I was growing bored of cracking open eggs, peeling back the lids of sardine containers, and cutting up avocados. While attempting to ready myself for a race season in the 12-6 class I decided to make a focused effort to drop back down to the fighting weight of my mid 30s...or at least get as close as possible to said the weight of days past. This required A LOT of sacrifice on my part and a larger budget for food products because it is ridiculous how much more expensive it is to eat healthier, especially when you try to do it the lazy way and purchase pre-prepared, non-processed, healthy items. Those trays of pre-cut raw vegetables are such a rip off compared to buying a few heads of broccoli, cauliflower, and a couple cucumbers and making raw snacks on your own! To fill in the blanks of a self prescribed heavy raw and omega-3 based program I found quite an appetite for Clif Builder's Protein Bars. The vanilla-almond flavored ones are too die for! The chocolate-mint flavored ones taste like ice cream. Not only did these particular protein bars taste good but they filled me up, kept me energized, and seemed to help my body recover from intense workouts. This Clif Builder's bars also fed and satisfied my ever-present desire for sweets. I was hooked.
Soon enough I found myself eating a protein bar for breakfast and either dinner or my late-night snack. By no means was I starving myself. Throughout this program I never fought to stave off hunger pangs. I seemed to be doing everything the right way. I was down to 193 by the Carolina Cup. I wasn't feeling any ill effects so I decided to carry on with this program and try to lose a little more weight for the Midwest SUP Championship series.
Another factor that played into dieting is the fact that I ordered a new 12-6 from MHL Custom in Puerto Rico for the 2013 race season. The first thing owner, shaper, and designer Nick Leason said to me was "you should be on a 14." Of course he's right but the first race board I ever bought was a 12-6 and I like 12-6s a lot. They are easier to manage when you are constantly looking for storage in tight places and the class is much less crowded than the 14s. I tried one of the MHL 14s that was much narrower than anything I had ridden before and loved it! Paddling that board had to be as close to a magic carpet ride as one can get and I tried several brands of boards over the course of the weekend in Wrightsville Beach. Nick agreed to take that 14 design and shrink it down to a 12-6, which translated into: my days of eating ice cream remain further down the road. This board is going to be the 2nd or 3rd narrowest board I have ever paddled, depending on what the final width will be (which I am too afraid to ask what it is). I just need it to get here and get my feet on it and start training so it can be the fastest board I have ever paddled! Guaranteed, it will be the most beautiful board I have ever paddled!
After the Carolina Cup it was back to Chicago and right into an invitation from my ol' buddy Matt Lennert to sign up for a triathlon that will take place on June 2. It will be one of the largest triathlons to have a SUP leg instead of a swim leg. I eagerly said yes without fully grasping the fact that after the SUP leg there will be a 24 mile bike ride and a 6 mile run. Training for this has been exhausting. There are so many more things I would rather do than ever get on a bicycle, watching TV rates as the number one thing I would rather do! After a training session, I have no desire whatsoever to wash vegetables, then cut them, then dig around for various containers in which to store them. Grabbing a protein bar has been much easier.
During this time I have also been doing a lot of waiting. Waiting for my new board to arrive, waiting for a small-business loan to go through to be able to start a business, waiting for the bank to get my debit card right because they screwed it up the first time, therefore waiting to be able to pay for my orders, therefore waiting for my orders to go through so I can start getting gear, waiting for my logo, waiting for the gear to arrive so I can put pictures of other things besides me on my website, waiting to officially launch my website, waiting for Lake Michigan to warm up to a tolerable level, waiting to hear about possible sponsorships which would be a dream come true, waiting for movers to help my wife and I move out of Chicago to Ogden Dunes, Indiana, waiting to figure out what our permanent living situation will be in a few months...and so on.
I don't do well with waiting...the last thing I want to do after all that described in the previous paragraph is make food and wait while I eat before cleaning up after myself. Yes, that sounds dumb and I know it is but I bet you do dumb stuff too! A protein bar solved many of these waiting problems by giving me immediate satisfaction. I told myself I was to eat no more than two of those per day. Well, in the last two weeks I was sometimes eating three of those a day. Immediate satisfaction for my appetite felt therapeutic during the stressful waiting period. In my head I knew all the protien couldn't be a good thing. Have you ever read the ingredients on one of those packages? That stuff ain't natural!
During the last two weeks I developed a major hot spot on my right arm just above the elbow around my tricep. The itch would pop up and last for quite a while. Over the course of, according to my GPS, 13.5 miles of racing at the Carolina Cup I got a good farmer's sunburn on my arms. I thought the itch might be sun related. However, there were no outward signs of skin trauma. What was going on was under the skin. I tried to combat the symptoms with Cortaid and Lubriderm. Nothing worked for long periods of time. Saturday night I had a flare up in the middle of the night that popped me out of my bed as if I was being stung by a small fleet of Itchy Wasps (there was no pain just crazy itchies). I was able to get back to sleep but the first thing I did when I woke up the next morning was put on my white coat and hit the internet to research Web MD type sites.
I found a few possibilities of what I might have and started to do some tests. The first thing I did was run scalding hot water over my arm to see if I had a histamine problem. Running scalding hot water over chigger bites and poison ivy is a euphoric-like experience that uses up all the histamine in the body and leaves one itch free for 8-10 hours. (It is the single most amazing remedy I have found on the world wide web!) Running hot water over my arm only further irritated the itch and caused the first bit of epidermal layer agitation. Not histamine related I deduced...
The other possibility I read about was a protein imbalance. I thought back to Saturday and realized Saturday was a 3 protein bar day...hmmmmmm...there might be something to this protein imbalance thing that isn't so good for me. Luckily, on Sunday I was to meet Matt up in Evanston for some paddling in the morning then go to North Avenue Beach and meet my buddy Clem for an afternoon session. I decided that I would NOT eat any protein during this day of intense activity and try to use up all of whatever might be in my body to see if that helped. Also, I tried to eat as little as possible so my body would use up ALL of the fuel needed for energy. By the end of the day I was used up and STARVING.
Next, I prescribed myself an overdose of carbs. The best part was wondering where I was going to get my medicine McDonalds or Bacci's over sized pizza slices. I chose Bacci and feasted to the brink of gluttony. The slice wasn't even that good but my body needed the carbs. Here I sit writing this on Tuesday morning and I can report that I have only had one minor little itch that was eased away with a light brush of a fingernail. On Monday I ate only foods that I prepared myself, no shortcuts. Too much synthetic material going into my body did not sit well. One bar a day is fine. I like those Clif Builder's, especially for the way they take away my craving for sweets. I just can't let them take away my sense of what is true nourishment for the body and what isn't. Back to the grocery store today! It is hard to argue that there was a protein imbalance causing me to suffer through some very annoying symptoms.
This dieting has been a good thing for me because I am on the path to getting back to a normal weight. It is not like I am trying to drop to an absurd weight class like some MMA fighters do; this is me getting back to the old me (which is damn hard being over 40)! For the most part I have handled things properly and not made bad decisions during the sacrifice period of attempting to get in tip-top shape. Life sure got in the way at times and I lost my common sense when it comes to following the simple rules of eating, like the five ingredient rule or eat only foods that contain ingredients you know how to pronounce. At no time has anything ever been bad save for the itchy breakouts on my right arm. It just goes to prove that listening to your body with a keen ear can keep you headed down the best path for your overall well-being. Sure, some of those side routes with the signs reading SHORTCUT look good at the entrance but that way can be much more dangerous. Staying true and focused on the correct path may seem like more work at times but it is only through the bad that we can truly comprehend the value of the good. In lay men's terms...make your own meals and eat a well balanced diet and you will do great!
Summer is starting to feel like it has finally arrived here in the Midwest. I cannot wait to race this season on the new board being in as good a shape as I was in my younger years. Maybe next season I will stay in the 12-6 class but after that I think going to skip right on over the 14 class and get on an MHL Custom unlimited so I can hit my mid 40s and start enjoying gallons of mint chocolate chip ice cream once again, all while trying to maintain an even keel mind you!
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