This is a picture of me back when I was 30′ish. I was closing in on 230 pounds. I was a fat ass, let’s just call it what it is. I ate whatever I wanted, I did not exercise one bit. And my body showed it. I don’t think I could have done any of the things I do today such as hiking or bicycling, but then again I never tried so I really don’t know.

My dad and I had a conversation a while back about healthy eating. I had mentioned a book called What the Bible Says About Healthy Living to my mom and since she loves anything that discusses God’s word, she said she wanted to read it. My dad immediately started ribbing me because he’s 70 and eats whatever he wants and the author of the book died in his 60′s. And it struck me that that’s how people view life in today’s society. It’s all about staying alive, not really about living our lives in the way God designed us.

When I first decided to get in shape, I had no idea about God’s design or whatever. I was just done with being fat and tired. I wasn’t really ready to exercise, but I knew I could control my diet, so I just cut out fast food. Period. Cold turkey. I lost 20lbs from that one single act because even the worst food you make at home is still not as bad as fast food.

After that, I decided to start working out. And it’s funny because it doesn’t really take that much time, just 1 hour a day. I love when people say they don’t have time to workout, yet they never miss an episode of their favorite TV show. At first I did weight lifting and ran a treadmill. And it worked great. I got really thin and very fit. Eventually though I decided I wanted a more rounded, more interesting workout program, so I started P90X to get a good combination of flexibility, strength and cardio capacity. I also started riding bicycles and hiking to mix it up a bit and get outside more.

However, I finally realized that I had to focus even more on my diet. While my appearance was what I wanted, I wasn’t getting enough quality nutrition and my blood test results at the doctor showed that. You see, most of the food we eat today is garbage. It’s full of preservatives and has been processed and stripped of most of it’s God given nutrients in the name of shelf life and profits. So earlier this year I decided to go full on and really focus on eating in the most pure way (God’s designed way) possible in a modern world. We eat almost nothing out of a package. We eat lots of vegetables and fruits, nuts and beans. And what little bread or pasta we have is whole wheat. It’s made a HUGE difference in how I feel. Our next step will be to switch to grass fed beef, organic dairy and free range chicken and I’ll be posting on that subject tomorrow.

This is a picture of me my wife took two days ago. I’m 43 and currently 194lbs. All my blood tests are ideal with the exception of high cholesterol which runs in my family. Darn genetics! But the difference between me now and me 15 years ago is not just in appearance, it’s in quality of life. There’s almost nothing I can’t experience because I’m physically ill-equipped. That’s freedom.

The bottom line in all of this is that I believe God designed this world specifically for us with everything we need to be healthy and happy. I believe He created us to do and be more than simple food receptacles sitting on cushions while bombarding our eyes and ears with imaginary imagery projected from an electric box. Like anything else in life, it just takes a small bit of discipline, and faith that God’s design for us is better than our design for ourselves.

I’ve also been doing a lot of reading lately on nutrition and things though and while I thought I was always eating pretty well, I’m finding that it’s really hard to eat the way God intended for us to eat in America. Most of the food on the grocery store shelves has been processes (altered) to improve shelf life (and therefore corporate profits), yet these processes also strip out the nutritious parts of the foods. The result is that we’re no longer eating food the way God created it and as a result, we’re getting fat and unhealthy.

What really crystallized this for me was when I began to read Tony Horton’s book called “Bring It!“. Tony is the next Jack LaLanne and has a lot to say about food and exercise in his book. He talks a lot about eating food the way it comes out of the ground. So I started doing some research for myself. That’s when I found the information on wheat and how white flour is basically wheat with all the good parts removed to increase shelf life. I also discovered a lot about how we raise beef in this country and how we feed cows food they weren’t designed to eat and pump them full of unnatural hormones and anti-biotics in order to increase yield.

And so I started thinking about why we do this. It’s not because we have to increase yield to feed the masses. There are people starving all over the world. The real reason is to increase profits. Corporations are feeding us junk because it’s more profitable, plain and simple.

All this brought up two questions in my mind. The first is “What would God think of the way our society approaches food?”. The second is “Would God approve of how we’re taking care of our bodies?”.

The first question is a larger question and I don’t have space to get into it here. But the fact is, we’re producing MASSIVE amounts of food. It’s being created to stuff the stomachs of Americans while people elsewhere go hungry. And the result is that our gluttony is making us extremely unhealthy. I’ve been listening to Proverbs on my iPhone and there’s a lot of warnings in there about the rich getting fat while ignoring the needs of the poor. If ever I saw a reflection of modern America in scripture, it’s in the early Proverbs.

The other question though has to deal with personal responsibility. And so to look into what God has to say about that, I bought a book called “What the Bible Says About Healthy Living”. In it the author, who is a Christian doctor, talks about what God has created for us and what His commands are with regards to taking care of ourselves. To me it’s absolutely fascinating because now that science is discovering how badly we’re screwing up our food supply, it becomes clear that God already told us how to eat and live thousands of years ago and he’s already provided us with everything we need. We have simply been too arrogant to listen, and that’s why we’re facing an epidemic of obesity and the conditions that go along with it in this country.

I would just suggest that everyone read the two books I listed here, especially Christians because we are called to set the example. “Bring it!” will tell you what to do to be healthy. “What the Bible Says About Healthy Living” will tell you why you should do those things from both a scientific and spiritual perspective.

DON’T.

Last night we went out for my birthday and I had a combo pizza, a few beers and some chocolate cake when I got home. I swear my body is experiencing toxic shock this morning. I actually feel like I’ve been poisoned. I’m shaky. I’m tired. I had nightmares all last night and couldn’t sleep. I have the worst heartburn and my gut feels like a band of raving jungle savages are in there doing a war chant, and dancing over hot coals. Michelle was also complaining about an upset stomach last night. Unbelievable.

This really goes to show what certain foods will do to a body. I honestly thought that a lot of the stuff in the diet about wheat being bad for digestion, etc, etc was bull and just put in there for encouragement to stay on the diet, but I’m a believer now. I have felt so good for the past three weeks and I feel completely trashed today.

So today it’s back on the diet… for good.

Link: Dax Moy’s Elimination Diet

This sounds pretty harsh, but what it leaves are pure, natural foods. Anything that’s an animal or grows in the ground is basically fair game. And as restrictive as it sounds, there’s plenty of great dishes that can be made. I have not been hungry at all.

Another facet of the diet, and this really goes for all diets, is that you have to excersize and you eat smaller portions of food, 5 or 6 times a day. So you keep your body working. The other thing is, you gotta have willpower. If you cheat, you will fail. This is critical for any diet.

So how well does it work? Very well. I started the diet at 206lbs and set a goal of 195lbs. 15 days later, I’m sitting at 196lbs. These are pretty astounding results I think. I’ll hit my goal in the next few days. I’m going to take a day off for my birthday to have a beer and a pizza and then I’m back on. I still don’t have the shape I want, so I’m going to increase my weight lifting and continue on the diet until I get a better shoulder/waist ratio.

So if you’re looking for a great diet to kickstart your body back into shape, head over to Dax Moy’s website and sign up. It’s free and you’ll get the latest revision of his diet pamphlet with full instruction on how to do it.

Link: Dax Moy Website

So anyway, the only reason I bring this up is because I had my annual physical yesterday. Now, the bad part about hitting 40 is that you suddenly have a whole new barrage of tests they want to do on you at your annual physical. I’m not going to get into the gory details here, but let’s just say they require you to assume some postures that the majority of us would prefer not to assume in the company of another man. You’re also required to provide “stuff” that should never be exchanged between two people. I don’t care how professional the pretty young gal is at the lab, giving her the gift of yesterday’s bratwurst and sauerkraut in a vial is just plain uncomfortable.

The good news though is that I’m healthy as an ox! An ox with a bum wrist and failing eyesight, but a generally healthy ox none the less. That is unless my labs come back showing I have a failing liver or colon cancer. But hey, I prefer to keep a positive outlook! All kidding aside, I’ve lost 10lbs since my last visit which was in January and my heart rate has slowed considerably. Doc says it’s from all the running I’ve been doing. He was pretty stoked about it and so was I.

So here’s to a healthy 40! You certainly won’t see me in the moshpit at next week’s Sevendust show, but God’s given me another healthy year and plenty of adventures to seek out and experience!

I’ve been kind of bowed up about my wrist issue. It’s finally starting to get better now that I’ve switched out my keyboard and mouse, bought some wrist pads, and adjusted my chair. But today I sat down and started coding and my eyes just started hurting. I’ve been getting headaches lately and today it just got to be too much. I have two 24″ monitors on my computer at work and I had to change the font on them to these big ol’ fonts so I could see without straining my eyes. Geeze.

It’s just kind of funny that over the course of 25 years of daily computer use, I’ve never had any problems until now when I am about to hit my 40th birthday. It’s almost like a magic number that your body senses as a signal to begin premature decomposition.

Ah well, I guess that’s life. But I’m still not going without a fight let me tell you. I guess its inevitable that I will someday be old. But I can delay looking old, and I certainly never have to act old! But I do know one thing; Regardless of what happens, I’m never going to do this:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB119431190803983349.html