Look at that picture. I mean really look at it. Those are the same person. That’s me.

What separates them besides 2 years of time? About 130 lbs.

130 lbs

I have now lost over 144 lbs in less that two years through diet, and I don’t mean some sort of starvation or deny yourself food diet. I eat well every day, I am not hungry between means, and I don’t have to take any pills, powders, shakes, or subscribe to any programs or pay any money to anyone. I didn’t have surgery or any other procedure. I did one simple thing: I CHANGED WHAT I PUT INTO MY MOUTH.

It doesn’t matter how much you work out, how much you walk, what your workout plan is, or that you hit the gym twice in a day. Unless you change your diet long-term, you will not lose weight.

Weight loss is 90% diet and 10% exercise. I know this is true because I lost 90% of my weight before I started running. Since I started running, I have only lost about 15 lbs. I used to weigh 312 lbs. I now weigh 164 lbs.

I gave up processed sugar, artificial sweeteners, grains, legumes, dairy, and soy. I may still have food with trace amounts of these things in them from time to time, but for the most part, I no longer eat foods that contain those ingredients. Why? Because they act like poison to my body. When I eat those ingredients, my body swells and I gain weight very quickly. There’s a reason pigs and cattle are fed grain to fatten up; it works.

If you want to lose weight, stop eating whole wheat or oatmeal. It’s not doing you any favors. Look into Whole30. Look into the Paleo Diet. They work. I’m living proof, and so is my wife, my son, and nearly all of my friends. We’ve all adopted Paleo, and we’re all losing weight. It’s not rocket science; it’s actually older than science itself.

This is a good question. We all respond differently to not only the messages we are sent, but the method by which those messages are sent. Some people just don’t like being told the truth in a concise and clear way while others abhor being coddled and having things sugarcoated. I am the former; I like my information straight and to the point. That’s why I present it that way; no coddling or sugarcoating.

I read a quote today that said something like, “Rarely are harsh words helpful.” I disagree. I vehemently disagree. Some people only respond to harsh words. My son, as a little boy, shut down anytime I raised my voice or yelled at him. As a parent, one of the non-violent ways to get through to a kid is through a booming voice, only my son would literally just shut down.  I had to present information to him gently so he could absorb it. My daughter, on the other hand, only learned through the booming voice. My grandmother taught me that kids are all very different, and it takes different methods to get through to each. You need to find out what their method is and stick to it. Adults are no different.

If you don’t like straight talk and concise language, then this site is not for you. If you, like me, respond well to direct, clear, and brutally honest information, then welcome! Please look around, browse some blog entries, and enjoy!

Sure, some of what I have to say is not very politically correct. I use the word fat a lot instead of its more friendly euphemism overweight. If we can’t call ourselves out for what we are, then we have little chance of fixing ourselves.

I wish people would have been more blunt with me in the past. Would it have hurt my feelings? The Hungarians say that behind every joke or harsh word is a grain of truth. Well, by calling me fat, it would have been more than a grain of truth; more like a heaping truckload. It was’t until my cousin, a PA, flat out told me that I was going to die soon if I didn’t change my health. She didn’t sugarcoat things, and she laid it all out for me on main street. It changed my life. Had she not done that, there’s a good chance I would either still be very fat today, or dead.

There is a time and place for being politically correct, and a time to tell it like it is. If you are overweight and unhealthy, the time for being nice is done. It’s time for you to get with it, lose the weight, get healthy, and save your life.

My wife and I were talking about how much our lives have changed since we adopted the Paleo Diet, and one thing she reminded me of is that preparation is key to success. Not just preparation in the kitchen, but preparation in planning the meals, in getting rid of non-compliant ingredients, planning ahead for dinner parties, for what to eat when going to a work lunch, or for me, what to eat on drill weekends when all the foods present are carb-rich and unhealthy. Having healthy alternatives, or at least a plan to mitigate the damage from non-compliant foods is essential to success on the Paleo Diet.

Through preparation, we mitigate the costs associated with the Paleo Diet by planning our meals carefully. Sherry then cooks on Sundays and packages all our meals for us to use throughout the week. I then make sure to have enough lunches for myself to eat and one extra in the event I’m working late.

Before we started our first Whole30, Sherry prepared our kitchen by getting rid of all the non-Paleo ingredients and foods. We also read as much as we could about the foods we could eat and purchased a bunch of the ingredients to have on-hand. We made sure to buy only the amounts of meat and vegetables we needed to control cost. While eating the Paleo Diet may seem to be expensive, when you factor in the amount of food you can make and for how long those meals stretch over the course of the week, it actually ends up saving us a lot of money. We also take into consideration all the meals we no longer eat out (lunches and dinners) and the savings is actually quite substantial.

Planning for dinner parties is something we’ve been fortunate to not have to do too often because the friends with which we have dinner parties are also on the Paleo Diet. For those rare occasions where we are attending a dinner party of non-Paleo people, we either bring a side or snack that is Paleo compliant, or we limit the amount of food we eat and try to choose the most Paleo-friendly options available.

The same goes for any work-related lunches or dinners. Fortunately, those tend to be at restaurants where choices can be made and options tailored to ensure non-compliant ingredients are left out. Almost every restaurant has a meat and vegetable option as well.

As for me, like I said in a previous post, for my drill weekends, I pack RX Bars and other Paleo snacks to make sure I have energy through the day of my drills.

A little preparation goes a long way toward the success of people adopting the Paleo Diet. It’s not something you can just go into without planning, and it’s not something you can do without doing some research. Do the work, and your health will be rewarded.

Being successful in adopting a new diet takes the following:

1. Make the change permanent.
2. Change your mindset about what is acceptable food.
3. Change your perception about what food is for. It is fuel.
4. Never allow cheat days, or what I call them, sabotage days.
5. Find many data points to track, not just the scale.
6. Avoid sweeteners, even if they are artificial and zero calorie.

I will explain each one of these individually.

Make the change permanent.  It’s not a temporary diet, but a change in lifestyle forever. You have to go into it with this mindset or you’re doing it for nothing. You have to change your relationship with food; look at it differently. That means you have to change your mindset about what is acceptable food and change your perception about what food is for. Food is, first and foremost, fuel. It’s what gives us energy. In our culture, it has become the center of our social lives and celebrations. Heck, we even mourn with food. Social gatherings will always have food present, and it’s a tough situation to be tempted by all the foods present at these get-togethers, but you have to limit yourself to one normal serving of acceptable foods and then leave the food table. For me, this is probably the most difficult aspect of adopting a healthy lifestyle.

Never, ever allow cheat days. I call them sabotage days. Cheating is defined as gaining an unfair advantage over a competitor. By eating foods that are not in your diet, you are not gaining an advantage over anything. To the contrary, you are damaging any progress you’ve made and endangering your ability to stick with the diet. Every sabotage item or meal is like taking a hammer to a brick. Sure, one whack may not do much damage, but repeated strikes will eventually cause the brick to fall into pieces. Each sabotage meal breaks your resolve and your ability to stick with the diet. It’s a slippery slope.

Find many data points; not just a scale. We all like to track our progress when we adopt a new diet, but something we aren’t taught is that our weight does not gradually drop in a linear fashion. A graph of typical weight loss will look more like stairs descending. For some people, it’s hard to stay motivated through plateaus. The good news is that there’s typically a lot of other improvements in health going on while one’s weight is stagnant: clothes are fitting looser, waists getting smaller, improved energy levels, and even improved health. Blood tests are a good measure of your body’s health changes while you are transitioning from unhealthy to healthy. People who focus on the scale alone will be unhappy a lot of the time they are on their journey, and it can make them want to give up.

Avoid sweeteners, even artificial sweeteners that claim to be zero calories. The way sweeteners act on the brain is exactly the same way sugar affects the brain. It causes cravings and makes it harder to make it from meal to meal without a snack. Our brains equate sweet with sugar (duh!) and our craving mechanisms are enabled when we have something sweet.

Losing weight is not hard. It’s not easy, either, but with preparation and discipline, anyone can lose weight. You just have to want it and put the effort into it.

I’ll be brutally honest (because I am nothing but honest when I talk about health and fitness): it wasn’t that hard. It wasn’t easy, but it wasn’t that hard, either.

The plan is simple enough. Avoid sugar, artificial sweetener, grains, legumes, dairy, and soy. The execution of the plan is easy enough, too: just eat meat, vegetables, and some fruit. Nuts are good for snacks in-between meals if you’re delayed (at least they’ve worked well for my wife and me).

What people perceive as difficult is no longer eating foods that are bad for you: bread, pizza, pasta, sweets, rice, beans, kolaches, etc. People focus a lot on the foods they can no longer eat, and they tend to fixate on that point. They fixate on it too much, in my opinion.

Was it hard? No. Was it easy? No. Is it do-able? Absolutely. Tomorrow’s post will go into the steps it takes to be successful in adopting a Paleo Diet and lifestyle.

I’m in the National Guard, and the military is known for it’s high-carb/high calorie foods. Even the food they serve us in the dining facilities (affectionately known as D-FAC’s, or “Defacts”) is very unhealthy for us. The military is typically at least 20 years behind in nutrition science, and they still believe that whole grains and low-fat are better for us than whole vegetables and meats. The last lunch I had on drill weekend was two slices of ham lunch meat and two apples. Everything else was carb-heavy and I just wasn’t willing to eat it.

To get through, I usually take some RX Bars with me in my ruck to drill. This allows me to eat one late morning, one at lunch time, and one in the mid-afternoon to keep my energy levels good. It also gives me freedom from having to eat food that is not good for me.

I also take some other Paleo snacks with me to eat either at lunch time or throughout the day, as necessary. This drill, however, I’m on a Whole30, so the challenge will be to eat something Whole30 compliant. My plan is to take some food with me. While the RX Bars are not technically allowed, they may be my only option. I may also take some smoked meat and some dried fruit or vegetable. I haven’t yet decided.

I edited the above because RX Bars are very Whole30 compliant. On top of that, there are a host of Whole30 compliant snacks I was unaware of until my wife emailed me the list. You can find these items on the Whole30 website.