Category: Scoop

Overheard last week at lunch: “I’m not going to have a steak today because I’m trying to lose weight, so I’m going to have a salad and soup instead.” Then, when it was time to order, “I’ll have the deluxe salad with cheese, ranch, and extra croutons, please.” Her soup of choice? Beef barley soup.

There is so much wrong with what she ordered from a nutritional standpoint that I just sat there dumbstruck. This is what happens when we listen to the talk shows, Dr. Oz, and Oprah about what we should eat to lose weight. The salad she ate had more calories than my 6 oz filet and sweet potato that I ate for lunch. The salad I had before my steak was a Caesar with no croutons. Her soup had probably three times the calories of my salad.

Please, please, please don’t thin I’m judging her, because I’m not. I am sad for her. She’s wanting to eat right and lose weight yet she’s acting on bad information she has been given. Our sensationalist media and talk-show culture has fed her so much bad information that she truly believes she’s doing the right thing to lose weight.

I haven’t had a single meal that was salad-based since going Paleo. I have had some salads before meals, but not salads as my main meal. That’s because they don’t fill me up. All the food I eat is normal, delicious, and filling. I never interrupt anyone, especially strangers, about their food choices. That would be beyond rude. I do hope people find this blog, and heed my words. It is possible to lose weight without suffering, starving, or having to eat bland food. It’s called Paleo, and it’s delicious.

My wife and I both put on a similar amount of weight when we went to Spain for our vacation this year. Afterward, we both set out to adhere to our strict Paleo diet and to do everything necessary to lose the weight. We ate right, we both ran, and we both stayed away from anything non-Paleo. What was different, however, were the results. While I was able to get back to my pre-vacation weight within a week, it took her longer. Why?

Well, it turned out that her body was going through a natural process that only women go through. That meant she was retaining water. The result was that she was aggravated at her lack of weight loss while she watched me drop pounds as her own progress was slowed dramatically. It’s not fair, but it is what it is. I’m certain that once this cycle is complete, she will drop the weight quickly. She’s very strong willed and has been really good with sticking to Paleo-only foods.

The reason I mention it is because it’s nothing to be embarrassed or ashamed of, and it’s also something that you need to consider. Us guys don’t have to deal with the same issues, and our bodies are different. It’s unfair to compare progress when we don’t deal with the same factors. With that said, if you’re a woman and the man in your life is losing weight faster than you are, don’t get sad, depressed, or upset. We don’t deal with the same things that women have to deal with. We are super proud of you, and we are here to help and support you.

I’m beside myself. Literally. In the photo above, I’m over 312 lbs on the left and 174 lbs on the right. I know, the Photoshop job wasn’t perfect, but it gets the point across: I’ve changed a lot. When I was the guy on the left, I ate without limits, thought exercise was something I would never do let alone like, and that any thoughts of military service were long gone for me. I never dreamed that three years later, I’d be in fighting shape and back in the military.

Inside, I’m the same guy. It’s weird. I’ve recalibrated my mindset and and adopted a new, healthier lifestyle, but I’m the same guy. Last night, as we were going to sleep, I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror and I was checking out my stomach muscles that are increasingly becoming prominent. Sherry said, “I didn’t know you were so vain. Being thin brings that out in you.” I told her that I wasn’t vain, but that I still find it surprising that I am fit. It’s still weird to me.

She told me she’s used to her body now, and that it’s her new normal. For me, it’s still weird. It’s a good weird, but weird. Ultimately, I’m still the same person. I’ve just been on a roller coaster ride on the scale.

The guy on the left would have laughed hard if you told him back in 2014 that he’d be in the Army National Guard in 2017. He’d tell you that there was no way that could be true, and that he’d never do enough exercise to lose all the weight. He didn’t understand how weight loss worked back then. If only he’d have known, he could have joined the military a lot sooner.

I’ve seen people try and fail at this so often it makes my head spin. Ask 100 people the best way to lose weight, and I am certain that most would say exercise. The next largest group would say to diet, but in the modern sense of depriving ones self of calories for a short period of time until a target weight is attained after which they could return to their pre-diet eating habits.

I know people who have successfully used exercise to maintain a healthy weight. If you start with a healthy weight, it’s easier to maintain it through exercise, but at some point (typically as we turn 30), diet becomes far more important. Anyone who is in great shape will tell you that it’s a combination of diet and exercise that keeps them fit and trim.

I know others who have unsuccessfully used exercise alone to lose weight. This is the majority of anyone who has struggled with weight, unfortunately. Often, these same people also resorted to unhealthy or fad diets that promised great weight loss rates and amounts. These plans had initial success, but being restrictive and low in satiety, people fall of the wagon and gain back the weight they lost while even gaining back a bit more.

I know that cycle all too well, because I was one of those people.

You cannot exercise away a bad diet. If you are not careful with what you are putting into your body, you will never lose the weight. Let that sink in, because it’s the most basic truth that every weight loss company fails to tell you. Sure, they allude to it by saying, “Coupled with a healthy diet and exercise…” before making their unrealistic claims, but it’s in small print. It should be the cornerstone upon which all weight loss plans are built.

HEALTHY DIET.

I advocate Paleo because it works for me. It’s worked for my wife. It’s working for friends of mine. We have all seen varying degrees of success due to varying levels of adherence to the tenets, but even with the variances, I see it work. Does that mean Paleo is the only healthy diet? No, of course not, but there is much truth within the science of low-carb.

Do you like living? Do you want to be healthier? Lighter? More flexible? More mobile? Do some research. Find something based on good science that more than a few hundred people have succeeded with and that makes sense to you. I don’t care if it’s Paleo, Keto, Whole30, or whatever. Just do something to eat healthy. Make the change and commit to it. Only you can control what is going into your body which in turns will determine your health. Take charge of it and stop letting bad food get in.

I have written about how I ate non-Paleo food and how it affected my weight through water retention. What I didn’t talk about, however, is that I didn’t really gain a lot of what I would call long-term or permanent weight on this trip. This is due to two things.

1. Walking. So much walking. We did all the walking. 10 miles plus per day was the norm, and while it’s easy to eat more than the calories you expend, walking this much helped burn off at least some of the increased calorie intake.
2. Budgeting the bad-food intake. I consciously ate Paleo as often as I could to allow myself non-Paleo servings or meals.

In other words, I didn’t eat non-Paleo three meals a day. At most, it was one meal that had a serving or two of non-Paleo options. The rest of the time, I skipped the bread, the desserts, and the rice. It was easy to do, as a lot of food in Spain is surprisingly Paleo-friendly to begin with.

A little restraint goes a long way. Limiting myself to just a serving or two a day of non-Paleo foods went a long way to ensuring I didn’t gain a lot of permanent weight. Also, eating a reduced amount of the non-Paleo foods when I did eat them helped matters as well.

I always tell people: live your life. Experience new things. You don’t have to live without carbs forever. If you do have them, be reasonable, be smart, and find a way to fit it into your life without derailing everything. Treats are okay; just don’t make them the new normal.

My vacation wasn’t just a trip to Spain. I didn’t just get to see Madrid, Barcelona, Segovia, and Toledo. I also got to see how sugar, salt, potassium, and drinking a lot of alcohol affects my body’s water retention. Let’s just say it was both enlightening and frightening.

Our body is good at holding water. When your diet contains excess salt, sugar, and potassium, it will cause a reaction within your skin to store water. I’m not talking about edema, but a condition where (as best as I can understand it as a lay person) the cortisone in your body stores water. Weird, but true. And, it’s something I watched happen.

My trip began after a few days in Spain when I gradually allowed myself to eat foods that were higher in salt content than normal. I also began eating foods that were higher in carbs, and eventually, desserts with sugar in them. It’s not that I didn’t care: I did. It’s just that the more I thought about it, I was missing out on foods I really wanted to try, and these were likely once-in-a-lifetime opportunities to have these things. I figured I’d deal with the fallout later.

I didn’t expect to gain as much as I did. Two days before I left for Spain, I enlisted into the National Guard, and before my swearing in ceremony, they weighed me. I weighed in at 174 lbs. Fast forward two weeks: I weighed 189.9 lbs. That’s 15 lbs gained in 12 days.

Everything I read said that when you gain that much that fast, it’s mostly water weight, and that it will go away very quickly once you stop imbibing the added sugar, salt, and potassium. Well, I put this to the test, and sure enough, I dropped all but 5 lbs of it in two days. I’m sure that the rest is honestly-earned extra weight, but I also know that within a few weeks, it’ll also be gone.

My recent trip with water retention is likely over, and now I’m back into real weight loss territory, but it was an interesting (if not annoying) journey learning about how the body reacts to chemical input. It was also interesting to see how quickly the water retention subsided and how my body got back to normal.