Why I Choose Plant Based Protein | My first post on Natural Products

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https://i.postimg.cc/vTsvj224/protein.png This is my first post using the new front end Natural Products! I am very excited to see all of the front ends, and now there's one that is focused on connecting and sharing based on natural health. For my first post, I want to start with an introduction to anyone who may be reading my content for the first time, and also talk about my favorite protein and why I choose plant based protein. I am The Yeti. You will find me all over the blockchain as @freedompoint. I feel that I am a big man, with an even bigger personality. I have a background in many different avenues of fitness, and I am currently focusing on my daily yoga practice. I co found a community with my wife and best friend Stacie D (@freedomtowrite) called Inner Blocks. The objective of Inner Blocks is to support the whole person behind the content. To encourage each person to live their best life and create content around their first hand experience. I don't typically create written posts, because I love video. I feel like I can fit more words in a 5 minute video than I can in a post that takes me two hours to type out. I hope you enjoy this little flashback as I work my way to why I choose plant based protein. I first began to journey into fitness when I was just 15. The high school that I was going to had a really nice weight room, and I was able to use it whenever I wanted. The trick to this was that I did so while also trying different sports. I was by no means what someone would call athletic, but I enjoyed the idea of it. I actually tried out for football all four years, but it never worked out. I did however manage to be a part of the power lifting team, and I threw the shot on the track team. When I was a junior in high school, I joined both of the above mentioned teams. I had a natural disposition to do power based activities. When I first started, I was 6'4 and weighed about 250 lbs. As far as the "shape" I was in.... there was no "shape" just big. It was during this time that I met some new people that turned my onto the idea of being big, and strong, and having a "shape". I started with something simple called Amino Fuel. It came in a tablet form and it seemed to do the trick. This is where I first began to learn about amino acids and how our body creates lean muscle mass. I remember this supplement for sure.. I had an experience once at school involving a couple of tablets. I had just finished lunch and tried to take a couple tablets while drinking a Sprite. It foamed up and I could barely swallow and nearly puked all over the locker room haha. I had some significant gains from Amino Fuel that seemed to last through the rest of high school. I took it during the winter and spring of my Junior year, and it resulted in me gaining 25 lbs and adding 50 lbs to my bench press. I tried and used several whey based proteins, and maintained my "shape" from that well into adult hood. Post high school it was a different story. I started college and quickly found out that it was not for me. So I quickly became a "working man". The jobs that I chose to work were pretty physical. I always enjoyed doing things that came easy, which freed my mind to think about more important things. For many years I worked different jobs and maintained a pretty terrible diet. I would use supplements at different times for different results depending what I was doing. When my kids were young I took on a second job at a fitness center. When I was at work, I was free to use the equipment. So I managed to work a full time job, and then chase some gains in the evenings while getting paid for it. It was during this time that I found Met-rx big 100 bars. These things were packed full of protein, and I was able to eat them anytime. After the second job had gone and I quit the job that I was working at full time, I found work at a great company working in a warehouse. This wasn't any ordinary warehouse, this was hand packing trucks as the different products came down the line into the back. I was spending 8-9 hours every night (yep night shift) packing trailers and essentially working out. The contents of each trailer weighed between 10,000- 30,000 lbs. This was a struggle at first, but after a few months it got easier. So much so, that Stacie D and I started to talk about working out outside of work. That's when we found P90X. If you are not familiar with this total body program, look it up. It was a game changer. So I was still packing trailers at night, and now working out for 40 minutes to an hour before work. It was time to supplement! I found a new product, it was an egg based protein. After reading and researching all I could about it, I jumped right it. I started seeing results and feeling results in just a couple of days. I was recovering quickly and I was getting my energy back. All of this sounds great except the excessive gas. I'm not talking about something you can squeak out and blame on the dog. I am talking about full...hot...relieving...room clearing...paint peeling gas. Despite the side effect of messing my stomach up, I actually used this product for several years. I moved from packing the trailers to being a supervisor. I was way less physical and I didn't need to supplement anymore. I maintained that until one day at work we had a health risk assessment. That's where nurses come in and check all of your "numbers" to see how healthy you are. Then, those numbers would effect how much you paid for health insurance. My numbers were not great, and it actually made me unable to get the best insurance rate that I could have, and I knew something had to change. During my time as a supervisor, outside of work Stacie D and I looked into other physical things that we could enjoy together. We started training in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, and training for an event called Tough Mudder. During this time we discovered Clif bars, gel blocks, and gel shots. We also started to learn more about sodium and water intake. Tough Mudder ended up being on a day that was 95 degrees F. So that training paid off. When Tough Mudder ended in July of 2011, I had a radical idea to shock my body. I wanted to spice it up a bit and see how my body would respond. I stumbled onto a documentary called Fat, Sick, and Nearly Dead. I was fascinated by the idea of doing a natural juice fast. So I jumped right in. I started a 7 day juice fast that changed the direction of my whole life, even if I didn't know it at the time. During that week I did a lot of reading. A lot of researching, and a lot of watching. I wanted to know everything I could about the food that I was eating and what it was doing to my body. I followed the paper trails, and I followed the money, and I followed my heart. In July of 2011 I stopped eating meat. The data that I had gathered had lead me to this decision, and I knew that it wasn't just as easy as flipping a light switch. I needed to continue to learn and continue to open my mind to information from every angle. After making the switch there was a good length of time that I didn't do any sort of training. I just focused on the family and working. I was very mindful about eating, and my new lifestyle, and how my body was responding. I didn't SEE changes very quickly, actually it was about 18 months, but I did FEEL the changes within weeks of starting. Fast forward a few years, life was moving on, and so were we. I had left that job and was now setting out on the adventure of a lifetime. I was becoming self employed. Not only that, but we moved to a brand new state. We bought land in Southern Missouri, in The Ozarks. We cleaned the land up and built our homestead in the woods. We spent 2 1/2 months building our own home and learning new skills. Life felt wide open, and the freedom of it all was amazing. When all of the dust settled from building the house, out building, chicken coop, garden...it was time to get the business going. I found that the best business in our location was firewood. There was wood everywhere, there were people burning wood everywhere, but there wasn't a lot of people selling wood. I bought a chainsaw and started going. That is when something amazing happened. I got a phone call from a new friend, actually he owned the storage unit we were renting, and he wanted to talk to me about cutting wood with his brother. After contacting his brother, who had just had shoulder surgery, I started cutting with him. He taught be how to really handle my chainsaw. He showed me how to be efficient, confident, and safe. There was only one issue.....I hurt...bad. My body was aching. It turns out that even building my own house and developing my own land, I was using new muscles and over using others. I remember a very clear evening. I had just finished stacking the split wood up for sale at the front of his property. I was sitting in my suburban thinking. I was sore all over, so I started to pray. I simply said "God, what do I do. I hurt so bad". Mind you that we still didn't have a finished house. We didn't have a bath tub for soaking, and barely had a shower that was made from a water hose straight from the well. While I was praying I just clearly felt the words "Be bigger, I have to be bigger", so that's what I did. I talked with Stacie D about finding a nutrition store nearby that would carry good quality supplements and finding them plant based. It was a bit of a battle at first because the most common protein ever is whey based. Because I didn't eat meat, and I wasn't eating dairy, I wanted something different. I was still eating eggs from our chickens, but it all wasn't enough, and Stacie D said our house was too small to handle the gas from egg protein again haha. We found a store 45 minutes away, and it was tucked into a small town square. They were packed wall to wall with amazing natural foods and supplements. That's where I found my current favorite protein. I tried a couple of different types. A hemp based, and a pea based. Both were good, but didn't quite do the trick. Plus they contained a lot of additional ingredients for flavor profile. I didn't want any of that. I wanted a straight drink of necessity. I wanted a pure protein with only one ingredient. I didn't mind chalky, I can push past taste, I wanted results. That is when I started drinking Sprouted Brown Rice Protein!! I continued cutting firewood for the next couple of months after starting the protein. It was great. I didn't hurt! That was the only goal, to not hurt. I felt great. I had new energy and no side issues. I did not have increased gas or upset stomach. It really worked. Toward the end of my time cutting, I was at my friends house, and I weighed myself. Turns out that my weight had gone up to over 280 lbs. That isn't too big of a deal since I am over 6'5. The amazing part was that I wasn't really bigger. We could see a change in my muscles, and in my waist, but it wasn't over the top. There is a whole other story that goes with this about when I stopped cutting wood and went back to the homestead. I was still swollen with muscle, but because I wasn't as active I started to get fat on top of the new muscle!! That was a few years ago now, and we are off of that homestead. Over two years ago I stopped with dairy all together and have been eating vegan. We have traveled across the U.S. and have landed in Northern Michigan at a small hobby farm just outside of a small town. I work part time as a farm hand, and work full time online. Stacie D and I have shifted the vision of our physical lives. I have a simple goal. I want to be able to move. I want to be able to bend. I want to be able to do things with my kids and not hurt. I don't feel the need to be gigantic, I feel the need to be powerful. I have found the difference between strength and power while practicing yoga. We currently practice yoga six days a week, and I consume this protein a couple days through the week. It is certainly a different mindset. I have gone so long wanting to be big, or to do big things, and now I don't. I am able to do things now that couldn't dream about when I was 20. I am holding at 6'5 and 270 lbs. I can move, bend, and work hard on the farm without feeling destroyed. *** *** Like I said in the beginning of this post, I am not much for writing out a long post. I wanted to try something different. I wanted to convey a personal perspective on this protein, but not in a video. When it comes to personal perspective, I believe in living your best life. I enjoy having new experiences, and now I enjoy sharing those experiences with others. It was through the process of learning to share and post content online that I realized there were so many different parts of my and my personality, and what made me who I am. It was from that idea that Stacie D and I founded Inner Blocks. A community that is focused on supporting the whole person behind the content. To encourage others to live their best life, and create content that showcases the many different things that make them who they are. We are currently updating our dApp on the Steem Blockchain as we are moving toward a token or SMT. We are developing a discord based bot that will allow curators to find and support amazing content from many different genres and parts of the world. We are in the middle of transitioning from The Inner Blocks to Inner Blocks. Some of these changes include moving all of the delegations to the new account to support the curation bot. If you feel like you would like to know more about this encouraging project, please contact me, and if you feel like you would like to support this project via Steem Delegation please delegate to @innerblocks. The future is bright and we all have so much to share. I look forward to seeing new and focused nutrition based content and reading your comments. This little story was a small glimpse into my life. I hope you are enjoying our adventure as much as we are. Be well ~The Yeti https://i.postimg.cc/0yNHpCWp/strong.jpg https://i.postimg.cc/1zG6XkGM/Footer-Gif.gif
Originally posted here: https://steemit.com/innerblocks/@freedompoint/why-i-choose-plant-based-protein-or-my-first-post-on-natural-products