For a while now, I’ve been debating going personal on my photography blog because let’s be real, this is a blog that is associated with my business. It’s always been something I’ve wanted to do, it’s something I’m trying to change over on my Instagram, but I really believe that as a photographer, I work in a very personal industry. I’m working with families, babies, and couples on the biggest day of their lives (their wedding). Last time my social media was more personal was when we had our first baby. We were able to connect with other expecting couples, some of whom we have become great friends with as well as be able to engage with so many others because they were genuinely interested in our baby transition. Somehow, over the last 2-3 years, I switched things and became Mr. serious businessman and posted very little to engage with others on a more personal level. I want to change this. I, personally, want to know the photographer we work with. I want to know what drives them, what they enjoy doing, who they are as a person. Why? Because they are coming to my home, or we are spending an hour or two together taking pictures and I just feel it makes everyone more comfortable. As a photographer, the more comfortable we can be around each other, the better the session and the better the pictures. So it’s truly a win-win for everyone.
With that long introduction, let’s get personal! Lately, I’ve been on a journey to look at food differently. I know what you’re probably thinking, “oh great! I’m about to read about another diet,” or “what new thing am I going to be pitched to buy into now?” I get it! I’ve seen a lot of diet posts, “I’ve lost X pounds in just a month. Send me a message to find out how.” Fear not, this is not one of those posts. This is about my journey, and if you can relate, I hope it can be an encouragement. I actually told myself I would not talk about what I was doing, because we’ve all seen the diet posts kicks where people post the latest and greatest diet they are on, only to see them not doing that diet or doing a new one a month later. I’m guilty of this myself. This is not a diet plan post. This is simply a post about how I’m choosing to look at food differently and what the outcome has been over the past 45 days. I’ll have this at the bottom.
Recently, I realized that I was a glutton. As a Christian, this troubled me because as we know, this is very much sin and just as the scriptures say, a glutton will find themselves drowsy (Proverbs). How many of us can relate to the afternoon slump of feeling tired? I know I did. Then, I started to think of food differently. I really had to change my mindset and through this change in mindset, a lot of prayer and a ton of self-control, I started to look at food as what it is… energy. Food is energy, and I literally spend the majority of my day sitting on my butt working on a computer. How much energy is really needed to do what I do? Then, I started to ask, why do we grow up thinking that we must eat three meals a day? Did you know that it wasn’t really until the 18th century that this three-meal-a-day thing started? And it was really pushed in the early 1900s. So if food is energy and the three-meal-a-day thing started only within the last 300 years, isn’t there a chance that maybe it’s wrong? Everyone is different. Some may need food constantly. Others may not need as much as they have been led to believe, such as me. Through this process, not only did I look at when I ate food differently but I started to look at the type of food I consumed differently.
I wish I could say I broke all addictions to unhealthy food and drink, but I haven’t… yet. I no longer drink energy drinks, thankfully! I have cut way back on soda, La Croix has really helped in this area. My sweets have been drastically cut, but I still enjoy little treats here and there. The biggest change has been my meat consumption. Two months ago, my breakfast, lunch, and dinner were filled with meats. There is no way this can be healthy and with the way, I feel right now at 2:30 pm (the time of writing this blog), I’m starting to think we definitely don’t need as much meat as we think we do. I’ve been researching veganism for a while now, not to become a vegan because while I have cut back on meats, let’s be real… meat is so tasty! There are reports of those who have had to switch to a plant-based diet because of health reasons. Others chose to do it on their own and found they were far healthier than before. This can’t be a coincidence. I decided to at least try out a primarily plant-based diet if anything, just to see how I felt. I rarely eat lunch. I only eat lunch if my body tells me I need it. This is a different feeling than the one you get simply because it’s “lunchtime.” You can really feel a difference between “I’m hungry” and “The clock says I need to eat.”
Please don’t misunderstand what I said above. This isn’t a full-on vegan diet. I still eat meat, I may only eat some meat a few meals per week. I am trying to be more conscious about where the meat comes from. In the midwest, this can prove to be difficult, but we do our best to consume the best meat we can. There is not a diet plan I’m following. It’s simply a mindset of food is energy, we don’t need as much meat as we think we do, and ultimately just trying to be as healthy as I can with a cheat day (sometimes days) on the weekend.
Along with this, I work out about three days a week. My workouts are usually around 30-40 minutes long. Nothing crazy. Part of my experiment was to not to have to workout a ton or do some crazy diet and see what happens. On those three days per week, I usually lift for about 20-30 minutes, non-stop with very little breaks and then I do cardio the remaining 10 minutes. Throughout the week, we may take walks as a family too.
The results:
It’s been about 1.5 months since I started. In that time, I’ve lost 5 pounds and have also built muscle too. I have way more energy than before. That early afternoon slump that used to hit me no longer happens. I’m even waking up at 4:00 am and I do not feel tired at any part of the day. I may feel worn out depending on what work looked like, or if we did something as a family and/or around the house, but I don’t feel that sluggish groggy feeling I used to feel prior. Before changing things up, I thought when this feeling hit, I needed an energy boost and would usually consume and energy drink only to find that it didn’t help at all! It’s been pretty wild so far, but I think one thing that’s really helped is not trying to follow a diet plan. The hardest thing about a diet plan is sticking with it and the one or two times you fall of those tracks, you feel like you failed and you don’t want to start again. I realized that I’m going to mess up at times. I’ll have sweats, or eat more meat than I should, or drink soda, but I’m not going to let it ruin the next day. If I have one bad day (that’s not a cheat day), I just make sure the next day I do better. My late-night snacking has been cut back too. This has really been my biggest problem. Now, I find myself looking at the pantry before bed realizing I’m doing it out of a bad habit and I will ask myself, “do I need this energy right now?” The answer is, of course, a big no! And usually, I shut the pantry door with nothing in my mouth. Again, I have failed at this, but the next day, I correct this failure and try to not fail again.
All that said, I post this as an encouragement. I feel that gluttony is something the church avoids a lot of, and in facts, I think we oftentimes laugh it off or encourage it. A number of years ago, I had a friend tell me that I need to just be content with my body and not worry about watching what I eat or working out so much. In some ways, he was right, but I also have borderline high blood pressure and being content is something that would lead to this blood pressure thing becoming a bigger problem. All of this seems obsessive right now and it kind of is, but the only way to change 15+ years of a bad habit is to be a little obsessive. Eventually, I won’t be writing nearly 2000 word blog posts on this. I won’t have to worry about failures as much anymore. But until then, I will obsess a little because I want to be healthy, not just for me, but for my family. I want to be a good example to my kids so that they have a healthy relationship with food and don’t find themselves so addicted like I was and living in a world of instant food for $1 or $2 just down the road, this is really hard to do, but with a little obsessiveness, a refreshed mindset on food, and a lot of prayer, I believe I will see not just a change in my energy, mood, and appearance, but more importantly, my health.