Early last year I discovered the forest trails around my home: muddy, steep terrain filled with ferns and silence. I'd crank up Queens of the Stone Age, double tie my laces, and set off for a gruelling one hour run over knarled roots and through pelting rain. Staggering through the evergreens with rain clinging to my hair and mud spattered all over my t-shirt made me feel super badass.
Afterward, my body felt spent: deliciously smug in its accomplishment, and hungry for fuel. I'd often stop at my Mom's house and nosh endlessly: spaghetti sauce with garlic bread and cheese, lemon cake with icing for dessert. I'd run hard, after all, and I deserved it.
For so many years, I believed that if I kind of watched what I ate, and exercised several times a week, I'd stay lean and fit. Yet as I crept through the first years of my thirties, I was finding my jeans were tighter around my waist. There was...flesh hanging over my belt when I sat. Did I care? I wasn't sure. I loved food, the crunchy, cheesy kind best. And I was tall, I could hide all kinds of lumps under strategic clothing and high heels.
***
Corey was the leanest human being I'd ever met. He had a no-shit 6-pack, the kind I'd only seen in magazines. He wasn't gym-monkey enormous, but strong and firm and I was half intimidated and half completely fascinated as all hell.
"How often do you work out?" I demanded, envisioning the gruelling routine that must be necessary to obtain that kind of physique.
"An hour a day or so? 5 days a week," he responded. I didn't believe him. Anyone with a body like that must spend six hours a day in the gym, and he was hiding it from me to prevent me from judging him, which of course I was already doing.
"No," he insisted," It's all in the diet. Diet is more important than the gym -- I'd say diet is 60% of it, working out is 40%."
I believed him. I worked out 5 days a week, running my ass off, and I wasn't nearly as sculpted as he was. I decided to alter my diet as a science experiment. I've concluded that it's actually about 70% diet and 30% exercise for me. If I eat well, I can actually exercise less. And the more healthily I eat, the less I crave junk food.
***
I started working out at the gym a few days a week, pumping weights and listening to tinned pop music with the pure misery I've described before. I was frustrated: I was seeing a bit of progress here and there but my arms still felt week, I wasn't losing a lot of fat. I needed to do something different. I needed to see tangible change in order to stay motivated.
For the month of March, Corey and I both gave up grains, salt, dairy, and sugar (outside of the naturally occurring sugar in fruits) I am shocked at the direct impact of that kind of eating on my mind, my body, the bloat that was omnipresent before but that has completely disappeared in me. I am amazed at how much I relied on Nutrigrain bars and pre-packaged crap for so long, thinking I was eating "healthily". I wonder why I didn't realize after those long, sweaty trail runs, that downing a loaf of garlic cheese bread was basically undoing all the good I'd just done my body.
The proof is always in the pictures, and though there have been times in this last year that I've felt like a hamster in a wheel, it's nice to look back on this time last year and see the gains I've made. I am still working out 5 days a week, running less and crossfitting more, but I have also learned so much more about what actually constitutes a healthy, clean diet. I'm happier, stronger, and better.
I was spending just as much time on exercise in the picture on the left taken almost exactly one year ago. I ate a lot more rice pudding though. Also, scads more garlic cheese bread.
Here's Corey's before and after pictures from the Paleo Challenge. He's ripped as all shit in the first place so there's no holy-crap changes, but his legs have more muscle and his abs are even sharper if that's possible. Also: he's enjoying his food a lot more. He's subsisting on more than just carrots and protein shakes, and on the Paleo Plan, he can eat as much as he likes, which he digs very much.
We're both going to keep going with the Paleo diet, and go full tilt with the Crossfit and running, too. I don't know what next year will hold, but I have the feeling there won't be many Doritos.
Subscribe