A Break in Alaska

I was doing about a month of CrossFit before I hit a planned week long Alaska cruise with my mom. At this point, I was committed enough to working out that I did a few WODs on the cruise using weights and rowers.

Cruises aren’t my ideal method of traveling and exploring, but one thing it does provide is plenty of time to read. And I read a lot.

The first book I got through was Learning to Breathe Fire. It should be required reading for anyone that starts CrossFit. It’s basically the history of CrossFit up to the point of publication. But it really helped explain why CrossFit is set-up the way it is: why the workouts are designed in a certain way; what all the terms mean; how the sport evolved; and why the boxes are unique without much control from corporate HQ. After reading this book, I had a much more thorough understanding of what the program was all about.

Why not take full advantage of the work I had been putting into CrossFit and get maximal results by eating better?

Then I started reading some food books. The first that got me down this rabbit hole was The Big Fat Surprise by Nina Teicholz. Basically, fat doesn’t make you fat. Fat isn’t bad for you, despite all the USDA health guidelines I was raised on.

This path led to looking into paleo, the crazy-caveman diet I had written off. Like my turn to CrossFit, this too began bouncing around in my mind. And when I get curious about something, I’ll obsessively research it.

It definitely helped that I was on a cruise, surrounded by an endless supply of food and an abundance of people all too willing to keep eating it. Ok, that was a nice way of saying I was on a ship with a lot of fat people. It was a bit of a wake up call. Do I really want to continue going down this path and not care what I put into my body?

Why not take full advantage of the work I had been putting into CrossFit and get maximal results by eating better?

I started with Nom Nom Paleo, a book that’s part paleo insight, part cookbook. Funny enough, Michelle Tam was also on an Alaskan cruise with her family when she decided to go paleo right then and there. Her fellow passengers were also a source of inspiration for her.

I followed this up with one of the original paleo books, The Paleo Solution by Robb Wolf, which really helped me understand the science and ideas behind paleo.

Then I landed on It Starts with Food, the book for Whole 30. Whole 30 is basically a 30 day paleo challenge. The idea is to eat clean for a month, which is less intimidating than switching your diet indefinitely. It’s a reset for your body to see how you feel, and then you can re-introduce foods if you want after the 30 days.

Now, I won’t say right then and there that I stopped eating foods developed after the paleolithic era. But I was more conscious of what I ate, and the idea of at least doing a Whole 30 when I returned was enticing.

Being out in Alaska, I was also reminded of how much I loved hiking in the mountains. I signed up for every hike excursion I could find at each port. I love hiking — it’s one of the few activities I did enjoy growing up. But living in Miami, there aren’t a lot of options for hiking if you’re not prepared to be covered in a net and brave clouds of mosquitoes.

One summer in high school I went to a Boy Scout reservation in New Mexico where we hiked for ten days. The highlight of the trip was reaching the summit of one of the taller peaks in the area. I liked the goal of the summit over the act of just walking a lot.

Though we were far from any summits, being out in beauty of the mountains in Alaska reminded me of how much I enjoyed being in the outdoors.

Whole 30

I got back home with the determination to change my diet: I’m going to do Whole 30.

I clear out my fridge and take a printout of a shopping list to Whole Foods. It felt like that old show Supermarket Sweep, running around looking for things I’d never heard of before — ghee, coconut oil, a variety of spices.

I bought some meats for some recipes I had scouted that looked easy. Up to this point my cooking experience extended to boiling pasta and scrambling eggs.

I was kicking myself, thinking “Why didn’t I start this years ago?!?”

I didn’t find Whole 30 that hard. Now I have a history of making extreme diet changes — I was a vegetarian for seven years. But more importantly my head was in the right space. I wanted this change.

Before this, I hadn’t drank soda for a couple of years. It wasn’t that hard — I realized that as soon as a drank a soda, I’d feel like shit, whether from the sugar or the artificial sweetener. So it was easy to quit because I didn’t like feeling like shit.

My head was in the right space for Whole 30. So I didn’t miss much. I do like sweets, so I probably had more fruit and dark chocolate than I should have — but I still got results.

Within a day or two of starting, I began dropping weight, and really quick. The first week or two I was losing a pound a day. It seemed too easy to be true.

I was kicking myself, thinking “Why didn’t I start this years ago?!?”

I learned a lot about cooking and nutrition. When I would eat out and get a salad, it was amazing how I could taste all the sugar in a seemingly healthy vinaigrette dressing.

Here’s a chart documenting my weight from its highest in 2012 to today. The sudden drop is from paleo, along with the very recent drop to 171.

Once the 30 days was over I wasn’t in any desire to stuff my face with cake. I went from a little over 200 pounds to about 180, my post college weight. Though that’s not factoring in gained muscle mass.

Even though I wasn’t in a rush for carbs, it was hard to eat out. I settled into a routine of paleo at home, sensible eating when I’m out. This worked to maintain the weight.