Silversabrie(l) - Introduction

[silversabrie]

Hello everyone -

Here is my second post. My first was to join in the current 6-week challenge (here).

A somewhat brief introduction for myself... I am a 32 year old female living in Milwaukee, WI. I am hoping to fill some nerdy-gaps in my life following the decision to quit World of Warcraft (spending way too much time on it when I should be working on REAL WORLD goals). That's where I thought Nerd Fitness could fit in. I am also a year into the Paleo lifestyle and love it. Despite some hangups on my part (read: sugar, especially refined), I have experienced many positive things.

My journey to fitness didn't start until 2008. I was 28, 5'4" and 225 lbs. Miserable, I decided to go extreme. I read a book called "The Philosopher's Diet", cut calories back to around 900 a day (yikes) and wasn't eating much for protein because I was vegetarian and had basically turned a blind eye to the whole "macro-nutrient" thing. Although I lost weight quite easily (and started understanding how much eating an entire box of mac and cheese was costing me calorie-wise), I am sure much of it was muscle mass once I shed my inital fatty layers. By the time I was down to 125# (about 7 months after I started), I was looking better but my brain was a train wreck. Every minute of every day was spent obsessing about when I could eat my next Luna bar. I knew something had to change or I was just going to go nuts, and of course I did not want go back to the way things had been before, gain the weight back and become another "dieting failure". So, I tried things. I tried the Clean Diet (lots of liquid food... fun. I cheated a lot after the first week). I tried following "health food blogs" for inspiration, but I found their obsessive food-cataloging to make my own obsessive food-monitoring behavior even worse. However, I believe it was on one of my blogs that I found a link to a reporter who tried out the "caveman diet". I thought it was intriguing but I did not think I could do it as it involved eating lots of meat. Time went by. By this time I had quit my obsessive food-cataloging and calorie-counting (I had been writing all my consumed food, as well as exercise down in a daily journal, and would run or bike more to offset any possible extra calories). This was good as the food cataloging took up a large portion of my mental energy and time. However, it was stressing me out even more not knowing "where I was at".

When I finally found Mark's Daily Apple, which led me to Sarah Fragoso's Everyday Paleo Cookbook, I ordered it right away. Somehow, I had a good feeling about it. I told my boyfriend what it was and asked if he could help me. Thankfully, he was interested (at the time we were neck-deep in the craft beer scene) and we decided to try it for a month. We both read The Paleo Solution. We have been Paleo ever since! I do not think I even remembered what actually feeling FULL felt like (veg for 7 years). I make sure I get my meat from trusted sources, but it is part of the diet human beings were meant to consume. I also wish we could get far, far away from the influence of processed sugars. This is my current hangup. That and a bizarre (or maybe not) tendency to over eat roasted almonds.

I no longer have that panicky, "where's my next meal coming from" feeling. However, I still get that urge to overeat when I've got something good (especially chocolate/sweet stuff and almonds). This is my challenge and what led me to Nerd Fitness. I hope this can help me reach my current goals!!

[Chicory]

I made you a thing, for referencing such an awesome book series, but I failed at attaching it to this post. Please (if you want) steal the Sabriel-themed red circle thing from my sig!

And good luck with the challenge.