Sometimes you stumble across something that has such a profound effect on the way you think that you can’t work out why you ever thought anything different.
This was me last December. Forty eight years old and most of those years spent dieting. Don’t get me wrong, I was very good at dieting. I had lost ‘several people’ in weight over the years. I was put on my first diet at the age of 10 by my well meaning Mum and spent the next 38 years in mortal combat with my adversary – Food.
Trouble is you CANNOT fight food, any more than you can fight water. I was bound to lose because I didn’t even know the rules of the game. I was given the wrong set of instructions and some of the really important pieces were missing.
The web page I stumbled across was Mark’s Daily Apple. It describes a lifestyle that was based on human’s pre-farming existence and the close correlation between our evolutionary pathway and our available food. How modern carbohydrates and oils produced in farming had taken our sophisticated and balanced hormonal systems and whacked them over the head until they were confused, belligerent and down-right annoyed at us. So they hit us back with autoimmune diseases, inflammations, bad sleep patterns, stressed digestive systems and FAT!
This was the start of a very intense period for me. I felt angry, cheated and pissed off at every ‘Nutritional Expert’ that had every walked through my life, taken my money and hope and leaving bad information in their wake. ” Eat whole grains. Eat less meat. Low fat or no-fat. You fail because you are weak. If you had more will power you would be thin like me.”
I also felt angry at myself for being so ignorant. I had never asked how people get fat. I assumed I ate too much. I didn’t understand how energy works in the body, or how insulin works or how leptin works. Do you? Are you fat and ignorant too? A really good explanation can be found here.
We were running up to Christmas and I recognised adopting this lifestyle was going to be a major change and one that I would wait until the New Year to start the transition.
January 2nd 2012 was P-day. I started a 30 day challenge at 343lb. I would not weigh myself again until the finish of the challenge. I gave up sugar, grains and dairy cold turkey. I didn’t exercise and I felt rubbish for 3 weeks; headaches, low energy and grumpy – not quite the outcome I expected. Before I panicked, I did some more research and understood that what I was experiencing was ‘carb-flu’.
Finally, the light dawned and the feeling of wellness that I had been expecting kicked in. I was happy, sleeping well and most importantly, not feeling hungry at all. I balanced my macro nutrients aiming for a target of around 100g a day for protein, carbohydrates and fat. I ate organic when I could, concentrated on good fats and cut out the bad guys. By day 30, my weight was 326lb, a weight loss of 17lbs.
To keep to the righteous path, I promised myself one day a month of eating anything I fancied. Day 31 saw my visit Mr Pizza, Mrs Chocolate and Master Baked Goods. The plan was that I would start my next 30 days stint the following day. The cheat day was a massive insight as to how carbohydrates react in the body. I was hot, sweaty and had a terrible night sleep. The following day I felt like I had a hangover. It was not good.
So now I am my second thirty days, seven days away from my next weigh-in. I have also been taking my measurements too. So far 3 inches off my hips and 2 inches off my waist.
So you can appreciate I am a bit evangelical about this way of eating. But primal / paleo is also about being functionally fit and strong, and that is where my next challenge lies. You are welcome to join me.
Primal Donna 