Normally I don’t link to Penny Arcade. Most people who care about video games at least check them occasionally. But today, I’m in a blogging mood and am in such agreement, I figured I’d say something.
Now, let me preface this by saying, I play a lot of video games. I’ve played a lot of video games. Given this, it’s not very often that a game grabs me in such a way that I literally want to be playing it all of the time.Darksiders is one such game. I bought this game along with Bayonetta, figuring that I’d alternate between the two. I’d been following the game, but the reviews made it seem like it would only be ok, and that I’d just be consumed by the need to play Bayonetta.
Gabe, Tycho, I’m right there with you. The game’s awesome.
So I haven’t talked a lot about it, but about two months ago, I decided to change up my diet a bit. Now, for the most part, I had an ok diet. I generally ate “balanced” meals; I drank only water and “various spirits”; and I generally tried to avoid foods that were high in sugar. You know, everything that we were taught in schools was right. For the most part, I was “healthy.” Sure, I had problems with my blood sugar dropping and becoming kind of a not, but hey, as long as I was good about eating i was fine. I felt I had no real reason to change up my diet.
Well, over the course of 2009, a bunch of my friends changed their diets to be more like the paleolithic. They ate no starches, no processed carbs and generally upped their meat intake. Now, being a very skeptical person, I thought this was kind of crazy. I’d heard of this before, or so I thought. To me, my friends had just discovered the new Atkins. Congrats, guys, you’ll be done with this in 2 months and back to where you were. Except they never got there. In fact, they were all dropping rate for a prolonged period of time and in very large quantities. I’m talking guys going from 230 to 160. (Apparently 70 lbs is the current average) Over the summer, when they were only a few months in, I was with 3 people who had, in total, lost my body weight of 170. I was in shock.
So fast forward to the end of October. At this point, I’ve been hanging out/living with people who didn’t eat carbs, starches, etc for a while. At this point, my diet is beginning to mirror theirs, as we just eat together a bunch. As this is going on, I begin to find that I’m having fewer and fewer episodes with my own blood sugar. I’m feeling better and I’m less sick. Needless to say, I’m a much happier person. After having given it some thought, I start to consciously make changes to my diet, and I’ve been eating this way ever since.
So what are the benefits? Well, the biggest is that I’m not having the crazy blood sugar crashes I used to. I’m able to go for extended periods of time without eating and I’m not getting headachy or becoming a complete dick. The other major advantage I’ve had has been that I’ve actually lost a little bit a weight. While I’ve only lost about 7 lbs or so, that’s pretty significant, as I really didn’t have a lot of excess weight to lose.
So that’s kind of my story. I now go around eating as few starches and processed carbs as possible. I’ve gone as far as to bring paleo foods to pot lucks and managed to have people really like the stuff, even though it lacked all the carbs. (I found a recipe for jambalaya that was quite the hit). I still get some weird looks from people, and a lot of people are skeptical when I explain it, but well, the results kind of speak for themselves.
If you’re interested, I’ll point you to my friend Lowell’s (he started all this) intro letter on the subject. It’s worth a read if you want to get healthy.
Also, I listened to this today, and well, given my druthers, I’ll take the beer:
So, after a year of travel that included multiple trips to NY/NJ, Chicago and Ohio, I’ve accumulated enough sky miles that I’m now officially enjoying flying.
As I type this, I’m sitting in a first class cabin, using free wifi. The best part, I didn’t pay for first class, I was automatically upgraded because of my Delta Skymiles status. Honestly, this is quite a pleasant treat given my usual travel experiences. for once, I haven’t had any craziness. I sped through all the lines, I had good seats (although I gave up my nice seat with plenty of leg room on my first flight to the guy who was 6′6″) and I’ve been getting free gin and tonics.
Honestly, this is so strange for me, given how much…fun I tend to have whenever I fly. I know this is very temporary, but at least for now, I’m actually enjoying this. ^_^
