Modeling Healthy Behaviors, Mentorship, and Inspiration: Why I Became a Caveman

The Game

I was sitting at a table in a meeting room with four other work colleagues and we were tearing our hair out trying to solve a problem.  It was not a job related issue though and we were not working as a team.  Instead, we were individually trying to think of how to define ourselves in just eight letters and/or numbers.  The name of the game was “license plate”, an icebreaker exercise to learn more about our colleagues by writing down what our vanity license plate would have had emblazoned on it.  It was a really fun concept, but also challenging. At least it was for me!  How was I going to define myself in just eight characters or less?  I wanted to my colleagues to know that I had a family with two great kids, worked hard, had a passion for wellness, had a good sense of humor, etc.  Then I remembered what my wife had been calling me lately: “caveman.”

Mentors Matter

As far back as I can remember I was always interested in wellness and fitness.  My dad had an old Joe Weider Olympic barbell, bench, and weights set in the garage.  The weights were concrete forms encased in plastic.  I recall being intrigued by the weights and even throwing them around a bit beginning in 4^th grade or so.  Dad always exercised regularly by lifting weights and going on runs.  My mom always cooked healthy homemade food from scratch.  We rarely would eat out at restaurants.  Both of my parents would encourage me and my younger sister to eat healthy, go outside and exercise, play sports, ride our bikes, play games with friends, and have a positive attitude.

Most importantly, our parents practiced what they preached.  They did not command us to eat our veggies but leave them off of their own plate.  They did not push us to exercise, engage in sports, and play outside and meanwhile sit on the couch.  Maybe I would have been interested in wellness and fitness without such good role models, but it certainly did not hurt.  According to ScienceDaily.com a Duke Medicine study showed that kids whose moms encourage them to exercise and eat well, and model those healthy behaviors themselves, are more likely to be active and healthy eaters.

I also had really good coaches for strength and conditioning throughout high school and this had a major impact on me.   Most notable was the summer football conditioning program before my freshman year of high school in Niceville, Florida in 1993.  We learned proper technique on olympic power lifting moves, how to push ourselves while also lifting safely, and how to take care of our teammates with careful spotting.  I also remember one coach who called me “Sandy” (short for Sandburg) would remind me almost every workout that my friends were still in bed or eating chips on the couch while I was building serious beach muscles.  This was regardless of the fact that I was six feet nothing and weighted one-hundred and nothing.  Good sports coaches always have the best ways to reach kids with their special turn of phrase.My point is that good mentors matter.  Mentors shaped my love for wellness, fitness, and coaching.  What does all this have to do an icebreaker game and a “caveman”?  It all started when I lost my most important mentor, my dad.

How Could This Happen?!

In the summer of 2005 dad and I were cruising down the highway in a mint green Toyota Prius en route to California from Kansas.  I had just graduated from KU and was moving out to San Diego where my future bride and I had jobs waiting for us.  Dad traded me his lovely mint green Prius for my Ford Expedition as it would get much better gas mileage on the crowded highways of California.  We were taking turns driving and monitoring who could get the best gas mileage average.  I remember a lot of coasting and drafting at terribly slow speeds, all for the glory of earning the title “best driver”.  I also remember both of us being in a lot of pain on that trip.  I had tweaked my back somehow and dad was having a lot of stomach pain.  We journeyed on despite the pain and still had a great trip driving out to San Diego together.  He stayed with us for a few days but was in such bad pain that he really only wanted to lay around and rest.  This was not like him at all.  We thought it may have been ulcers or bad food or something of the like.  He wasn’t about to go see a doctor about it though, no sir.

A few weeks after he got back home to Kansas he and my mom called me and let me know he was still having a lot of trouble and they were having tests run on him at the hospital.  After a ridiculously long 4 weeks of diagnostics we learned that dad had pancreatic cancer.  Sadly the cancer had already metastasized so badly that the tumor could not be removed.  Dad put up a great fight but the survival rate for pancreatic cancer is very low.  We lost him in February of 2006.  How could this happen?  He was only 51! Dad took great care of himself.  He never smoked, exercised regularly, and ate healthy.  This was not fair.  According to the American Cancer Society there are risk factors for pancreatic cancer that you cannot control such as age or family history and risk factors you can control like being at a healthy body weight, not smoking, limiting alcohol use, and limiting exposure to certain chemicals. We were not aware of any pancreatic cancer on dad’s side of the family and at 51 he was not at risk from an age perspective.  As mentioned earlier he took good care of himself.  So what could it be that caused the cancer?  Of course we don’t know for sure.

Elimination

I suppose at this point you could go down quite a few different paths as a child of a father who passes away from cancer at a young age.  I guess one path would be to go on unchanged in one’s own life like nothing had happened, although that is unimaginable to me.  Another path, the one that I admittedly went down for several months, is being really angry at the doctors for not diagnosing the cancer faster.  That did not do much good of course.  One sad path may be to assume that taking good care of yourself apparently does no good and then proceed with self-destructive unhealthy behaviors since nothing really matters.  I did not entertain that path thankfully, nor did my sister.  Instead, the path that I eventually got on after dad passed away, is a path of avoidance, extremeness, elimination, simplicity, suppression, and most importantly, enlightenment.   I decided I was going to be an n=1 experiment in preventing pancreatic cancer and finding wellness balance. I started to look more carefully at everything that I put in and on my body.   I already reviewed food labels at a macro level but I started to look more carefully at all ingredients.   I also began examine the ingredients in deodorant, lotion, shampoo, shaving cream, laundry soap, sunscreen, etc.  If we look at look at nutrition labels out of concern of what enters into our body then should we not see what might be entering our bloodstream through our skin?  You can argue about percentages of different chemicals absorbing at different rates in different people all you like.  My new outlook was if it was a potentially hazardous chemical I was going to avoid putting into my body via mouth or skin.  I started listening to wellness ideas from EVERYONE.  I started considering things I would never have considered before like only eating plants, using coconut oil as deodorant and lotion, taking cold showers, changing my strength workouts to full body, and even swimming!  As I tried these ideas and many others my wife began to lovingly call me: “caveman”.

Mission

I think about my dad every day.  I hope that my pursuit of health and wellness balance will honor him.  My goal with BOOST Health is to share experiences, successes, and failures in health pursuits with everyone who will listen and hopefully ideas and inspiration will be gleaned.  For me personally I can say that the knowledge that I have put into action has been transformative.  I feel better than I ever have in my life at 39 years old.  I was already taking good care of myself but have been able to move the needle closer to great.  My doctor says my bloodwork numbers could not be better. I now can effortlessly maintain a healthy bodyweight with body fat residing between 9-10%. I can lift heavy weights but also keep up with my endurance buddies on runs and bike rides.  Perhaps some of the information I share will BOOST your health.  That is the dream of this caveman at least.