Paleo Marine

Why?

I keep seeing posts on Facebook that keep touting low-fat as the way to be healthy and lose weight. It drives me nuts. I can’t believe people still believe this poorly-conceived diet as being actually good for you.

I’ve been living low-carb/high-fat (LCHF) for over two and a half years now, and I’m healthier than I’ve been in the past 30 years. Seriously. My blood test results are the best they’ve been in decades, and I’ve reversed some pretty serious weight-related health issues just by changing my diet. I will say that again for those who didn’t let that sink in the first time: To get healthy and lose weight, all I did was change my diet.

The diet I chose is low-carb/high-fat (LCHF) in the forms of Whole30, Paleo, and now Keto. These diets have led me to be not only healthy, but able to sustain that health in a way that allows me to eat delicious foods, to remain sated and avoid snacks between meals, and to keep my body healthy in a way that is verifiable through blood tests, stress tests, and my appearance.

Low-fat was the worst thing I ever tried, and I was never able to keep any weight off. I was constantly hungry, constantly unhappy with the food I was eating, and eventually broke the diet and ate so much that I gained back any weight I lost plus at least 5-15 lbs. Every single time, and without exception, every low-fat diet I undertook ended in miserable failure.

There are many diets out there, and people have shown success with just about all of them, but in the long-term, in my personal opinion, LCHF diets are the easiest to maintain, sustain, and stick with as a lifestyle. If the experience my wife and I have had with them is any indication, it’s a lifestyle that opens the door to good health, low weight, and even just generally feeling better overall. Even sleep is better on a LCHF diet.

Stop trying to do low-fat. It’s bad for you, and it doesn’t work. There are people who lose weight despite doing low-fat diets, but I’m fairly certain they had to do something other than just low-fat to succeed; either Calories-in/Calories-out (CICO) or some other form of deprivation. I didn’t have to deprive myself of anything, and on Paleo, I eat until I’m full. On Keto, I have to count macros and be more careful, but the food has been incredibly filling, and I’m never hungry between meals. Oh, and I’m losing weight daily without suffering. Try that on low-fat. If you dare.

On our way home from our Valentine’s Dinner, Sherry and I were talking about how much our lives have changed since doing our first Whole30. Living after Whole30 is like living a life where anything and everything is possible. I see my life in different phases now: childhood, Marines, post-Marines, and post-Whole30. The post-Marines/pre-Whole30 period of my life was marked with difficulty, poor health, and poor fitness. I wasn’t able to do all the fun things I always wanted to do, and I wasn’t able to be as active as I liked to be. I couldn’t plan anything that required a lot of physical agility or stamina, and some things were completely off the list for me due to my excessive weight. Once I lost the weight, everything became a possibility. Once I got fit, everything became a probability.

We have been able to accomplish so much not only in terms of fun and adventures, but even professionally since losing weight and getting fit. Sherry and I have both been able to make progress in our careers since losing weight. I don’t agree with it, but opportunities are greater for those who are average or thin versus obese. I experienced this first-hand, and I can honestly say that things are easier for me now in certain ways professionally. The biggest opportunity I was able to take advantage of was going into the National Guard to resume my military career. This is something that could never have happened when I was obese as I didn’t conform to the height and weight standards, nor could I pass a physical fitness test. Now, I can pass both easily.

I can’t see myself going back to my post-Marines/pre-Whole30 days. I never want to feel like that again. It’s why I’m doing Keto right now: because I am looking to get more weight loss and make some physical gains that Keto seems to be really good at promoting. I’ll go back to Paleo at some point, but for now, I’m hitting Keto hard and I’m also getting back to my running and push-ups. Sherry and I are also doing swing dancing now, and between the lessons and the practice, it’s very physical and demanding. I’m also looking into some other workouts to do on my non-running days. All of these would have been impossible pre-Whole30, but now I’m only limited by time and my motivation, and I have lots and lots of motivation!

Well, we started the Keto diet a few days ago, but I started eating Keto a few days earlier to get ready for it. I started taking some exogenic ketones to help my body get ready, and I felt the positive effects of them early on. I was hoping to be able to transition into ketosis quickly so that I could get as much as I could out of this experiment, and it seemed to have worked quite well; I actually got into mild ketosis on the third day and lost about 4 lbs for the week.

The foods are a bit different, and Sherry and I are having to learn new rules. The biggest change for us: not a lot of fruits, and cheeses are okay. Heck, cheeses play a big part in Keto. This means that there are a whole lot of foods that Sherry and I have been unable to eat that we can now eat again. I’m not sure how this is going to affect my G-I tract, so I’ll be taking things slowly.

Everything from snacks to lunches and dinners need to be re-imagined. Sherry and I have a pizza planned for later this week using a Keto crust made with cheese, cauliflower, and eggs. I’m also making sure I have nuts and Epic bars on-hand in case I need to eat something keto-friendly in the event of a non-keto meal situation (at work, etc).

The biggest part of our work-up toward starting Keto has been the research. Sherry and I have been reading as much as we could to get our heads around the different rules and to ensure we are giving ourselves the greatest chance for success. Like I’ve said in the past, I’m looking to get some good weight loss out of this. Sherry and I haven’t yet decided how long we will be Keto, but I want at least 10-15 lbs out of it. I’m sure she’d be pleased with the same amount.

I want to help. Seriously. And there are no strings attached and I don’t ask for any money. I just want to help people get healthy. I’m all about motivation and giving people advice, sharing my journey, and giving tips and tricks I’ve learned on my way from 312 lbs to 160 lbs.

Feel free to message me or email me at ej@paleomarine.com. I will gladly offer advice, answer questions, and share anything that may help.

I kind of chuckled when I thought about it, but I’m literally a walking, talking, and breathing science experiment. I went from fit to fat and back to fit again using science.

Fit to fat: lots and lots of eating without any exercise and without any control at all. This led me to weigh over 312 lbs.

Fat to fit: lost 110 lbs in a year without any exercise, and another 40 lbs the following year. I was successful because I used science: low carb, high fat really works.

As I work on getting back to my lowest weight, I find myself turning to science and experimenting. In going to the Keto diet, I’m also using exogenic ketones to help kick-start the process. I’m monitoring my ketone levels through strips that test my urine, and I am keeping track of the carbs I eat along with the fat and protein. I should make a tri-fold poster board and make a science fair project out of it!

The point of this silly post is that all of this weight loss and health improvement work I’ve been doing is all based on science, but we are all very different. Our bodies have different genetic makeups depending on where our ancestors were from, and different things work in different ways for all of us. That’s why it’s necessary for us to experiment and analyze the data to achieve the most efficacious plan for us. What works for me may or may not work for you: only experimenting and tweaking will get you the best results.

It is this reason that I get irked when someone tells me that a certain food doesn’t  affect my weight when I know first-hand that it does. The same holds true for certain foods that my stomach just isn’t friends with anymore. I’m sure some people can eat all the potatoes and hard cheeses they want, but when I do, I bloat and get digestive issues.

One last point: don’t use the scale as your single source of data. It’s a horrible way to analyze your health. Sure, weight is important, and it’s a good general way to quantify your health with a number, but there are so many things to consider. Track them all, and use your data points to paint a more complete and accurate picture.

Sherry and I hit the ground running on our first day eating the Keto diet. We began with some Keto pancakes. They are kind of high-carb, all things considered, but not so high as to go over our max carb count for the day, so we did it anyway. Two pancakes and two slices of bacon. The pancakes came from a keto-friendly mix, and it was actually quite delicious! The keto maple syrup was actually pretty darned delicious, too! It is sweetened with monk fruit, and didn’t have any strange after taste.

For lunch, we experimented with a keto pizza that turned out far better than we expected. As a Chicagoan, it really hit the spot for me, and it has been the first time on a LCHF diet that I’ve been able to eat anything that resembles and truly tastes like pizza. It was very filling, too, and I’m certain I’ll have no trouble eating this over the next few weeks while we’re on keto.

For dinner, we had a Hungarian dish I converted to keto: stuffed cabbage rolls with sauerkraut. It’s basically pork and beef with some onion (browned), salt, pepper, marjoram, and some bacon in it stuffed into some cabbage leaves and baked in sauerkraut. It was a favorite of my dad’s and I remember my mom making it for us all the time. I called her for the recipe and I found I was able to make it keto-friendly with very minor modifications. Sherry thought it was delicious and I’m hoping to be able to make it again in the future.

I get asked by people who knew me when I was overweight about my method for losing weight. They first assume that I lost the weight through a lot of exercise and they are always astonished when I tell them that I lost the weight through diet alone. Then, invariably, they ask what diet I did, and when I tell them I did a Whole30 followed by going Paleo, they either nod their heads and say something like, “Oh, I’ve heard of that. It’s like Atkins, right” or they shake their heads and say, “Well, those diets don’t really work long-term and aren’t good for you. You should eat low-fat.”

Well.

First, I’ve kept my weight off for over two and a half years. Second, as more data comes in from repeatable studies, it is becoming clearer all the time that a low-carb/high-fat diet is better for us. From my own experiences with my improved health to the countless millions of others who have also “Stumbled” upon the LCHF life. But that’s not what I want to write about.

There are lots of ways to lose weight including counting calories (also known as Calories In/Calories Out, or CICO), portion control, and others I don’t even know about. But people have been known to have success with them. So they can’t be all bad, right? Well, I’m not going to talk to that, either, because my opinion is that LCHF is better for us, but what I’m really getting at is the secret ingredient to success in ALL diets, whether they involve LCHF or not: adherence. Strict adherence to the diet and NO CHEATING/SABOTAGE.

I read study after study today regarding many different types of diets, and every one of them claimed to work. They pointed to success stories and proved that if you were to adopt their way of eating and stuck to it, you would lose weight. So, how can so many different diets yield the same results: lost weight? It comes down to being strict.

If you are strict with calories in/calories out (CICO), then it’ll work. Scientifically, this is very solid, and to be honest, there’s nothing more basic. Eat 20% fewer calories than your body needs in a day, and if you keep that up for a long time, you will lose weight. What I advocate in LCHF is that it is easier to maintain than a diet that has a lot of sugar and carbs in it due to the decrease in cravings and no sugar crashes after meals. But aside from that, sticking with a diet is probably the most important thing you can do.

I personally prefer the LCHF diets, but I don’t have a problem with anyone using any other non-invasive method to lose weight. No surgeries, pills, powders, shakes, or crazy fitness regimens are necessary to get healthy and lose weight. Just find a diet that works for you and stick to it!