So here I am, 42 and thirty pounds overweight with two marathons and several other races facing me in the upcoming months. I can’t blame anyone, I did this to myself, starting about 24 years ago with the intake of way too much breakfast cereal, submarine sandwiches and pizza. Beer probably didn’t help but I’ve never been a huge drinker so it’s safe to say that my excess tonnage (exaggeration for effect) can be attributed to a lifelong love of carb-heavy foods and because I’m originally a Wisconsinite – cheese.
As of the beginning of this month, I started Whole 30 and so far it’s given me a big ugly window into how far off my eating habits have gotten from anything that would be called healthy. From the beginning of the year, I wasn’t paying any attention to what I ate and was generally coasting since I was recovering from surgery and unable to exercise. It was a simple surgery (hernia repair) but the majority of my recovery was through the holidays and on into the month of January. That snowballed through February and although I was working out again, I had definitely picked up some bad eating habits (or just woke them up again).
Since time just keeps moving along, it’s time to start making permanent changes to things and I’m putting an emphasis on healthy eating. I’ve done the new beginning thing thousands of times in my head (you too?) and even accomplished a few restarts that resulted in the loss of forty pounds, a renewed love of running, a newfound love of CrossFit and weightlifting, and a generally better outlook on things.
So that’s where we are now today and I’m putting it up all here for as long as I can keep this train rolling. Thanks for reading this far, feel free to say hello and let me know about your journey, whatever it might be.
Edit: Based on feedback from a couple coaches at the gym, I’ve decided to forego starting Whole 30. I’ll be shifting back to the Zone diet, which I did briefly late last summer just before surgery but did not pick back up because well, see above.