⚠️ I am not a doctor or in the health industry. These are just my thoughts and opinions on the matter. Only you can take control of your life.
I used to be in what I would consider an unhealthy state from the ages of 8 to 34. I was overweight, not very strong, lacking endurance and did not appreciate myself. The habits in my home were not conducive to being a healthy person when I was growing up. We had a lot of packaged and processed foods in the refrigerator, freezer and pantries. I was drinking anything (non-alcoholic) but water and if I was hungry, I could eat as much as I wanted. I would have a big glass of milk with multiple servings of the food per meal. I did not do any resistance training at all and barely did cardio.
At one point in my life, I weighed close to 300lbs. I did not like the way I looked or felt about myself. I would try to lose the weight by exercising and I would be able to drop 20 or 30 lbs in a month or two, but weight loss would slow down and I would feel discouraged. Once than happened, I would stop and the weight would rise again.
⚠️ The next section talks about fasting. Done improperly can cause serious medical issues. It is strongly recommended that children and pregnant women should not fast for prolong periods of time. Read Jason Fung’s book for more information.
After my Father passed away and I looked towards God, I was able to get some answers to my health problems. I learned about fasting at first. With how much extra fat I had on my body, I found that I could go a few to several days without eating anything and drinking only water. Jason Fung’s The Complete Guide to Fasting: Heal Your Body Through Intermittent, Alternate-Day, and Extended Fasting was a great resource for when I was doing the multiple day fasts. The longest I was able to go without any food was around 10 days. I did lose some weight during that time, but my other issue was with the food I would eat after a fast; I would break my long fasts with Chick-Fil-A. I would order about 2-3 meals worth of food (extra refills on the large Cherry-Coke as well) when breaking the fast, so my body would have to process all of it at once. I learned that the liver can only process a tiny amount of fructose at a time, so consuming a lot of it at once is like drinking a bunch of alcohol; it can’t handle it and converts it to fat.
I also learned to love myself for who I was, through the teachings of Jesus Christ, preached by Lion of Judah World Outreach Center. I let go of the negative feelings I had about myself and broke spirits of bondage on my life. I learned more and more about what it means to be a disciple of Christ and how it affects the world. I met my wife during this time; we both felt it was God’s blessing and answered prayer for us to be married.
The habit that really changed my life is one that developed once I married my wife; Only eating two meals a day, one of them being home cooked. Since I found out that I could go long periods without eating and I was fine, I choose to enjoy just two meals a day. We started with a home delivery service for meal prep, Dinnerly. It was much better quality foods than the plastic packaged meals and fast food I had been eating before.
I increased my learning about health during this time as well through podcasts. First I started with High Intensity Health with Mike Mutzel, MS, then I moved on to The Doctor’s Farmacy with Mark Hyman, M.D. and Dhru Purohit Podcast. We decided that we would cut down on the sugars in our diet, cook as many meals ourselves with as close to “the way God made it” as possible (cut out processed foods) and eat smaller portions.
I started to walk a lot more and before I knew it, I had lost 70lbs. I was down to 200lbs without really stressing over my weight. I became stronger and weighed, so I could do push-ups and pull-ups. I was amazed with how easy it had become.
By sticking with removing the sugars from my diet along with resistance training plus cardio, I was able to get as low as 155lbs. I looked very skinny at 155lbs and started to have the opposite health problem, underweight. Thankfully that was easy to remedy by eating more.
I did reintroduce sugar back into my diet and no surprise, my weight is climbing back up. I currently weight 180lbs, which is the max I would prefer to be. I will say goodbye to sugar once again and start a daily habit of resistance training, which brings me to the journal.
Time to write down what I am doing, so that I stay on track. The information I will be recording in the journal will be:
- How many hours of sleep I had the night before
- How much and what I ate for a meal or snack. Recording in handfuls as the measurement, as I feel that a serving size is usually the size of a person’s fist.
- If the food was packaged or processed, it will be marked accordingly.
- The amount of resistance training for the session.
- The times of eating and working out.
- End with a summary of how I felt about the day.
We stopped subscribing to Dinnerly. We now have meat delivered to our door through Butch Box along with getting our vegetables and other foods from Costco.
I must stress that you should know what you are doing; Partner with a professional in the medical field, such as your doctor, when applying any health suggestions or advice. You should listen to your body, don’t ignore it. Please be safe in your life. May my Lord bless you as he as blessed me, I encourage you to get to know Him.