I’m a 34 year old male. I’ve been trying to get fit for a while and was settled into, what I thought was a good, routine of running about 3 times a week and 4-5 sessions of lifting weights in the gym. My routine was very similar to ‘Body for Life‘. I’d been doing this for about 4 months with rather ordinary results. I had put on some muscle but was still carrying too much body fat. I’m 185cm tall and was stuck at ~100kg. I’ll admit that my diet was only about 75% of what Body for Life recommend. I was probably having close to two cheat days a week but was pretty good the rest of the week.
I started thinking, that usual ignorant stuff, such as – Oh, I’m getting old. It’s just harder now.
In early November 2009 I started to Google running technique, as I’ve always been slow (I run 5km in about 30min) and thought I could improve my times through better technique. Well, that was a bit like taking the ‘Red Pill’! I came across Pose Running. Pose looked really interesting so I started to do more searches on Pose and came across this. Which led me to this video and then this! Well those last two videos blew my mind. I just had a voice go off in my head that said “I wanna be able to do that!”. I realised that I was never going to be able to do that with my current regime and hence those two videos took me down the ‘Red Pill’ path of Crossfit.
I was really impressed with what I saw on the Crossfit site and spent several evenings just reading all the really good information they and their affiliates have on their websites. Through one of the affiliate’s sites I came across a video called ‘Sugar the bitter truth’. Now this goes for 1.5hrs and gets rather technical in places however I think it’s an absolute must watch for everyone. I can not recommend this video enough. It explains how the body processes sugar and the effect it has on the body. This lead me to the Paleo diet. I’d never heard of this before and stayed up really late reading about it. I’m not sure what it was but I was convinced that this was the right way to eat. The next morning I started Paleo!
As I’d not had much sleep, staying up reading about the paleo diet, and not having paleo foods ready, I skipped my normal breakfast of porridge grabbed an apple and went to work.
I didn’t’ really feel good that day. However I got organised that night and started eating proper paleo that night. After two or three days I felt like I had just been reborn. The amount of energy I had was amazing. The physical effects of eating paleo were awesome however what really got me hooked were the mental changes. Much improved mood and my often depressive state of mind was all but gone. I felt clear and keen to take on life.
This blog is to track my progress and post stuff about food, exercise and lifestyle. I’ve been doing paleo for about 4 months now. I’ve been going to Crossfit since February 2010.
