Paleo Marine

There are lots of reasons. I’ve talked about it before, but it’s something I still get asked pretty often, so I’ll talk about it again.

In the beginning, it had to do with the fact that I had so much to say, and I wanted to talk to people all the time about the amazing changes going on in my life due to me doing a Whole30 and adopting the Paleo Diet. I wanted everyone to know that they could be eating better food and helping themselves get healthy just through their diet. I was losing more weight without exercise than many people I know who were working their tails off! Instead of annoying everyone around me, I started this blog.

Then, my mission quickly changed as I started hearing from people who were inspired or motivated by my example. I was interviewed by a few websites, and even a featured runner on Reddit. As word of this website spread, more and more people were giving me feedback about how I was helping them lose weight.

Then, there’s feedback like this which totally and completely humbed me:

The irony is that Tracy is one of the people who inspired me the most when I first started running. Whenever I got tired during a run, or my legs were aching, or all I wanted to do was quit, I thought of Tracy and how she was training for a half-marathon. She completed it, too, and once again, was an inspiration to me. She’s always upbeat and never lets any setback get her down for the count. She brushes herself off and gets right back into the swing of things. If that’s not motivating, I don’t know what is!

Then there’s this incredibly nice post on the blog My Pants are too tight. This is what gives me inspiration now to keep blogging and keep posting information, ideas, and tricks I use to keep losing weight, getting healthier, and getting fitter.

I’m not perfect, and I have setbacks, too. I document these to show people that everyone has setbacks, everyone struggles, and everyone has a hard time now and then with staying on-track. It’s okay; we’re all human, and we’re all going to make mistakes. What separates us from those who stay overweight is that we continue to get back on the right path after we’ve strayed. What separates us runners from those who are out of shape is that we continue to get out there and get the job done even when we don’t really feel like it.

I know you can do this. It’s not easy, but it is simple. It takes work, but you’re worth it. Your health is worth it. Your life is worth it.

I made a boo-boo today. It was unintentional, of course, but I think I could have and should have handled it better. Someone showed me a photo that their granddaughter sent them of a meal they were having for lunch: whole wheat bread with peanut butter with avocados. As she was showing it to me, she said, “How’s that for healthy?” She was beaming. I became the joy thief when I said, “Nope. There are two out of the three things there I won’t touch.” She said, “Really? Which ones?” “Peanut butter and the bread. Both of those are off-limits to me.”

She was a bit deflated, and as I walked away, I wondered if I could have handled that better. Why yes; yes I could have. I followed up with her by saying, “You know, that may be fine for some people, and it’s a far cry better than a hamburger or a sub. It’s just not part of my current diet.” She seemed much happier with that, and I was hopefully able to restore some of the points I lost for being a joy thief earlier.

I’m not the Paleo Police, and sometimes unintentionally, I say something that can be perceived as judging. I don’t judge what others eat, but when presented with something that is allegedly healthy when I know it’s not, sometimes, it’s hard to just smile and accept it. I am not a liar, and I won’t just nod and smile when someone shows me that they think is healthy but is, in fact, filled with sugar, grains, or dairy. It’s this false information that has gotten our culture into the health trouble it is currently in.

Someone asked me this today when they saw photos of me from before I lost all the weight. I think it’s interesting how they would never have asked me that if I was still obese, but the fact that I’m no longer fat somehow gives people the courage to ask me things like that. It’s as if now that we’re in the “Skinny club,” we can talk about “Those fatties.” I ignore the fact that it’s kind of rude only because I look past these little social faux pas’ because I really and truly want to help people and I’m not so thin-skinned. Not everyone who loses a great amount of weight has my lack of modesty, however, which is why I mention it at all.

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As a young man, I was very thin. I never had a problem with weight regardless of what I ate. I could eat anything, anytime, anywhere, and I would stick at 162 lbs. Sure, I was a little soft in the middle once I hit my 20’s, but it wasn’t until right at 30 when I started putting on weight.

From that point forward, keeping my weight within the Marine Corps height/weight regulations became a struggle. The maximum weight for my height was 175 lbs, and I was always right up on that number. There were many times I went over it and had to do some severe dieting and exercise to get below 175 lbs. It was not fun and I hated it. This is part of the reason I had such a negative outlook on exercise for such a long time: it was because I struggled with my weight and erroneously believed that exercise was the preferred method to control weight. Nobody told me that I could control my weight better with a low-carb diet. That was not a “Thing” yet. Had I known about Paleo back then, I likely never would have struggled with my weight at all.

A year before I got out of the Marines, I had a surgical procedure that left me on light duty for the rest of my time on active duty until I got out. This left me unable to exercise, and worse, allowed me to gain weight. I fattened up like a well-fed pig and left the Marines about 15 lbs overweight at 190 lbs.

From the Marines, I went to a desk job answering server support calls at Compaq. I went from a fairly active lifestyle (even on light duty, I was on my feet most of the day) to one where I sat at a desk all day. What didn’t change was my eating habits, and I gained a lot of weight very quickly. So fast, in fact, that I had stretch marks exactly like women get when they get pregnant. I ballooned up past 215 lbs within six months. A year later, I was over 240 lbs.

Over the course of the next few years, I struggled with different diets to try to get my weight under control. One time, in late 1998, I succeeded in getting my weight down to 189 lbs. I felt pretty good, but I was subsisting on a diet that was unsustainable. I felt tired, worn out, and had no energy. I was doing a lot of working out in gyms as I was traveling extensively at the time, but I caught pneumonia and was sidelined for a few weeks. Once I recovered, I had gained 15 lbs and along with the weight, I lost my will to continue on the diet or to get back into exercise. I gained all the weight back – and then some.

I tried time and time again to lose weight unsuccessfully. Regardless of how much walking I did or how much “Diet food” I ate (low-fat, no-sugar), I couldn’t get past about a 20 lbs loss. What’s worse is every time I failed, I would gain all the weight back plus another 10-15 lbs. At my heaviest, I got up to 312 lbs. I thought I was going to die at any moment.

The only thing that seemed to work for me was cutting out all sodas. Even though I switched to artificially sweetened, just getting rid of the full-sugar Coke I used to drink daily allowed me to lose about 2 lbs a month. This was steady, sustained weight loss over the course of about two years. When I started my Whole30, I only weighed 290 lbs. Only. It took me two years to go from 312 to 290. At that rate, I’d be dead before I ever saw 170 lbs again. I had made the decision that I needed to do something that gave me faster results. Or else.

A year and a half later, here I am. I weigh 169 lbs and I’m within a stone’s throw from my final goal of 165 lbs. I am no longer obese, but while according to BMI I’m still overweight, my body fat is very low and I’m comfortable with the weight I’m at. If I go lower than 165 lbs, it’ll be because my body wants to be there, not me. I’m finally at a place in my life in terms of health and fitness that I’m happy with.

Whole30 and Paleo are both free and there are lots of resources available online. I am here to answer questions via email, PM, or messaging. Let me know if you need any pointers, tips, motivation, or just an ear to listen to. I’d love to help you (and there are no strings attached, no fees, and I’m not selling anything).

1998 vs 2017.

Wow.

The photo on the left was taken of me in 1998 about a year after I got out of the Marine Corps. I was working for Compaq at the time as a technical trainer travelling around the country. I was in Chicago on business and stopped in to visit my aunt and my cousin when we took the photo on the left. It is one of the earliest photos I have of me at a heavier weight without a beard.

Fast forward to 2017, and I now weigh less than I did when I left the Marines and I’m in the best shape of my life since going to boot camp. I have less hair now, and it’s turned a bit gray on the lower sides, but in every other way, I look much healthier. I didn’t say thinner because that’s not the point.

I’m happiest most with my transformation from someone who was living an unhealthy and unfit lifestyle to someone who is healthy and fit. I don’t know if there’s any way to quantify adding years to my life, but in all honesty, the quality of my life has improved so much that even if I still have the same number of years left, at least they will be active, comfortable, and healthy years. It’s worth the effort.

I need to be better with this. I have been pre-posting pretty much everything on this blog for the past few months which gives me the flexibility of missing a day or two here and there as life gets busy without missing a day of new content here on PaleoMarine.com. However, that sometimes leads to some weird posts that seem out of order compared to my running blog or with previous live-posted entries. Case in point: Tuesday’s post (which is today for me, but last week when this goes live). The post that was published talked about how I had lost 4 lbs and that I ran two days before and would be running again that afternoon. Well, I ran yesterday (in the rain!) and I will not be running today.

So…

I will be making more of an effort to live-blog those things that are immediate and worthy of going out immediately, versus content that is more general and can wait to be pushed out at a later time. This should be seamless to everyone out there, and truth be told, I may be the only person this bothers, but it’s the little things. Attention to detail is a big thing to Marines.