In August of 2010, I weighed 390 pounds. One year later, I have lost 100 pounds by simply being smart and eating right. I didn’t excercise or starve myself either. I am halfway on my journey and it dawned on me that I should really share this with others. So, this site is where I will record my progress, dispell a bunch of misconceptions, and hopefully encourage some of you curious enough to venture here to get your life back too!
I started this journey a year ago much like so many others. Both as in other people and in other personal attempts to lose weight. I had previously seen a lot of success on what was Larry North‘s Great American Diet. I credit him with getting me started in actually thinking about nutrition and the fuel that makes our bodies work. If you aren’t familiar with this diet, it is basically a zone diet. I also had some friends doing the Atkins diet with a lot of success. So I started out like before trying to eat 5-6 smaller portioned, well balanced meals each day. I saw the most success when I reduced my carbs so I was really customizing my plan based on what my body was telling me. A couple months into this, I was listening to some of my favorite programming podcasts and the term paleo kept getting mentioned, particularly by Dan Benjamin and his 5by5 network.
I started listening to Latest in Paleo and the Paleo Solution podcasts and this guy Robb Wolf was sounding pretty damn knowledgable as a biochemist. I had already eliminated sugar but was still trying to watch my fat intake while eating lots of good lean meats. I had figured out that bread and pasta were killers in my diet but I didn’t have a clue as to the real health impact these foods were having on my life.
For the past 15 years, I had been bothered by a handful of issues including inflammation (a bought of cellulitis that doubled the size of my left leg), sleep apnea (spent a couple nights being monitored for a cpap and had over 300 “events”), psoriasis on my arms and face, and a perpetually stopped up nose that only cleared when I went outside into the fresh, pollen filled air!
After only a few months following a roughly paleo diet (about 80%), I have seen huge improvements in all of these issues! I can’t begin to tell you what a difference this has made in my life. I’m in better shape, have better sleep, and breath easier throughout the day. I will be explaining more about the paleo diet, why it’s so freaking amazing, and how to make it easy, in the posts to come. I will also be talking about what the corporate giants are doing keep the wool over our eyes and how the government is inept at solving these problems.