Day 29

(Jessica and our first Paleo breakfast on day one of the challenge)

I'm only minutes away from eating my last meal of day 29 of the paleo challenge. Tomorrow I will take a photo and post it along with the photos I took just days before the challenge started. Let me just say that things have changed for me in a phenomenal way. My stomach is a comepletely different thing now. Today I had three scrambled eggs and some grapes for breakfast. Snack was a paleo-friendly Larabar and black coffee. Lunch; a handful of dried fruit and nuts. Hunger is a completely diferent thing now, before paleo when I got hungry I would almost freak out. There was this sense of desperation to not be hungry anymore. Now, I get hungry in a different way. My stomach doesn't rumble as much if at all...and when I do get hungry I just need a small snack to tide me over for a while.

Physically, the changes are pretty easy to see and pretty exciting. Lookign in the mirror I'm starting to see something I've never seen in my nearly 39 years of existence...my stomach muscles. No I don't have some ripped six pack but I can see the definition of the top part of my ab muscles. Pretty damn exciting for a life-long fat guy. This has changed my life and I can guarantee you I will be sticking to this way of eating for many years to come.

I cannot believe I've made it this far with no sugar, bread, rice or any other grains and no dairy.....

I feel incredible. I am truly amazed. I feel like I'm running on the right kind of fuel for my engine.

AWESOME!

Halfway Mark

Today is the halfway mark of the paleo challenge and I am kicking ASS!!!. In all honesty I had doubts about my ability to make it this far. Maybe I didn't believe in myself and that could be attributed to the countless number of times I "went on a diet" or told myself I was going to eat better....only to find myslef in the line at starbucks getting a double mocha and a slice of iced lemon cake by the week's end...pretty much accepting my failure and justifying it by the stressfull week I had or the fact that I had missed lunch. Whatever the case may be I can say that this challenge has done a lot for me. It's really opened my eyes at how sugar and carb-y foods were affecting my life. Here's a prime example; One of the main changes (and probably the most significant to me) I've noticed is that during my normal workday I don't have to pee as much and I can also hold it for much longer. This has been crazy because before the challenge I would get these frequent and urgent needs  to urinate to the point where I would be in pain the longer I held it. Even if I went to the bathroom I'd have to go again within 20 minutes. This was making me MISERABLE. Today things were very different. I was on an assignment (I'm a news cameraman) and ended up in a place where there were no available bathrooms and I had to pee the moment I got there. Obvioulsy I couldn't and for over four hours I held it. Now this may be no big deal to some but for me this was huge. Honestly I was starting to watch those commercials for medication for people who pee to frequently and wondering if I was gonna need that stuff soon....this was not good. So I give up sugar for two weeks and already I'm noticing major changes for the positive...awesome!


When I was on the white poison (saw that name for it on the internet) I never knew how much it was screwing up my body....how could I know?? I've been eating sugar almost all my life so not having it was an unkown way of life to me. If I really want to be specific I can probably say that the last time I ate a true paleo regimen was when I was breastfeeding. Because I know for a fact once I started taking the bottle I started getting sweet drinks. And they weren't "organic" "good for kids" type sweet drinks (if such a thing even exists) it was probably Kool-Aid or sweetened fruit juices. I know this because I was a fat kid growing up. We ate a lot of sugar in our house. My parents justified it because it made us kids happy and we bugged them for it. Growing up we didn't have a lot of money so things like candy bars and soda were a prized treat. These were things that me and my brothers would fight over as kids and until I gave sugar up I never even thought about these things.

Day 15 and things are going great. I don't miss sweets. I don't crave them and to be honest I feel like I'm looking at things like that in a diferent light. I know what negative effect they have on my body that goes beyond weight gain. I believe I understand how my sugar addiction probably had me on a path to diabetes. No guarantee I won't become a diabetic someday, its pretty dominant in my family, but I at least know I can do something to work against it.

15 days of paleo and I feel amazing. I'm losing weight, sleeping better, waking up earlier and I've noticed an improved mental clarity and an increase in overall energy.


Who knew life without sugar was this good?


:D

Two weeks

Ok, things got a little crazy with work and all and I haven't posted yet so I have some catching up to do.
First off I am stoked to say at fourteen days I am still doing well with the Paleo challenge. I have not once cheated. Las week I was sent to the fires in San Bruno and set up at the evacuation site. After the word got out about the fires folks started bringing all sorts of food for the evacuess, in particlar, pizza. They were giving it out to everyone there and this red cross lady offered me a whole large pizza. I said no and she got kinda pushy and said TAKE IT! I respecfully and repeatedly declined so she stuck the pizza in the back of my van and I was stuck with it. Mind you this story was so crazy I hadn't had a chance to get dinner. I had a banana and nuts for dinner and lunch was nuts and dried fruit....
Still, the whole time I refused to give in and didn't eat the pizzza. I ended up giving the pizza to a coworker at the end of the night who hadn't eaten either and was having a lousy night. The starbucks was also giving out free drinks, the sugary kind. I stayed away. The next morning I had to go back to the same spot and there were people giving away sweet coffee drinks, sodas, chocolate croissants and other sweet breads. I remember looking at them and thinking "I am not going to have ANY of that, I am not goign to fail today"


So, anyhow all is going good. Breakfast is getting pretty boring though....All the other meals have been great!


I'm also figuring out how to eat out and stay paleo. During this San Bruno story I needed to get dinner. I was at a strip mall and wanted to get some food. I walked up to a restaurant, read the menu and walked away. Next I saw a burger joint that was crowded and smelled great. Obviously they make good burgers there. I sniffed the air for a few more seconds and walked on. Then I decided to go into the Mollie Stone's grocery store. Dinner was served! They had a salad bar and a deli so I made myself a paleo salad and got a grilled chicken breast from them. Success!!!

A couple of days later I was there again and wanted a hot meal,  I was pretty tired of cold food. They have a hot food deli (most of it I can't touch) so I got some sliced turkey breast from there and a 1/2 pint of mixed berries from the coolers. Dee-lish!!!

The next day I went in for a chicken breast and some fruit. The lady behind the deli counter was a nice woman and we started talkign about the explosion when she saw on my jacket that I worked for a TV station. She gave me the chicken breast for free and I bought a pear and an apple to go with it. Lunch was $1.49 that day!!! My point, I can manage to eat out and still eat paleo. I was pretty worried about that in the beginning.

 Sidenote: Tango apples are awesome!!!


Oh yeah, I'm really starting to see the physicall changes :)

Day 2

So yesterday was a more or less flawless day. I wasn't even tempted to cheat. Maybe I was just fired up about this or maybe its becuase Jessica is my accountability partner and I don't want to let her down. Either way, I exercised hard yesterday and ate well. Today I'm resting up, pretty sore from Monday and Wednesday. Right hip is pretty tight so I gotta try and loosen that up over the next few days. Today is also going to be a bit of a challenge because we really need to go grocery shopping. We have food but we're runnning low :)

One thing I noticed yesterday evening. I was tired....Jessica and I went to get a few things at Trader Joes and Target last night. This is a pretty normal mid-week errand for us but last night I looked over at Jessica and she was yawning and her eyes were a bit glazed over....she looked sleepy and I felt exactly the way she looked. So my first day of Paleo went fine but I was pretty tired by the evening. So my energy level was pretty low by nighttime.

So today is day 2 of the paleo challenge and I'm fully fired up about the next 28 days. Hopefully I can keep up this tempo and get to see some results at the end of the month. Jessica is helping a lot. She threw away all of our rice, grains etc. that will help for sure.  They can't tempt us if we can't see them!

Ok, thats it for now. Kinda boring I know....but my cup of black coffee awaits.


BTW - this weekend I ate whatever I wanted knowing I was going to start this challenge. That was a bad idea. My stomach just reminded me that I'm almost 39 and that kind of food just doesn't work for me anymore. In short....my lifelong path with food like BURRITOS is coming to and end...the last couple of times I ate like that I was hurting. My point is the paleo way of eating could end up becoming a very normal thing for me.

Three days...

Ok, so today is Sunday 8/29/10...its about 1pm and I just had myself 2 cups of coffee with cream and sugar and a bowl of cereal. Now the reason I'm writing about something as trivial as that is because there is some significance behind it. Starting Wednesday 9/1 my girlfriend Jessica and I are starting a 30-day paleo challenge being done at Crossfit Oakland. What that means is for 30 days we will not eat ANYsugars, grains or any sort of dairy. Essentially, we are going to eat as close as possible to the way cavemen would have eaten thousands of years ago. So....sugars, bread, rice pasta, dairy...anything that was farmed or processed is out....for thirty days. Now maybe this sounds easy to some...but really...think about it...how often do we not eat these things for extended periods of time. I am pretty attached to my slice of whole grain toast in the AM as well as the occasional sandwich or pasta and its all gone. Brown rice??? NOPE! Its all out. Its an experiment to see what kind of goals I can reach with this way of eating (I don't like calling it a diet). I'm not nervous about doing it but there is some anxiety attached to it...as I'm about to start this I'm realizing I've never eaten like this. My whole life there was some sort of grain, potatoes, beans etc. with each meal and now for thirty days its all pretty much meat, fish, chicken, veggies, fruit, nuts and seed. The only thing I will be drinking will be water and my cup of black coffee in the morning. So this morning's breakfast, however lousy it may have been, was sort of a goodbye to that food. I fully intend on seeing this through knowing that I can only benefit from it. So, over the next month I'm going to try and keep updating this so I can go back and see where I was at in the challenge. Going into this I know that its going to be tough especially in mine and Jessica's line of work...I work in the news biz and I'm always out and about running around....gathering news, sometimes stuck in one place for hours with only crap to eat nearby (but thats pretty much everywhere outside of what you bring from home). Jessica is a barista at Starbucks....always abundant sugary-bready snacks and sweet sweet drinks for days. Yeah...this could be tough....so we gotta be tough :)

We've taken before pictures and we are going to take after pictures...they'll be posted at the end of the thirty days

Couple of key points for me to be successful:

I have to get in control of my sugar eating urges, they can be pretty bad sometimes.
I absolutely have to pack lunch every day for work or I WILL FAIL
I have to remember that while this challenge restricts me from eating certain foods I will eat good...real good.


Oh yeah. I'm also giving up alcohol until the new year. Just a personal challenge that's linked to my fitness goals at crossfit.