My Primal journey began a few years ago. I have always been an avid nutrition hobbyist, reading book after book on the subject. With each new read, I would experiment with what I had learned, finding that some of the advice worked, and some didn’t. I also began to get frustrated because the books I was reading were often in direct contrast to others I had already finished. I realized that figuring out the best way to eat was going to be my responsibility alone, because no one agrees on what the best diet truly is.I read books and blogs on food, dieting, the glycemic index, diabetes, the organic movement, meat, fitness, slow-burn type of lifting… the list goes on. I currently have my very own reference section on fitness and nutrition. Some of them I love, some of them I keep around simply to remind me what NOT to do.

Two- maybe three- years ago, I was struggling with a health problem that I couldn’t quite resolve. I knew that food was the culprit, partly because of my heavy reading on the subject, but also because occasionally after eating, it would literally send me to the floor in pain. The pain was not in my belly, but in my intestinal tract and it would not go away until the next morning. Sometimes when it was really bad, it would return every afternoon. The problem was, I couldn’t find the food source that was causing the problem. It seemed that the foods I ate would sometimes cause problems and other times I would be fine. Somewhere in my food and fitness research, I came upon some information on gluten, which at the time was not as common a subject as it is today. I figured it can’t be the problem because one of the primary foods I had been testing were pretzels, and they did not cause the problem every single day. Still, rolling around on the floor of my office everyday was both embarrassing and difficult to explain to my co-workers and I was desperate, so I pulled myself off gluten. I’ll spare you the story of my testing and jump to the end of the story. I discovered that I am gluten intolerant (not celiac!), and what that means for me is that I basically shouldn’t eat gluten at all, but if I’ve stayed away for a significant amount of time, my sensitivity goes down enough that I can partake in a slice of pizza if I feel so inclined. The problem is when I build up a certain amount in my system, a cracker can drop me to the ground.

So, for a while I chose to live that way, buying gluten-free pastas and cereals, and enjoying pizza with my family once in a while. It was a good fit, but I continued to do my nutrition reading and although I had come across Paleo before, I was not yet sure what I thought about it. I knew enough by the then to understand that it was in fact a healthy lifestyle; my concerns were more or less about whether or not I could sustain such a diet long-term knowing that I live with 5 other people who will never agree to such a diet (my husband, two sons, and two step-daughters). I could maybe get my two boys on such a diet, but their father is a marathon runner, and of course carbs are the holy grail of life for him. He gets nervous just discussing the idea of Paleo eating with me…. ironically, he was diagnosed celiac two years ago. I chalk it up to the sickening amounts of wheat he consumed daily to feed his running habit. But, I digress.

So, at this point I was eating about 90% gluten-free but still eating other grains and partaking in wheat on rare occasions. I knew all about the effects of food on blood sugar, and already was in my own “testing” of different foods to discover which ones kept me on a roller-coaster and what foods didn’t. My next experiment involved a very low-carb diet which included no grains and no fruit. It was essentially Atkins, but my own take on it. Two new things came of this. First, I discovered that going without grains made me feel amazing (I’ll expand on this another time). Second, while these types of diets claim to be really healthy because of the lack of effect on blood sugar, it felt wrong to me because a super healthy food group, provided 100% by mother nature was completely forbidden (I’m talking about fruit of course). I just can’t see giving up something that is so whole, so unadulterated on the idea that it’s bad for you. Mother nature provides food for us for a reason, and I’m biased because I love fruit.

After the low-carb experiment I went back to my research, and at some point it occurred to me that the Paleo Diet is basically a diet that includes all the things I believe I need to be healthy (including fruit!), but without the grains that clearly make me feel less than spectacular. Naturally, my next experiment was the Paleo Diet. I did it for a couple weeks and kept track of my progress on my other blog, but I ditched it soon after the experiment. The reason being was twofold: I didn’t like giving up legumes and dairy (I love chili and lattes too much) and it was difficult to not be tempted by the things my family was eating for dinner. Problem was, I had already experienced how great it felt to be Paleo, and so reverting to my previously GF eating was not doing as much for me as it had before.

The last spring, my husband moved to Florida for four months for work. I had the kids 50% of the time (and the rest of the time they were with their other parents). Since I was able to spend a good amount of time cooking for just myself, and now had 100% control over the dinners that were cooked for the family, I restarted my Paleo Diet. For four solid months I ate like a champ! I felt better than I have ever felt in my life and couldn’t imaging ever going back. But I did. In September when he came back home, our days and dinners were filled with foods he had missed, dinners out to our favorite places that neither of us had been to in a long time, and dinner parties to see old and new friends. My diet went from amazing to bottom-of-the-rung bad. I will spare you the details, but suffice to say I went from feeling pretty good about my health and my body (as I had lost many inches) to seeing my weight sky-rocket and feeling crappy again every morning.  It wasn’t even a conscious decision; it was “I’ll have this one nice treat with him since he’s home” choice that snowballed into a series of horrible decisions. I felt awful. I was disappointed in myself. I had to buy new jeans… that was the low point.

I managed to live in that horrible situation for a few months before coming full circle and realizing that I had to pull myself out of the food gutter I was in and get back to a Primal Lifestyle. I’ve since been sticking with it, and am committed enough to belong to a couple Paleo/Primal Meet-up groups, and to start this blog, since my other blog is not really the right venue to ramble about things like this.

My story is really to tell you all a couple things. One, I have been full-circle through the plethora of food lifestyles that are out there. I’ve read them all, I’ve tried them all, I’ve experienced firsthand the effects of different ways of eating. Because of that, I have many things to share here about my experiments, and the reason I have finally chosen to live Primal. The second was to remind everyone out there who is going through similar trials and tribulations that we all go through it; we’ve all eaten things that have made us feel awful. It’s part of the learning process. No matter how many times you’ve gone astray from what makes you feel great, you can always come back to it. It’s never to late to commit and dedicate yourself to a way of life! And this doesn’t apply only to food. This rule holds true in all areas- career, relationships, goals, and dreams.

I am fully committed to my Primal ways now; I do subscribe to Mark’s Daily Apple prescription of the 80-20 rule (although I would say I’m more like 88-12!!!!!) I hope to continue blogging here about my diet, my lifestyle choices, my reading/researching, and any and all experimentation I do through my journey.