Not necessarily random thoughts and photographs

This is me on June 24th, 2010.

Click to enbiggen, as if I wasn’t big enough already.

Wowsa. I cringe when I look at what I used to carry around.

I have written two other posts in this series, which you can read here and here, but I will summarize:

I made some pretty good progress in that first year. Again, details can be found in the posts I point to above, but the short and sweet of the changes I made to affect those improvements were:

1. Exercise – I started Crossfitting 4-5 days per week. This turned out to be too much for my body to handle and I dropped to three.
2. Nutrition – I greatly reduced the amount of grains and refined sugars that I ate.

That’s all cool and wonderful, but with a post title like “The End of the Beginning,” I’m sure you are wondering how things are going now.

Still here?

Cool!

In all seriousness, things are going absolutely fantastic. I had a physical today, the 27th of June, 2012, and everything is good. In fact, doc didn’t suggest any changes.

Let’s look at the numbers first.

First. Yup, that’s 40+ pounds gone.

Poof. No longer on ma bod. (If by poof we mean gone because of a whole lot of work and a whole lot of change)

Second. Those are some fabulous numbers. What’s more, every other number in my labs was in range, i.e. good. Not bad for a 47 year old. Reminder: Nutrition and exercise, no meds.

The most amazing part is a good chunk of that weight loss since 2011 has occurred over the last 6 weeks or so, with 10 pounds of it coming off in the last month.

How?

I’m going to tell you in just a moment, but first, gratuitous shirtless photo taken on June 24th, 2012. Notice that is exactly 2 years since the first photo in this post.

Click to enbiggen.

A bit less of me than before, huh? Wanna see side by side?

Okay.

click to enbiggen

Just a tad bit of a difference.

Now to answer the ‘how’ question.

It’s really quite simple. Read The Primal Blueprint by Mark Sisson and do everything he says. If you would like to know more before buying the book, you can read The Primal Blueprint 101 online.

However, I’m not going to leave you hanging since this is about my story, not Mark’s. This is how it happened.

I started Crossfit. I saw progress. I started messing with my nutrition. I saw more progress. In fact, I have made many changes to my nutrition over the last 2 years. All of them, slowly, but surely moving me towards stricter adherence to a paleo/primal diet.

About a month ago, I finally decided that I wanted to see what would happen if I bought in whole hog to eating primarily whole foods, avoiding most grains, and removing dairy and refined sugar from my diet. Yes, even cookies and ice cream although I have snuck in some frozen yogurt a couple times. Second admission, I have some rice now and again. Result? I got even healthier and my Crossfit performance started to improve.

I also started paying attention to the other facets of Mark’s fitness plan. Succinctly said, that means lifting heavy things a few times each week, getting some low level activity in frequently, and sprinting once in a while.

What does this mean to me specifically?

This is what my weekly exercise plan looks like now.

• I go to Crossfit Des Moines three times per week where I lift heavy things .
• I also participate in the Crossfit metabolic conditioning workouts, i.e. workout of the day (WoD), those three days.
• I try averaging 10,000 steps every day. I use FitBit to track and make sure.
• I try to get a three mile walk in on days I don’t go to Crossfit. I try to make  one of those walks longer.
• I do a sprinting workout once per week.

That may seem like a lot of exercise, but it really isn’t and I feel so much better for doing it.There is also the added benefit of 3-4 hours of think time built into my week as I walk.

The end result of going primal is 10 pounds of fat loss in the last month. 10. You be the judge as to whether it has been effective or not.

Could I have made progress more quickly? Maybe. I could have made all these changes quickly and maybe gotten to this point a lot faster. However, that could also have been disastrous. As we say in Crossfit, slow is smooth and smooth is fast. Taking it one bit at a time made some pretty drastic changes palatable and really not that hard. It also gave me time to research everything I was doing and convince myself it was the right choice.

This is getting pretty long so I am going to end with an explanation of the title of this post. By ‘End of the Beginning,’ I mean that I am now what I consider healthy or well, but well isn’t good enough. I want to be fit. I want to excel.

Crossfit believes that there is a continuum that goes from sick -> well -> fit. I want to be fit. That means that my focus is now shifting from being on a health journey to being on a fitness journey. Who know where this will lead me, but I’m pretty excited to find out.

Performance is now the goal, not fat loss and health marker improvement. Those will take care of themselves as I continue to adhere to my exercise and nutrition plan. That plan will take some tweaking to support my activity level, but the what I eat won’t change, just the amounts and ratios.

One final thing. None of this would have been possible without the love and support of my wife. Thank you and I love you babe!

There are a number of other resources that I have come to rely on that I will write about in the very near future.

As usual, comments are welcome below or if you prefer to send me a private message you can email me at kriggins _at_ randommissives.com.

-Kevin

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