Fitness & Nutrition

We get plenty of emails, and most of the messages brighten our days. Some emails really intrigue us. Like the email from a gentleman who expressed his love for SunButter and suggested we promote it more to people like him who are following a low carb/paleo diet lifestyle. There’s a lot more to his story, and we’re grateful he agreed to share it. Thanks for sharing, Mr. North Carolina. We’re proud to be a part of your amazing journey, and we’re rooting for you!

Hi, my name is Vainglory. Well, my real name isn’t Vainglory, or else my parents would have some explaining to do. It’s actually my online name so I can mask my identity. But you can see me in a recent photo:

That’s me on my 30^th birthday. A dapper young man posing in a guest room turned weight room. I’m not ready to share my real name here because my best friend in the world doesn’t know who that is in the picture above. We spent an entire summer living together when we were teenagers. He was a witness when I got married. Yet, he wouldn’t recognize that person on the street. Why? Because the last time he saw me, I looked like this:

I haven’t released my real name because I want to spread my story and inspire others. I also want to surprise my best friend, who I haven’t seen since early 2010. By then, I had just become too large to travel and he had kids so didn’t travel, either. We communicate solely over the Internet and by phone. It’s going to be amazing when I see him for the first time, likely in January 2012.

 “Before” weight: 538 lbs.

Officially, my highest known weight was 538 pounds. That was in March of 2010. I decided it was time to do something about it. I was addicted to sugar-loaded foods. So I adjusted my eating and began restricting my carbohydrate intake. I also began to take my fitness seriously: I started lifting weights regularly.

I learned early on that part of the trick to losing weight was not eating too little or too much. I needed to find the sweet spot where I would lose weight without feeling like I was starving. For me, that was around 2,400 calories a day. So when I looked online for advice on filling gaps in my caloric intake, lots of people suggested a spoonful of peanut butter. I was always a little wary of that advice, because all of the peanut butter I had access to locally had too much sugar in it.

SunButter in a paleo diet

Around that time, I was transitioning to a dietary regimen that was gaining popularity in the fitness community: the “paleo diet.” It made a lot of sense to me, and it allowed me to keep my carbohydrate intake down. The idea was that early man had it right in their diet choices, before humans started processing foods. The important thing of note is that the diet basically said legumes were a no-no and because peanuts are a member of the legume family, I had to stop eating peanut butter.

That’s where SunButter came in. I spotted it when I was walking through Harris Teeter with my wife one day, and was surprised when I peeked at the nutritional information. It only had three grams of net carbs. Plus, I love sunflower seeds. So we bought a jar of organic SunButter , which has no sugar or salt: it’s just sunflower seeds.

SunButter smoothies

It was incredibly tasty and similar enough to peanut butter that I could use it in my post-workout protein shakes. Protein powder tastes decent, but when you add something with a creamier texture, the taste really pops. My favorite protein shake: 8 ounces of almond milk, a scoop of protein powder, a serving of SunButter and a couple of ice cubes, blended together.

There are a lot of people out there just like me, trying to correct their health mistakes, and SunButter fits into the equation perfectly. It should be a staple of low-carb/paleo and smart eating lifestyles.

I now weigh half what I did when I started.

As of my November 2 weigh-in, I officially have lost half my original weight. I’m now 269 pounds, and I wrote a more in-depth post on the reddit board.

Low carb diet, paleo diet resources

Plenty of resources exist on low carb/paleo eating lifestyles. I’ve found these most helpful, accurate and supportive:

• Mark’s Daily Apple, a blog with practical tips, recipes and success stories
• Jimmy Moore’s Livin La Vida Low Carb , a spirited blog that also includes info on how to start a low carb lifestyle
• Robb Wolf’s podcasts and blog include timely info on nutrition, metabolism, exercise, meal plans and more
• Angelo Coppola’s podcasts and blog, with other very timely updates, product and food information

Thank you for indulging me and thanks, SunButter, for making my post-workout shakes a lot better for me. If you’re interested in more of my ramblings, my full story, my diet and exercise information, plus progress pictures, visit my website . Of course I also wouldn’t hate it if you helped spread my story. I’m trying to help as many people as possible.

You just did, Vainglory. You just did.