Where Did It All Start? Good Question!

Where to Start?

Honestly, I am not sure exactly where to start because I don’t really know when it all began.  I also don’t know where it will end but what I do know is where I am now and how I got to this point!  Before I even go there, however, I want to set the record straight.  I was a solid B- to C+ student when it came to English Class.  This means that this blog will likely have numerous grammatical errors as well as run on sentences and I am sure the occasional improper use of certain words.  That being said, I want to write this blog in hopes that someone reading this may at some point think "That sounds like how I feel" and perhaps be moved to not accept it as "It is just how I am".  Yes, much of your health can be attributed to diet and exercise but sometimes there is more holding you back from being your best.  Listen to your body, it often will tell you more than we actually hear.

This journey to improve my health is proving to be a process similar to peeling back the layers of an onion.   When you uncover an issue, address it.  Searching for a solution will likely lead you to another issue.  Rinse and Repeat the process until you hopefully have arrived at the root of the problem and can begin to solve the puzzle.  First, I feel like I should give everyone some background information that may or may not be useful as we move through my saga together.

Background

I am a 48 year old male who has been happily married for 16 years.  My wife and I have 2 wonderful kids, a daughter who is 13 and a 10 year old son.  I grew up in Bloomington Minnesota, a suburb of Minneapolis.  I played almost every sport I could growing up soccer, baseball, basketball, football, dabbled with tennis and threw shot put and discus on my HS track and field team.  Growing up in Minnesota there were a few gaping holes in my resume.  It seems most everyone played hockey, hunted and fished (both regular and ice fishing) except for me.  I tease all the time that these are the things that got me kicked out of MN!  While in college I discovered my love for the sport of volleyball.  It consumed my life for the better part of the next 15-20 years.  Indoor and beach, 6’s, 4’s, doubles, men’s or coed it didn’t matter, I was in!  My playing transitioned into coaching and I did both for many years!  My wife received a promotion at work which moved our family from MN to Arizona and then ultimately to Georgia where we currently reside, in a northern suburb of Atlanta.  Once we moved away from the volleyball community I had known in MN, I played a little here and there.  With a growing family I was never able to devote the time necessary to really get back into it.  Once we moved to GA in 2012, I soon found CrossFit as my means of exercise but more than that it was a community of like-minded people.  After spending a few years working out at the gym, I decided to get my CrossFit Level 1 certification so I could coach classes at the gym.  In addition to being a social outlet for a guy who worked out of his home office every day, the coaching also helped to fill the void left from no longer coaching volleyball.  There is something about helping people become better versions of themselves that is very gratifying!  I feel like this background is important to illustrate that my past is not one of being sedentary but a of physical activity, sports and fitness.

Physically - Over the Years

It is hard for me to track down when things really went sideways as my life has been a series of ups and downs.  I figure that is not to dissimilar from most people.  Over the years, I have gone from 245 pounds playing football in H.S. to 195 pounds (10% body fat) while playing volleyball in college back to about 240 after the birth of my daughter then back down to 200 after starting CrossFit and doing a very strict, Ketoish, type diet about 6 years ago.  Since then I have been on a steady increase back up to my current weight around 240 once again.  During the past six years, I have tired many different “diets” from counting macros, keto, carb cycling, paleo and gluten free to name a few.  Nothing seemed to work to move my weight back in the right direction.  Maybe I didn’t give each of them enough time but 30 days with no effect seemed to be my breaking point most of the time.  I even hired a nutrition coach who wrote out exactly what to eat and when to eat it.  In addition, I had a chef prepare the proteins, veggies and carbs for the lunches and dinners to make sure I was following the plan to a “T”.  My nutritionist also suggested that I get my testosterone levels checked as he said that could have a major impact on the success of such a program.  I had it tested and guess what?  I had “Low T”!  So on Testosterone Replacement Therapy (TRT) I went!  My numbers improved but how I felt did not.  The Testosterone also immediately caused a 10 pound weight gain, which was not the direction I wanted to head.  All the other blood tests from my “traditional” doctor came back normal, except high cholesterol.  I have had high cholesterol my whole life and given my active lifestyle and no other risk factors for Heart Disease so I didn’t worry too much about the cholesterol.  After about 6-7 months on the TRT, I decided it wasn’t having any noticeable positive effect.  The biggest issue was that my wife said it made me more irritable.  Nobody wants to be more irritable so I stopped taking the TRT shots.  I used the recommended protocol for transitioning off of TRT to stimulate my body to produce what testosterone is would produce naturally.  That was roughly 18 months ago and was the last “thing” I tried to help alleviate my symptoms.  When I say symptoms, I had other issues in addition to the weight gain.  There was chronic fatigue, issues swallowing when I ate (frequently but not always), abdominal cramps when I bent over to tie my shoes and frequent jock itch, ringworm and fungal rashes.  I had an abdominal ultrasound to check for any abnormalities and nothing was found.  I did a high fiber regiment to help remove “old bile” from my system and stimulate the making of new bile.  All the while my weight did not improve and my energy continued to decrease.  That brings us to good old 2020!

The Year That was 2020!

While 2020 will probably go down as one of the most unique years of all of our lives, I will not say that it was the worst.  If nothing else, everything that was 2020 drove me to search for answers to questions that had puzzled me for many years!  Why does my body not react to things the same as other people's?  We all know the person who gives up drinking alcohol for a month and drops 14 pounds (without making any other real lifestyle changes).  I don't even drink alcohol, work out 4-5 days a week and watch what I eat fairly closely (not super strict by any means at this point in my life) and cant seem to drop a pound.  I did an 8 week transformation challenge during the first part of 2020 and was very diligent with my diet, exercise and water consumption.  What did I have to show for it at the end?  A big fat NOTHING!  I woke up every morning with aches and pains.  Shoulder, back and knees mainly that I attributed to a childhood bike accident (back) and years of playing volleyball (knees and shoulder).  In addition to these historical factors, I had been working out hard for years and just accepted the aches and pains as part of the deal.  As the year progressed, I continued to feel more and more fatigued.  I would regularly get 8-10 hours of sleep and wake up feeling like I needed a nap!  I continued to go to the gym 4-5 days a week when it was open and worked out in my basement gym and ran outside when it was not.  I know that exercise is supposed to release endorphins and increase your energy but for me, it just made me more tired!  Frequent naps during the day and early bedtimes helped me get through the days.  I finally decided that enough was enough and I needed to go in search of some answers.  Where to start?  That was the million-dollar question.  I had gone the "traditional" medicine route my whole life with no real direction or even red flags over the years!  I decided to try a naturopathic approach to see what mysteries we could uncover!  

My Clinic of Choice (The Genesis Center)

My fitness journey into the CrossFit community has been a blessing in many ways but anyone who has experienced it will tell that the people you meet are nothing short of extraordinary.  During my time of attending events and getting to know athletes and their families I was lucky enough to meet an incredible family that lives near me here in GA.  They told me about how a clinic near us had helped their son overcome some issues as a young teen which enabled him to regain his health.  He was then able to begin training at the level it takes to eventually become the Fittest Teen on Earth at the 2019 CrossFit Games (14-15 age group)!  They told me stories of professional athletes coming from all over the country to this clinic for issues that others had been unable to solve.  I had kept this all in the back of my mind until I had reached my breaking point!  In the year of Covid-19, I decided to take the leap and make an appointment.  This brings us to the beginning of  August and the start of what would turn out to be a very eventful second half of 2020!  My next post will pick up with my first appointment and also include my personal experience with the dreaded Covid-19 virus.  Stay Tuned!