“Constructive” Criticism

My new diet is called the Paleolithic Diet, or Caveman diet.  The broad stroke idea is that you eat only things that were eaten by humans for the majority of our evolution.  Meat, seeds and nuts, meat, low density carb veggies, meat, some fruit, and absolutely no grains or non-fruit sugars.  I work out using Crossfit methodology, which is highly intense and varied functional exercises.  Assuming you, the reader, didn’t quickly push the back button on your browser when seeing words like “equation” and “delicious confection”, I would like to respond to a few criticisms of my new lifestyle I’ve received.

Diet: “You shouldn’t deprive your body of something you enjoy (sugars and grains), you should only cut back”

• I know that it is bad for my body to eat grains and sugars, to continue to put any amount of these substances into my body would be completely irrational, even if I do like them.  Really, it is different than something like cocaine only in magnitude.

• Along the same lines as cocaine, the insulin reaction to these substances is like a drug, and I’m an addict.  You wouldn’t tell a cocaine addict to just cut back.

Exercise: “You should start slow until you are in a better position and at a healthier weight before you start intense workouts”

• If you start easy, you quit easy.
• I know my limits, I know that my limits aren’t my REAL limits, and I know that I need to push my REAL limits to get any kind of benefit from any excercise program, or I’ll simply end up treading water.
• I’m not 22 any more.

Body Image: “Why can’t you just be happy the way you are?”

• Chicks dig scars, but not triple bypass scars.
• If I was, my sense of happiness would be really fucked up.
• I seriously couldn’t believe a good friend of mine asked me this.  My response to him was “Are you out of your fucking mind?”  And I think the thing that bothered me the most about this is that if he had asked me a year ago, I would have believed that I was happy the way I was.

The start of my new life and up to today…

As this is my introductory post, I’ll start with a little backstory.  I’m a very private person, so this is a very alien endeavor for me.  To externalize my internal dialogue, and to do so in such a public forum, is to go against every instinct I have.  I feel, however, that it is an important exercise if for no other reason than to force me to be more open.

Until recently, my life could be summed up in a very simple equation…. maximum pleasure minimum work.  Many might feel like that is how we all live, with different activities adding more or less pleasure depending on perspective, but this equation lacks a very significant variable…time.  Max pleasure for min work in the moment generally leads to less pleasure and more work in the future, and it certainly did in my case.  Every peanut butter cup I savored in the past now takes maybe 10-15 burpees to get rid of, and let me tell you, 10-15 burpees now are a lot harder than they would have been the day I ate that delicious confection.

The answer, then, seems to be to flip-flop the equation, and put forth maximum work for minimum pleasure.  When you then consider time in the equation, you get max work for min pleasure at present, for less work and more pleasure in the future.  How do I then apply this new, less fun equation?  I work my ass off every morning with my workout of the day (WOD), and I lay off the candy.  I have done this (more or less on the candy part) and the most amazing thing happened.  I put forth max effort, quit eating the easy-delicious-in-the-moment junk food, and I actually felt better.  My overall pleasure level seemed to rise with my work level.  So, I ended up with max work for max pleasure now and in the future.  Science rules.