safe rate of loss. As a result, my body has done a decent job of shrinking the skin around my reduced frame. Is it perfect? Of course not; I have lost over 140 lbs so far, and it’s hard for the body to shrink the skin that much within a year and a half. However, the amount of extra skin I have is pretty negligible, and I can see it continue to shrink monthly. I am not sure if my running is helping, or if it’s just a natural process taking place, but there is more and more of my muscles showing and less and less skin surrounding it.
WARNING: The following is a photo of me without clothing on. It is definitely not safe for work, and I recommend not opening it anyplace where nudity is frowned upon. I am covered from showing anything graphic, but I am otherwise not wearing any clothing. I am posting this photo only to demonstrate that you can lose 140 lbs in 18 months and not have a lot of skin hanging off your body.
![IMG_2724[1]](https://paleomarine.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/img_27241.jpg?w=318&h=424)
me a really awesome Mother’s Day gift this year – an Anova Precision Cooker for sous vide. I’ve never tried sous vide cooking before, and honestly I’ve been a bit intimidated by it… anything with a fancy French name sounds complicated in my book. Turns out, there was nothing to be afraid of – in fact, I’ll say that it rivals the Instant Pot in its simplicity, with the convenience of a slow cooker.
as a kid – mostly…
Paleo Marine 