Rambling On

I've been reading and learning a lot over the past few days. Some of the things I have learned are pretty scary. Did you know that 70% of what is on the supermarket shelves isn't really food? It's chemicals created in labs to resemble food. It's hydrogenated oils, high fructose corn syrup, added plant starch, unpronounceable preservatives, and artificial colors and flavors added to make psuedo-food look and taste more like the real thing. I've learned that we are killing ourselves with what we eat.

We've been falling for the industry pushed line that what we get packaged on the shelves is healthy, but all it really is is cheap. How much of the food you buy today would have been recognizeable to your great grandparents?

I've been looking - really looking - at the lables on the food I've been buying and I now understand why I've had so much trouble with my weight over the years. I'm not going to go into detail about why all those chemicals and sugars are bad - the wonderful authors of the blogs listed over to the right have done a much better job than I ever could. I mean, hey, they convinced me.

Something else I've learned about is the Japanese principal of Kaizen - change through baby steps. I want to change the way I eat and live. I want to get healthy, I want to have the energy to do more, I want to be able to be proud of my body - but if I look at everything I need to change all at once it seems overwhelming. So I'm going to apply Kaizen. My first little change is what I've already started doing: cutting out grains and starches and sugar.

I'm going to post updates on my progress here as well as my usual cool stories about life on the road. This job presents unique obstacles to living and eating healthy, and maybe through my trial and error, discoveries and progress I can help other truck drivers who want to get healthy out here on the road, or anybody who wants to get healthy.

So, as I sit here in Mira Loma, CA, four days into a new way of eating, I'm making this resolution - I AM GOING TO GET HEALTHY!!

Here's my before picture:
267 lbs, smoking a pack a day, no energy, eating anything I feel like, depressed, hormones imbalanced (the doctor says its Poly Cystic Ovary Syndrome (PCOS), but when they say "syndrome" instead of  "disease" that means they don't know what causes it or how to fix it. Maybe it's from the hormones in the meat and dairy I've been eating all my life.) Because of the PCOS (or whatever is causing my hormone imbalance) I've got acne, oily skin, dandruff, and other problems.


Here's my plan: Stay with the carb reduction for now - no grains, no pasta, no refined sugar. Once this has become a fully ingrained (ha) habit - say 30 to 60 days, and I'm not as tempted to grab for sweets and pastries, I'll move to step 2. Step 2 will be the hard one - Quit Smoking. After that I'll work on ways to move from processed, industrialized foods to natural, organic foods. Through the whole process I'll be moving every chance I get, adding exercise Primal Blueprint style.

I'm not going to set a timeline, I'm not going to get depressed and give up if I slip, I'm not going to set myself up for failure. I'm going to take baby steps.

My progress so far:
I haven't had any bread, pasta, pastries, potatoes, corn, or candy for four days now.
I've mostly been eating salads, nuts, veggies, cottage cheese, a little fruit, and beef jerky.
I have gotten out of the truck three days out of the four and walked for at least half an hour.
I have been drinking only water and, once a day, a cup of coffee with half-&-half and no sugar.
I've lost 6 lbs already!! And I know that I'm not going to keep losing at this rate. I'm hoping for about 2lbs a week on average.

The thing is, I think this diet is going to work. There are a lot of meats and cheeses I like to eat. Since I stopped eating sugary foods, fruit tastes decadently sweet to me now so I don't think I'm going to miss the sugar much. I don't feel hungry, and I have more energy now than I've had in a long time. And this is only four days in!! I can't wait to see how I'm doing in a year.