I was born and raised here in Tennessee, which, according to a 2012 CDC report, is tied with Virginia as being the 12th most obese state in the country (coincidentally, Bristol sits right on the state line of TN and VA). I've never been what you would call a picture of fitness. As a child, I was generally one of the heavier kids in class. This was mitigated somewhat by a healthy growth spurt as I entered my teens (I'm 6'2" now), but that didn't last long. I didn't play sports in middle school or high school except for a brief stint doing shot put and discus at the end of my senior year. My lifestyle was fairly sedentary.
After graduating high school, I went to college at Clemson University in South Carolina (an even heavier 8th on the CDC list). Fortunately, Clemson has a fairly large campus, so just walking to and from class expanded my physical activity by quite a bit. Whereas many new college students gain the infamous "freshman 15", I actually LOST somewhere around that much after my first year. But, as our bodies tend to do, my metabolism adjusted and I experienced a plateau, then some weight began to slowly creep back on.
For the second half of my junior year at Clemson, I spent a semester studying abroad in Córdoba, Argentina. Although the typical Argentine diet is pretty heavy on meats and breads, this South American diet is still generally a bit leaner and healthier than the typical American South diet. Also, I didn't have a car while I was there, so I had to rely HEAVILY on walking to and from campus, or walking several blocks to the bus stop to get elsewhere, plus we also went on a number of weekend hiking/camping/climbing excursions and vacations throughout the 5 months I lived there. Needless to say, I dropped a significant (to me) amount of weight while I was there. I came back to the States, spent the summer in Tennessee, then got ready to start my senior year at Clemson. So, I went from walking nearly everywhere I went, lots of activity on the weekends, and fairly healthy eating back to having a car, eating my favorite Southern foods that I'd missed so much, and starting my final year of college which wasn't too rough since I'd gotten many of my harder classes out of the way early on. It bears mentioning that I turned 21 while abroad, so I was then able to go out to all of the bars and such in Clemson when I got back home. Over the course of that final year, I ballooned to the heaviest I'd ever been, and ultimately wound up somewhere in the mid 250s.
Because the economy and job market had pretty much hit rock bottom when I graduated in May of 2008, I was unemployed for some time (about 8 months) after graduation. This didn't exactly do wonders for my motivation. I should mention at this point that during most of the summers since high school, I would participate in shows with a local theatre organization here in Bristol. It would give me something to pass the time in the summers, plus many of my friends participated as well. Now that I found myself back in Tennessee, I started helping out with the kids summer camp that the theatre was doing and helped out on stage and off with their summer productions (still unsure if I might be moving back to South Carolina for some job opportunities that ultimately fell through). When it became clear that I'd be in TN for the foreseeable future, I decided to audition for the theatre's Fall production of The Wizard of Oz, in which I was cast as the Tin Man. One of my best friends was also cast in the show as the Cowardly Lion. Neither of us were happy with our weights at the time, so we decided to devote ourselves to losing as much weight as we could and developing a healthier lifestyle before the show opened.
Well, since I was still unemployed, I had nothing but time on my hands during the day, and I lived right beside the park here in Bristol, so I would go out walking nearly every day of the week, sometimes upwards of 7 or 8 miles a day, then go to the theatre for rehearsal at night. I also began meticulously journaling what I was eating and drinking. Rehearsals began in September, and through the run of that show and a small holiday production thereafter in December, I lost over 50 pounds!
**Disclaimer: the final 3 or 4 pounds were the result of a bout of food poisoning that struck in mid-December. Anyone who's ever dealt with that will understand me when I say those are the most agonizing few pounds you could ever lose...**
Here's a before and after image from September 2008-December 2008:
Definitely a bit of a difference. Anyway, in January of 2009 I FINALLY entered the workforce and have been gainfully employed ever since. This, however, as most of you know, made it far more difficult to focus on my health like I had been. The quality of my meals became less of a priority, and exercise shifted to the back burner. I was eventually able to find time to start doing some shows again here and there, some of them more physical than others, and like everyone would occasionally get on a short-lived health kick here and there, and of course life likes to throw us other personal curve balls and hurdles from time to time, so my weight began to rollercoaster up and down over the next few years. I started 2012 wanting to really refocus back on my health, so I increased my exercise frequency, started trying to make healthier choices. I even ran my first EVER road race of any kind, a 10k, on St. Patrick's Day that year. This was a huge personal accomplishment, and one that's encouraged me to run in a few other races since that time. Something wasn't right though...
For several weeks, it didn't seem to matter what I ate, but after almost every meal I would get this intense nauseated feeling as though I were going to be sick, no matter how simple or basic the food choice. I tried adjusting just about everything you could think of, but it didn't seem to matter. Then, on April 21, 2012, I went grocery shopping and made a decision: let's go vegetarian. I figured, if nothing else, it would help give my digestive system a sort of "clean slate" to work out whatever problems were going on, and I had several vegetarian/vegan friends that I could count on for encouragement. I still ate eggs and dairy, just no actual meat.
I've not been 100% faithful to this lifestyle since that time. But, as my friend Sarah discusses on her awesome blog "What I Vegan", I've still been able to evade arrest by the vegetarian/vegan police. (More on the "purity" of my food choices, even with my upcoming experimental endeavor, in my next post)
Long story short: problem solved. I felt GREAT, and still do! I actually began to drop weight again, and never suffered any lack of energy (though I did have one brief episode where I let my iron get low...not something to mess around with, gang). I work, do shows, spend time with friends, and I even joined the YMCA in the fall of 2012 which gives me a great variety of ways to keep active. I'm still not where I want to be though, which brings me to today...
I'm at a point now where I want to try something that will give me another firm push in the right direction. There's been a lot of discussion in recent months about "Caveman" and "Paleo" diets that attempt to replicate the eating habits of our earliest ancestors who would have eaten only the foods we were "meant to eat" before the ages of agriculture and processed foods came along. The diets emphasize high protein, generally through a comparatively high level of meat consumption, and relatively low carbs because of the omission of any sorts of grains and things of that nature as well as refined sugars. This does somewhat differ from other high protein diets in that pretty much all other vegetables and fruits (limited with some plans) are fair game. Countless individuals have reported successful, sustainable weight loss, as well as improved mood, energy, and overall feelings of well-being with these plans. It sounded to me like something I'd want to try, but I wasn't necessarily willing to forgo my vegetarian lifestyle that I've adapted to and enjoy so much. That's when the wheels started turning and I began to do a bit of research. There were some folks out there ranging from your everyday vegetarians and vegans all the way up to high endurance athletes (see another favorite blog of mine, No Meat Athlete) who had tried varying versions of these diets, so I knew it wasn't impossible.
That's not to say it's exactly easy. Most vegetarians and vegans rely on things like soy (and its derivatives), wheat gluten, a number of grains, and several varieties of beans and other legumes for their protein. Unfortunately, all of these are off limits with traditional paleo-style diets.
I feel like it's time for another **DISCLAIMER: I am not a certified nutritionist, nor am I any sort of self-proclaimed expert on nutrition, diets, eating plans, or any related fields. I'm not a medical expert, and all of the views expressed throughout the entries on this blog are simply my personal observations and deductions that are based on the research that I have done, however deep and thorough it may or may not have been.**
Just figured I'd throw that out there in case I say something that's not 100% accurate about any of these lifestyles or someone mistakes me for some type of dietary guru. But I digress. Back to the topic at hand.
Sure, I could still eat eggs as a protein source, but anyone who's done one of those diets where you eat a hard-boiled egg for more than one meal a day knows they get old REAL quick, so I though I might try to make the jump from vegetarian to vegan in my approach since my other non-vegan love, dairy, is also a paleo "no no".
Am I going to always adhere to the strictest standards of the paleo and vegan philosophies? Probably not. You see, I LOVE food. I love cooking it, eating it, experiencing new ones, discussing it with friends, and I love to actually taste what I'm eating. There may be some ingredients that I cook with that don't mesh with the paleo ideology, and I'm not going to grill the servers in every restaurant that I eat in to make sure there's not so much as a molecule of animal byproduct that would conflict with the vegan lifestyle. (See previous reference to the "What I Vegan" Vegan Police post). All I can say for sure is that I'm going to try my best to adhere to this plan because I want to provide you all with the clearest picture possible of my results from this experiment.
The planned time frame for the experiment is going to be from Monday, April 15, 2013 through Sunday, June 16, 2013, approximately 9 weeks. Why this time frame? I wanted to choose an adequate amount of time so that I could see if any real results would start to come of this, plus, as previously mentioned, I'm a live theatre performer. I'll actually be in overlapping rehearsals for two shows this summer. The first of which, "Urinetown", closes on...you guessed it, June 16. Then I'll head full steam into a production of "Les Misérables" which will run in late July and early August. (I'll provide more info on these shows and my life as an actor outside of my day job in later posts). One of the main things I'm interested in seeing is how this new lifestyle will be able to provide me with the energy I need to make it through the busy schedule that working a full time job plus rehearsing for demanding roles in two shows will incur.
Well, that about wraps up the introduction to this madness. (About time, right?) I look forward to having you all along for the ride and hopefully having your encouragement as well.
Best wishes to all of you!
Jon
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