I’m wondering if I have a problem with addiction.  Well, I’m already aware that I have some sort of food addiction, but over the past two years I’ve realized that I’ve developed a new one.  I think I’ve become addicted to challenging myself by going without certain foods that I never thought I could go without.  In the beginning, it was giving up sugar and flour, but then continued to move on through other things added onto that base idea. 
 
I realized though, that over my many challenges I had never completed one specific behavior that most health professionals recommend.  In fact, almost every book or program ever written about becoming healthier, contains this one direction that I’ve always ignored.  Tracking your food intake.  I’ll be honest here and tell you that I’m not a big fan of writing down what I eat, likely because I don’t want a written record for others to scrutinize.  Missing this step though, causes me to miss quite a few opportunities to figure out where I might be straying from the healthy path.
 
Enter March 2018, and a new challenge beckons me.  I’m sure you know what’s next and you’re likely not very impressed.  Whoop de doo, John’s going to jot down what he eats every day, great for him.  I wish it was that simple, but that’s not really a challenge though, is it?  I’ve decided to raise the stakes and not only just track my food, but also try to function on 25 carbs or less each day.  This is a new place for me because my no sugar/no flour mentality has given me results, without having to worry about the carbs, but with that thinking I’ve consumed some things that aren’t the best for me.  Call them the junk foods of the no sugar/no flour world and I’ve eaten them, sometimes sabotaging my hard work while lulling me into a sense that I was still “sticking with it”.
 
My new challenge will change all of that and for once open my eyes on how many carbs I consume in a day.  This test comes from watching friends utilize the KETO diet to change their lives, which caused me to wonder how far that was from what I’m doing currently.  While I’m not even positive I can eat in way to put my body into Ketosis, I thought it might make an interesting challenge to see how close I get.  In the end, I will at least gain an understanding of how to eat while minimizing my carb intake.  Plus, I’m sure that consuming less carbs, especially the bad ones, can on some level be good for me.  At least my no sugar/no flour behaviors have prepped me well for this experiment because those two things are the toughest for most people to get out of their system.
 
So look for updates throughout March on my survival and I’ll do my best to keep them coming.  I’m still a very picky person, so we’ll see how I can incorporate my lackluster meal choices into making this work.  Maybe this will make a nice chapter for the revised version of my book later this year.
 
All the best!
John Graham
 
PS – If you’re interested in checking out a well written blog about the KETO experience, then check out our friend’s blog at:  www.crazyhealthyketo.com

Around week three of going without sugar and flour, you brain and body encounter a different phenomenon than what you might be used to.  I call it the "What the heck" stage.  You see, up to that point, your old feelings, habits, and food cravings are lingering about, maybe keeping you from making the healthy change easily.  After a few weeks, that starts to disappear and in its place you start having these mental exchanges.

​"Looks like I have a little time on my hands, wonder what I should do?  What the heck, I think I'll go to the gym for a while."

"I'm starting to get a little hungry, what should I eat?  What the heck, I'm going to grab some fruit."

​"Man, I sure am thirsty.  What the heck, I'll grab some water and be just fine."

​These exchanges look entirely different from our previous lives, when the answers may have been sit and watch a show, eat a candy bar, or grab a soda.  It's amazing how three weeks can change your outlook, but it can.  I'm hoping you're close to the point of asking yourself this question:

​"How can I finally make a positive impact on my health and see what I'm capable of?  What the heck, I'm going to give up sugar and flour for a month and see what happens."

I know you can do it.
All the best!
​John Graham

I’ve been toying with the idea of doing one of those 100 day challenges.  You know the ones I’m talking about, you see them as viral videos on Facebook, etc.  Basically someone does some healthy activity or specific exercise for 100 days and they record themselves doing it every day.  The video is then spliced together so you can see their progress over that time and you usually find yourself impressed or motivated, so you share the video and tag it with a “check this out”.
 
The problem with thinking about doing something like this is that it seems like a long time so you begin to map out everything that would keep you from being successful.  For me, the questions ranged from when I would do the activity, how would I record it, what happens if I get sick, and what if it interferes with other activities I have planned during the next three months.  There’s a lot of variables, so in the end, most people, such as myself, feel it’s too much and never even start.  Maybe this describes you too?
 
This morning though, I found myself asking why couldn’t I just do it for a month?  Or even 50 days instead of 100?  Was there some sort of rule out there that if I didn’t post something that encompassed 100 total days, then people would shame me?  Well, maybe my video wouldn’t go viral because the results wouldn’t smack you across the face at the end, so folks would just give me a, “good for that guy and his month of hard work”.  This entire thought process gave me the realization about myself and so many others that I’ve spoken with about my One Month No Sugar and No Flour Challenge.
 
People often tell me that they couldn’t give up sugar and flour for a month because there’s a special event coming up, like a holiday or birthday.  It’s like this holiday at the end of the month is causing them to not even think about starting, giving them their ultimate excuse.  Other excuses are peppered in, such as they couldn’t live without either sugar or flour for a month or they have family members that would hold them back.
 
After my epiphany today, I have to wonder what’s keeping people from doing just two weeks without sugar and flour, or even one week?  Do they think that if they approached me and told me they only completed two weeks instead of a month, I would push them into the dirt and call them worthless for not doing the whole month?  Do I think the 100 day challenge police will arrest me if I only made it 75 days?  I’m pretty sure no one is going to mock me for only going one month recording my healthy activity and I promise that if someone posted on the Facebook page that they did just a week without no sugar and no flour, I would still congratulate them and be proud.
 
Ask yourself at this moment, what’s keeping you from starting something healthy today?  Are you doing a great job of talking yourself out of it because it seems like too much work?  Are you setting too lofty a goal, like planning for a marathon next month when you haven’t ran in years and then find yourself frustrated and give up?  Are you focusing on the 50 pounds you have to lose and find yourself constantly thinking of the time it will take because it doesn’t melt away with the first trip to the gym?  What if you just set a small goal and celebrated that? 
 
If you want to impress me, then go five days without sugar and flour.  I’m pretty sure you could do anything for five days and I’ve realized that you begin feeling something positive after that time.  Maybe it won’t change your life, but if you make it that amount of time, then you know you did it.  The next time it comes up and someone tells you they couldn’t last two days, then you could tell them they can do at least five days because you did.  Your second attempt might give you eight days or ten and you’ll realize that you can do that too.  Feel free to post all attempts to the Facebook page or email me directly and I will celebrate the crap out of your success with you, no matter how big or small you think it is.
 
Feel free to read through this entire blog or buy the book.  Do the challenge for a month and be amazed, or do it for shorter and see what happens.  I can promise you that you won’t regret any decision that helps you become healthier and realize your potential.
 
All the best!
John Graham

December 31st, 2017
 
I realized today that it took me 14 months to lose 70 pounds and then around 5 months to put half of it back on.  Sure, I can list a variety of excuses for my lack of eating focus, stresses like moving into a new house and starting a new job, or even fun stuff like a 2-week vacation to Orlando where buffets rule and convenience eating is king.  Honestly though, not much of that matters.
 
What does matter is that I feel terrible every day and find myself putting up with it.  When I originally lost my weight, I drew a line in the sand and gave away all my 3XL shirts and pants, stating that I would never go back to that size.  While I haven’t gotten to point where I need to start buying a bigger wardrobe, I have found that my selection of 2XL shirts is slowly diminishing as I grow bigger.  I’m down to just a few that fit comfortably and I wonder if maybe they were mistagged at the factory.  Either way, everything I wear right now is tight and uncomfortable, so something must happen.
 
I’ve never been much for “New Year’s Resolutions”, simply because starting something in January makes you feel like a Lemming that’s joining the crowd and running until you eventually go over the cliff and back to the way you were.  I often let things die down a bit and start my goals in February, after the crowds thin out at the gym because folks can’t maintain their momentum.  This often puts me in a good position as Spring starts in March and the weather changing gives me further encouragement.  Whether I like it or not, I can’t wait another day for the sake of my health and well-being.
 
I think the biggest issue with losing a lot weight and then putting some of it back on is that you become keenly aware of who you haven’t seen in a while.  When you’re losing weight, it’s always great to run into that friend you haven’t seen in months because they are often blown away by the change and can’t help but to comment on your progress.  This action pumps you up and keeps you going.  When it’s the other way around, you find yourself dreading the contact with others that haven’t seen you since your fall from grace.  Even if they likely can’t remember how thin you were, you still are keenly aware of it and can’t help but have it pester you while you interact with them.
 
The second issue of the weight yo-yo must be the memory of how good you felt then, and how different that is now.  Let’s be honest here, it’s likely twice as bad for me because I had the nerve to write a book about my experience, recording everything I felt as things got better and better.  It’s tough for me to even go back and read it at this point because the words sting and I feel even worse about my lack of ability to maintain the things I spoke about.  The big thing is understanding that I’m aware of the difference and I want to get back to where I was.
 
So, what’s the point of writing this all down for you once again?  It’s likely one of the more embarrassing topics in my life right now and it’s even difficult to talk with my wife about it, let alone a group of strangers.  I’m doing this because I feel like there’s more to food as it relates to my life than I previously understood and I need to be honest about that fact.  I know I need to begin my journey back to where I was with my weight just six months ago, but for the effort to be effective, I need to do a better job this time at figuring out why food can impact my life just as much as alcohol does with an alcoholic or drugs with a drug abuser.  My goal is to analyze the addiction of food in my case so I can help myself and help others.
 
Putting my soul out there isn’t the easiest thing to do, but I know that my first time around, things I wrote helped others in their lives, so maybe this will too.  Often, we feel like we’re alone in our troubles and despair, thinking that everyone else has such a perfect life and doesn’t experience these things.  Let me be the first to say that my life and health aren’t perfect, so you’re not alone if that’s the case for you.  I’m willing to put myself out there for you to realize that there’s someone else experiencing similar issues to what you might be. 
 
Here’s to 2018!  Let’s all get back on track.
John Graham
​

Hello everyone!
March 1st was my one-year anniversary of an experiment where I gave up sugar and flour for a month.  My goal was simply to see if I had the willpower to walk away from foods that were such an important part of my life.  Trust me when I say that I was more addicted to pizza, cookies, and cereal than the average person, along with the countless other delicious items that I could run out and buy whenever I wanted.  I decided to see if I could survive a month and I did.  What I didn’t realize was how large of an impact it would have on my mind after that month ended.

Now I’m not going to detail my journey over the past year, simply because I’ve written extensively in this blog about it during the previous year and you can scroll back to get the full effect.  Instead I want to take a moment to reflect and explore how this one-month experiment morphed into a life-changing year, how it’s worked for me, and how I believe it can work for you.

Before we begin, here’s a special disclaimer for you.  You see, there isn’t anything special about me compared to you in regards to motivation, desire to be healthy, or determination.  I say this because we tend to see the results of others with their health and immediately try to figure out something special about that person that we can never do.  I used to be that same way, watching the Youtube videos of people being healthier over a year and saying I could never be as motivated, resilient, or focused as they were, so why should I bother.  So, even though I’d like to say I’m special, the truth is that the “me” in January of 2016 is likely the exact same person as the “you” of right now.

Here are some of my main learnings from my experience this year.
1.      Set a timeframe goal!  You’ve already heard speeches and read books about goal setting, so I’m not going regurgitate a bunch of stuff here that you’ve gotten somewhere else already.  Short version is that you need to set some sort of timeframe for your “experiment” and stick to it.  I recommend a minimum of two weeks and a maximum of a month because two weeks without sugar, flour, and processed foods lets you get most everything out of your system and begin feeling the benefits.  One month gives you the mental clarity to realize the haze you’ve lived in all your life and you’ll likely want to keep going.  Besides, how can you say no to a two-week experiment?  What do you have to lose?  I can tell you what you will gain, the ability to realize that it’s possible and you can do it, then a month seems possible at that point.
2.      Tell people what you’re doing!  Now I’m not saying you need to go grab strangers and tell them you’ve reached a point so low in your life that you’re trying something crazy to see what happens.  And I don’t recommend posting on social media that you’re starting a new “crazy diet” and people should express their condolences.  Make it more about the experiment and testing of your personal willpower than the eating.  You’ll find that people will start encouraging you more and become involved in your success each day for the timeframe you set.
3.      Don’t make it about the eating!  People seem to always get hung up on their diet and what they are going without.  In my past, I would focus so much on what I could and couldn’t eat, that it ended up consuming me.  I made the “diet” into an evil creature that was to blame for making me go without the foods I loved.  This would cause you to hear multiple statements like: “I’d love a piece of pizza, but my diet won’t allow it.” Or “That’s not something I can eat because of my diet.”  People started to pity me because of this evil “diet” that was ruining my life and making me sad.  In fact, once I started to cheat, my brain didn’t see it as a bad thing, but instead that I was escaping the clutches of the diet overlords and finally tasting freedom after a long imprisonment.
4.      Finally, I must put a plug in for planning. Let’s be realistic and agree that you can’t completely change your eating habits, unless you do some planning and prep on the front end, and some regular planning throughout.

Beyond these four points, I’ve realized that my experiment was built on three simple things that fed into each other.  Commitment, Results, and Motivation.

My commitment to the initial experiment equaled great results.  The results I felt then contributed to my motivation to continue with the experiment for a longer time.  This longer timeframe of showing success then helped me continually renew my commitment, which started the entire cycle over again.

I can honestly tell you that if you have the commitment to try the same experiment I did, you will be amazed after just a few weeks.  This is true even if you have little motivation to give up the sweet foods you’re addicted to and even if you don’t believe the results will be the same as mine.  Start with commitment and the rest will follow behind, whether you like it or not.

So there you go, my life-changing year in a nutshell.  My health has drastically improved, I’ve lost around 70lbs, and all my stats are better than they have been in a decade.  I have the self-confidence to keep challenging myself with new experiments around eating and exercise, and I obviously have no issue baring my soul to the world through a blog.  Even with the distance I’ve come this year, my journey started with a single step and when I took it, I was in the exact same place you might be right now.  Think about what’s holding you back from trying a “crazy” experiment in the coming months and weigh it against what you’ve done in the past.
​
All the best!
John Graham
​

I really wish I knew what to say in this blog or in person now to help people understand how my “food” life has changed in the last year.  In March when I started down this road, the last thing I imagined would be me still pursuing my healthy goals a year later and showing great success.  I also didn’t imagine that I would write a book about my experience that would turn out to be one of my best sellers so far.

Even though I feel great about the direction my health has taken this year, I also suffer from carrying the burden of knowledge about what I’ve done and what I know others can do.  For almost a year now I’ve tried to explain to others the mental clarity, the focus, and the feeling of actual weight loss you get when you cut out sugar and flour from your life.  I just figured that since I succeeded at something I could never have imagined doing, then it was something any average person could do.

But I realized quickly that the problem is that people don’t want to do it, no matter how you sell it or explain the benefits.  This scenario causes me not to push too hard because you don’t want to become that person who goes on and on about their healthy lifestyle and the great results, which makes others want to punch them in the face.  I find myself balancing a desire to not get punched, with the knowledge that if people just committed a month or two, then they could have a complete mindset change like I did.

Now, before I waste the entire blog on my personal healthy living pity-party, let me give a quick recap of my year so far.  As you remember, I did my initial no sugar / no flour experiment in March 2016 and blogged about it daily.  I was amazed by the end of the third week at how great I felt, so I kept going for a few more months after that.  The results were staggering, with weight loss, aches and pains going away, medical conditions clearing up, and gaining a more positive self-image.  As summer came and went, I still avoided sugar and flour most of the time, with sporadic breaks on special occasions or when I had no other choice.   This eating, along with some regular exercise, helped me achieve around 60 pounds of weight loss and completely eliminate the 3XL size from my wardrobe.

Let’s pause for a minute so I can help you understand that after the first month, I no longer felt like I was “going without” foods like you might imagine would be tough to live without.  You see, for the first time in my life, I found a healthy method of living that actually got easier the longer I did it.  The more time passed, the less emotionally connected I became to foods that once ruled my brain.  This is the hardest point to get across to others when it comes to the challenge of giving up sugar and flour because people just visualize endless days of cravings that can never be satisfied, so it must be impossible.  Truthfully it isn’t like that at all, and many of my cravings are just vague memories.

When December arrived, I decided to loosen things up a bit and enjoy the delightful foods that the holidays tend to bring.  While I still couldn’t bring myself to go completely over to the dark side again, (ice cream, cookie dough, and soda), I still over did it here and there causing a few pounds to creep back on which was enough to bring back the sick, lethargic feelings that I lived with for most of my life.  While I didn’t enjoy feeling like a failure that month, it was definitely eye opening for me to feel once again what my life was like when I was eating sugar and flour regularly.  So, I did what anyone would do as they begin to slip back into their old ways of eating, I published my book about my previous success and decided that February would be National no sugar / no flour month.  I was dedicated to going without once again to reclaim the amazing feeling I felt when my system had no sugar or flour in it.

Once January arrived, it was a bit strange because even though I had not eaten that healthy in December, much of my emotional connection with food was still gone.  I decided on the fourth of January that I would prep for February by just giving up sugar and flour the next day and on January 5th I just stopped eating it.  No fanfare, no big announcements, it was just like flipping a switch and I was back to eating the way my body wanted again, especially since the memory of my sugar free days were still fresh on my mind.  It didn’t take me that long to become addicted once again to how great I felt and I decided that I wanted to challenge myself even more for the month of February.

The first week of February has wrapped up and I’m shocked at how easy it is to go without sugar and flour, simply because I had done it before.  I even upped the ante on the challenge and gave up white potatoes and corn, two of my favorite items that fit the criteria of no sugar and no flour, but aren’t the best for you.  I expected the extra sacrifice to throw me off a bit, but again, once the emotional connection with food is severed, it completely changes your brain.  I’m actually looking forward to what the month brings me since this time around I gave myself an exercise goal of 14 trips to the gym during this month also.  We’ll see how it turns out.

As I try to eloquently wrap this up for you, I’ll only try once again to explain that going without sugar and flour becomes easier the longer you do it.  Take a moment and think about the last few days of your week.  How many times did your brain tell you that you “needed” a certain food?  How many moments did you feel forced to pick something up to eat that you “just had to have”?  In this world we live in, we have the ultimate power to get any food we want at a moment’s notice, so what would you give to not feel forced to buy something just because your body and brain “wanted” it. 
​
At age 65 we will have spent 780 months on this planet, so why not try something crazy with one of them.
All the best!
John Graham