Things get drastic

So if you have been dying to know what rules I basically broke off, it was the fast-food/ gas station food ones. I feel so criminal as I write it, like I was sitting in the dark, eating a big mac and suddenly there is a spotlight on me and I’m dressed in old-timey, black and white prison stripes. Somewhere beyond the light a man calls “We've got you surrounded, Schwartz. Put down the burger and come out quietly; No one needs to get hurt.” (When you read that, read it like Peter Brady saying “Porkchops and Applesause”.) “You’ll never take me alive, Copper! I ain’t going back to the joint!“ I shout, as I stuff my face, trying to eat it all before they cuff me.

The truth is, it wasn’t a matter of craving or needing junk food; it was simply convenience and inappropriate use of preparation time… AKA laziness. If you don’t spend the time to make and plan out your food for home as well as work, you will fail as I have. Just the basic principle that what you eat from home is better than eating out will probably save you calories and money. So, to break my old mindsets and challenge my twisted, unknown philosophies about food in my life, I’ve done something rather drastic. I have started the Whole 30 food challenge. If you have never heard of it, look it up on the Googles and check out the details. No sugar, no bread, no dairy, no legumes (which is beans), no processed junk. That means yum, I can have bacon, except if it is made with sugar, which pretty much all bacon is. You have to read labels all the time because, guess what, sugar is in everything. I read that 80% of all the things you will find in a supermarket will have sugar in them.  What the Whole 30 does is force you to explore whole food, try new things, get creative, and really make you think about what you’re eating. But more than a diet, it’s a philosophy changer. There are ways to make pancakes with bananas and eggs, or baked goods with fruit and almond flour, which are all Whole 30 approved ingredients, but the rules say "No!". Actually their phrase for that eating that stuff is “sex with you pants on”. I like to say people want to NOT have their cake and eat it too. The reason they say this is that your brain doesn’t know the difference between the “good for you” sweet, yummy muffin and the sugared up one, and the idea is to detox your mind as well as your body. It’s not that a little sugar is bad or a delicious biscuit is bad, but it's all we eat.

That’s a really simple and hopefully not grossly in error way to describe it, but hey, I’m still learning.  I’m on day 9 and I don’t really miss the sugar, at least not yet, but I do miss the dairy and mostly cheese.  I didn’t realize how much dairy my diet consisted of until not having it for nine days. I have had to get creative and try out new recipes, but I’ll save all that for another post. Check out the Whole 30 Challenge and tell me what you think. Comment below, email me at thenotsofatso@gmail.com, and follow me on twitter @thenotsofatso.

Change of plans

“If I was coaching third I would have made you crawl to home plate.” said my friend Dan Cupersmith, as I sat in a folding camp chair with my foot up, watching my teammates continue on without me. Dan is the coach of the church league softball team I’m on, and part of me wishes he would have gotten me to crawl home; it would have been a great story. But alas, I did not crawl home because a sniper shot me in the leg as I was rounding third….I mean someone was trying to throw me out at third and hit me in the leg…I mean I tore my calf muscle and fell down. This is when Dan wanted me to crawl home; he was kidding of course…well at least I think he was. Although I wasn’t shot or hit by a ball, it did feel like that’s what happened; a shot right to my calf. I went down “limp like a bonefish”, lying on the ground ready for Shelob to eat me, hoping and praying I didn’t tear my Achilles or an ACL or MCL or BLT….mmmmm, BLT. Lucky for me the other team from my church was playing right after us and they have a doctor on their team. Dr. B. checked out my leg and it looked like everything was still there, it was just a really bad pull. Later I would come to realize that what I did was tear my calf muscle. Then I looked to the sky and proclaimed “I’M OLD.” Now, was it twisting my leg earlier mowing the lawn, or lack of hydration and stretching before the game, or was my 18 old mind telling my 38 year old body to “RUN Forest RUN”, I guess I’ll never know except that it was probably all those, so I guess we do know. I cannot expect to play sports or do activities like I could when I was younger, especially with being out of shape. I don’t want stop playing sports, games, and activities, but I need to adjust how I approach them.  I call this the Three W’s:

WATER:

I need to be drinking more water. I think that's already a part of my new rules. It’s not like I didn’t have liquid with me at the game, because I had delicious ice coffee. (I can feel your judging from the other side of your electronic device, and you aren't the only ones - My wife was judging from the moment I came out of the store with coffee instead of the water she thought I was getting.) Anyway, I found in one of my apps a place to record how much water you drink a day, and it's set for 64oz a day as a goal. I guess I’ll try that unless I hear different.

WARM UP:

I have been playing in the church softball league since I was 17 years old and I have only missed two seasons. That means I have been playing for 21 years (gee whiz, why aren’t I any better?). Sometimes before a game there would be these older guys jogging up and down the fence line, stretching out their leg muscles and laying on the ground stretching all over the place.  I would think “Ha! Look at the guy running around trying to touch his toes, what a goof!”. So that’s going to be me now.

WOAH - Settle Down Now (Settle. Da. Na.):

I need to ease into things and not hit the ground running anymore, especially now that I’m trying to rehabilitate my calf.

Have any advice for me when it comes to keeping fit or great ways for me to keep a workout routine while I’m injured? Leave a message in the comments! Also, take a guess at which of my new rules I already broken in half and I will reveal the answer in my next post.