The Paleo Solution

I'm currently sitting inside a room at the Renaissance Hotel in the Skydome (yes it's the Skydome!) about to embark on 3 days of Fitness Manager bootcamp along with 17 other new FM's from across the country. I'm looking forward to the learning experience and working on my personal development in order to be a better teacher and leader to those I affect directly.

It's now been one week of my Paleo challenge against my friend Patrick and I can honestly say, this time I think it is going to stick as a lifestyle.

Let me elaborate.

I've tried a couple times to go "Paleo" in the past. I read a bit of Loren Cordain's "The Paleo Diet for Athletes", but it was too technical. I went solid for the month of February and fell right off halfway through March. Come to think of it, it was right around the time I accepted the FM position. Hmm...stress leading to poor eating habits? I may be on to something!

It was Robb Wolf's "The Paleo Solution" which really got me interested in it. Robb writes in an easy manner. I don't want to say "layman's terms" because there is a lot of technical stuff in there that can be quite hard to understand. After reading Robb's book, I read Art De Vany's "The New Evolution Diet" and everything began to click.

To be honest, I don't even see it as a competition anymore. And I don't mean that from the "I don't care about winning or losing" perspective. Simply, the purpose of the competition was to be able to have a reason to stick to the diet. I was using excuses, saying that it was too hard to not eat grains when it is everywhere around us. So, we made a competition with an end point and a reward at the end. And I stayed true, until Friday night when I decided to experiment and had some nachos.

Needless to say, my stomach felt like crap, I got a headache, and the experiment was done. It's obvious that I have reset my system, and putting "food" that isn't healthy in me just doesn't make sense anymore.

It would be ludicrous to presume I will never have another grain again. However, as Agatsu CEO Shawn Mozen once told me during a kettlebell cert in Toronto, "Just think about what you are putting into your mouth, and what it is doing for you." Putting "food" that we know is crap into our body is serving some sort of emotional function. The trick is to rewire your brain into getting that same end without turning to food. Some people chew gum. Some chug water. Some exercise.

My trick: 1 shot of tequilla, mixed with soda water in a tall and 3 limes. Stir, and enjoy.