Paleo Marine

Here’s a weight loss tip that I don’t see often enough yet has such a large impact on weight loss efficacy: get some sleep. Get lots of sleep. Get at least 7-8 hours of solid, restful sleep. Why? Because your body needs it to lose weight properly.

Why do people weigh themselves in the morning? Because you actually lose weight while you sleep. Your body processes and metabolizes fat and you exhale it. Seriously. I thought it was crazy until I looked it up. Of course, the processes going on are more complicated than that, but at its most simple level, your body is processing fat and you exhale a lot of that weight as vapor.

This process takes a long time, however, and the more sleep you get, the better the process works. For whatever reason, I find that my own weight loss is maximized with a minimum of 7.5 hours of sleep. 8+ is even better, but I always try for at least 7.5 hours. Whenever I find I’m not losing weight, I usually find that I haven’t been getting enough sleep (among other things like eating too much, eating sweets, or maybe some non-Paleo things had crept into the diet as well).

Get sleep. Get good, restful sleep, and get at least 7-8 hours of it. The difference it makes extends far beyond just the scale. You’ll also feel better and more ready to take on the world!

Before undertaking a change in lifestyle like doing a Whole30 or adopting the Paleo Diet, the first piece of advice most people read is that preparation is key. Preparation in cleaning out the pantry, buying the right foods, preparing foods for the week, etc.  What I’ve never seen covered, however, is the mental or psychological preparation one must do before starting a lifestyle changing diet.

Framing for success. What I mean by this is that you need to focus on the foods you can eat and not those you cannot. Create a list of foods you can eat and you will find that a lot of food you already enjoy is on that list. When we focus on what we can no longer eat, we have a harder time foregoing them or resisting temptation. By re-framing our concept of what foods we enjoy and like to eat with those that are permissible, you find yourself not missing the anti-Paleo foods.

Relationship with food. You need to change your relationship with food from something that is comforting, soothing, or entertaining to that of being fuel. Life happens between meals, not at them. This is difficult in our society, as many gatherings happen around meals, and that isn’t going to change. What I’m talking about is non-gathering meals. Meals should be about fueling the body, about feeling comfortable but not stuffed. Once you realize that food is fuel and it’s okay for it to taste good, but that should be secendary to its primary purpose; energy.

Prepare to fail; it’s okay. This one is a fine line, because I’m not saying it’s okay to cheat (or sabotage your own progress). What I am saying is that, especially in the beginning, there will be times when you just can’t be 100% strict, or when temptation is too much. It’s okay. It happens to all of us. The important part is to just get back up and keep going as if nothing happened and avoid falling again. It’s okay to stumble. Just get back up.

Going into a different lifestyle without mental or psychological preparation makes it harder to succeed. It’s like a soldier going into battle without all the weapons at his disposal. Prepare yourself mentally and you give yourself a better chance to succeed.

I used to use a web site called Calorie Count when I tried to lose weight back in 2012. I was able to lose around 40 lbs, but stalled there and quickly lost motivation when I got sick for about a week. After I got better, I had fallen off the proverbial wagon and gained the weight back (and then some). I failed miserably.

The sad part is that I was very diligent in tracking all my calories. If it went into my mouth, it was logged and tracked. I knew exactly how many calories I was eating each day, and initially, it seemed to help me stay under the limits for my weight. Then, when I hit a bump and was unable to track so rigorously, I easily fell of the wagon. When I look back as to why I failed, it’s because the food I was eating, while low calorie, just wasn’t filling or satisfying. I was always left hungry, and as my calorie requirements declined with my weight, I  was left feeling hungrier and hungrier. It was a recipe for failure.

About two years before I did my first Whole30, I got a Jawbone UP and used it every day thinking that having this fitness and sleep tracker would motivate me to walk more and sleep more. It did for a little bit, but then just became a reminder to me that I wasn’t doing what I thought was enough to lose weight. Like many, I had the mistaken belief that if I just walked more, I’d lose weight. Of course, this didn’t happen, and I continued to gain weight.

When I started my Whole30, I had a Fitbit Surge. This was a great device and helped me track my sleep which was very important. I learned that I needed a minimum of 7.5 hours of sleep to realize any weight losses during the night, and the Fitbit helped me track that. Once I began running, the GPS feature in the Fitbit Surge helped me track my progress and was a large part of my success in running.

I started using the Strava website and iPhone app to track my running and I even splurged for the pro version to use the advanced tracking features. I’m no marathon or speed runner, but I’m very interested in my running progress and I want to continue to improve. The pro features have been very helpful to me in gauging just how efficacious my workouts are and to track my progress and trends.

I recently switched over to the Garmin Fenix 3 HR, and this watch has been the best yet. I really feel it helps me track my running and sleep in better ways than any device or app before it, and checking my data points has become a part of my daily routine.

Could I do it without technology and apps? Certainly! I found that counting calories didn’t work for me at all while eating the Paleo Diet did (and it requires nothing more than cooking and eating meat and vegetables). I could even run and get my exercise without using high-tech devices and apps, but utilizing them has given me added information which aids my progress and helps me understand which areas I need to work on.

I get it. Self esteem is a tricky thing. Most people lack it in large amounts, while some have none. Oftentimes, it is related to a person’s self image, and when they are overweight in a society that is increasingly overweight yet worships being thin, it’s easy for self esteem to fall. The solution isn’t to make being overweight okay, though, because it’s not. Being overweight is a problem. It’s not a natural state for us to be in.

This gets me in trouble, and people think I’m being insensitive or outright mean. What I’m being is honest. The human body isn’t designed to be fat. We are able to carry fat as a survival mechanism, but if you live in a first-world country in 2017, there’s no excuse to be fat. Eating with abandon and eschewing exercise is the cause of our obesity epidemic. Coupled with nauseatingly bad nutrition advice from our government and medical industries have done nothing but exacerbated the issue.

Now, you have people posting on Facebook self affirmations from overweight models talking about how they had to accept themselves, to say daily affirmations in the morning telling themselves they had worth, etc all because they are overweight in a society that values being thin. The takeaway shouldn’t be that people who are not thin are made to feel bad. They definitely shouldn’t feel good about being overweight. They should be concerned and should want to fix that, because that makes you healthy. The myth of the healthy overweight person is just that; a myth. Don’t believe me? Talk to your doctor.

But I digress. Some people just don’t care about their health enough to do anything about it. We are a culture of ease, and losing weight and getting healthy takes discipline, motivation, self-control, and perseverance. In short, it takes effort. The majority of us in our culture refuse to life a finger or, more aptly, refuse to put down the fork to lose weight. They accept their being overweight as inevitable. I know, because for a long time, that was me.

If you’re lucky,  you get to a point where you say, “NO MORE” and change your lifestyle permanently. If  you’re lucky, you make this realization before a doctor tells you that you must do so or face a certain, early demise. If you’re lucky, you have the time to make the change before your body gives out. If you’re lucky, your body can withstand years of abuse through increased blood sugar, increased cholesterol, and fatty liver. How many of you have won the lottery?

I don’t judge people for being overweight. I don’t look down on anyone for being overweight. I know personally how easy it is to find ones self as an overweight person. I know how it feels to resign ones self to an early grave because of the mistaken belief that it takes a lot of exercise and starvation to lose weight. I know that’s why so many people are overweight; they don’t know you can lose weight by just eating different foods and NOT through starving. Heck, I lost my first 110 lbs without a single step of exercise!

Being overweight is not normal. It’s not good for us. It’s something that’s in our control, and we can change (unless you’re one of the ~.1% of the population with thyroid issues). The good news here is that it’s not nearly as hard as you think it is! There’s Whole30, Paleo, Keto, and others that are free, science-based, and efficacious. Stay away from the pills, powders, patches, and products that promise weight loss. All they deliver on is profits to the proprietors and disappointment to the dieter.

It’s not okay to be overweight. It will kill you. Do something about it while you can.

It happens to all of us; me included. You spend an entire week being good, eating well, getting exercise, and that Friday morning weight is looking great! Then, the weekend happens, you drink some alcohol, eat some food that’s non-Paleo, and then the Monday morning weigh in is a horror story. This morning, I weighed in the highest I’ve been in as long as I can remember. Horrifically high. I’m still reeling from it.

I don’t regret the weekend or the fun I had. The memories that were made and the good times were worth it all, but now, I have some serious work to do. Again. It’s the feeling I have inside right now that I hate. It’s a bit of fear coupled with regret. The trick is to channel that energy into motivation. This is where, I think, people fall off the wagon and fail.

I could easily slip into sadness, depression, and regret, but I won’t allow it. I know that the big picture is much more important, and that there will be times when my weight is up and there will be times when it gets back down to a normal spot. It’s easy to give up. It’s easy to surrender. It’s hard to keep fighting, to keep going, to get back up when you’ve fallen down.

I’m not ready to give up. I’m not ready to allow myself to get overweight again. I’m not going to wallow in self-pity and eat more. I am going to do just the opposite; I’m going to eat right, I’m going to run a little farther tonight, and I’m going to keep sticking to the plan. I may even forego my after dinner cookies this week. I’m going to do whatever it takes to get back down into my happy zone.

My health matters to me. It’s one of the most important things in my life. Without it, everything else is in jeopardy. I can’t allow this to slip. Neither can you.

For many years, my wife would tell me that she didn’t recognize the person she saw in old photos of me. She said that the person in the photos was not the man she married, and it seemed like that person (in the photos) was long gone. I felt that way, too. When I would look at old photos of myself, I looked at them with a sadness, thinking I would never again be so healthy and fit. Little did I know that at age 48, I would turn things around and get to be in better shape at 50 than I was at 30!

Now, she says she sees me in the old photos. The person in the pictures, who for many years didn’t seem like a real representation of who I was, now seems more familiar. She says that it’s taken a few years, but now she is used to the normal sized me. I’m finally used to it now, too, although I have to admit that from time to time, I still marvel at the fact that I’m back to a normal size. When I pull shirts out of the closet, I often think to myself, “This shirt is too small. There’s no way it’ll fit!” and then when I put it on and it fits perfectly, I’m reminded that I’m no longer 312 lbs.

I was recently asked by a friend I reconnected with recently how I was able to stick to Paleo as closely as I have. Without much thought, I was able to give him a few reasons. What surprised me about this is that I knew immediately how and why I kept going on Paleo.

• I don’t ever want to be fat again. Not because of the social stigma or because I have anything against overweight people, but because of how I felt. I feel so much better now: more energetic, limber, and active. I don’t want to lose that.
• I have worked too hard to get where I am today. I will not surrender that under any circumstance.
• It feels normal and regular to me now. There’s nothing weird about the food; it is what it is: delicious, filling, and good for me.
• I am an example to others. This one isn’t a reason I mentioned, but it’s something that means a lot to me. I’m an NCO in the Army National Guard, and among people who want to lose weight and get healthy, they look to me as an example. My troops in the National Guard deserve a leader who is healthy, fit, and continues to exemplify a healthy lifestyle by leading by example. My readers deserve a person who walks the walk, not just talks the talk. I’m tired of seeing physically unfit people tell me how to get fit, or overweight people trying to sell me their diet plans. I could never be one of those people.
• Finally, this is actually my primary reason: I want to live as long as I can to molest and annoy my wife for as long as possible. This is a joke we have, but it’s one of the reasons I gave her for wanting to do a Whole30 and then transition to Paleo. I felt that I wouldn’t live long without the change in our lifestyle.

We all have our reasons, and these are mine. Think about what caused you to look up Whole30 or Paleo, or what led you to this blog post. Keep that in your heart as you move forward in your journey. Remember that it’s not about the destination, but the journey. Make that journey the best possible by staying healthy and fit.

This is an interesting concept I saw on Reddit this morning. I was reading the post of a gentleman who lost about 35 lbs recently, and he said he did it by focusing on habits instead of rules. It made me think about my own success, and I think it has a lot to do with how I did it.

I focused on creating new habits and on changing my eating habits not for the short-term, but for life. I knew that I couldn’t keep doing what I’d been doing for years, and that a real, permanent change was necessary. I had to change my habits. I had to get away from not caring about what I eat, eating until I was stuffed, and eating anything I wanted to. I needed to adopt habits that were conducive to me being healthy. Anything to the contrary had to go.

Following rules is simple, but falls apart when you fail to create the habits necessary to allow the rules to become the laws by which you live, thereby undoing the rules themselves. By creating the good habits, rules become the new normal, and they seem less restrictive.

Today, I have fully adopted the Paleo Diet, and for me, it is the law of the land. I don’t consider eating it if it’s not Paleo, and my health is better for it. It also feels effortless. I’m not suffering, sacrificing, or missing out. I have created the habits that enabled me to succeed.

As someone who is more or less in maintenance mode with my weight, I’m able to go a little off-plan every now and then without ruining any progress. My weight goes up and down within 3 lbs usually, and by watching it closely, I’m able to make adjustments in my diet to bring my weight back into a range I’m comfortable with. I have earned that ability be reaching my goal and staying there.

There are people I see online who complain about not being able to make good progress while on Paleo despite their adhering to it strictly. Well, their definition of strict and mine differ wildly. These very same people allow alcohol into their diet a few times a week, and some have gone so far as to justify cheat meals or cheat days because they “Eat well the rest of the time.” I will agree that it’s better to eat Paleo most of the time if you can’t do it all the time, but then to hear people complain about a lack of progress toward a weight loss goal when they aren’t doing the work to get there? It is tiresome.

I try time and time again to show people that when it comes to losing weight, you have to be strict and you have to really follow the plan without exception. It’s a long-term proposition, and a change in lifestyle you need to adopt for life, not something you can change short-term and then go back to the way you ate before. I was able to lose weight steadily and consistently because I didn’t allow myself cheats or sabotages. I didn’t even consider it. Now? I actually consider allowing non-Paleo foods every now and then depending on the situation, but I’m in maintenance mode. While I was losing weight toward my goals? Never!

The only way to truly succeed and to be able to enjoy a relatively normal life in regards to eating and diet, you have to do the work and be full-time Paleo. You need to commit to it and not succumb to temptation. You need to stick to it until you reach your goal. Then, and ONLY then, should you even consider non-Paleo foods.

Look: I know it’s not a race, and I know that there’s no real reason to lose all the weight at once. You can spend the rest of your life working toward a weight goal, and it’s really not my business. But I honestly believe that being in maintenance mode is so much easier than weight loss mode, not just physically, but psychologically and emotionally. I know it is for me. While I’m as losing weight, my attention to the foods I ate was almost to the point of obsession. Now? I can be relaxed regardless of what I eat as long as I know it’s Paleo. I just eat until I’m full and then I can go on with my day without any emotional baggage. I couldn’t do that while I was in weight-loss mode. I know I’m not alone in this.

Live without the guilt. Commit full-time to the Paleo Diet and see the results you’ve been wanting. Once your each your goal, life gets even better. Paleo food is good to begin with, but the freedom you attain once you reach your goal and get into maintenance mode? It’s awesome. I want you to get there.