Relationships with food can be incredibly complicated. Food plays with our emotions. Not only does it impact our physical selves, it impacts our psychological selves too. The wrong food makes us feel good at night and leaves us after a one night stand with a note on the pillow saying thanks for the good time and sorry for any negative consequences it left you with. For many...this happens night after night.
Over the course of my life I've gained and lost over 100 pounds. I'll never forget my first affair with weight loss. I was 25. Just married earlier that year to my amazing wife. We were planning a trip with friends to the beach at the end of the summer. Myself and some friends decided on a weight loss challenge for the 2 and a half months prior to the trip. Game on. I weighed in at 211. I'm 6 feet tall so I wasn't that overweight. Although I'm pretty sure I had visible six pack abs 2 years prior. Commence severe calorie restriction, massive will power and two hours or more a day at the gym or other exercising. Easy to do when you have a flexible work schedule, don't have kids, and there is money and bragging rights on the table. It worked, I lost 36 pounds. Weighed in at 175. Though, I didn't win the competition. Which was unfortunate because this was hard! But hey, I didn't lose entirely. I was still in great shape and lost a bunch of weight.
I can't say I remember for certain what my diet looked like. I know I didn't give up drinking Miller Lite. Pretty sure I stuck with mostly vegetables and chicken. Lots of salads, yogurt and granola. No fast food but an emphasis on low fat and low calorie. One thing I'll never forget is that first stop on our trip the Outer Banks. We all went to IHOP. I felt lost. I felt like I was betraying all that I had worked for. I don't know what I ate, but I remember the feelings. And after that meal....It was game over. No more dieting. I let loose that week on all things food and drink. In a way, it was good to not stress about food. But over the next year, my weight crept back up. I couldn't sustain the work I had done to lose all that weight. Nor did I want to continue restricting the amount and kinds of food to be had. This only confirmed what I thought about losing weight was correct, that I needed to eat food that I didn't really like, be hungry, and work out a lot to lose weight.
The next affair with weight loss came when a friend told me about this "paleo" thing. Basically a caveman diet. So I tried that. I set a goal that if I got down to 180 I could buy a pair of Vibram Five Finger shoes. My rules were simple. If a caveman could eat so could I. Well, apparently I thought cavemen could eat popcorn, salad dressing, cheese and beer. Regardless, I got to my goal weight over the course of a few months with a similar exercise load as the first go around. After I got my shoes, all progress was halted and all weight crept back.
I'm sensing a pattern. Eat whatever I want, gain weight, get frustrated at weight gain, put a reward out there for me to get, cut calories, exercise a lot, lose weight, get reward. I had several of these weight loss affairs usually lasting a few weeks and 10-15 pounds at a time. I never found anything that stuck. Why could I not maintain? Why could I not continue? I assumed it was because I lacked will power.
My next fling I decided to run a 77 mile ultra marathon. If I just ran a lot I could eat whatever I wanted, right? I was about 30 pounds overweight at the start of 2015 when I started running. And did I ever run! Up through August of that year I had completed about 6 marathon distance trail runs with nearly 15 half marathon distances tossed into the mix. Let alone all the single digit mileage runs. I ran right through pain and into an injury. I didn't listen to my body at all. But even after having run all those miles...I still had quite a gut on me. You could call me fit fat.
I had gotten to a point in my life where I had given up. My wife and I had children now. We both had careers we were busy with. We both had life stress. Food and exercise were the last of my worries. I wrote off ever being fit again and tried to settle into this new life. At this point food was my drug. I loved craft beer and whiskey. I kept Jelly Belly jelly beans with me all the time.
In January of 2016 I got wind of this thing called the ketogenic diet. It is a high fat, low carb diet. First, I had to figure out was a carbohydrate was and once I found out that carbs were in all my favorite foods I decided it wasn't for me. I didn't want to give my beer and candy and I thought fat made you fat! But in the Spring of 2016, I knew something had to change. I was going downhill fast. I was overweight, I had no control over my eating habits, and my mental health was in decline.
On May 9 2016 at lunch time I ate a salad and had a beer and decided the keto diet was what I was doing. I was committed from day one knowing and believing it would work. And it did, I lost about 35 pounds in 3 months with most of that coming off in the first month. I've been maintaining happily every since. No more yo-yo's.
It wasn't long after beginning the diet I co-created a Facebook group for others also interested in the keto diet and as of the day I'm writing this we've collectively lost well over a ton of weight. And the more I listened and learned about the ketogenic way of eating, I also learned the right way to eat in a primal aligned way. I knew it was time to take my journey to another level and get some proper education on the subject. Enter the Primal Health Coach program based on the Primal Blueprint philosophy.
Whatever your goals are we will work together and I will help you achieve them. It would be an absolute joy to share what I know and eliminate any guess work you have about what it takes to have the health and wellness you desire. Losing weight and getting healthy take time, and time is valuable. No one wants to commit to months of effort only to be going about this journey on the wrong path. Let me help you find the one that fits you, whether that's a ketogenic diet, a Primal Lifestyle, or just learning what food choices benefit you instead of hurt you. Let me help you find the pattern of health that you can commit to for a lifetime. It's time to get married to the new you. No more affairs with bogus health advice.Let's sit down and have a conversation about what having a health coach looks like for you. Be a part of the Bee Fit Family. Check out Bee Fit on Facebook at www.facebook.com/beefitfamily and our website launching this winter www.beefitfamily.com.
