I grew up in a small town in PA where there was always a plethora of things to keep you busy. As long as the only things you wanted to do was drink copious amounts of booze, eat yourself into obesity, and get into trouble.
I give you exhibit A.
That lovely creature is me, as a sophomore in high school. I tipped the scales at 295 lbs and what I can only assume was around 30+% bodyfat. Eventually I got so unhealthy I had no choice but to lose weight, by junior year I was 185. Enter the gym. After discovering weight lifting I went back up to about 200lbs and have hovered between 190-210 pretty much ever since (barring injury).
My diet "Improved" while in college. I went from a dairy heavy diet short on grains, meat, fruits and veggies to a diet heavy on dairy [7 gal of milk per week] and grains (whole grains) with moderate meats and fruits... sans veggies.
Post college a bit more balanced, a few veggies snuck in, less dairy [3-4 gal per week], more lean meats, some fruit. Eventually it payed off, but to get any really low bodyfat numbers I had to do more extreme diets. Probably my most fit to date was my trip to Greece 2 years ago after an entire month of eating no flour at all.
Exhibit B.
That was after a short swim off the cost of Santorini (best part of Greece I saw) where I shared the water with approximately 1.7 trillion sea urchins per square inch. Awful, but I digress.
I spent most of my post grad-school (the first time) career cycling my diet with my lifting to get stronger, but at the cost of my connective tissue. Many injuries and surgeries later, my joints hate my guts down to it's soul. I noticed that I was having a ton of inflammation related issues as well, terrible episodic stomach pain, joint issues, dry skin, cerebral conditions... very similar to the autoimmune based issues faced by my father. The final straw came on about 6 months ago.
While at the gym doing pull ups I noticed the tips of my fingers were numb, within weeks my hands, then by month 2 up to my shoulders -- Peripheral neuropathy without degenerated muscular involvement. Essentially, I felt no pain in my arms. That's awesome!! right?? wrong. I have a permanent burn scar on my left hand now due to not noticing my flesh being seared off until I hit the latter stages of a second degree burn. I'll spare you the Exhibit C of a photo of it.
The diagnosis was vitamin B6 poisoning... what? A water soluble vitamin poisoned me, yup. It was time to overhaul what I thought I knew about nutrition. I read a small library's worth of books and scientific journals on inflammation, acid/alkaline, paleo, vegan (as if I could have pulled that off), zone, Atkins, food pyramid, etc., and after digesting a bit of it decided to go paleo. Mainly, because it naturally swayed towards anti-inflammatory and alkaline balance, avoided glycemic spikes, and also because I could get balanced vitamin and mineral intake without the multivitamin that apparently poisoned me.
But what is it you ask? Well for those of you who stayed through that overly long back story, the next post explains...
No comments:
Post a Comment