FAILURE.... or is it?

At the beginning of this blog adventure I told you that I would "tell it like it is" and today I'll hold true to that. Life has warts, you know?

So this was the second weigh-in for the Yokota's Biggest Loser YBL event and I'm not nearly as excited as I was for the first one since I've gained almost a half-pound. I can already hear some folks thinking "HA! Failure of the Primal lifestyle... you should eat some whole-grain noodles fattie!" But being the insightful old man that I am I can very easily look back at my food logs and journal entries and see exactly where the problem is.

It's my wife's fault.

Now READ ALL OF THE STUFF BELOW before you start sending the hate mail please.

I blame the bird. Well, maybe not...

My wife is awesome. She's smart, has a good head on her shoulders, has a great sense of humor and is easy on the eyes to top it all off. She has a laugh that simply makes my day when I hear it. Because of her awesomeness she recently got promoted at work and as a result we may have to move this summer after being in Japan only a year. Moving is stressful; moving early sucks rocks. Our last assignment we moved after two years of a three year tour and that was painful enough. This, at the moment, is worse. We have a fantastic church, the kids are happy with their schools, friends and activities and I have yet to get a photo of Mt. Fuji that's worth showing to anyone. I feel like I'm on the express train to Stressville.

Did I mention I happen to be a stress eater? I might have left that part out.

Thank God I have become pretty firmly set in my Primal eating habits. Previously I would have easily packed an additional ten pounds onto my short suffering body under conditions like this (being the grocery shopper can have some negative side effects) but I'm out of the danger zone when it comes to the processed carbs I loved so much i.e. potato chips, french fries and the like.

But there has been some extra cheese hanging around in the fridge. And since I'm the King of Rationalization I said to myself, "Self, cheese doesn't have carbs in it! You should just heat some up on a plate and it won't be nearly as bad as those evil bags of sin you used to eat." So I did. Totally oblivious (OK, I admit I just didn't care) that despite being carb-friendly I could easily plug a thousand extra calories into my body throughout the day. And I did. More than once. sigh 

Because of the YBL weigh-in today I didn't continue on this course. Because of the food logs and journal entries I keep it was very easy to see what happened on such-and-such day AS WELL AS what my food response was to that day. Now, it is super-easy to make an adjustment and since I have a couple of people in my inner-circle of trust that will keep me on track I don't look at this as a failure as much as a lesson that I needed to learn. Emotions can trigger all kinds of ugliness and when combined with a liberal application of rationalization can start me back on the road to fattie land.

You see, our lives are about personal accountability. I made a choice and there were results from that choice. I can't blame my wife, her promotion, the lack of snow in Japan or the fact that I got canvas Nikes in 9th grade and not the cool leather ones. None of that crap is responsible for my actions. I am.

And thus, officially, it is not my wife's fault. Did I mention she's awesome?????

Hey, Conventional Wisdom: Eat It!

I used to have a doctor with the bedside manner of a seedy roadside-bar comedian.

"Silk or satin?" he says to me one day.

"What????"

"It's the question your wife is going to have to answer about your coffin if you don't get things together soon."

Shortly thereafter I left the office with a high-blood pressure medication and a high cholesterol drug. Well crap.

Fast-forward to yesterday. My blood cholesterol panel never got really good despite some pitiful efforts at CW eating (but I must admit no exercise). I began a Primal eating regimen and exercise program in the first week of December. So yesterday morning, Feb 2nd, I got my latest blood work results:

                                      25JUN10         24FEB11           1FEB12
Total Cholesterol                252                   206 (-46)         162 (-44)
HDL                                   33                      34  (+1)            34
LDL                                   176                   138  (-38)        113 (-25)
Triglycerides                       243                   191  (-52)        102 (-89)
Fasting glucose                    --                     116                    88 (-28)

I changed what I had been doing for years 7 weeks before this test

Oh, and it gets better. You may remember that I entered Yokota's Biggest Loser event since I was already making these sweeping changes to my life. Well I had my first weigh-in today:

                                    2NOV11     5JAN12*          3FEB12                     
Waist @ hip crest, inches      --              50.6               49.5 (-1.1)
Weight, pounds                  272          267.4 (-4.6)    254.8 (-12.6) <~~~~~ DUDE!!!!!
Body fat, %                        --               37.3               36.4 (-0.9)
BMI                                   --               40.1               38.6 (-1.5)

*Yokota's Biggest Loser Challenge starting weight

Again, I changed what I had been doing for years 7 weeks before this weigh-in. So what am I doing?

I eat BACON and make my REAL EGG omelets with BUTTER and on occasion I have a cup of WHOLE MILK and I use COCONUT OIL which is super-high in SATURATED FAT. I drizzle MACADAMIA OIL on my salads and have regular handfuls of MACADAMIA, ALMOND, SUNFLOWER, PUMPKIN, WALNUT and CASHEW nuts. I eat HARD BOILED EGGS wrapped in PORK SAUSAGE and BACON for breakfast. I have THAI CHICKEN SOUP made with COCONUT MILK for supper. I've eaten more BROCCOLI, BELL PEPPERS, CAULIFLOWER, BRUSSELS SPROUTS, ROMAIN LETTUCE, SPINACH, KALE, MUSHROOMS, SHALLOTS, ONIONS, GARLIC, CABBAGE and AVOCADOS in 7 weeks than I have in my entire life. I make my own GUACAMOLE every week. I put real freaking CREAM in my occasional cup of coffee!

I do SIT-UPS (I originally could not do a single one, now I do them in sets). I do PUSH-UPS (not regulation yet, but have gone from leaning on a wall to leaning on a couch and I make gains every week). I do SQUATS (and no longer hold onto a chair for support). I do KNEE-PLANKS (and have gone from seconds just barely into the double-digits to closing in on two minutes). I do this three times a week.

I run. Let me repeat that: I RUN! 7 weeks ago I ran for less than 30 seconds before I was gasping for air. Now I'm on week 3 of the Couch to 5K app. It's not pretty and I took 3 weeks to confidently perform the first week and I take 2 weeks to do each new milestone. But I can now run for over 3 minutes at a time and do that multiple times in a row. I don't LIKE running, but I like OWNING each segment. Hell, I spent money on running shoes. I do this three times a week.

I do hard things. And when those things get easy, I do something harder.

What DON'T I do?

I don't eat SUGAR, FLOUR, GRAINS, NOODLES, BREAD, MARGARINE, ICE CREAM, VEGETABLE OILS, BEANS/LEGUMES including PEANUTS or THINGS THAT CONTAIN THEM! I don't drink FRUIT JUICE, BEER, SODA or DIET SODA. I don't eat PROCESSED FOODS if I can help it. I don't eat FAST FOOD if I can help it (but still follow my guidelines as closely as I can when I have to). I DON'T SHOP FROM THE AISLES in the middle of the grocery store except for those items that promote my lifestyle (I shop around the edges mostly). I don't think of buying a new item WITHOUT READING THE LABEL. I ignore the standard FOOD PYRAMID, MY PLATE and RDA %.  I pretty much don't eat crap food anymore.

That's how I feel about Conventional Wisdom.

I don't blindly follow CONVENTIONAL WISDOM. I don't attend a social function WITHOUT EATING "MY WAY" before leaving the house. I have learned to liberally use the phrase NO THANK YOU. I don't spend HOURS working some CARDIO program to "burn calories". I don't take CRAZY SUPPLEMENTS or outlandish FAT BURNING PILLS. I don't put FUNNY DROPS in my water. I don't exercise because I HAVE TO or because someone TOLD ME TO. I exercise because I UNDERSTAND that it will BENEFIT ME and allow me a longer time to yell at kids who walk on my lawn. I eat the way I do because I understand that CONTROLLING MY INSULIN LEVEL is a VERY BIG DEAL and A DIRECT RESULT OF THE CHOICES I MAKE EVERY TIME SOMETHING GOES INTO MY GAPING MAW.

I EXERCISE RADICAL RESTRAINT on a daily basis (thanks for that Dean!). It is a LEARNED SKILL. I FAILED at many early attempts but I KEPT TRYING. I can now walk past plates of hors-d'vours or jalapeno poppers or petit fours or <gasp> glazed doughnuts unscathed. I'll say it again:  

EXERCISING RADICAL RESTRAINT is a LEARNED SKILL. Which means you can learn it!

If you don't try to figure that out, you'll never figure it out. I also learned that if I do eat something decadent that a) I'll feel like a steamy pile of poo later on, and b) the world will keep right on spinning. Meaning that I didn't BECOME A FAILURE, it means that I HAD (past tense) a failure. Get back on the flipping horse and continue the race!

Stepping off my soap box...

Adapt. Improvise. Overcome.

One of my favorite movies is "Heartbreak Ridge" and it stars Clint Eastwood as Gunnery Sergeant Thomas Highway who leads a band of young Marines with a piss-poor attitude through the machinations necessary to excel in their chosen profession... eventually. One of his lessons to these young men was that they weren't held to a rigid set of rules. If conventional wisdom didn't work or make sense in a situation, they were expected to adapt, improvise, and overcome. We could learn a thing or two from Gunney Highway.

There are rules and concepts one should pay particular attention to as they have an effect on your life whether you believe in them or not. For instance, gravity. Gravity cares not if you believe in the concept. You can believe against gravity all you want but if you walk over a cliff you'll become a believer my friend, trust me. Other rules or guidelines have a bit more leeway because some things in life aren't so cut and dried.

Score of the day: celery and smoked cuttlefish!

The eating model I subscribe to says I shouldn't eat processed carbohydrates i.e. food with sugar in it a.k.a. PCs. Recently I found myself at a New Year's Day celebration with my Japanese hosts. Before me on the low table I was sitting at (cross-legged no less, no small accomplishment for me) was a very impressive spread of food: sushi on rice (PC), tempura shrimp (PC), assorted breaded and fried meats (PC), some type of potato salad looking thing (PC), etc. But there was a selection of cold roast beef and prosciutto ham slices and a wonderful dish which I later found out was sliced celery and smoked cuttle fish (uber yummy). I was able to avoid offers of soda and drank lots of water but felt compelled to join in the toast with saki. Sometimes you have to take one for the team, right???

Finally our host came out with a small bowl with dessert. Sweetened silken tofu with almond flavoring and orange zest. Not exactly the way I wanted to end my pretty darn successful meal, yet I saw the ladies sitting close to me observing my reaction so down the gullet it went. Smiles all around. Could I have deferred the dessert? Yes, but would it have looked less than ideal? Probably. In the grand context of my life will it be counted as a failure on my part? No. Sometimes you have to adapt to the day. So when I came home I had a nap since that was the only refined carbs I'd had in three weeks. Funny how far I've come.

To improvise means you work with what you have. We all have constraints on our lives, the most common is probably money (or the lack thereof). In an ideal world I would buy the finest cuts of grass-fed pastured organic humanely raised meats. I would enjoy eggs from chickens roaming around my yard eating what they found appealing and perhaps drink milk from my own goat. But hold onto your hats, the world isn't ideal. My access to prime meat is limited by what is available at the Commissary or on the local economy (at a premium price). Forget organic vegetables at a reasonable price. Fresh I can get at the local farmer's market and even reasonably priced if I drive out far enough, but not without fertilizers or pesticides.

Now don't get me wrong, I'm not a food-elitist by any means. I've known people who would turn their nose up at the thought of having a steak from the grocery store (how dare you?!?!?!). I'd love to have the best to feed my body with on a daily basis but I'm probably not going to drop dead tomorrow because my eggs came from a large-scale farm. I'm OK to work with what I have, especially considering I spent a few decades mistreating my body.

Of the three terms in the title I think this is the most important: overcome. It means to get the better of. I like that. I like the thought that because we can adapt to a situation and improvise with what we have, we can get the better of our situation. Don't let it become overwhelming. Look at your present situation in the grand scheme of things. If I have to eat this small bowl of pudding to honor my host, is it really going to matter? If I have to eat store-bought meat because of availability will it be the end of the world? Usually the answer is no. Can I still be in command of what goes into my body and what I do for activity? Yes. I shall overcome.

This is only a test...

A month into my primal transformation I began to get curious. I remember how crappy I felt before changing most everything about my life and I can't explain it but I was curious... what would it be like if I "slipped". So I had a little test and boy was it ever an eye-opener.

One of my standard comfort food sammiches is an old fashioned grilled cheese. Using Conventional Wisdom I thought that I had somewhat "healthified" the Beast because I was using 12-grain bread (the BIG loaf sized slices) with 2% reduced-fat cheddar cheese (about 4 ounces) 2 slices of pepper jack cheese and using a very popular "buttery spread" made from various vegetable oils. CW says I'm doing ok since it isn't made of white bread, full-fat cheese and, dare I say its name aloud, butter. So all total the Beast is a whopping 920 calories with 76 grams of fat and what shocks me know 44 grams of carbs (half of what I try to eat now in an entire day). I couldn't bring myself to have a Coke that was also par for the course at that time, 39 grams of simple sugar there.

920 calories, 76 grams of fat and 44 grams of carbs. Shudder.

So I fired up the trusty George Foreman grill (which I could have sworn cursed at me) and constructed the sandwich. Lots of sizzling and dripping later it was done and when I lifted the lid it just looked... different. Not as appealing as it had in the recent past. But I dug in and shoveled it down and went back to writing.

Now on a lark I had taken my blood pressure and pulse before making the beast and after finishing it and after getting good and settled to keep things even noticed that my pulse was almost bounding and had jumped 10bpm. It might not be a true scientific indication but boy did I feel different. And then I got real tired. Sleepy wanna take a nap sleepy, so I did. I woke up 45 minutes later feeling like a big steamy pile of poo and was FAMISHED. And then it hit me, this is that way I had felt for years. I had never been out of the "fog" long enough to realize it.

I may have set myself back a bit by my little experiment but it sure did open my eyes to the effect my old eating habits had on my body. Now, if I need a little motivation, I can just look at this photo of the Beast and remember how crappy it will make me feel. A bacon-wrapped sirloin with a salad puts it to shame.

How I Got Here

You see, when a man and a woman love each other..... wait, that's a different story.

How I get HERE is not such a long tale but parts of it will sound familiar to many of you. Recently I had my 45th birthday. I had recently heard someone talking about their bucket list (the things you want to do before you die) and while I was wistfully thinking about my dream of playing a soldier in the Nutcracker I realized that, given my family history and current health state, I was likely past the half-way point in my life. Now I'm not the sharpest fry in the Happy Meal but I know you have to be ALIVE to actually check something off of your bucket list.

Add to that the fact I was on high blood pressure medication and high cholesterol medication which I was really not keen to be on because of the possible side-effects.

OMG I'm bigger than Godzilla!!!!!!

So, I needed to figure out a way to lose some weight and get into a fit physical state. I looked around the house and noticed a fairly recent issue of Air Force Times with an article about the ongoing struggle for some people to pass the Air Force fitness standards. BINGO! I set my first goal: pass the Air Force PT test on or before my next birthday. The exam consists of performing a timed one and a half mile run, waist measurement, and a certain number of sit-ups and push-ups in one minute. Being a non-exercising carefree-food-choice kind of guy I knew it would take a good amount of time. The running and sit-up / push-up parts were covered (see running and exercises) but what to do about the dreaded waist measurement?

Eating is the key as we all know. But it isn't as simple as X calories in and X calories out. I already had a decently sufficient intake of vegetables. In the past I had lost a good amount of weight with the Adkins diet but even a meat-eater like me has limits. South Beach slimmed me down but I hated the whole portion control hungry feeling I got. I had had a couple of brief exposures to something called a Primal lifestyle. One was a story on CNN about a Primal restaurant opening in Europe and I'll admit I had a good laugh at what they were serving (but like most places in Europe the plate was dang-near empty and fancifully decorated). The second was a much more positive experience of a lady also here in Japan and after a short talk or two I went to her blog and read her story as well as seeing her results. Now this was interesting because I not only saw the before/after but I could talk to her (we were both on committees that met regularly).

Debi was kind enough to send me a few links and then let me do my thing: research. Being a nerd has certain advantages and finding things on the internet is one of them...HA! I soon began reading quite a bit from a blog written by Mark Sisson called Mark's Daily Apple. At first what he was suggesting sounded, well... heretical. Meat and saturated fats on purpose????? But I had seen the results and was willing to spend the time learning before I brushed it off and continued the search. So I read and cross-referenced and scanned research reports and eventually came to the conclusion that, hold on to your hats folks, it makes sense!

Shortly after that weekend of intense activity I decided that there were some changes I could make immediately: cutting out the processed foods I so loved like THE WHITES (white sugar / bread / rice) and boxed meals (easy-peasy 1-2-3!) that made life simple but not necessarily healthy. I then followed with all processed carbohydrates like pasta and sugary drinks as well as my beloved but ineffectual Diet Cokes. After two weeks of this I have to say I began to feel much better, like a fog had been lifted off of my brain. With the exercise that I'm doing I feel good whereas for years I was happy to reach mediocre.

And that is how I got HERE.

What you'll see (or not).

What you will (and won't) see at the Reluctant Primalist!

What you will not see:

• Posts telling you what to do/not do.
• A rigid adherence to any professed program.
• Correct answers 100% of the time.
• Full-blown perkiness or doom. Life is a cycle folks.
• Posts appearing in a manner that would make an efficiency expert smile.
• Pandering to readers to increase my hit count. I could care less about numbers.
• Posts blowing sunshine up your skirt. Life is hard.

What you will see:

• A front-row view of a transformational process occurring in the life of an imperfect human in an imperfect world.
• Honesty.
• Feelings often in a very raw form and expressed in an equally raw manner. If the words "suck" and "crap" make you uncomfortable, walk away now while you can.
• What I like (or don't), what works for me (or doesn't) and requests for your thoughts.
• Liberal usage of flippancy, sarcasm and what may be loosely defined as humor.
• Links to content I find helpful to me (but may not apply to your life).
• Photos (of course). It's what I do.
• Excessive use of parenthesis.
• Success and failures. I am a work in progress.

So there you are, very broad expectations of what you'll find here. If it helps you that's cool, if it doesn't keep on searching. You can find anything on the Inter-webs (as one of my college-age boys calls it).

Why so reluctant?

Reluctant for a number of reasons; some of them operational (meaning the day-to-day aspects of this lifestyle) and others more deeply ingrained in who I am.

Conventional Wisdom CW: A term from the book The Primal Blueprint by Mark Sisson meaning those things we know to be true (but it turns out we're partly correct or flat-out wrong). I was a registered nurse for a number of years so have had the USDA food pyramid / saturated fat is bad CW drilled into my brain. I'm also married to a nurse (a women's health nurse practitioner to be precise) who happens to be one of the most intelligent people I know. You can see where CW had a long history of being foundational for making food choices (even though I went rogue as you'll hear about later). Being immersed in a culture of those living and touting a CW lifestyle makes it hard to change.

Newton's First Law of Motion: Objects in motion stay in motion unless acted upon by an outside force. Conversely, objects at rest stay at rest. I had slid into a lifestyle of sitting at a computer desk for hours on end day and night. I had convinced myself that my photography, know hereafter as "the work", was the most important thing in my life and that other activities that interfered with "the work" were the enemy and to be shunned. I knew I was out of shape but until recently I hadn't realized that because of my devotion to "the work" my ability to get myself and my camera to a location was becoming quite hampered. Gone were the days of hiking 14 miles through the woods wearing a 50-pound backpack. I was blocking any outside force from acting upon my non-motion.

Peer Groups: I currently live on a military installation which means most people I see are pretty darn fit as they have certain physical training requirements. In fact, a 45-year old male needs to run 1-1/2 miles in under 14:25, do 21 push-ups in a minute, 34 sit-ups in a minute and have a 39-inch waist or less JUST TO KEEP HIS JOB. More accurately, he must do the above plus a little bit more as these are the minimum criteria in each category but those numbers aren't enough to get you a passing score. Now as good as this is for the military and their ability to quickly respond to any situation it can also cause the occasional ugly look or comment if you're one of the few hairy fat-boys on the base. And I have to tell you the sight of the aforementioned hairy fat-boy jogging and jiggling like an earthquake in Jell-o Land is often too tempting for some to keep their fat mouths shut. Damned if you do, damned if you don't.

Social Pressure: Primal eaters don't fill themselves with the same fare the rest of the world does. Having messed about with the Adkins Diet 15 years ago I can remember the feeling when someone (often loved ones) giving you the hairy eyeball when you ditch the bun from your hamburger. When researching the Primal/Paleo lifestyle I have to admit that's one of the first things that popped into my brain; the social stigma of doing something "different" and being guilty of wielding the stick myself at times. Damn I hate being hypocritical! Add to this the fact that I'm living in a foreign country. I occasionally have to attend official functions with our Japanese hosts and it can be, well... rude to decline the offered meal. Although not an impossible hurdle, it can present a situation where you feel like you're backpedaling to save face.

New Year's meal. Picking OK items is easy. But is the offense worth it?

 
The whole "dude, cavemen died at an early age" thing hasn't popped up in my life as of yet. Partly because I am only a month into it but also I simply tell people I'm cutting out a lot of processed foods and making better food choices, trying to live a better lifestyle.

Beliefs: I have a very difficult time with the whole we-came-from-mud concept. When I read a statement talking about insulin levels fluctuating due to carb intake I totally get it, but when it is linked to something theorized to have been done by a tribe thousands of years ago I have to pick and choose. It works for many but not for me. Don't let what I think dissuade you from researching on your own and coming to your own conclusions. You are the one in charge of your body so get informed. I often tell my photography students "Don't do something I do just because I do it. Look at the concept and understand it; then use it or discard it because of your knowledge and experience".