One of my favorite health blogs, Mark’s Daily Apple, is running a 30-day challenge to “live primal” and take control of your health. I’ll be participating, and I’ve decided to keep track of my body fat percentage while I do it.

Body Fat Percentage at the beginning of the 30-day challenge: 14.5%

Let’s see if I can get down to around 12% by the time this challenge is over.

About 2 and a half years ago, I stopped eating meat. I had read some books and articles and watched several documentaries on how animals were mistreated at factory farms:

• how they were fed non-nutritive diets full of soy, corn and wheat to fatten them up as cheaply as possible
• how they were pumped full of hormones and antibiotics
• how they were kept in cages with very little “personal space”
• how some of them were even abused and tortured before they were killed

It was too much for me to take, and as an animal lover, I didn’t want to be a part of this mistreatment of animals, so I gave up eating meat altogether.

Now recently, I’ve been reading a lot on Mark’s Daily Apple, an excellent blog where Mark Sisson, author of The Primal Blueprint, talks a lot about the benefits of eating meat – not just any meat – but organic, pasture-raised (or cage-free), grass-fed meat.

Why Organic? Because that way you know that the animals weren’t treated with hormones or antibiotics

Why pasture-raised (or cage-free)? Because that way you can be sure that the animals lived in a natural environment

Why grass-fed? Because grass-fed animals produce the healthiest meat, not to mention that it is their natural diet

So, being a long-time vegetarian, I started to wonder if I had been missing out on some of the health benefits of eating meat (I should specify organic, pasture-raised, grass-fed meat)…

Stay tuned for part 2 tomorrow…

I watched this lecture the other day, by Gary Taubes, author of Good Calories, Bad Calories. He essentially debunks the theory that people get fatter by eating more calories than they expend.

He says that excessive carbohydrates are the cause of obesity. And he uses a lot of science to back up his claims.

We just bought a mini-trampoline (also known as a rebounder) a few weeks ago, after reading an article about all the beneficial effects of jumping up and down on a trampoline.

Not only is it great for your heart, but it actually gives you energy when you jump on it.

I get on the trampoline several times a day. Any time I need a break from working, I’ll get up and jump on the trampoline for anywhere from 1 to 5 minutes. It’s invigorating.

I would highly recommend it to anyone who’s looking for a fun way to improve their health. You can get one at Wal-mart for about $30.

See this article for more about the benefits of rebounding.

One thing I’ve learned…if I’m not completely “on the mission”, then I’m off the mission. In other words, I’ve found that as soon as I start to allow myself a little slack, I start slacking.

If I allow myself to have a cookie, or a doughnut, or a couple beers one day, it makes it difficult not to do the same the next day…especially if those things are around the house.

I’ve also noticed that since I haven’t been posting every day, the mission hasn’t been at the front of my mind. So I’m going to start posting every day, even if it’s just a sentence or two, to keep myself reminded every day.

Even though I’ve slacked a bit lately, I feel I’ve made great progress on this mission, especially in terms of what I’ve learned about health, nutrition, exercise and most importantly about myself.

Last time I posted, a week ago, I wrote that I was making progress but slowly. This past week I felt like I’ve made quite a leap in my progress.

I’ve been eating very healthy and feeling great! Most importantly, I’ve felt really in control of what I eat. I’ve really been able to control my emotional eating.

I spent about a week going over my notes from the Shrink Yourself program that I completed about 4 years ago. That week made a huge difference. I have really felt in control and I haven’t been using food to satisfy my uncomfortable emotions.

It’s been almost a month since I’ve posted a photo update. The reason for that is that I went on a trip around Memorial Day for about a week, and allowed myself to eat just about whatever I wanted. When I came back home, it took me about another 10 days to get back to where I was before the trip.

I’m really glad that I did that, though, because it taught me that I can stray from my healthy diet if I want, but that it will take about 1.5 days to recover for every 1 day that I eat unhealthy. So that should help me to stick to my healthy eating habits, and only indulge on rare occasions, and only for a day or two at the most (and preferably only a meal or two).

Photo Update

Before:

After 53 Days: