Motivation

Motivational Monday: The First Step, a Decision

“How are you so motivated?” This is the biggest question I get when people find out I’m primal. So for the next few weeks, I’ll be motivating you on Mondays. These posts may seem a little ranty, but it’s my blog, right? (Also don’t forget to watch the vid at the bottom, it’ll motivate you for the whole week!)

Is living a Primal lifestyle really about motivation? Not at all actually, it’s about habits. Motivation gets you started, and habits keep you going. But the first step is a decision, and that decision is driven by motivation. Motivation has to come from within.

This is the most overlooked step. The danger is that most people go into it half hearted without fully making the decision. This is the point that people miss.

“So what’s your ‘secret’?” Another question I get constantly. Once again, no secret; its habits. And whenever I think about swaying from those habits, I remember why I started. There’s a goal so much bigger than that piece of cake. For everyone that goal is different. My goal list grows daily, and sometimes I take things off the goal list. For instance, a number on the scale doesn’t mean anything to me anymore, but getting a perfect pushup means a LOT. You have to decide, write them down, and stick to it.

But step 1 today is to find that goal. Do an exercise right now- Write all your goals down. Write down anything that you’d be proud of if you achieved it. Want to hear some of mine for examples?

Be a role model for other college students struggling to eat healthier and lose weight
Get more fit

Now these are two of my examples from where I am today. But when I started, it was simple things like:

Stop eating pizza
Give up soft drinks
Avoid sweets and late night carby snacks (Honey nut cheerios were quite a weakness)

So see, I am human! Things don’t happen overnight. No matter where you’re at in your journey, you have to have goals to keep improving. It comes down to the fact that it’s your decision. So, stop blaming other people for the way you live your life, and take some responsibility for your own actions.

The Ultimate Hunter-Gatherer

By Monica Bravo 2 Comments

You could call Mike Lecompte the ultimate hunter & gatherer. His philosophy, “If it swims, if it flies, if it runs, I eat it. If it comes out of a bag or a box I don’t touch it. If it grows out the ground, I scrutinize it.” As a hunter and fisherman all of his life, this was the ideal diet for him.

I started on the primal path almost three years ago when a close friend, Clint Bravo, who had cheated death recommended I read a book titled, “The Paleo Diet” by Loren Cordain. I say he cheated death because he was lucky, his doctors had found a 95% blockage in the artery of the heart known as the “widow maker” before it made a widow. At this

mike time I was in my late forties and had just watched people I knew about the same age as me and younger die of heart attacks or have close calls with death by heart attack. Having a family history of heart conditions and colon cancer, I made up my mind to get checked out at the age of 46. Colon was clean and that was good news but my blood work was not so good. My cholesterol levels were in the 260 range. My doctor promptly prescribed a statin drug and being from the school of conventional wisdom, complied. I was also instructed to cut back on the fats and go whole grain and dry skinless chicken breasts. Six months later the statins worked. My overall cholesterol was in the 160 range. During this time I noticed I was starting to gain weight. I am 5’6” and have always hovered around 165 to 170 pounds since high school graduation. Since taking the statins and eating the way I thought I should, I jumped to 185 pounds. Not a comfortable weight for a guy 5’6”. I couldn’t figure it out. I have always been active, from sprint triathlons to weight training to hiking, hunting, you name it, I tried it.

Fast forward a couple of years and I’m still at 185 and know something has to change. That is when my good friend recommended the Cordain book. I read it front to back in less than a week. After reading and re-reading some parts things started to make sense. The whole discussion on ancestral diets in the human species and insulin reaction in the body made incredible sense. I was impressed but not yet convinced so my buddy gave me some web sites to visit and do some more research. Next thing you know I am reading the “Primal Blueprint” by Mark Sisson. This one really struck a cord with me since Mark had also been a triathlete, although at a much higher level than me, and he incorporated not just a diet but an entire lifestyle which included different takes on exercise and fitness.

OK, now I am willing to give this a try. At first I told no one except my friend who started me on this path, not even my wife. After about 2 weeks I noticed a drop in the scale of about 8 pounds and an increase in strength in the weight room. It was about this time that my wife noticed I was not eating portions of the meals she made at night. I didn’t eat the pasta, the bread, the rice the red beans. Typically I would eat the meat, chicken, or fish and just have a salad with it. Also I was a big “snacker”, especially at night. Cheezits, chips, ice cream with chocolate syrup, all kinds of “goodies”. Now she noticed that that stuff in the pantry was going stale before it was empty and I was eating a lot more fruit and raw veggies instead. She asked what’s up and I told her. She asked is it working and I said yes, over eight pounds in less than 2 weeks gone.

To cut to the chase, I lost 25 pounds in about 6-7 weeks and felt better than ever. Lean, strong, fit and saw abs for the first time since high school. And it was all effortless and easy. Just eat real food. As Mark Sisson puts it, “eat lots of plants and animals”.

This is when I decided to conduct a little experiment. As I said earlier, I was on a statin drug for cholesterol. Taking one 40mg pill every day. I decided to cut it back to every other day for six months, as this is when I would go in for my blood work. After cutting back to every other day for six months and eating primal, my levels were still in the 160 range. Then I decided to go with every third day for six months. Same result. Next cycle, every fourth day, same results. I finally got to the point where I was taking the statin just once a week with the same blood work results. At the time of this writing, I have been completely off the statin script for about 6-7 months and will go in a couple of weeks for blood work. I predict no change and then I will tell Doctor Conventional Wisdom what I have been doing and tell him I don’t need another prescription.

I can’t tell you how much I enjoy this lifestyle, and that is what it is, a lifestyle, not a diet. Diet implies temporary, this is not. I am almost 3 years into it and love it.

While I know that natural grass fed meats and free range chicken and wild caught fish are optimal and the best sources of protein, they can be expensive. A lot of what you will find on the web and blogs promote these types of proteins and that is ok, like I said it’s optimal if you can do it. I am lucky, I have hunted and fished my entire life here in south Louisiana so I have great access to wild, natural meat, pork, waterfowl and fish. But do not let the expense of the natural proteins keep you from starting a primal/paleo lifestyle. You can still get your food from the grocery, just stay on the perimeters of the store and keep out of the middle aisles as much as possible. The outside is where the real food mostly lies, the veggies, the meats, and the eggs.

Don’t take my word for it, do the research, read the books, the blogs, the websites. Do the 30 day challenge, forego the grains and all the derivatives that come from them, pasta, flour, bagels, cookies. Stay away from sugar, corn, all legumes. Eat real food, leafy vegetables, colorful vegetables, meat, fish, chicken, pork, fowl. Start eating more fruit instead of the sugary snacks, you will be surprised as to how sweet fruit is when you are not eating processed sugar. I guarantee after 30 days you will be leaner, have more energy and feel better all around.

Want to be the next Testimonial on my blog? Send me your story at bravoforpaleo@gmail.com, and I may feature you!

Call To Action!

By Monica Bravo 2 Comments

Now that I explained why I’m here, it’s your turn to decide why you’re here. What’s your Call to Action? What kind of changes are you looking for in your life? Remember that we always have room for improvement. Are you looking for better sleep? More energy? Weight loss? More muscle? A healthier lifestyle in general? Maybe you feel great about your lifestyle and think, There’s nothing wrong with the way I look or live, and I’m perfectly fine with eating the standard diet. I’m normal and it’s okay. But is it okay? Is it okay for us to be eating all these harmful foods just because they taste good? Is it okay to be consuming things that will inevitably decline your health and standard of living? Personally I’m going to go with no on this one. Maybe it is the normal at this day in age, but let’s go back to our ancestors called the hunters and gatherers. Look around the Earth at what foods would be available. Surely there would be a variety of meats, seafood, fruits, and nuts in abundance. This was the normal then, and at this time our ancestors had lean, strong, and efficient bodies. We evolved to eat this way, and emulating this diet will indeed make you lean, strong and efficient also. So here’s the point, you can eat normal for our modern society, but you have to be willing to take the rest of the package too. What are some normal consequences that will follow the modern day food? TWO- THIRDS of adults in America are overweight or obese. How’s that for a mind-blowing statistic? How about heart disease? 600,000 people die of heart disease every year (which is 1 in every 4 deaths). Does it worry you a bit? Because it should. What our country is undergoing is called an obesity epidemic. This isn’t just something we can ignore, because it’s everywhere we look. It’s normal to see many overweight people everywhere we go and see many fast food chains and see many vending machines and see many fitness gyms and diet commercials. Wait what? Fitness gyms and diet commercials? Yes.. Actually our country spends about $40 BILLION on weight-loss programs and products each year. Sounds like business is doing well for the weight-loss industry, but we look around and it’s not working. The calorie obsessed, diet obsessed, quick fix obsessed society is not getting any smaller or healthier. We’re getting bigger and bigger and bigger every year. Obesity has doubled since the 70s.

So where’d we go wrong? We took the fat out of food in the 50s and replaced it with sugar. Our government has an emphasis on carbohydrates (actually making it the base of our food pyramid), which turns into sugar as soon as it gets into your body. In biology we actually refer to carbohydrates as sugars. So take a minute and forget anything you’ve been taught about dieting and losing weight and what’s healthy for you. You must go back to your roots now. Your roots are in nature. Sometimes I think we forget our species is an animal. The best food for an animal wouldn’t be a food-like product. It would be food found in nature. So ditch those 100-cal snack packs, hunger reducing protein bars, diet pills, low fat products (chemical shit storms as I call them), or how about you just ditch ALL processed foods. Because they’re making us sick, they’re making us fat, and they’re not real foods. Many people will ask, Why do you care about eating healthy? Why do you go through the trouble of cooking? I care about what I eat because you truly are what you eat. My food is my nourishment. It provides my body energy to move and live and grow. Why would I give my body chemicals and almost poisonous food as energy? Of course that fuel would not do well. Our bodies are like cars, you put the wrong fuel in the tank and you’re just not going to run as well. So why are you here? Well you decide that yourself. Only you can decide who you want to be and the quality of life you will have.

Motivation

Footer