Starting Out

Seeing as how this is my first post on here I will give you a bit of background on who I am, the changes I have made in my life, and what I am doing now to keep living a strong and healthy lifestyle.

I was always the chubby kid growing up, but never paid it much attention until around 7th or 8th grade. I played baseball from ages 5-12, but this only helped to keep me from adding pounds because of what I was eating. Unfortunately, I did not have the drive to change things until I was in college. At my peak I was 240 pounds at 15 years old. I am 6’5’’, so it was not completely evident to everyone else that I weighed this much. When I would ask people what they thought I weighed the response was always “around 180-190”. People could not believe that I weighed that much, but it was evenly spread from head to toe. I had a 19” neck at the time, wore XL shirts, and 36’’ waist pants that were on the verge of being extremely tight.

In my 3rd year of college I started having some problems health-wise. I could not keep anything in me and I saw multiple doctors, almost all of which wanted to do all sorts of expensive things to “fix” my problems. Well, I finally started listening to my dad; who all along had been telling me that it was what I was eating and that I was not getting enough exercise. We started researching the foods that I had been eating and what was in them. I never new that there was so much CRAP in the foods being served at restaurants. I was eating out most meals and everyday because of school and work, but I had no idea what it had been doing to my body. I can only assume that my body had finally decided to say “Nope, I am not taking in any more of this garbage!” We decided to make a change. Now, this was not a “diet” that we were going on. This is the mistake that people make when trying to loose weight or become healthier. It’s not a diet, but a lifestyle change that you are doing. We really started researching what was going into our foods and the reactions they have with the human body. This was many, many, many hours of research online and in books. We came up with a plethora of additives in food that would cause so many health problems (one’s that we had all experienced, or in my case was experiencing). The key things we initially cut out of our diets were: High Fructose Corn-Syrup, Partially-Hydrogenated and Hydrogenated Oils, MSG (which can be disguised as natural flavors or spices), and any added colors like yellow 5, blue 2, etc. Each of these additives wreaks havoc on your body’s internal workings.

If there was one thing that I would cut out of my diet to improve my health, it would be High Fructose Corn-Syrup. I am just going to touch on this right now, but will go into more depth later on in another post, and cover more topics. High Fructose Corn Syrup, or HFCS for short, is a cheap sweetener and is in NEARLY EVERYTHING you buy at the grocery store. It is in bread, ketchup, sodas (or aspartame, splenda, or some other artificial sweetener which is just as bad for you), fruit juices, candies, and a myriad of other products. It is seen as a poison by your body, but you can dilute and pass it. The only problem is that since it is in nearly everything you buy, your body gets overloaded with it and you cannot pass it in the time it takes. So, your body stores it in your fat cells to dilute it until passing. The problem with this is that your fat cells have a limited capacity. Once they are full, your body must store the HFCS somewhere, so it unnaturally creates more fat cells to store it in, hence, the great obesity epidemic in our country. Say what you want, but by cutting out this ingredient alone, I started losing weight and feeling better.

I now exercise on a regular basis, mostly running with occasional mountain biking, indoor climbing, or swimming. We have stopped eating out at restaurants (except for very rare occasions) and now east mostly organic and make/grow what we can. My 47 year old father has dropped 60 pounds and can out perform most people in there 20’s. From the 240 pounds at age 15, I am now 25 and 170 pounds. I have not seen a doctor since my 3rd year of college, nor have I even been close to being sick. My body is running like a well-oiled machine. I hope you have made it this far, as I know I can get long winded. I plan on doing regular updates and hope to help you understand the transformation I have gone through and how you can change your life for the better.