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A key turning point in my life happened for me during my last year of university in 2004.

I was a pretty ordinary uni students. My life revolved around my classes and ‘having a good time’. I studied the martial art of Aikido and did a bit of skateboarding but other than that I had no interest in exercise, physical culture or any kind of health.

I ate whatever tasted good to me and I had the money to afford – this was mostly baked goods like sausage rolls, meat pies, cheese and bacon rolls along with other staples like hamburgers, sausages, pasta, pizza, etc. I didn’t have much of a sweet tooth although I did on occasion having cravings for chocolate. I didn’t like sodas or ‘soft drinks’ as we call them in Australia and I didn’t like vegetables or fruit much either.

I did my fair share of binge drinking (or as most people think of it, social weekend drinking – however now I see if you get drunk off it, it is a binge drink) and recreational drugs. Down time was surfing the net, watching TV or playing Playstation 2… although I did (and still do) enjoy reading books particularly science fiction and fantasy.

I didn’t look ahead much or think about consequences of any of my activities, the thought that there was even something not-so-healthy about the way I was living my life never even crossed my mind! I generally lived doing whatever gave me some kind of gratification right now.

In that last semester of the last year of uni I was doing a single subject “Environmental Management”. It was a shock-horror subject where the devastation and environmental damage now occurring on planet Earth was made very real to us. The class was a single six hour day per week. I was not working and so had a lot of free time on my hands.

For this subject we were given an assignment to choose from a list of topics and in a group we would need to complete a report, a website and a 10 minute presentation in front of the class.

When I finally got around to scanning the list of topics I saw one that immediately struck my eye, entitled: “What’s in the food we eat?”

This was something I had never thought about before and seemed like it could be an interesting exploration. Initially I intended to do the website thinking I could learn to do web design at the same time… but then after my first week of studying I quickly asked my group members if I could do the talk.

I can remember that first afternoon I sat down in front of the internet. I can’t remember now what I typed into google or what the first website I looked at was but I do remember the almost real physical sensation of my jaw hitting the floor. I was shocked… food… affected us… could make us sick… weak… cancer… chemicals… genetically modified… toxic… and so on.

Something happened to me that day. Suddenly ignorance was no longer bliss and I was aware for the first time in memory that what I did, what I ate had consequences in the future and the next logical conclusion was that where I was now was a result of what I did and ate in the past.

It was like a haze lifted from over me and I become unpleasantly aware of how I was actually feeling…. and it didn’t feel very good.

I was tired, my body was stiff, I had a layer of fat around my middle (even though I was still a skinny guy) and well actually I felt a lot older than 23.

That moment defined a shift in my thinking that has determined my life since. I became obsessed, as I had so much free time I dedicated probably 10-20 hours a week doing independent research on the internet about food. I changed my entire diet almost overnight. I dropped almost all of the junkey baked goods and switched to whole grains. I began to increase my uptake of vegetables, I began volunteering at an organic co-op for discounts, I began frequenting my local organic markets and making friends with the stall holders and I am not kidding when I say this… without decreasing the volume of food, without increasing the amount of activity I did… I dropped 10kg in three weeks.

Yes, 10kg in three weeks.

Being a skinny guy already this became incredibly noticeable and I started to get concerned questions about my health, constant admonitions to eat more and gentle queries about possible, you know um, anorexia. The truth was I was actually feeling better, I had more energy than before and my thinking was clearer.

However getting sick of the questions and also tuning into my physical state and along with my crazy, obsessive level of internet browsing I began to run into, at the time, ‘alternative’ physical conditioning programs. Almost simultaneously I came across Clubbells and Kettlebells and I knew I wanted to train with one of them (eventually the Clubbells won out) what however really struck me in this search and won me over to the RMAX way of doing things was this video of Coach Scott Sonnon rolling around on the grass. There was something about what he was doing that looked fun, cool and yet attainable and most of all it looked like it felt really really good and free to be able to move like that.

And so I found myself on a new life-path. My focus had now shifted to health and movement. No longer could I be satisfied with instant gratification and I became considerate about how would I feel in 5 years, 10 years, 15 years, etc?

I have been reflecting on this defining moment lately as I take stock of where I am and how I feel about it… and what I see is my motivation at this time was to feel good.

I had noticed that I had been living a life of what feels good right now, this second and momentarily as opposed to one where I would feel good all the time.

I can see now that was the ideal I was chasing, to feel good all the time.

And as I take stock I can see how far I had diverged from that. How the fantasies of superhuman health promoted by the raw food crowd, mad physical skills that would impress the girls and big muscles with a sculpted six-pack like the media tells us we should look like have all influenced me. It was no longer about feeling good, it was about fitting some other person or paradigms version of what feeling good should be, again. Sure this was a much healthier version of before but it was still a path of fear, a path being concerned about living up to someone elses standards.

If you have invested any time in the health or fitness community it is very easy to see this trend. These crowds are promoting products continuously and subversive within this advertising is a hidden message that in order to feel good, look good, be healthy, be fit we need to do things their way. The undercurrent of this is fear, fear that if I as the consumer do not get this product then I will be missing out I will be doomed to feeling bad and being unhealthy. I understand this completely, they are trying to make a living selling a product.

Nevertheless the point I have reached is one where I can now see through all of that advertising. I have done so much chasing, I have bought so many products and read so many websites and books on health. I have tried so many different paradigms. I have been scared into vegetarianism thinking meat was going to give me bowel cancer. I have been scared into raw food thinking anything cooked would create toxic chemicals that would make me sick and have cancer… I have seen almost all of it, read almost all of it, tried much of it to the point where I found my own discovery, my own truth, my own ideal of feeling good was lost.

Until now.

None of my time was wasted. I gained much knowledge along the way, I gained much discernment and through the patterns to see which path was leading the right way.

As I tune into my body these days, I still don’t feel that great. I’m definitely not of a superhuman level of health, I don’t have particularly big muscles, my mad skills are in short supply. I have tried to chase so many different rabbits it made me dizzy.

However if I look back to the time before my insight, if I extrapolate along the path I was on…. well I am certainly a lot better off than that.

And I take comfort from this thought. And I relax.

I believe I have found something that works for me. I am coming back inline with my original motivations. I am stalking my own, and single, rabbit.

To feel good. All the time.

So why do you do it, whatever it is you do?

P.S. That talk I gave at university… I spoke for over an hour to a completely silent and transfixed room of more than 50 students. The professor allowed me to continue well past the 10 minute mark. It was something I had never experienced before and I got the highest grade for this subject in my entire university history.

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