CrossFit Weight Loss Challenge - Perseverance - Post 15

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As with any large goal that you’re going after, there are going to be setbacks, and your perseverance is what will keep you strong, and on the path of achievement. Beth has INCREDIBLE perseverance! She will complete her goal!

This week Beth is sharing her thoughts about what she has learned, and how her approach to eating has changed.

Beth’s story:

While eating dinner the other night, Neal and I were discussing the foods we used to eat and thought were healthy. Now that we have read about Paleo eating and are seeing results, it is no wonder anymore why all my diets and attempts in my life before this never worked. I always had a feeling there was some combination of food/exercise my body needed but never knew what it was and never was able to get answers as to what the right combination was until meeting you. Looking back, I can’t believe how much time, energy, and money I have probably wasted and am so happy to have finally found the key to my success at being healthy after all this time.
Since getting married 7 years ago, Neal has taught me alot about reading labels on food, the effects of food coloring and how we shouldn’t be eating foods that have ingredients in them you cannot pronounce. I still am not that good at remembering to check labels on things and that is why he does most of the food shopping and cooking really! I never really truly cared about those things as long as I wasn’t eating McDonald’s, I thought I was okay. Clearly that was not true and most of the food choices and alcohol choices I’ve made have only led me to this challenging place I am at.
In the last few years we have put alot of effort into making sure we switched out the foods we had in our house from brand name labels to more earthy crunchy brands. We thought we were doing the right thing but still with doing this and exercising all the time…nothing was changing. My weight was actually just increasing.
We didn’t go out to eat much or order food to go so we thought we were “healthy”. I’m sure that living this way probably was helping our cholesterol levels and other things in our body because we weren’t digesting Dominoes Pizza, cheese curls, hostess cupcakes, etc so it’s not all a loss, but with all this effort we thought we would see more results. We did realize that we were probably better off than those that were naturally skinny but filled with junk food!
The other thing I realized recently was that I was overeating the amounts of “healthy” food because I thought they were healthy enough, it wouldn’t cause me to gain weight. Wrong!!!
An example of some of the foods we ate were: Whole wheat bagel for breakfast, eggs and white potato homefries that only were made of potato…no other junk in it, sandwiches, wraps, dinners were always accompanied by some sort of grain….potato, rice, risotto. Weekend snacks were nachos we made at home with melted cheese on top. Sometimes we had muffins for breakfast on the weekend. Snacks were crackers with sliced cheese. We ate fruit and vegetable most days too.
Like I mentioned earlier, all of these foods seemed healthy to me even 6 months ago, but after reading the book “It Starts With Food” and learning all about Paleo eating, most of my diet was made up of things my body couldn’t process or didn’t need like all those carbohydrates for body fueling, so everything was stored as fat including all the beers I used to have on the weekends to “unwind”. Like in the article Joe wrote, we only need carbohydrates if we are going to use that fuel….sitting at a desk all day or sitting on the couch does not call for those type of foods. No wonder I gained so much weight!
I am so thankful to have recently learned what I have because it has literally changed my life and it wasn’t ridiculously hard! I had worked much harder and gone much hungrier in the past making diets and exercise agonizing with little result, when it clearly didn’t need to be that way. It’s amazing that cutting out carbohydrates, grains, sugar, and focusing on fruits, vegetables and protein can melt fat off my body. It used to be a pain to get out and exercise knowing it was probably a waste of time, but now I’m excited because I know that if I have followed the Paleo way of eating (for the most part), when I did exercise, I could expect a positive result.
After 4 months of eating this way, working out daily, not drinking alcohol anymore I have finally had success. I hope by sharing these life experiences, I can maybe help someone out there that has traveled a similar path as I have or not and that can benefit from things that are working for me that maybe they just don’t know about yet.
I have lots more to learn and many things to improve upon still. As long as I keep putting the effort into being healthy and improving my fitness, things can only get better from here. It seems that if you feel good and are feeling good about how you are treating your body, then other parts of your life seem to be in alignment as well. I am learning that all these things work together.