Like others, I'm hoping that by keeping a journal I'll be more faithful to my efforts until the PB becomes a fully-ingrained lifestyle.

I stumbled across MDA about a year ago. I don't remember the precise search that had gotten me there, but I had been sniffing around online abount diet/diabetes. I had just been home and had been discussing with my mother how she was being directed by her doctor to get her diet in order, as she was heading towards becoming diabetic. This was a bit of a "wake-up" for me, too. Both of my grandmothers were diabetics, and one died a terrible death from its complications. I figured I should start looking to change my ways, too--and now.

My history. I am a 39 year old male. I'm 5'8" and weighed 181 lbs this morning. I was a very scrawny kid who weighed 139 lbs when I went off to college (This low weight is probably attributed to my being extremely active in high school--running cross-country and exercising race horses.). As you can see, over the last 20 yrs there has been a "slow creep" up to where I am now. While there have never been any huge gaps in time where I have been totally sedentary, some periods find me exercising more than others. In the last 4 or 5 years I've been moderately active by running and/or cycling--but mostly in a "chronic cardio" kind of way. Unfortunately, for someone who loves beeing outside, I've always had a "desk job". My diet, however, was pretty bad in that I pretty much ate anything. A high cholestoral reading (300+) got my attention two years ago. I started eating "better" in a CW kind of way, and brought than number down a good bit,but it was still too high by conventional standards. I was put on a statin drug. My diet, however, was still very heavily dependent on breads, grains and pasta.

After finding MDA, I read nearly all of his articles and have read his book. Everything made intuitive sense. About that time, my wife was at the beach for a month, so I decided to try out this new funky lifestyle while alone and not subject to ridicule. It really worked, I felt better overall, lost some weight (don't know how much as we didn't have a working scale in the house), and at the end of the month my wife wanted to know what had happened while she was away . . .

Since then, we've both pretty much lived what I'd call a 60-70% PB lifestyle. We eat far more meats and vegetables and far less pasta, breads and grains. My goal now is to bring this up to the 90%+ level that it really needs to be.

I'm sure I'll post more background as things go forward, and as it relates to any progress (or lack of progress) that I might be making. So let's get to it:

July 12, 2010

Diet: 24 hr IF to kick things off. Dinner to break fast was 2 eggs and 4 strips of bacon.

Exercise: 35 min HIIT (running/walking on canal paths)