Paleo Marine

I often get asked for recipes, product links, or recommendations, etc. My wife put together a great list of products we use and enjoy on her blog. I thought I’d post a link to it from here so you, too, can check them out.

Full disclosure: she does get a small percentage (which does not raise the price on Amazon!) if you buy from the links she provides.

I’m a loser.

Stop laughing.

But seriously, I’m a loser again. For the past two days, I’ve lost weight, and it feels great to be on the losing part of my weight loss journey. In an earlier post, I talked about how I have a cycle that goes something like this: lose weight for 10 days, then lose size for 10 days. Wash, rinse, repeat. Well, I’m done with the 10 days size loss and back to the 10 days of weight loss. It’s especially satisfying after a day of eating well but comfortably. I ate three meals every day this week, and each was delicious and satisfying. The important part for me is the satisfying. I never felt hungry or as if I didn’t eat enough after each meal. My weight is now 204.5 lbs (85+ lbs lost since September 1, 2015!). Just 4.6 lbs to Onederland (for those of us who weigh over 200 lbs and are working our way down into the 100’s, we call it “Onederland.”).

My body fat percentage is also down a lot now: 24.1%. When I started, it was over 47%. That’s a staggering loss! I’m two belt holes from needing a size 34 belt, and my 36″ trousers feel very normal and almost loose now. My size large t-shirts don’t fit me quite as snug now. The size large Duluth Trading shirts I love are almost too big now. I may need to buy a medium to see how it fits.

Every one of those little facts is a little victory for me, and helps me keep my head right and stick to being a loser. Sometimes, it’s good to be a loser.

As I sat at the doctors office waiting to take my physical, I thought about the changes in lifestyle I have made recently. These changes weren’t easy, but they were necessary. I know a lot of people tell me that they could never do what I do. I’ve discussed that in the past. But what I thought about was the fact that it wasn’t nearly as hard as I had made it out to be. I used to be one of those people who would say I could never get rid of breads, pasta, etc. Now, I find that the sacrifice was actually quite trivial as compared to the better health and weight loss.

It helps that Sherry makes amazing foods for us. It helps that we are in this together and we are accountable to each other. It helps that we are there to support each other when we are psychologically beaten or feeling down. It helps that success breeds success; our experience with Whole30 was so successful that transitioning into Paleo has been easy and actually, quite nice.

We ultimately decide how we want to live. Sherry and I decided we no longer wanted to be fat people who were out of breath, out of shape, didn’t fit into booths at restaurants (me), and generally just didn’t look good. These things were all within our power to change, and we’ve done that and we continue to march forward. I have 40 more lbs to lose to my final goal, but now, it seems like an attainable goal versus a fantasy.

All it takes is for you to commit to making the lifestyle change and make it permanent. Once you do that, things fall into place.

 

This is a brilliant article about how health professionals and scientists actually helped bring about the health disaster we’re currently facing through bad advice rooted in the flawed hypothesis of a scientist at the University of Minnesota following the heart attack of President Eisenhower. I highly suggest reading it.

Here is an important excerpt from the article: “…It is a biological error to confuse what a person puts in their mouth with what it becomes after it is swallowed. The human body, far from being a passive vessel for whatever we choose to fill it with, is a busy chemical plant, transforming and redistributing the energy it receives.” A person does not get fat from eating fat. Our body has to create that fat in a way that is efficient; it takes sugar and turns it into fat. “Cholesterol, present in all of our cells, is created by the liver. Biochemists had long known that the more cholesterol you eat, the less your liver produces.” Think about that last sentence. Re-read it if you have to. This is key.

The Reader’s Digest version (a gunnery sergeant I used to work for in the Marines would say  that) is that humans have been consuming and digesting fats since we’ve been around; it’s even in breast milk. Sugar, on the other hand, has only entered our diet in the past 300 years which, from an evolutionary standpoint, is very recent. The health issues we are seeing that have cropped up in the past 60 years is directly related to our consumption of sugar. It is not fat, as believed, that is the culprit. Worse yet, a scientist in 1972 tried to warn us and he was run out of his field, ridiculed, and eventually discredited. Only now are we realizing how right he was and how wrong everyone else was.

Here’s something pretty convincing to me: “France, the country with the highest intake of saturated fat, has the lowest rate of heart disease; Ukraine, the country with the lowest intake of saturated fat, has the highest. When the British obesity researcher Zoë Harcombe performed an analysis of the data on cholesterol levels for 192 countries around the world, she found that lower cholesterol correlated with higher rates of death from heart disease.”

But don’t take my word for it. READ THE ARTICLE. The life you save may be your own.

Fat people are easy marks. We don’t like being fat, we would like to get thinner and healthier, and we want to do the least amount of work in the least amount of time to lose the weight. Don’t lie to me or to yourself by saying otherwise. Our lack of exercise and, in many (but not all) cases, our lack of self-control when eating is what led us to where we are now. Seriously.

Now that we got that out of the way, let’s get to the solution: eat less and move more. It is that simple. Anyone who says otherwise is lying to themselves. This is where someone invariably says, “But I have a thyroid problem…” or some other such ailment. Well, I’m here to tell you that I know people first-hand and very close to me who used to say the same things before they lost 50+ lbs in six months. They used to rest on their excuses and be content with being unhealthily heavy*.

What happened to make them lose weight? Mindset.

It wasn’t a grueling workout routine or a restrictive diet. It was reasonable movement and a reasonable diet that eliminated added sugars, high-carb foods, and focused on eating healthy alternatives.

It is easy.

People don’t believe me. They say they can’t give up certain foods like breads, rice, or beans, yet they complain that they can’t lose weight. They don’t want to commit to a little bit of exercise every day yet complain they can’t lose weight.

You get nothing in life for free unless you are Paris Hilton or Kim Kardashian. For the rest of us, to get anything at all, you have to work for it. Weight loss is no different. There’s good news, though. By losing weight, you do get something for free: better health.

---

 

*Yes, there are people with legitimate health issues that preclude them from losing weight the way most people can and they should be working with a doctor, PA, or nurse to find a way for them to lose weight, if that’s even possible. Reading blogs isn’t going to help.

I know people who use supplements, diet drinks, powders, patches, etc in their efforts to lose weight. I won’t tell anyone what to do, but I will make recommendations based on information I have and my own personal experience with losing weight.

First things first: if you’ve read any other post of mine, you know I did a Whole30 followed by a Keto-heavy Paleo diet. These are not for everyone, but they worked great for me (and are working great for many other friends of mine while it didn’t work for a friend of Sherry’s).

Second, I haven’t used any supplements, diet drinks, patches, etc in my journey to becoming healthier. I’ve used diet and limited exercise alone to achieve the weight loss and improved health.

My recommendation: becoming healthy and losing weight can and should only be done one way: naturally. Our bodies are made to process food and to maintain a healthy weight as long as what we put into our bodies is healthy and natural. When we move around, we not only burn calories, but our bodies are kicked into “use energy” mode (different from actually using the energy). There are no short-cuts to losing weight. None. Anyone who advertises or advocates a short-cut or a sure-fire way to lose weight other than diet and exercise are being disingenuous at best, and probably trying to make a buck at your expense.

Don’t waste your money or your time. My next blog entry will talk about what the real solution is.

 

I used to hate it when people would tell me about their fitness routines or their diet because the last thing I wanted to do was give up delicious foods that I loved or make puddles of sweat. I used to think that those people were pretentious and full of themselves and pushing their lifestyle on me. The sad part was that I needed the pushing. I was horribly and frighteningly obese.

When my cousin Sarah told me about Whole30 and Paleo, I was intrigued mostly because she told me that she was able to get healthy (and she was already very athletic!) and even lose weight just by changing the types of foods she ate. When I presented this information to Sherry, she told me I was crazy and there was no way she was going to stop drinking milk, eating cheese, and ice cream. I told her, “That’s fine, but if we don’t do this together, I can’t do it alone, and if I don’t do this, I’m going to die way too soon.” Sure, I laid the passive-aggressive guilt on her, but I wasn’t being dramatic. I had reached a point with my health that things were starting to go wrong, and unless I made a dramatic change, my health would pass the point of no return and I would die.

Sherry finally agreed to do a Whole30 with me, but with the caveat that she had to have her milk in the mornings. I told her that would be fine. She began reading everything I forwarded to her about Whole30, and then she began reading about it on her own, doing her own research. We started our Whole30 the day after her birthday, and within three days, she told me she was going to try cutting milk out of her diet as well. Then a crazy thing happened: She found that she had a food allergy to milk.

That made her a believer in the program more than the weight loss or any other health benefit. That her blood work was the best she’d had in years was icing on the cake. The strangest part is she never knew she had the allergy. She was no longer bloated all the time with inflammation.

I began losing the weight quickly, and in my mind, effortlessly. I won’t discount the amount of mental discipline required to do a Whole30 and then to stick with a Paleo diet in the face of social events, going out to dinners, parties, etc, but compared with running, lifting weights, and Zumba classes, I prefer the mental discipline. Sherry, on the other hand, is doing a combination of diet and exercise and it’s working for her. She enjoys the running, and that’s great! I wish I could enjoy running, but I just can’t. I do enjoy riding my bike, but I get bored very easily and it, more than anything, is what derails my exercise efforts. But I digress.

I lost 20 lbs in the first 30 days as we transitioned to the Paleo diet. I know that not everyone loses 20 lbs in their first month of a new diet, but you have to remember that I was a VERY heavy guy. After almost seven months, I’m only now at the weight many people start a diet at when they say they need to lose 40 lbs.

I felt great. I felt amazing. I felt like I actually had a chance at meeting my first goal of losing 50 lbs by Christmas. The best part: I never felt like I was suffering, starving, or being cheated out of delicious foods. Sherry did a great job of finding foods we could eat that tasted great. So much so, in fact, that for the first time in a long time, I would eat a meal and be completely sated. I no longer had cravings to snack or to eat between meals. I know a lot of that has to do with cutting the processed sugar out of our diets, but it was all new sensations that I was very happy to experience.

Over the next two months as we approached the holidays, we were full of trepidation: How were we going to navigate the parties and hosting our own holiday meals? How would we get through meals where nearly everything on the table is “Off plan” for us? Fortunately, with some planning and research, we were able to find out which of the foods were okay for us, and if none of those were available, which were the least evil. We ate food at every party we went to, and some of it was even food we shouldn’t eat (birthday cake, for example), but for the first time in my life, I was very mindful of everything I ate, and I made sure that if it was bad food, I ate only a very little. It worked. My weight loss continued, and I never tanked my weight loss.

Christmas came and the scales rewarded me with 50 lbs lost. I was elated! Looking back at pictures, I remember feeling so much slimmer when in fact, I was still by modern standards, still a very large guy (but I wasn’t THAT large anymore!).

January brought renewed hope for reaching my next goal: weighing 175 by my birthday. January went well (over 12 lbs lost that month alone) but February was the bane of my existence. I went for nearly three weeks without losing a single pound. However, the strange part was that while I didn’t lose weight, I was losing inches off my waist. I went from 40’s at Christmas to wearing 36’s by March. To put that into perspective, I was wearing 34’s the entire time I was in the Marines. I tried on jackets I had in the Marines, and they all fit me now. While I’m heavier than when I was a Marine, I’m almost the same size.

As I approach my second major goal, I still believe I can do it. I am on-track to make 175 lbs by July 5th, and my resolve is just as strong, if not stronger, than it has ever been. Now that I’ve lost over 84 lbs since September 1, I not only feel different, but I really look different now. It’s so drastic that I pause in front of mirrors as I pass them because it is so strange to see the person looking back at me from the other side. It’s a face I remember from long ago, only a little older and grayer on the sides, but a face I’ve missed for a long time. It is seeing that face that makes me want to talk to people about what I’m doing and about my journey. I want everyone who is overweight like me to feel the way I feel when I see my old face looking back at me.

It’s not about vanity or about wearing fashionable clothing (although the latter is pretty darned cool!). It’s about being healthy and liking who you are. I know we all tell ourselves that we love ourselves regardless and that we have to be good on the inside and the outside doesn’t matter. Well, we’re sausages. Even though we don’t see what’s on the inside, the outside is a direct reflection of what’s inside. I know from experience that I was unhappy with myself because of how I looked; it’s not how I felt I should look. On top of that, I felt horrible because of weak knees that were always sore, not being able to clip my toe nails or tie my shoes without holding my breath, and not even being able to sit on the floor because my stomach was so big. This is not how people should live. Our bodies were not designed for this; they were designed to be thinner.

Now that I’m in the last third of my total weight loss journey, I find myself being asked A LOT about how I did it. Did I use pills? Did I have a lap band inserted? Gastric bypass? How often do I work out? Am I doing Atkins? When I answer, “None of the above,” people are incredulous. When I tell them that all I had to do was adjust my diet slightly to avoid all processed sugar, processed foods, and most high-carb foods, they are incredulous. It goes against all the marketing and education we’ve been fed (hah! A pun!) our whole lives, and it’s almost too simple to be believable. I give them the url’s to Whole30 and Paleo. I give them the urls to my blog and toe Sherry’s blog. I tell them to not believe me alone: do the research like I did. Read, read, and read some more. The more you read about Whole30 and Paleo, the more you find that they are rooted in pretty solid science, and that the results speak for themselves. The best part? I feel like I’m alive for the first time in twenty years.

Most people’s perception of radically altering their diet is filled with negative preconceived notions. Diet food has to taste bad. You have to get rid of the best foods, or comfort foods. Diet food is restrictive and isn’t satisfying. Diet food has tiny portions. Well, some of that is true, but only if you’re doing some program or fad diet. Eating good, whole foods that are prepared from scratch with ingredients that are unprocessed and not full of carbs yields delicious and filling foods that make you forget that you’re eating food that is actually good for you. You find yourself eating less because it fills  you up faster, and you find yourself not being hungry soon after eating because your body is working hard to digest the good stuff and it’s using the energy more efficiently.

Once people do a Whole30 and go Paleo afterwards, they find that it’s not nearly as hard as they thought it was going to be. Sure, preparing healthy foods takes more time and effort than eating pre-processed foods, but the health benefits are so huge that I can’t imagine eating pre-processed foods anymore. My long-term health is worth a lot more to me than any short-term gain in efficiency or gratification. Besides, I’m finding that I really like cooking, and that I’m getting really good at some basic skills everyone used to have in a time before canned or frozen foods. Even my own cured bacon is getting better every time I make it!

So, when I talk about what I eat, how I’m losing weight, and how everyone who is overweight should do this, I’m not doing it because I’m rubbing it in or bragging. I’m doing it because I was there; I was the fat guy hearing about losing weight and not believing it. I was the fat guy who thought there was no hope; there was no getting healthy. I began to accept the fact I was going to die soon. Nobody should have to do that, especially when there is a healthy way out for everyone who just puts in the work!

Do you have questions? Need some motivation? PM me, email me, or make a comment here!

Current weight status: 205.9 lbs
Total lost since September 1: 84 lbs
Total lost since August 2013: 102.5 lbs
BMI: 32.2% (Starting BMI: 45.4%)
BF: 25.1% (Starting BF 47.4%)