can I get a whoop whoop

I.....feel.....amazing!!!!!!

This is day 5 of NO SUGAR, including anything that turns to sugar - this includes grains and fruit. The first two days were rough, bad headache. The next two days were good because my excruciating headache finally subsided, but I felt dizzy and drained.

I hit the gym this morning at 6am for the first time since before Christmas. I was scared. I got on the rowing machine and I could tell it had been over a week. But it was only a 5 minute warm up, I could handle it. Then I moved on to shoulders. I did 5 shoulder exercises - that's it - and burned 350 calories!! BAM! And I left the gym bouncing off the walls. I felt so amazing. It was so great to be back. And it was so great to feel so energized and just plain happy.

For the first time EVER I feel like I am going to accomplish something I never really believed I could do. I am going to COMPLETELY change my physique and my health! And I am so excited, I feel like shouting it from the roof tops!

Either I was just so ready or in the right mindset, or it's actually a lot easier than I thought - either way, giving up sugar wasn't as hard as I thought it would be. When I first read the books, I was incredibly scared. How was I going to NOT eat bread, oatmeal, fruits, etc. I mean, I can't even eat carrots! I've tried low carb before and it was so hard that I never really succeeded at following it for more than 3 days at a time. But this isn't low carb, it's no sugar. I get plenty of carbs from all the veggies I'm eating. Between that and all the healthy fats, I'm never hungry. AND the really great thing is, I don't have to eat my body weight in protein! Which was one of my mistakes in the past.

I always read about the importance of high protein for building muscle. I failed to realize that there is protein in other foods besides just meat-meat-meat. So, I was trying to eat like 25-30g of protein at EVERY meal. Guess what? It did nothing for my fat loss efforts. And it did nothing for my muscle gain efforts either. Honest. When we consume more protein than we need, we store it as fat, same as everything else.

Add in the fact that our bodies use SO MUCH energy just digesting processed food, that it leaves little energy for other things. Ever wonder why you feel so tired and, well, just plain crappy after eating foods which aren't in their most natural state? Because it takes our bodies so long to digest them! Think of your energy level at 100%. If you eat crap, you are using 70% of your energy just to digest that crappy food! That doesn't leave you with a whole lot. But when you eat whole foods, natural foods, they go through your system quicker. Your body isn't working as hard to digest them. So you might only be using 10% of your energy to digest food, leaving you a whopping 90% for other things! Makes sense, right? Also, when you digest your food quicker and easier, it doesn't leave you feeling bloated, constipated and gassy.

Here's another little tidbit fer ya: now that I'm not eating any sugar or sugary carbs, guess what I'm burning when I exercise? That's right! Stored fat! It's no wonder fat just falls off people who do this! And that is what gets me AMPED at the gym. When I know I'm not busting my ass for nothing, it makes me want to work twice as hard!

The hardest part about this lifestyle is going to be dealing with people who don't understand it. 99 out of 100 people are going to think it's C-R-A-Z-Y. They are going to think I'm starving myself or depriving myself or making myself unhealthy. They couldn't be farther from reality. They are going to tell me I NEED grains. Because since the food pyramid says I need 6-8 healthy servings of grains a day, that's what I need. Well, do you know how screwed up the food pyramid is??? Tell people they need to eat more food that turns to sugar the moment we eat it, no wonder we're fat as a nation!

This lifestyle gets scrutinized (like anything else, I suppose). It's hard for people who've never tried it to imagine living it. I remember buying the book "Wheat Belly", reading it and desperately wanting to try that lifestyle because of all the healthy benefits people were seeing from simply cutting grains from their diets. Well, I tried it and failed. Miserably. It was just too hard. I wasn't ready. But now, something is different. Whether it's the helpful books I've read that are chock-full of delicious simple recipes and ideas to keep you going or the stories of incredible health and weight loss "miracles" - something sparked in me and my mind simply told my body...."it's time".

This lifestyle is about getting healthy fats - which is seriously lacking in our diets today. People are SO SCARED of eating fat. I even know people who won't touch coconut oil with a 10 foot pole because of the fat grams and calories in contains. What they fail to understand is that the fat in coconut fat is the GOOD fat. And your body needs these good fats to benefit you by dramatically reducing obesity, cancer, diabetes, heart disease and cognitive decline. Coconut oil, hemp seed oil, flax seed oil, and other omega 3 rich foods like salmon, nuts & seeds, anchovies, sardines, even grass fed beef and organic free range eggs! Don't be afraid of good fats! They are not what are making us fat. Sugar is what's making us fat.

Something to chew on...