Today is the 30th day of my new lifestyle. I have lost 15 lbs. and I am stronger than I have ever been. I decided to make a change to be healthier, feel better, and to stop relying on synthetic processed products to make me compete at the highest level. And I did it with food.
Just after my last season playing for the Bar of Green Bay, I tipped the scales at 235 lbs. and was in constant pain while I played. For some reason, I tended to gain weight during the season. It wasn't really a secret that season, tho. We didn't win often so we spent plenty of time drowning our sorrows in the bar after the games, knowing that we didn't have to play the next day. After that season, I decided to clean up my diet and managed to lose 30 lbs. only to put a few back on. I started the following year at 210 but sure enough wound up at 220 once again.
I have been on that cycle until this past January. After getting a book called "It Starts with Food" by Dallas and Melissa Hartwig for Christmas, I decided to make a radical lifestyle change and begin eating what is commonly referred to as the caveman or paleo diet. In a nutshell, the diet consists of eating meat, eggs, vegetables and fruit. The idea is simple enough, when we were roaming the land as early humans we ate things that were whole. There was no agriculture or processed foods, we killed animals, foraged in forests, and ate things as they were.
Now, of course, there will never truly be the same foods as then. Wild food, without acid rain or pesticide run off, exists only in the most remote areas. Now, the solution is organically grown food, which is better than major agriculture and processed foods, is still not the same as it used to be. But it's a viable solution. In reality, nomadic people are at the mercy of whats around them. I can actually go to the store and get food native to just about anywhere, and it's an awesome thing!
In reality, I eat like a king! Just today I had 5 eggs scrambled mixed with spinach, onions and tomatoes, bacon and raspberries for breakfast. For lunch I ate 16 oz. of steak grilled asparagus and avacado with grapes and for dinner I had a salad with mixed greens, broccoli, carrots, avacado, tomatoes, onions, and grilled salmon with pesto and an orange. That's it. Three meals a day and they're great meals. Oh, and I kept track of how much money I paid for all the food I have eaten in the past 30 days... $465. If I had a #7 at Taco Bell everyday, 3 meals a day for 30 days it would be about $450. Weird.
Thing is we have been conditioned by bad food. Oreos are delicious, but they attack your chemistry with synthetic sugars, processed from sugar cane. The sugar attacks your senses, making you want more and more, and it's shocking, but if you think about it, would you ever stop? Think about it. I am capable of eating the entire box in one sitting, because my brain won't tell me to stop. Since there is no nutritional value in an Oreo, your brain never thinks that you are satisfied or "full". But that's not the worst thing. All those carbs you eat makes your internal chemistry numb to the constant carb overload. You become insensitive and all out of whack, eventually needing those carbs to function, and never tapping into the fat stores that now cover your body and get you ever closer to cardiovascular diseases, diabetes, and a multitude of other problems.
It's honestly sad. Now that I am a little tuned in I heard a story about when the FDA initially wanted to do a food pyramid. You have all seen it if you live in the states. Remember? 6-11 servings of grains, right at the bottom as the basis for our nutrition. Ironically, the woman that proposed the original food pyramid to the FDA actually had 3-5 servings of meat as the base of the pyramid (I am sorry, I forgot her name). She suggested only 1-2 servings of bread. The shocker is this: our government, during the cold war, decided that it would be impossible to give food stamps for meats and vegetables because it would have been too expensive and there wasn't a surplus due to the impending nuclear war. So the basis for our nutrition, taught in every school in the country, was formed as propaganda for financial reasons!!!! WOW!!!
Fortunately, we can recover from our past discretion. We can choose to eat what we should have known for years, and we can afford to do so. If for no other reason than to simply know the truth, read the book and do some investigating. You can visit their website at http://whole9life.com/ and check it out. I have already suggested this to my closest friends and the people I care about the most. I hope you take a look for your sake, and your family's sake as well.
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