@ZoDogg34: I don't believe in diets.

I don’t believe in diets. I don’t care if you are eating low carbs, or drinking grapefruit juice or eating cookies – diets are a scam designed for someone to make money.  So why am I writing this blog and participating in the Fittest Tweeter? Well, I just want to eat more healthy (and I was talked into it by @DigitalRoyalty).
 
A couple of years ago, before my son was born, I was sitting around the house watching one of those Mystery Diagnosis shows on Discovery Health one night when I caught a story on a perfectly healthy in shape guy in his early 30’s who was diagnosed with colon cancer. At the time my wife was pregnant and I decided I didn’t want to go out like that – so I began to look into some of the causes. To my horror I discovered that I had two strikes against me…a family history (grandfather) and bad eating habits.
 
Now, like I said, I don’t believe in diets, but I decided that eating not much other than pizza, burgers, and other things loaded in saturated fat was probably not a good idea, considering that saturated fat intake is one of the causes of colon cancer. So I quit eating it. Cold turkey. I went to eating almost zero red meat, and nothing fried. I replaced French fries with side salads. I replaced burgers with grilled chicken. I probably cut out at least 80% of the saturated fat I ate on a regular basis.  I also lost weight. A lot of it. About 20 pounds. At the time I was about 195, which for a guy who is about 6-1 and active wasn’t really bad, but people started noticing how much weight I lost…and I had to go buy a bunch of new pants.
 
So, again, why am I doing this Fittest Tweeter? Well, I kept it up for about a year, but things have changed and I went back to some of my old habits. I have more responsibility being a dad, and my time to exercise and play basketball is reduced. I have a new job with an on-site cafeteria that actually has good food. Unfortunately most of it (the good stuff at least) isn’t really healthy. I’ve gained about ten pounds back from what I lost, and those new pants I bought are starting to get a little tighter. I’ve been telling myself for a while that I wanted to go back to eating healthy again, and thanks to Fittest Tweeter, now’s as good of a time as any to do it!

~ @ZoDogg34