A Change Of Diet Really Can Change Your Life

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It’s so easy to slip into a routine. Hey, routine is good … as long as it’s a positive routine. But some routines we develop aren’t so good. Like our diets, for example. It’s the easiest thing in the world to stick with a horrible eating regime month in and month out and ignore the facts staring you in the face. You might be going to the gym regularly, or training at home, or at least doing some sort of regular physical activity. So you just cannot understand how it is that you’re still out of shape. Damn!

It’s easy for me to sit here writing about how to develop a good diet. I know how to do it. It’s not as though it’s even that difficult. I can write about it all day long, and make it sound good and appealing … and yet I still sometimes have trouble sticking to that diet myself. So don’t think I’m just idly pontificating when I tell you how to cut out all the garbage and eat better foods. I know the difficulties involved in it just as much as you do. And I’m trying to stick to a better diet myself.

Day after day I’m engaged in this battle. I’m not massively overweight or anything, but I’m not in the best shape of my life either. And I should be. Working on a health and fitness website as good as Exercess, I owe it to myself to keep in shape, and I’m letting myself down. I want to share with you how to be fitter, leaner, and healthier, and how to enjoy a more positive lifestyle in all kinds of ways. And if I don’t get back in condition I feel I’m letting you down, as well as myself.

So how come I’m not fitter?

Well, I have one or two serious health issues, and the effects of a life-changing back injury to deal with. I used to be much fitter, but it’s a struggle these days to achieve the level of fitness I’ve been used to in the past. I’m not letting these things stop me, but it’s an ongoing challenge to achieve the fitness I want.

One man’s story

Gates Garcia
Gates Garcia before
Gates Garcia
Gates Garcia after

I’d like to share with you the story of one man who did make massive positive changes in his lifestyle, and shed an amazing amount of unwanted weight in the process. His name is Gates Garcia, and this is him as he was (left), and as he is after losing that weight (right) .

Back in 2008, at just 5’9″, he weighed in at a hefty 254 lbs. That’s despite being a strong, active individual who regularly undertook some intense weight training. In fact, he held records in the weights room, and considered himself healthy and fit, although he admits he knew he was carrying unnecessary baggage.

“My blood pressure was so high that during my physical for my senior season, I had to convince the doctor to let me play,” he recalls. And the discipline he had developed in the weights room didn’t spill over into the kitchen … he’d think nothing of tackling a whole pizza and washing it down with a few beers. His appetite was controlling him, instead of the other way round.

‘Diets’ didn’t work for Gates

Like many others, he was tempted to go the diet route to fix the problem. He tried lots of them, every fad diet and crazy idea he read about, but none of them gave him the results he was after. Sure, he’d lose some weight, but after a while it would creep back on again, often with a few more pounds to keep it company.

On his wedding day, his weight had dropped to 228 lbs but, according to him, most of what he’d lost consisted of muscle mass. And he was still depending on medications, and his cholesterol levels were still way too high, and climbing.

Something made him realise he needed to change

Then his wife got pregnant. When she told him, it was the moment something fundamentally changed for him. He remembers thinking “If I can’t take care of myself, I can’t take care of a child”, and he undertook to change his lifestyle right there and then.