12,000 years ago, Ogg was going about his life—hunting, fishing, gathering, making baby Oggs, doing his thing. And then, one day, his dad died. But Ogg’s dad was no ordinary dad; he was the group leader, the elder of the tribe. Definitely sad. So, Ogg decided to do something no one else in human history had done before.

Ogg’s dad, Gugg, died shortly after a hunt. The tribe had a lot of extra food, so they thought it would be a good idea to get everyone together that night, build a large fire, and eat lots of food. They made speeches about Gugg and told stories about his life. This new ceremony made Ogg feel good, so we kept doing it. This all happened in a Hilazon Tachtit cave in an area we now call Israel.

Names were changed to protect the innocent, but the story is true. Remains of the feast were found at the site, and preservation allowed for accurate scientific dating. The Feast of Gugg is sometimes known as the “Tortoise Banquet” because of the shocking number of tortoises served at the feast.

The first human feast was about 12,000 years ago, long before we invented agriculture and quite sometime before the first McDonald’s. It’s part of who we are.

Do you live to eat?

I must have been around fourteen or fifteen years old. I remember it clearly. It was just after school, and my grandmother was watching us. My brother was under strict orders to complete his homework before having an afternoon snack. Serious stuff here. I didn’t have any homework, did it on the bus. I was smart like that. So, what do I do? I made a nice little snack, you know. Ah… a bag of potato chips, let's spread those out all over this paper plate here…. but we are missing something, oh right, ketchup! I don’t really know if there is a name for this concoction, but it is a tasty snack.

At this point, my brother is upset that he cannot partake in this glorious invention of mine, and my grandmother is rather annoyed with my snack choice. She looks at me—oh, for those of you that don’t know her, she is full-on British, currently 92 and will outlive us all—and in the best British accent possible, carrying as much disappointment as humanly possible, she uttered one question: “Do you eat to live or do you live to eat?”

I’ve always had a struggle with food and weight. It started around eight or nine, I think. I put on a lot of weight around ten, and I’ve never really lost it. I lost some weight Fish year in the Corps of Cadets but didn’t keep it off for long. Kids made fun of me for being fat, but I mean, that’s just what kids do. Sometimes, it was good fun, and I laughed; sometimes, it was mean, and I cried. But here is the great thing about food: it's available, and it doesn’t judge you. And sugar, well, that tastes amazing! And it makes you feel good as well.

What I didn’t know at the time was that I was really turning to food for emotional regulation and stability. If I was sad, I ate some ice cream; happy, I celebrated with pizza; stressful day, a Big Mac would clear that up. And then, when I tried to eat healthy, it was really unhealthy. I would eat a huge bowl of yogurt loaded with granola and honey or a Caesar salad with more croutons than lettuce.

I never really learned what healthy eating was. It was 2013/2014 when I hit 265 pounds. I was working at the psych hospital at night and working for my supervisor during the day. I had very little free time and lived alone, so fast food became my diet.

Approaching thirty and about to get married, I wanted to get serious about my weight and overall health. So, I hired a trainer and got to work. Josh was great. He was really the first person to educate me on carbohydrates and why my idea of diets never worked. He set me up on an approachable and simple plan:

1. Eat 30-70 carbs per day, none from processed carbs such as bread or pasta.

2. Walk 45 min per day, 4 times a week.

3. Do two 30-minute workouts with him twice a week.

Josh explained to me that protein will fill you up, so if you want a burger, go for just lose the bun. Focus on high-protein meals such as chicken, and eat anything you want so long as it’s not a processed carb. This is a kind of Keto. It's not full-on Keto, but it worked great for me. It might not be the thing for you, so please don’t take this as advice. You do you.

What Josh didn’t realize at the time was that he had found a sort of hack to social eating. Just like Ogg and his crew, we love to get together, and feast and most restaurant food is rather unhealthy. This is usually because it is cheaper to mass-produce carb-heavy foods like Deep Friend Twinks. Also, salty foods tend to make you want to eat more and drink more.

All that aside, the plan worked perfectly. I hit my goal just in time for the wedding and kept the weight off for a year or so. Then kids. What I didn’t account for with Josh’s plan is that we never addressed the core issue, which was the desire to eat Cheetos when I’m stressed. You have a stressful week and want to let yourself go on a Friday night, well that turns into the weekend. I started to gain the weight back, slowly at first, but you know how it goes.

Last year, I wanted to get back into Josh’s plan, but it didn’t work the same. I realized that I didn’t have a healthy relationship with food, and I didn’t understand what “healthy” food was. So, I made that my goal for 2024. And let me tell you…. we have some strong opinions about food.

Working Out Doesn’t Work

I set three goals for myself in 2024. You can call them New Year resolutions if you like, or action items, or the 2024 Strategic Development Plan for Taylor Corp. A company that raises kids and mows lawns and stuff. Three goals:

1. Set up regular time with wife and kids.

2. Dive into and understand my relationship with food.

3. Lose 30 pounds.

The first one was easy enough. I’ve just become more specific about boundaries and intentionality around family, but that is a story for another day. Let’s get into the food!

In my search for knowladge about food and working out in genreal I learned a LOT. Now, again, this journey was for me and not for you. Your journey will look very different from mine. If you don’t like what I’ve found or what I’m doing, that is okay. Do it the way that works for you. Live your life. Also, I am not an expert in any of this, so please feel free to challenge me or disagree as you like. With that out of the way, I found two massive lies - there is “healthy” food, and working out will help you lose weight. Here is the real deal:

1. There is no such thing as healthy food.

2. Working out doesn’t work.

Okay… don’t run off just yet. Our society has radically different views on what is healthy and what is not. We can all pretty much agree that fried food is bad for you, candy is bad for you, and soda is bad for and… blah blah blah is bad for you, but we sell all those things in mass quantities and consume them regularly. So if we are all doing it what’s so wrong with it? We can agree on what’s bad, but talking about what’s good gets really challenging. I’m not going to go into much detail here, mostly because I’m not qualified and because it’s kind of boring. But in the end, a healthy diet really depends on what works for you.

Additionally, while we are all very similar in that we are humans and need to eat food, our bodies deal with food in very different ways. But yes, if you eat more energy (calories) than you expend, you will gain weight over time, which is probably not a good thing.

Since we have no objective view of “healthy,” let’s just focus on you. What does healthy mean to you? For me, it was working with my medical doctor to set specific goals and measures and my therapist to sort out my relationship with food. My medical doctor gave me some fancy numbers, like blood sugar levels, blood pressure, weight, etc. We set goals for those things. I explained the diet I wanted to follow, and he said, “Sure, go for it.”

The other part was much more difficult. I worked with my therapist to process several difficult memories and emotions I had around food. I discovered that I am an emotional eater and have been for most of my life. We looked at my relationship with food throughout my life and learned that I did indeed live to eat. But I didn’t like that, so I thought it was time for a change. I started looking at food differently. Do I really need this? Do I really want this?

One thing I learned was that I would eat a lot of food after dinner, even if I wasn’t hungry. The other thing I learned was that when I really wanted to let myself go, I always went back to the same foods from my childhood. I did not particularly like these foods, nor did I like how they made me feel afterward. And then it hit me like a bag of ice cream sandwiches packed into a bowl of peanut M&Ms.

I would eat as a kid to feel full so that I couldn’t feel sad. But feeling sad isn’t a bad thing; it’s just part of life. So I don’t need to be full. And that connection really changed how I view food. Oh, don’t get me wrong, I still love a good feast. And this Thanksgiving, I am going to crush the sweet potato casserole. But in general, I just eat a handful of meals now. They have just enough to give me the energy I need to do what I need. I like the food I eat, it’s food that makes me feel good and makes me not hungry. It tastes great, and it keeps me going. I guess now I eat to live….

After chatting with my doctor, my therapist, and a few friends, I added a few rules to my daily life:

4. I only eat from noon to 8 p.m. I find that I’m not really hungry in the mornings, and I only eat junk after dinner.

5. Drink a gallon of water a day. ( I try really hard!)

6. Only eat if I am hungry and only eat just enough to be not hungry.

Okay…. now on to the fun part. Working out doesn’t work. I can hear you scoffing at me (yea, Matt, I’m talking to you). Rather than rehash everything here, I’ll just link the video to you: We Need to Rethink Exercise.

The long and short of it is that working out is good for you, but it won’t really help you lose weight. It’s a good thing, and you should do it, but that alone won’t solve the problem. The real issue is that we just overeat too much. As a species, we’ve gotten really good at making food taste good and making it abundantly available. It is really easy for us to eat way more energy than we need. So we do it a lot.

Learning this really helped me focus on shaping my relationship with food. If I want to lose weight, I have to get serious about food. Sure, I can lift heavy stuff around a lot and move my body around in weird, random ways, but that just won’t get me there alone.

Last week, I surpassed my goal for the year and lost those 30+ pounds. I did it without having to change too much, eating mostly what I wanted and living an enjoyable life. I’m not done, mind you. I’ll have a new goal for next year. It will be challenging but not overly so. I’m not looking for radical change, just a little growth here and there. Changing one small thing can really have a big impact if we let it.

Thankful & Vulnerale

With Thanksgiving right around the corner, you are gonna start getting a lot of be thankful messages - it’s gonna be everywhere non-stop. That’s okay - we should be thankful, but this year, I would like to encourage you to do something a little different. As you gather together with friends and family around the big feast - share what you are grateful for, but also tell them the story of Gugg and share what you struggle with - be it food or something else - open up and be vulnerable. Tell stories of your favorite people, share warmth and love, and, if possible, eat a tortoise or two.

I hope you have enjoyed these thoughts for your self-examination. See you next week.

-CT

PS. Check out the podcast if you like to listen.

Unrelated Stuff and Things

Below you will find groups, projects, organizations, programs, and cabins I am passionate about and involved in. I hope it doesn’t come off as shameless self-promotion. All the same, they are important to me so I thought I would share. Feel free to skip them if you like.

Feeling Generous?

Counseling for the Future Foundation and Grant Halliburton Foundation are two amazing non-profits doing some great work in the field of Mental Health. You can help make a difference by giving your time, empathy, and financial support. Learn more by clicking the logos below.

A few things related to mental health:

Check out our latest mental health post on the TCG blog, and learn more about the Empifany app, the Titus Check-In System, and our newly developed Independently Strong course.

The Independently Strong course is designed specifically for spouses or partners who have experienced trauma or abuse within relationships with individuals struggling with substance use disorder. Covering topics such as trauma bonds, identifying characteristics of healthy relationships, understanding the impacts of unhealthy dynamics, boosting self-esteem to align decisions with personal values, establishing boundaries, engaging in self-awareness exercises, and delving into various other crucial aspects, this comprehensive program offers essential guidance and support for healing and empowerment. Learn more about the course here.

Need a Break?

We love going to Broken Bow. It has been a special place for me for a long time and it has been a dream to share this beautiful place with my kids. If you are interested in treating yourself to some relaxing away time up in the pines of Broken Bow feel free to book one of our cabins. There is no greater retreat than the woods.

Okay! That’s all I got. Feel free to send me an email. Anything I can do for you?