Long before I started eating Paleo, I noticed that my college friend Maks often posted Paleo-related links on Facebook and Twitter. I also knew that he had run a few half-marathons and a marathon, and I wondered how Paleo eating and running fit into his overall health and fitness journey.
Luckily, Maks is quite the writer — I recall seeing his byline on the front page of The Seattle Times several times back when he was a reporting intern — and he readily gave me the full story, including progress photos. Since I’ve gotten lots of feedback and questions from people who are interested in Paleo, I thought some of you might like to read it, too.
Note: My Tumblr theme doesn’t allow me to add a “read more…” break. Forgive me for the long post, Tumblrites!
Here’s Maks…
My wake-up call came on the heels of the worst, most frustrating and downright embarrassing game of pickup basketball I’d ever played.
It was a Friday night in December of 2010. I was 21, a couple weeks shy of graduating from the University of Washington, and supposedly in the physical prime of my life. But there I was, bent over and woozy after a game of five-on-five that saw me blow open layups, stand flat-footed as others rebounded over me and struggle to run up and down the court against a team of — sorry to say — terrible opponents.
My calling card as a recreational basketball player — albeit a pretty average one — has always been my endurance. Growing up, my friends and I would bus to our local community center each Friday afternoon and shoot hoops until they cut the lights and shooed us away. I take pride in being the first one down the court, in outworking and frustrating opponents that were probably more skilled and gifted.
I stayed active throughout college and my body composition held steady — I was 5’10” and 160 pounds. That changed during my last quarter at UW. I accepted a journalism internship that distanced me from my parents and their Russian cooking. It was up to me to feed myself for the first time.
TURNING POINT
I followed conventional wisdom and the words of Men’s Fitness as gospel. I would start my days off with a toasted English muffin, lathering on heaping spoonfuls of peanut butter and jelly along with a glass of fruit juice. For lunch, I would bring a plastic container of oatmeal and berries to work or buy a sub sandwich. For dinner, maybe a salad (heavy dressing) with a side of beans and chips and salsa. Then, some cereal before bedtime.
To stay active, I joined a couple of other interns on a weekly three-mile running loop. But before long, I began lagging behind the others and was putting on some weight. My mood began to fluctuate, and I remember feeling unhappy and unproductive for the first time in my life.
One Friday, toward the end of the quarter, I drove back up to Seattle to play basketball at the gym. My terrible performance bothered me all weekend. I played it back in my head over and over. What was happening to my body? I didn’t recognize myself.
It was as if the question of my health had been reduced to a seesaw. I could lean one way and follow most of my family members on a path toward gradual weight gain and a slow decline in health, seen as a natural upshot of aging. Or I could try to do something about it. Which way would I lean?
OH, I KNOW: I’LL RUN A MARATHON!
I decided to take the extreme approach and run a marathon, an achievement seen by most as the hallmark of perfect health.
Somehow, I stumbled onto the book Born to Run, which changed my life. Here was a tribe of humans that enjoyed perfect health — no cancer, no depression, etc. — and could run 200 miles non-stop in sandals. The summer before my internship, I hobbled to the finish line of my first half-marathon in 1:50. The pain in my left knee was so severe afterward that I couldn’t walk up stairs. Sometimes, it woke me in the middle of the night.
July 2009 — 158 pounds. This was a couple of weeks after my first half-marathon. I did lots of running, lots of basketball and ate whatever I wanted. I had no muscle tone whatsoever.
I was so inspired by Born to Run and the promise of painless running that I became an early adopter of the ugliest shoe known to man: Vibram FiveFingers. As advertised, the aches I endured while in my cross trainers disappeared. Learning to land on the mid-foot area instead of the heel made a remarkable difference.
I had a few things going for me in my quest to complete a marathon:
1.) I was out of college, meaning that my weeknights had been freed up. No more scrambling to finish homework. No more late nights in the newsroom of our college paper.
2.) One of my bosses was a complete douche. Seeing his face during one of my runs completely dwarfed the sting of lactic acid in my calf muscles.
3.) My legs didn’t need long to adapt to the FiveFingers. I slipped them on for the first time in March (an hour after getting berated by the boss) and crossed — ok, staggered — to the finish line three months later. Probably ill-advised.
4.) I was a determined SOB, hell-bent on completing the race. You learn a lot about yourself during those long, lonely training runs.
5.) I wanted to look good, as in, six-pack good. And wanting to look good is a good motivator.
When I crossed the finish line on June 26, 2010, I felt like crying. Holy cow, I had actually done it. But then reality set in.
June 2010 — 160 pounds. This is a photo of me at mile 20 of my first marathon. Even though I could run 20 miles on a whim, I looked the same as I did before — maybe worse. Maintaining the lifestyle was exhausting.
Sure, I felt better, but I looked practically the same. The conventional nutrition and exercise wisdom I’d been hearing my entire life wasn’t working. More exercise did not yield better results. Neither would eating according to the USDA’s beloved food pyramid. And that was crushing. But I kept running for the time being.
THE A-HA MOMENT
One night in late August or September of 2010 — I can’t remember when or how or why — I had a revelation. If I could run longer and faster, and remain injury-free by running the way humans were designed to run (barefoot, sort of…), what would happen if everyone ate the way we were designed to eat?
I booted up the old laptop and read everything I could find. I landed on Mark’s Daily Apple early on, a tremendous blog and a resource I point people to all the time. Then I borrowed a copy of Robb Wolf’s The Paleo Solution from the library and read it in one sitting. This Paleo thing made so much sense, and I couldn’t get enough. I devoured blogs and listened to podcasts. I did it all.
GOODBYE CEREAL, HELLO ABS
The only thing left was to try the diet, and in September of 2010 I did. Whoa. Two weeks later, I saw my abs for the first time.
December 2010 — 155 pounds. Three months into the Paleo diet and I was the leanest I’d ever been.
One memorable evening, I decided to go on a run. I felt so good during the first mile that I sped up. When I reached my friend’s nearby home, my one-mile marker, I looked down at my sports watch in amazement. I had run a mile in 5:20, eclipsing my previous personal record set three years earlier during high school gym class. Maybe I wasn’t an old geezer after all.
A couple weeks later, I broke another personal record, running a half-marathon exactly 10 minutes faster than I had the first time — a pretty monumental improvement.
I managed to stick to the diet religiously, even disavowing my favorite food of all time — breakfast cereal. My friends and family members treated my newfound eating habits as just another phase, something I’d eventually get over. But the thing is, you don’t want to stop doing something when it works. When you look and feel the way you’ve been wanting to your entire life, you don’t want to go back.
My next revelation came in the weight room. If I was going to eat like a caveman, I needed to train like one, too. That meant lifting heavy-ass stuff.
In late October 2010, I took a job at a small newspaper in Bremerton, Wash., across the water from Seattle. I joined the local YMCA and focused on building up my strength through calisthenics — pushups, chins and dips. I added in the bench press a little later.
What amazed me about that particular YMCA was the intensity with which some of the other gym-goers — many of them ex-Navy guys — would train.
There were a couple regulars who could squat 500 pounds and perform a dozen chins with 90-pound weights hanging from their waists. These people were living, breathing contradictions to widely held Bro Science notions on fitness.
It became clear that the biggest strength and muscle gains wouldn’t come from sissy isolation exercises like bicep curls, triceps extensions and sit-ups. If I wanted to push my body, I’d need to throw around some serious weight with compound movements.
June 2011 — 163 pounds. Nine months into Paleo. I was still getting stronger and leaner, but I hit a plateau. I cut out alcohol.
At around the same time, my views on long-distance running began to evolve after reading Mark Sisson’s blog posts on chronic cardio. Maybe this whole running thing wasn’t just overrated, but unhealthy? I cut back on my weekly mileage, but still couldn’t quite shake my addiction to running. In the meantime, I kept getting leaner and stronger, while exercising half as often. So much for conventional wisdom.
That’s not to say the process has always been easy. In the early days, I succumbed to intense cravings for the very foods I wasn’t allowed to eat. At work, I would often snack on a pound or two of dried mango, finishing an entire bag within minutes. One Friday evening, while on a ferry to Seattle, I downed two industrial-size buckets of popcorn, a large chocolate chip cookie and a small box of trail mix, most of it drizzled with chocolate.
Soon, my longings for sugar were supplanted by a yearning for steak, omelettes, salmon and pistachios. Life on a diet is hard. It really is.
FEEL-GOOD ENDING
I’ve learned a lot about my body and how it responds to certain foods and exercises these past couple of years. For one thing, I’ve hung up my FiveFingers and stopped running. I find that I look and feel better when I’m lifting weights (I’m up to 275 pounds on the bench press — not bad for a 175-pound dweeb), and occasionally hiking and playing basketball.
May 2012 — 175 pounds. 20 months into Paleo.
As you may have heard before, Paleo isn’t just a diet. It becomes a lifestyle. Getting adequate sleep and sun exposure is a big deal to me, as is finding as much time for friends and family as possible. I try not to stress out about the little things anymore. Who cares if some guy cut me off on the way to work? In the grand scheme of things, it’s not a big deal.
People like to tell me that my success with Paleo is a product of my iron will, that not everyone is equipped with the same self-control or determination. I disagree. I’ve just found mechanisms that prevent me from slipping.
I learned to cook. I started taking leftovers to work so I wouldn’t be tempted by desserts lying around at the office. I figured out what kinds of meals I could buy if I went out with my friends or otherwise ate away from home (taco salads without the tortillas, Indian food, Thai food, salmon, chicken skewers, etc.), and what snacks I can stuff my face with if bored or hungry. Now, 21 months later, it’s become second nature.
That’s not to say I don’t ever cheat. About once a week, I’ll demolish a large bag of Trader Joe’s popcorn (popped in olive oil) to keep myself sane. Could I go without? Probably. But I just love me some popcorn.
Every morning, I wake up happy and thankful to have made this profound discovery so early in life.
When you find a lifestyle and diet that make you look good, feel good, changes your perspective on what’s important in life and doesn’t require calorie counting, you tend to stick with it.
Questions about my journey? Feel free to tweet me at @maksimg.
Dev on Running 