Where to (re)Start?

It's safe to say it has been a while.  When I looked and saw that my last post was so long ago, I would say I was surprised, but it wouldn't be true.  In fact, I was kind of surprised that it was that recent.  The truth is that it has been almost a year since I've felt like myself.  I sustained an injury last summer that put me out for months, got back, and sustained another one that put me out of training and out of my hopes for my second Ironman finish.  These injuries derailed me physically, but I allowed them to derail me mentally and emotionally also.  I've had spurts of time when I felt like I was coming back, but they've fallen short.  I guess I can't say that wont happen again, but I've got one little thing on my side that I'm hoping might make a difference.  Starting Monday, July 1, I have one month of summer vacation. No work, total vacation.  I'm going to use this as a 30 day reboot of my life.  I'm also going to use it to do a project that I've been wanting to try for a long time.  I'm going to chronicle the 30 day reboot in a video blog here.  Every day for 30 days I'll post a video of my progress, thoughts, struggles, etc.

In a nutshell, here's my plan for the reboot:
-30 days of totally clean/paleo eating.  Along with this I really want to refine the way I was doing the diet before, even when it was successful.  I'm a carnivore, but I really want to up the plants.  I'm going to incorporate some juicing, stack on the veg and try and stick to higher quality meats in smaller portions.

-My calf has been feeling normal and I've even been doing a little running.  I'm going to continue to swim/bike/run as well as do crossfit at least one a week (usually twice).

-While this is a month off of work, it's also my only vacation month, my birthday is this month, and hey, it's summer.  So I'm going to allow myself 4 days this month (one for each week) to enjoy a beer or two, or eat a non paleo meal.  These aren't "cheat" days, because I don't believe in cheat days (more on that later), but rather than go completely off the rails because I have a beer or a slice of pizza, let myself know that there will be circumstances where it happens.  Let it happen, then move right back on course.  That being said, I'm going to try NOT to use these 4 days.  Part of the purpose of this is to show that I believe this is a sustainable lifestyle and not something that is a departure or anomaly from "normal."

Just when you think you've got it all figured out...

It's been 6 or 7 weeks since I started eating/living the primal way, and I have totally bought into it and feel as though I have become more knowledgeable about it. Then I have a weekend like this one. What I realize is that this weekend didn't test my knowledge or my ability to follow this diet, it just tested my resolve. My resolve failed. One of the things that I have liked most about this "diet" is that it isn't a diet as much as it is a lifestyle, which meant that things like willpower, "can't have this, can't have that" don't really apply. What I realized is that as true as that may be, it can still be a challenge to live this way in today's world. I had an awful day Friday, which made me want nothing more than a big sandwich and a beer, and that's exactly what I had. I took food out of what it is, which is fuel, and turned it into medicine, medicine that's not even for my body, just for my brain. Paleo or not, turning food into an emotional crutch is a slippery, slippery slope indeed. The worst part about it is that it's insidious. I ate a sandwich and a beer Friday, I had a tortilla Saturday, I had pizza today. Most people would say, so what, but it's not even so much that I had them, as that I was able to justify them each time, and each time my justification had something to do with it being "ok" or "deserving" it. Again, food is no longer fuel, it's medicine.

The good news, tonight my resolve is strong. I don't feel like I've failed, I feel like I've learned. I have a lunch full of paleo foods packed for tomorrow and I probably won't really miss a beat, but I will approach the coming week a little more cautiously. One thing I have to look forward to, trying to figure out how to have a paleo friendly bachelor party weekend. Stay tuned for that one :)

Something I never thought I would want.

Most people who know me would tell you I'm not a fan of hunting. To be honest, I'm, more often than not, not a big fan of hunters either. I know too many hunters that stand take pictures standing over beautiful, lifeless animals, smiling because they just shot a living creature for sport. "Man I killed a huge ______" this weekend. Congratulations, you're a killer. This has been my standard thought process when it comes to hunting.

My thinking has been challenged a bit lately through the paleo diet as well as a couple interesting things I've seen on television. A few months ago a show came on the travel channel called "The Wild Within" and then a show came on last night called "iCaveman." I watched them both out of curiosity and of course to see what perspectives they could offer me on the kind of lifestyle I'm trying to live. Both shows were, eh, ok, with their good and bad points. I'm not going to waste the time summarizing them completely, but a little background is probably necessary. In the Wild Within, the host is a modern man, living in Brooklyn, who is a life long hunter and outdoors man. He contends that we have lost our connection to our environment and our food, and for this reason he only eats meat which he himself kills and brings home to his family. This usually happens on vastly expensive hunting expeditions in far off ridiculously beautiful places, but I found it interesting. In iCaveman, 10 people set out to survive for 10 days in Colorado with nothing more than the resources available to Paleolithic man. The main pursuit of this show was to test if modern life actually gives us the mental and physical tools to survive like our ancestors did. The short answer was no, not really.

So, to the hunting. What both of these shows did that really challenged my perspective and made me think was the fact that on both of these shows, when they killed an animal, it was nothing like what I've seen from "typical" hunting shows my whole life. When they killed an animal, there was no "oh good shot, what a beautiful kill, oh man..." type reactions. In both cases, the kills were emotional, gut wrenching, even painful. There was a sense that what they did was actually what they did, they took a life to sustain their own. They weren't exhilarated by a new trophy; they were humbled and deeply moved by what they had done. Both shows also always had the hunters stalking and killing the animals, not setting up killing stations where animals had been trained to congregate and be ambushed. There were tears, heavy hearts, and healthy respect for the lives of the beautiful animals that they killed.

Seeing these things made me think a lot about the food I eat. I love meat, I've always loved meat, and I always will, but I realized that on a day in day out basis, I place very little connection between the meat I eat, and a living, breathing animal. I've always looked at hunters as cruel, cruel people, and some of them frankly are, but I think there is nothing as cruel as eating meat and not acknowledging what it is. Again, I don't think eating meat is wrong, I think it's wrong to eat meat and have no sense of what it means to eat meat. The truth is that in our modern food culture we don't see livestock, chickens, fish, and even some game as animals; they are a product, no different from a jar of peanut butter on the shelf. I used to take this perspective and form some sort of ill advised, self righteous position over hunting, and somehow made it less cruel, when in reality, it was crueler.

So do I want to be a big hunter now, I can't honestly say, but I can say that I feel a deep need to re-connect the bond between my food and what it really is. I don't know when this will happen, but I feel it's very important. I would still place trophy hunters, the guys who get some sort of thrill out of killing animals, a 12 on a 1-10 scale of worst scumbags around, but I believe that those who hunt to feed their families probably gain a healthier perspective than people like me have right now.

****This list of "responsible hunting" from huntright.org contains a lot of what I think is necessary for proper hunting. http://www.huntright.org/where-we-stand/responsible-hunting

What a week

What a truly amazing week in life. For starters, we finally got the results from our 30 day paleo challenge, which started this whole adventure in the first place. I was so fortunate to actually win the male challenge which took in to account body composition change and food logging. So for some numbers. In 30 days, I dropped from 192 lbs to 184. Both of these weights were taken at the end of the day and quite off from what I consistently got at home. On my scale I went from 190-179, that's weighing in the buff and in the morning though. Even more importantly, my overall body fat went from 24.4% to 16%! I couldn't believe the amount of change there. I dropped two and a half inches around my waist which translates into almost 2 pant sizes. Im posting pictures below from week one to the final weigh in. I don't really know how much different they look to other people, but I see a huge difference when I look at myself in the mirror. I'm pretty much done with the scale, it's going to lose its importance to me with the amount of muscle I'll be gaining so who knows what the number will end up being. I couldn't be happier with the results, and I'm even happier with how I feel. I'm going into serious marathon training this week and I predict I'm going to have to up my carbohydrates, but I still plan to take them totally from natural sources like fruits and starchy vegetables like sweet potatoes and winter squashes. It's still definitely a work in progress but I'm nothing but excited about what's coming up.


Day 1 of the Paleo Diet


After 37 days on the Paleo Diet







I had a really cool breakthrough on my 12 mile long run this weekend too. I've been trying to figure out what I'm going to do about nutrition during long runs and have bounced back and forth between bananas and Lara Bars, but the bananas often give me heart burn if I eat them during exercise and the Lara Bars work awesomely on long bike rides, but I hadn't really tried them on long runs. Well getting ready on Saturday morning I was faced with the reality that I hadn't planned anything and I also remembered that the week before I had started crashing because I had nothing to eat on a long run. I started rummaging around to find anything that wasn't Gu and finally settled on a container of organic flame raisins. Looking at the numbers, a quarter cup of raisins had almost the same calories as a Gu (Raisins 120, Gu 100) and actually more carbs (32 raisins, 28 Gu). My only concern was, frankly, the fiber. I knew that the possibility of a bathroom break was a real one, but I decided to go with it anyway. 12 miles was going to be my longest run by a couple of miles since the Ironman in May and man was this a good one. It didn't hurt that it was 59 degrees and stayed in the low 60's the whole time, but I felt awesome. I started out at around a 9:00-9:10 pace, remembering also that the week previously I had gone out a lot faster than this to stay with some people, and I know better than that. It was a glorious run, and each mile split got quicker and quicker, such that I ended my 12 mile run with an average of an 8:50 pace, with the last two miles being sub 8:10. The raisins did great, but I did have to take a potty break. I can't say for certain if the raisins were the reason for this or not, but either way, I didn't care, I felt tremendous. So, long story short, I'll be using the raisins again.

No more confirmation needed

Yesterday officially marked the end of my 30 day "Paleo Challenge" through my crossfit gym. The "winner" get's announced tomorrow or the next day, but I already know I won. I don't know if I'll be named the winner of the challenge, but I definitely won something from this challenge. I have no doubt in my mind that this is how I will eat from this point forward. I'm going to wait until the results are out to give all of my final numbers and post some pictures, but what I will say is that the results were tremendous for me. I dropped significant body fat, dropped around 10 pounds, and feel like a million dollars. More than anything my mind is so clear on why this is good for me. It's clear to me not because of all the scientific reasons or because of what I've read, although all of that plays in. I know it's good because in just 30 days eating this way has transformed almost every part of my life. I don't even care if that sounds over-dramatic. I can't exactly explain the feeling of knowing that all of the food I eat is, as close as is possible living in a modern world, what my body was designed to eat. Naturally one of my big concerns was how it would affect me in my athletic pursuits and I have to say the results were great. I do see that in the future I am going to have to do a better job of planning for increased calories and carbohydrates when I have longer workouts, but paleo or no paleo, you have to plan to fuel during endurance sports.

If I had any doubts that I would continue this way of eating, I erased them yesterday, by not eating this way. As the challenge wound to a close, it felt "appropriate" to celebrate by going out to eat Tex-Mex. I set rules for myself before we went, no chips, no rice, and just try to be sensible. I think I did that, only had one chip, ate no rice, and didn't get the cheesiest most tortilla heavy thing on the menu, but I did take a hit on the churros and ice cream. Afterward and then today, I just don't feel like myself. It was one meal, and I don't feel any real guilt, just resolve. I don't need that anymore. Celebrating with food seems silly. Food is just fuel so that we CAN celebrate our lives, it doesn't need to be the celebration. That doesn't mean a treat now and again is bad, and I definitely know that I'll have them from time to time, but honestly, I don't need it. Bread, pasta, grains, sugar; I don't need those things to feel celebratory. I could go on and on and on about how we, as a culture, turn food into a drug more than an energy source, but that's another day.

To wrap up, I can't wait to see where this diet evolves from here. (yeah, that pun was very much intended) I look very forward to seeing how much more seamlessly I can integrate this way of eating into my life and the long term benefits it will have.

A bit of a hard day

I've been lucky since starting this particular phase of my journey, almost a month ago, to not have had many rough days. At the beginning of the paleo diet I had some sugar withdrawals to get past, not to bad. I've had to defend myself a few times, nothing too hard there. Today, I faced a challenge that I frankly didn't expect, and it's all on me.

Since my first crossfit workout a week ago, I've had trouble with my left knee hurting. All through foundations it was fine, it wasn't until I started squatting with heavy weight that my knee started hurting. I figured that my form could use some focus, and that more than likely I had some weaknesses to address. I wasn't overly concerned about it and my knee did feel better during the next workout, and I was able to run on it without pain for 8 miles on Saturday. Today my knee felt completely fine, even going down stairs (the consistent trigger of discomfort all week) so I felt very hopeful going into today's WOD (workout of the day). Not 2 minutes into the workout my knee was hurting from one of the movements. All of this just leads to what made the day hard. Over the last two years of becoming an athlete, I've had tweaks and injuries and the first thing you know is to slow it down, modify what you are doing, and above all don't just keep pushing through something that really "hurts." For some reason as I was performing my "man makers" tonight, I ignored all the things I knew about not getting myself hurt. I could have shallowed the squat, modified by not squatting with weight, but what I shouldn't have done is exactly what I did. I just kept going, but my form started to degrade, I started to short reps and I became very defeated, very quickly.

The other thing I did that triathlon, running, and endurance sports in general have taught me so well not to do is focus on something other than my own effort. I let where other people were in the workout, what time was on the clock, and what I "should" be able to do impact my workout more than actually doing what would have been best for me. I was more focused on being able to put a "good time" up on the board than I was on getting a quality workout done. It's a bitter pill to swallow after you feel like you've learned how to focus. In a way I'm glad this happened on day 3 of crossfit, and I guess I should be glad I realized it at all.

On the board at the box we have a section of white board where we are supposed to write our monthly goal. I didn't make one for September just because we were over halfway through the month. My "rest of September" goal? Don't focus on the clock, stop looking at where other people are, and do a workout RX (as prescribed) no matter what the clock says.

Three Weeks In

I've been eating the paleo way for 21 days and I'm really starting to see a difference in my body. 3 weeks is a relatively short period of time and so far I have lost 11 pounds and my clothes are really starting to fit differently. I'm not really losing weight anymore and I'm not going to be surprised if I actually start gaining because I started doing Crossfit last week and am hoping to start adding some muscle. With the paleo diet plan in full force, I do feel like I'm definitely losing body fat now and not just water. I'm having to make sure I keep my calories up so that I'm burning my body fat and not any muscle. I feel absolutely great, and even I can see change in these pictures.