Paleo Marine

The most difficult time to eat right is when going on vacation to a foreign country where you have no control over the preparation of the food you will be eating. Fortunately, most foreign countries have healthier options made from whole ingredients, but that doesn’t mean everything on the menu is going to be healthy or good for you.

I find that for the most part, eating in foreign countries is easy enough with a little planning and understanding what is in the foods you’re looking at eating. Most better restaurants will have healthier options, and many will even work with you if you discuss your concerns with them. I’ve not yet run into someone being offended when I explain to them that I need to avoid grains.

Sometimes, it’s just not possible to avoid the foods you’re trying to stay away from; it’s inevitable. In those cases, I do my best to mitigate the impact on my health by limiting the amount I eat or making the best choices possible given the options. This has served me well in Spain, and I’m hoping it will do the same in Ireland and Scotland.

I hope to be posting some of my culinary experiences soon, as well as experiencing running in both countries. I’m taking my running shoes and running gear, and I plan on sticking to my running plan while we’re there.

As I’ve said many times before, however, you can’t out-run a bad diet, so I will be ever-vigilant and doing my best to mitigate the damage through better choices.

I had some cake and alcohol last night. I even ate a roll and something called a blondie. These were all filled with carbs, sugar, and grains, and while I enjoyed these foods for the moment I ate them, literally as soon as the food was swallowed, any joy I derived from them was gone. What remained was the calories, the sugar, and the guilt.

I know: life is full of experiences, and sometimes, those experiences are through food and drink. The event my wife and I went to was a gala for the Habitat for Humanity, and it was a fundraiser with lots of great food. Surprisingly, everything but the dessert was either Paleo or Keto friendly. Had I stopped at dessert and avoided the alcoholic beverages, I would have remained true to my diet. However, being a special event, we decided to enjoy the food and drinks.

What ensued was a night of fitful sleep and sweats and a few pounds of water retention-related weight gain. While I know the effects will not be long-lasting, I prefer to not have to go through the 2-5 days of recovery after I do something like this. It’s in those days afterward that I’m reminded of the fact that the pleasure I derived from those foods and drink were very short-lived while I have to deal with the after-effects for a much longer period of time.

Maybe it’s because I’m nearing the three-year point in my journey of eating well, but I’m beginning to realize that even the enjoyment I experience from eating foods that have lots of sugar, carbs, or grains in them isn’t nearly as great as it used to be. I’m getting more and more accustomed to the Paleo and Keto foods, and I prefer them more and more. I can’t even drink any alcoholic beverage with Coca Cola in it anymore; it’s too sweet for me to even swallow.

The next time you’re about to go off-course, think about what you’re really getting out of it. Will it taste good? Perhaps, but what are you giving up long-term for that very little bit of pleasure? Is it really worth it? Most of the time, I decide that it is not, and I end up feeling much better in the long term for having made that call.

Every day I wake up starts the first day of my diet. What I did yesterday doesn’t matter so much as it set up any success I will work toward today. Today could be the day I eat well and make some more progress toward getting back to my all-time lowest weight, or it can be the day I throw away any progress I’ve made and eat whatever I want. The point is, where you are today is a product of the work you’ve done to this point, but it doesn’t determine where you will be tomorrow: today does that.

I find this to be helpful to my mindset literally every day. I make the day, good or bad. I make decisions, good or bad. I will determine how much success I will realize, or how much failure I will experience all based on decisions I make throughout the day. I choose, the majority of the time, to succeed and to make progress. At a minimum, I don’t want to back-track.

Most days, I succeed. Some days, I fail.

I don’t dwell on the days I fail. I take stock of what didn’t work, I try to find what did, and move forward with the lessons learned.

My point in this is don’t beat yourself up for yesterday or last week or last month. Hell, definitely don’t beat yourself up about the times you’ve failed sticking with a diet in the past. Learn from those mistakes, feed upon the successes and what worked, make a new plan, and execute it.

Today is the first day of my diet. Yesterday is gone and done. I’ve set myself up for success; it would be a shame to lose that momentum.

The problem with cheating on diets is that there’s typically no-one there to call you on it. It’s not like you’re taking a quiz or a test and have a teacher or professor in the room with you watching to make sure everyone looks on their own work. As an adult, we are responsible for ourselves, and unfortunately, many people don’t hold themselves accountable to their actions when it comes to eating.

The funny thing about cheating on diets is the more you do it, the easier it gets to do. That’s why I avoided any sabotage meals or cheats as much as I could when I was doing my Whole30’s or when I was in weight loss mode. Now that I’m in maintenance, I’m allowed a little more leeway, but even so, I don’t stray off the beaten path often. I don’t want to make it too easy for me to eat anything and everything.

Cheating is like a snowball that is rolled down a mountainside. At first, it’s not a big deal, but the more it rolls, the more it picks up more snow, gets larger, and it gets harder to stop. That’s why I find it’s best to not start that snowball rolling at all.

What are some real penalties for cheating on a diet? Aside from the loss of forward momentum or further progress, there’s the aforementioned ease with which one can cheat again. Add to this the fact that when people go off a diet, they tend to gain more weight than they originally lost. For me, there’s another penalty that is worse than all of the above, and I go through it every single time I eat anything that’s not Keto or Paleo: guilt.

I experience guilt as soon as I finish eating whatever it was that I wasn’t supposed to be eating, and it’s frankly more uncomfortable and disappointing than anything else. I feel disgust with myself for not having the strength to just say no, and to skip eating whatever it was that is bad for me. Sometimes it’s irrational, like when I decide to go ahead and eat some birthday cake or a roll before a fancy dinner. Other times, it’s well-deserved: I totally just ate something I am not supposed to for no other reason than because it was there (this usually happens if I drink alcohol, which is another topic entirely).

Since I hate feeling disappointed and disgusted with myself more than anything, I find that an amazing motivator is keeping myself from experiencing that immense guilt by avoiding foods I’m not supposed to eat. It’s how I keep myself accountable, and how I keep myself from experiencing the penalties for cheating.

My wife and I have been eating solely home-prepped foods for the past week, and we both noticed that we’re losing weight again. It’s not that the food we eat in restaurants is bad for us; we always eat Keto or Paleo options, and we are very particular about the places we eat and the choices we make. However, it’s the portion sizes that usually get us, and we both eat pretty much whatever is put in front of us out of habit.

Portion control is one of the things you learn when you do a Whole30, and it’s frankly one of the lessons I need to learn and re-learn from time to time. It’s not enough to eat good food; you can’t over-eat it. Due to the eating disorder I suffer from, if I’m not thinking about it, I can slip into over-eating very easily. Restaurants are a prime example.

So, this week, and next, we will be very good and do our best to eat solely at home. With the exception of a gala Sherry and I attended this past Saturday night and a birthday party Saturday afternoon, we ate all homemade food in the right portion sizes. We are both trying to slim down as much as we can prior to our vacation to Ireland and Scotland because we know that we will both be eating and drinking a lot of food that is likely not going to be Paleo or Keto friendly.

When I first approached my wife about doing a Whole30, she immediately responded with a forceful, “No.” I asked her to elaborate a bit more about why she didn’t want to try it, and she told me that she needed variety, flavor, and satiety in her foods. She felt that anything that aided weight loss and promoted good health had to be boring and consisting of nothing more than tuna, chicken breast, and salad. I took what she told me and did my research and came back to her. “The food on Whole30 is actually pretty decent. Here; take a look,” and I showed her sites devoted to Whole30 recipes. She was surprised, but still a bit skeptical. “Ok, we can try it. But if the food stinks, I’m off of it.” I agreed, and onto Whole30 we went.

We have thrived on Whole30, Paleo, and Keto largely due to the variety of recipes that were available to us in cookbooks and online. The recipes were all delicious, they were filling, and they allowed us to eat something new and different at almost every meal until we built up a list of favorites we now like to go to. Of course, Sherry is always on the lookout for new recipes for us to try, and we still find new favorites almost weekly.

I still see people starting diets and posting on Facebook or Twitter photos of salad with tuna or chicken breast on them, touting their “Healthy meal.” When I see that, I want to cry, because I know how bland and boring salads can be after a while, and eating bland and boring diets are a large part why so many people fail in adopting healthy lifestyles. They just don’t understand how important the role of food variety plays in our ability to stick to a healthy diet.

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.