Paleo Marine

This is crazy to me. That’s like a drug addict celebrating a year of being sober with a drug binge. It’s the wrong way to celebrate. I know; in most cultures, celebrations are intertwined with eating food. Every culture on the planet has special occasion meals, and yes, they contain foods that are tasty and wonderful. However, a lot of these celebratory dishes are not nutritionally good for us. Cakes, pasta, pizza, hamburgers (the buns and cheese), and all manner of high-carb foods are exactly the types of food we need to avoid to stay healthy. I know many people who have done Whole30’s and/or adopted the Paleo Diet, and when I hear one of them tell me they’re going to celebrate hitting a weight goal by eating a pizza or by having some cake, I can’t help but to wonder if they’ve learned anything at all.

I know: I’ve said time and time again that the occasional slice of pie or pizza isn’t going to derail you. Treats every now and then are okay, and heck, I just had a slice of cheesecake a few weeks back at a birthday party. I actually ended up losing about a pound the following day. However, those situations are completely natural and normal. Celebrating losing weight by changing your diet to get rid of horribly bad foods by eating horribly bad foods is illogical.

I plan on celebrating hitting 165 lbs by doing a happy dance, posting on social media (to the chagrin of everyone who knows me, I’m sure), and maybe doing a lot of smiling. But I refuse to eat anything bad for me. It’s not about discipline or being “All in” on my health, as some have told me. It’s about respect for the change I’ve made in my life. It’s about my new relationship with food and not going back to the old ways, even for just a moment. I refuse to use food to celebrate things anymore. That was part of my bad relationship with food, and I won’t give in. Not even for a moment.

I won’t judge you if you have your celebratory donut for reaching your weight goal, but don’t expect me to be enthusiastic about your choice of celebration. If anything, I’ll nod and smile, congratulate you on your success, and hope that you continue with eating healthy and avoiding bad foods. Any drug addict will tell you that all it takes is a taste to fall off the wagon and get back into drugs. Sugar is exactly the same thing. I know many scoff at this, but it is scientifically proven and I’ve experienced it and seen it myself. It’s best to just stay away at all costs. Even ESPECIALLY when celebrating.

Whole30

So far, so good! Sherry is making some solid progress, and I’m doing well. I wasn’t expecting to lose any weight, and I haven’t yet, but I feel great. Eating on this Whole30 has been really pretty painless as Sherry has perfected so many of our Whole30 recipes and choices. As far as I’m concerned, it’s just a slightly stricter Paleo menu.

Overall

My runs have been all amazing, even allowing me to experience what I think a “Runner’s High” feels like. I have been able to get to 100 push ups, and now I’m pushing for more. I have lots of energy, and my clothes are fitting great. Best yet; the skin is continuing to shrink around my mid-section.

I am doing this Whole30 to support Sherry. I figured it’s never a bad idea for me to follow it every now and then just to make sure things are all in ship-shape in terms of my serving sizes and the foods I eat. It’s also a good reminder of what eating good, whole food does for me and my body. It’s amazing how well you can eat on a Whole30!

After a weekend of rest and relaxation with my wife and another couple in Austin and Fredericksburg, Texas, we found ourselves faced with the challenge of deciding whether to partake in some German foods and pastries or to avoid them. We decided to go ahead and eat them, even though the pastry was filled with sugar.

We started the day at Paleo(f)X and sampled Paleo foods for about three hours straight. While the food was all Paleo, the amount was pretty large, and we were pretty filled up with naturally sweetened foods.

The meal I ate later in the day was Jaegerschnitzel, and was served with spaetzle (one of my favorite foods). I don’t ever eat spatzle, or nokedli as it’s called in Hungarian because it’s a pasta made with flour. I’ve tried some Paleo variants, but they haven’t quite been the same, so I just don’t eat it anymore. At this meal, however, I ate a serving, and yes, it was just as good and tasty as I remembered! I also had a few drinks and some wine earlier in the day.

The following day, I had two (TWO!) breakfasts that consisted of bacon and eggs and some cantaloupe and strawberries, and then after a lunch of wurst and sauerkraut, we had an apple strudel. It was absolutely delicious, but also filled to the brim with sugar.

The damage? I was up 7 lbs on Monday morning following the trip. I know it’s mostly water weight, but it’s still shocking to see on the scale and to feel in the waist. I can see on my skin that I’m retaining water, so I know it’s not permanent, but it’s amazing to me how much it bothers me now to be bloated this way. It strengthens my resolve to get back to my more comfortable weight range.

I will run later in the day which will take care of some of the extra water weight, but it usually takes a good 2-3 days for me to get rid of it all. I’m hoping it all comes back off in that time.

There is one way to become overweight: eat more food than your body needs; plain and simple. Whether you learned to over-eat as a child, adolescent, or as an adult, the fact remains that if you eat food that contains more nutrients and calories than you expend in a day, your body will store that excess energy and you become overweight. We all have reasons for being overweight, and some of these are legitimate. Our eating habits are learned, and many of us learned from our parents who didn’t have solid information about nutrition and diets. I get that. However, it seems that people always give some sort of excuse for why they can’t lose weight. They are big boned, have a thyroid problem, an eating disorder, never learned self control, are unable to exercise, and the list goes on and on. It all boils down to one thing: people don’t want to take responsibility for being overweight and solving that problem.

There is one very basic truth about being overweight: nobody forced you to eat more than you need. Nobody else is responsible for your being overweight. The buck stops with you.

Own it. So you’re overweight. You are one of millions of people who are. How can you stand out from the others? Take responsibility for your health and do something about it. Stop using excuses: start finding solutions.

Look, we all have our reasons for being overweight. Mine is due to a few things including being taught to finish everything on my plate regardless of how full I am (this one still haunts me and I struggle with it even today) coupled with bad nutritional education from elementary school through high school. I decided that I needed to get past my reasons and tackle the issue head-on. I did it by doing a Whole30 and then adopting the Paleo Diet. The bottom line is that I took responsibility for my own health. Nobody was going to change it for me. I could only do this for myself. Just like you; nobody is going to fix you if you are not willing to fix yourself.

No pills, patches, powders, or products are required. Just eat meat and vegetables with some fruit and cut out all processed sugar, added sugar and sweeteners, grains, soy, and dairy. It’s a simple plan, but not an easy one. It does take discipline to get through the first few days, but once you’re through it, it gets easy from there. I’m living proof of that.

Own your health. Make your health what you want it to be. It’s within your power.

At least at the very end. When I set initial goals of losing 20 lbs, 50 lbs, and even 100 lbs, I met those goals either on or before the mark, or slightly afterward (as in the case of my losing 100 lbs). Getting to my final goal has taken me quite a long time, and I’m still not there! I am within 2 lbs of it, although my weight has been going up and down +/- 2 lbs, bouncing off of my lowest weight a few times. I know I can get to 165 lbs if I really, really want to, but I’ve also been allowing myself to eat a regular Paleo diet without eating a “Weight loss” Paleo diet. What’s the difference? That, to me, would be cutting down on anything with sweetener in it at all, including honey or fruit. I haven’t gone that strict because, to be honest, I’ve been pretty happy with my weight and my physical progress.

My victories in the past few months have been mostly non-scale victories (NSV’s). Most of my NSV’s involve either losing waist size, shrinking extra skin, or improving muscle toning. I’ve also been making improvements in my push ups and in my run times.

As I get to the end of my weight loss phase, I am coming to the realization that I will not do anything different when I reach 165 lbs. I won’t eat a pizza, eat a cake, or have any sort of celebratory meal. To do so would be completely against everything I’ve learned in the past year and a half in regards to eating. I will likely just jump up and down like an idiot in the bathroom and smile a lot.