After hanging around twitter long enough, you may find that there are a ton of people talking about the whole “paleo” diet (if you haven’t, just do a twitter search for #paleo and you’ll see what I mean) so I decided to do some digging and see what it was all about.

I was first introduced to the concept of the paleo diet when I did crossfit.  The trainers there made it perfectly clear that paleo was the way to go and there were no ifs, ands, or buts about it.

And all my friends that do crossfit seem to be in the best shape so I figured I’d do some investigating…

Anyway, here’s what I found.

The paleo diet advocates mimicking (as best as you can) the hunter and gatherer days and to eat like, well, the cave folk did.

What’s that mean?

Animal Protein and basically all the fruits and vegetables you could eat.

Basically, anything processed or grains are completely out.

So no more bread, grains, dairy or corn (corn, unless organic, apparently is super unhealthy for you).

That’s “paleo” in a nutshell (or at least how I understand it).

If you really want to read more about it, I recommend checking out this guy.  He goes into a ton more detail about the whole thing.

I’ll be documenting my progress over the next 90 days and seeing how this works out for me.

I’m hoping for that fat to shred off of me (I’ve gotten way too plump during the football season) and perhaps more importantly, just start feeling better.

Energy seems like it’s been draining from me quicker than a bank robber fleeing from the cops recently.  From what I’ve read, the paleo way is supposed to help keep me energized.

Only time will tell.

To your health!

-Curt

A couple weeks ago I talked about how I started a new 90 day challenge to get myself back on track to where I was before.

When I talked about the challenge, I talked more about the why than I did about what I’m actually doing and today I want to discuss the changes that I’m making over the next 90 days (well a bit less now but you get the idea).

When I first started seeing real changes in my body was after reading the book The Four Hour Body by Tim Ferris.

In his book, Tim preaches what’s called the Slow-Carb diet.  While there’s plenty of resources online that talk about it, in it’s most simplistic form, all you need to do is make sure that you have a lean protein, a veggie and a legume in every meal that you eat.

That’s it.

So, after reading his book I decided to test out the theory and for 90 days, I followed the slow carb diet pretty religiously.

As a result, I ended up losing 12 pounds and 5% body fat so clearly, the system worked for me.

Now, since the end of my last challenge, as I mentioned before, I’ve let a few more things that are less healthy slide into my diet.  I think part of it is because I’ve been dating a lot more recently but that’s really a lame excuse.

Bottom line, it’s time to get back into the groove and the way I know how to do that is by getting back on the Slow Carb Diet.

So up until October 31st, I’ll be on my good ole’ slow carb diet and documenting just about everything.  And, of course, my amazing binge days .

Anyone that knows me knows that I certainly enjoy my fair share of cocktails.

Problem is, as I’ve looked at my progress over the past month or so, and I look at what I’ve been eating and drinking, it’s abundantly clear that I’ve been enjoying them a bit more than I should be.

When I first started my challenge I told myself that I would have 1 glass of wine per night max during the week and let myself get a little more loose on the weekend and have my fun.

As I’ve looked at everything for the past month, I’m noticing that I’ve clearly gone over my one drink max during the week on more than one occasion.

Not sure if it’s just been that the past month has been insanely emotional or if it’s just the summer time and there’s more going on or whatever.  Bottom line, I need to control myself a bit more if I want to achieve the results that I want to achieve.

So, with that being said, I’m going to make a little promise to myself starting next Wednesday (I’ve got a ton of stuff going on within the next week and a half for it to be realistic to make this promise earlier) that there will only be one day during the week that I will allow myself to have more than one drink.  I’m going to track this for a month and see what happens.

I’ve always heard that the alcohol is one of the main reasons people can’t get into their peak form.  Not only because of the empty calories that they get but also because of the poor food choices they make when they’re intoxicated.

Well, I’m going to put that theory to the test and see what happens.

Sept. 1st I’ll revisit my progress and this post and see how I’ve progressed.

Till next time…

Cheers!

-Curt

This post, in a sense, is a bit of sequel of my post last week talking about Why I Workout EARLY (And You Should Too)!

As I mentioned in that post, I think it’s of the utmost importance to get into the gym in the morning before the craziness of your day begins and you find an excuse to not get there.  There’s a variety of other reasons as well that you can read about it in my other post but long story short, I feel that it’s imperative to get your workout in early.

Now the obvious part… that means I  actually had to get up early!

And for me, that was easier said than done.

Personally, I was never one that could sleep in until 1 in the afternoon like my friends in college but waking up at 5 in the morning was another beast altogether.

Finding the energy to get my butt out of bed at that time was just something that was insanely difficult for me to do initially.

When I first tried, I would find myself hitting the snooze button like 5 times and not finding the energy to actually get up.  I would just lay there, try and go back to sleep and just hate myself for trying to get up that early.

Then, if I could actually get out of bed, it took me forever to actually get ready.  Finding clothes to wear and actually functioning just didn’t work for me.

It seemed like waking up at 5 meant not getting out of the house until 6:30 (and let’s be honest, guys really don’t need that much time to get ready, I should have been outta there in like 10 minutes!).

So, I started looking around for some tips on how to wake up early and actually get moving.

…and I came across a few different tips that I slowly started testing out on myself until I found something that worked for me.

I tried waking up to music and that worked for a few weeks, but eventually just died out.  Then I tried some other sounds to wake up to and some worked better than others.

What I ended up doing was something different altogether.

Instead of worrying so much about what I was waking up to I simply moved my alarm clock (well my iPad actually) so that it was completely out of my reach.  I literally put my alarm clock on the other side of the room so I had to get my butt out of bed and hit the snooze button if I really wanted to.

Eventually, I realized it was easier to just go, turn off my alarm clock and stick myself in the shower for a couple of minutes.

This helped me waken all of my senses and within a few minutes, I was showered and out the door, ready to take on my workout.

Now, I wake up between 5 and 6 regardless of the alarm clock since my body got used to it.  It’s kinda weird to wakeup at 6 on the weekend but to be honest, I absolutely love it!  I feel like I get to really enjoy the day when I wake up early!

Now, I’ve experimented with some other apps and tools to help me get a better sleep and wakeup better that I’ll talk about later.

But, if you’re like me and just need something to help you get up and out the door, try moving your alarm clock for a week and see what happens!

Hopefully it helps you like it did for me!

–Curt

We’ve all heard it before… we need to drink plenty (and by plenty I mean PLENTY) of water right?

Well, what does that really mean?

Some people will say that there’s a certain measurement of water that you should be drinking everyday but to be honest, I don’t really care about that.

For me, the real reason that I even care h0w much water I drink is because I feel completely different when I’m fully hydrated as opposed to when I’m not.

The reason I bring this up is because today has been a fantastic example of how important proper water consumption is for me.

I try and make sure that I drink a good amount of water throughout the day but there are sometimes when I slip up.  It’s generally those days when I feel extra tired and grab a couple more cups of coffee instead of filling up my water bottle.

You’d think that getting that extra coffee would give me that extra pick me up and get me energized but surprisingly, that’s not the case with me at all!

While a couple of cups of coffee can give me a little pick up, I generally just get jittery and a couple of hours later, start feeling all groggy again.

To put it bluntly, it sucks.

While today wasn’t exactly one of those types of days, it was definitely a day where I could feel myself starting to get a bit tired once 11-123o rolled around and I started thinking how late I was going to make it today.

But, instead of going and grabbing another coffee, instead I just filled up my water bottle (it’s one of those Nalgene bottles so however big those are) and drank it all in about 30-45 minutes.

By the time I was done I was feeling significantly more energized and any desire to go grab a cup of coffee completely vanished.

So the bottom line, for me anyway, is that I really don’t have a set metric for the amount of water I drink on a daily basis. While I’m sure doctors and scientists can point me to a million different studies as to the amount of water I should be drinking, all that I really care about is how I feel.

…and when I don’t have enough water, no matter how many cups of coffee I have, I will feel like absolute crap.

I guess it looks like I found my new cup of joe, a nice big ole’ jug of h2o.

As you may be able to tell by the sub title of this blog, my ultimate goal is to get a 6 pack.

I’ve always wanted one and have been insanely jealous of people that have them (especially those people that seem to have the natural gift of being able to eat pizza, cheeseburgers and french fies and not gain an ounce).

Anyway, moving on…

Over the years I’ve spent countless hours reading article after article and purchasing different products trying to figure out the best diet to burn fat.

Trying to discover that “super food” that would instantly eliminate that stubborn belly fat and see what it could possibly be that was keeping me from achieving my goals.

Well, I tried a bunch of different things and I never quite found that miracle food (shocker).

But, what I did discover was a diet that makes sense to me and that’s helped me burn off 5% of body fat in 3 short months.

…while still eating pancakes, churros, pizza and just about all of my favorite foods.

You may have caught on that there is a bit of a catch here and you’re absolutely right.  Of course I didn’t achieve that by JUST eating those foods .

But I did do it while eating my favorite foods and not feel like I was really giving up anything.  It was really a lifestyle change for me that wasn’t all that difficult to do.  And I’m pretty confident you can do it too if you set your mind to it!

Here’s how I did it:

All I did was eliminate any processed foods and carbohydrates from my diet 6 days out of the week.  On that 7th day  I have what I call my binge day (for me it’s Sunday, I love my Sunday brunch) and I eat absolutely as much as I want of whatever I want.

So what does that really all mean in plain English?

Basically, any type of bread, pasta, rice, soda, beer (I did drink wine), fried food and any other type of traditional carbohydrate you can think of was completely eliminated from my diet.

And I made sure to add a lot more veggies and lean protein.  I’m a pescatarian so that limited me to eggs and fish but it still was pretty easy for me.

I remember when I first heard about this whole “low carb” thing and I thought it was crazy to even try such a thing.  But after I did it, and saw results, it’s pretty hard to argue against it.

For me, the most important thing was to stay true to this diet (or lifestyle change if you’d like) for those 6 days.

No little cheats of just a beer, or some french fries, or a sandwich or, whatever…

I can’t tell you how many people I’ve talked to that say they like to have a “little something” each day.

Hogwash.

Stay focused and keep your end goal in mind.

If you steer off track, you aren’t going to get the results you want, period.

And then, that makes those Sunday binge days (or whichever day you choose) that much more fun.

What’s funny though, is after a while I completely lost interest in really overdoing it on those binge days.  Mainly because I felt like absolute crap at the end of the day and sometimes, even the next.

In fact, I have to be careful because I like to workout early in the morning before I head to the office.  And if I have a massive binge day on Sunday, I have the tendency to slack and don’t get into the gym on Monday morning which completely throws off my entire workout week.

So, here’s what I recommend, if you’re up for it…

Before you embark on this diet journey make sure that you have a starting point.  Do a weigh in so you know exactly where you are starting.  If you have a body fat monitor, make sure you get that data as well.

I’m a data geek and I can tell you from experience, after NOT doing this for years, once I finally did it, it made a massive difference in sticking with the program and as a result, I finally started seeing the results.

Once you have that starting data recorded somewhere, give this a shot for a week and then do another weigh in to compare.  You’ll probably be surprised at the results you can get in just one short week.

What I like about this diet is that there’s no counting calories or anything like that.  Just simply eating good quality food, cut out the carbohydrates and try and limit your processed food intake as a whole.

It doesn’t really require too much thinking and very little actual “work” which is a huge plus in my book.

After you’ve done this for a week, I’d absolutely love it if you came back and let me know how it worked out for you.

While I’m pretty confident you’ll get similar results as I did, it’s always great to hear other people’s stories.  Those are the things that get me excited and motivate me to keep on going!

Happy Dieting!

–Curt