Everyday Paleo (2 page)

What Is Paleo?

E
ating Paleo is an easy concept: We should eat as our ancestors once did, we should eat based on how we are genetically wired to eat, and we should eat foods that are not processed, modified, or tampered with in any way, shape, or form. It is not a “fad” diet or the latest trend in Hollywood. It’s how our bodies are meant to be fueled.

There is an obvious problem with the standard American diet. It has made the majority of our society sick, fat, out of shape, and unhappy. It has disabled our children and changed everything about who we are and what we are capable of doing. This diet needs to change, and not in the form of counting calories, measuring and weighing, or reducing the crappy foods we eat. We need to eliminate the crappy foods. We need to eat that which heals the body and supports the immune system, musculoskeletal system, cardiovascular system, brain function, and all major organs. This is what the paleo diet accomplishes. In a nutshell, it’s a food prescription for life.

I know what you are probably thinking:
That sounds fine and dandy, but what foods can I eat on the paleo diet?
Well, you can eat meat, seafood, eggs, vegetables, healthy fats (nuts, seeds, olive oil, coconut oil, avocado), and fruit. Why these foods? Because they are the foods that our Paleolithic ancestors consumed, the foods that we are genetically wired to consume. What type of person did our ancestral diet produce? Our hunter/ gatherer predecessors had lean, agile, and athletic bodies with no recognizable signs of the modern-day illnesses that currently plague us. Not bad perks, am I right?

Anything that I did not list above should be eliminated—meaning all processed foods, dairy, legumes, any form of sugar, and grains! Grains you ask? Grains might be the biggest part of our food pyramid, but they are also scientifically proven to be the biggest problem with the standard American diet. Grains are gut irritants, especially grains containing gluten such as wheat, barley, and rye. When our gut lining gets irritated, we are unable to properly digest our food, which leads to inflammation in our bodies. Inflammation is the source of a host of different health problems. If that isn’t enough of a deterrent, eating processed foods screws with our hormone levels, and our hormones control and manage just about everything important in our bodies. For example, a diet high in grains and sugars causes spikes in insulin levels, and messing with insulin levels is the precursor to one of humankind’s worst and ever-growing enemies: diabetes. When your hormone levels go bonkers, you risk all sorts of health problems, from various forms of cancers to autoimmune disease. So, in a nutshell, eating paleo is eating unprocessed foods that were eaten by our ancestors long before the introduction of agriculture.

I am not a scientist, but a realist, and what was more convincing for me than any research or scientific data was my own experiment with eating paleo. I urge you to simply try eating paleo for thirty days. What’s the worst that can happen? If you do not have any positive changes due to eating this way, you can simply go back to your old ways and trash my book. But if you are like me and thousands of others who have given the paleo diet a shot, the lifestyle changes presented in this book will make you happier and healthier than you ever thought possible.

It is important to note that my intention with this book is to help you and your family successfully make the transition to a paleo lifestyle. Walking up and down the aisles of a grocery store, reading the ingredient labels, and trying to decipher what you can and cannot eat, can leave you with a terrible lost feeling. Standing in your kitchen in front of an empty pan, wondering how you can combine whole foods into a delicious meal can make you more than a little frustrated. Squatting in your living room in your sweats, wondering what exercises you should do and how to perform them correctly can make you confused. And wondering how to lead your family into this new charge toward a healthier life can make you feel downright angry. My goal with this book is to offer you a roadmap to eliminate that lost feeling, frustration, confusion, and anger. My goal is to help you and your family turn over that new leaf so you don’t abandon the most important thing in your life—your health and longevity.

If you need to know the science behind the paleo diet before giving it a shot, I recommend that you pick up a copy of Robb Wolf’s book,
The Paleo Solution
, as well as follow his life-changing blog and podcasts, which can be found here:
www.robbwolf.com
.

My Life
before Paleo

I
was born into a family of health nuts. My grandparents were doing yoga in slinky outfits way before it was cool, and grandma was putting bone meal in my oatmeal cookies, which never became cool. For their generation, this behavior was considered baffling, new age, and wacky. The “wackiness” continued as my grandparents’ fixation on good health transferred on down to my mother, and needless to say I ended up being the only child in first grade who brought for lunch a whole wheat tortilla smeared with tahini and topped with organic sprouts and heirloom tomatoes.

A large part of my childhood centered on the healthy concoctions that my mom was constantly creating in the kitchen, and I was always one of her unassuming “come on and try this” guinea pigs. However, as strange as our food often was, my mom always included us in her culinary adventures. One of my earliest and fondest memories is of my mom hoisting me up into her arms, plopping me on the counter, and handing me her favorite wooden spoon so that I could help her stir. At a very early age, my mom instilled in me a lifelong love and curiosity for health and a genuine appreciation for food, fun, and family. I have never been afraid to try new foods or to create new dishes. My mom gave me an invaluable gift, and for this I am eternally grateful.

Besides the fun we had together creating crazy cuisine, what my health food–induced childhood led to was the lingering need for a greater understanding. I realized the importance of knowing where one’s food comes from, that what you see on TV is not always good for you, and eventually this lesson: even when you think you are doing everything you can to be healthy, it does not make you invincible.

Although “living healthy” was always a part of my life, I went through several years of going bananas experimenting with every kind of food and diet imaginable, but thanks to my mother’s influence, I always preferred food that was fresh, close to its source, and what I considered natural.

After leaving the nest and encountering a few years of being young and silly, I settled down like most of us do, got married, had some babies, and landed somewhere in the middle of what I assumed to be “healthy.” I ate whole grains, lots of veggies, some meat now and then, loads of dairy for calcium, and pretty much cruised along through life.

Despite my supposed health-conscious ways, I had weird stuff happening: chronic swelling in my legs during my pregnancy, and after the birth of my second child, weight gain that no matter what I did would never entirely go away. I was also suffering from a constant gassy, bloated feeling after eating, headaches, some mild depression now and then, acne, and chronic yeast infections. I still have a poignant memory of being only three months pregnant with my second child and having my father-in-law ask me if my ankles were already swelling or if they were just fat. His exact words, “Sarah, do you have cankles?” Awesome!

My health problems were not fun to deal with, but I perceived these nuisances to be minor afflictions that were a normal part of life. I probably would have continued to trot along this way, but life decided to deal one of its shocking blows. In the beautiful and what seemed hopeful spring of 2005, I lost my beloved mother to breast cancer. It was unexplainable, overwhelming, and undeniably the most confusing time in my life. My mother never drank, never smoked, ate only organic foods, tons of whole grains—even grinding her own wheat into four-and yet she died right in front of our eyes with no real explanation as to why, except for cancer does not care.

One month after my mom’s death I dragged my defeated and saddened self to the local Relay for Life, which was my mom’s favorite fundraiser and the event that she had hoped to attend one last time. I marched relentlessly and with purpose around the track, pushing my eighteen-month-old baby boy in his stroller and holding the brave little hand of my nine-year-old son, looking around into people’s faces for some sort of answer. Well, I found one. I practically fell over a man doing a handstand on parallel bars made of PVC pipe and a woman easily tossing a twenty-pound medicine ball into the air.

Fascinated, I stopped to ask what the heck they were doing, and Robb Wolf introduced himself to me along with his girlfriend, Nicki Violetti. My husband had just opened his chiropractic business and, as we chatted, Robb mentioned that he and Nicki had just opened a fitness facility based on full functional movement and high-intensity training, which is why they had their strange equipment out at Relay for Life. During our conversation, Robb mentioned that they happened to be looking for a chiropractor to refer their clients to. Excited about the possibility of networking with these interesting folks, we made a date for breakfast.

As the months went by and our relationship with Robb and Nicki grew, my husband, John, and I began to train at their gym, and they taught us about eating paleo and the health benefits associated with this lifestyle. Although I loved Robb and Nicki and valued our relationship, I was still in such a rough place emotionally that I simply could not see the gift that was being given to me. The answer to true health and wellness was in my lap, but I missed my mom terribly and I was living in a haze of grief. Instead of dealing with it, I gave all I had of myself to everyone and everything else around, resulting with nothing left for me. I worked out sporadically at Robb and Nicki’s gym and ate a “normal healthy diet,” which helped in no way but to up the scale a few more pounds. I soon found out that I was pregnant with our third child, stopped my already infrequent workouts, and of course continued to bury myself in all sorts of distracting projects. After nine months of pregnancy and eating everything on the planet, I had my third little boy, looked in the mirror, and did not even recognize myself.

In the two years that had passed since I lost my mother, I had turned myself into a blubbery ball of misery: unhealthy, sad, and frustrated. I had these three amazing little boys, one incredible, dedicated, and loving husband, and yet I was just floating along through life, slapping on my smile, but in reality feeling miserable, unhealthy and alone. I had to get serious.

I was ready for a change, and I made a commitment to work out twice a week at Robb and Nicki’s gym. About a month into my consistent workouts, I felt a bit better, but I still suffered from the list of complaints I had been suffering from for years, and I hadn’t really lost any weight.

After complaining to Nicki (never a good idea by the way), she challenged me. Nicki calmly and coolly said to me, “Sarah, try eating strict paleo for thirty days; if you do not feel, perform, or look better, then go back to what you were eating before, simple as that.” Somewhere inside me, a fire was lit. The old me used to like a challenge, and I knew I could do it. I was so incredibly ready to see if I could feel “normal” again that I dove in headfirst, and at the end of those thirty days, there was no turning back.

Almost immediately after changing my diet, the chronic swelling in my legs literally disappeared (no more cankles!). I lost an easy ten pounds in the first month, no longer felt gassy or bloated, and to this day I have not had a single yeast infection. All the inflammation and discomfort that had been plaguing me for years was gone. Besides feeling better, it was as if my body just knew that what I was eating before was bad for me. I did have a couple of weeks of carb and sugar withdrawals that I’ll talk about later, but soon my body began to crave meat and veggies drowned in coconut milk, while the sight of a sandwich would almost repulse me. I had no desire to ever drift back to how I used to look and feel. Never had a diet done such amazing things for me. Everything else I had ever tried left me feeling cheated, deprived, and always hungry. It was clear to me early on that by eating paleo I was not dieting; I was
living
!

I remember clearly my “light-bulb moment.” About three weeks into my paleo challenge, I was standing in my kitchen making lunch and suddenly started crying tears of gratefulness, relief, grief, and thanks. I felt so appreciative to my precious mom, and although I had lost her, she somehow gave me the gift of meeting Robb and Nicki at that fateful Relay for Life. It was
my
Relay for Life that day, and I was given the answer I had been searching for. I had found a way to truly be healthy, to really find wellness, and I was finally at peace both physically and mentally.

After successfully wrapping up the first thirty days of my paleo challenge, I became really focused. In seven short months, I was fitter than I ever had been in my life, even before having children. I felt vibrant, alive, and invincible, and yet I continued to feed my little boys and my husband the same old crap that made me feel so awful while I sat at the same table eating my paleo meals. Something simply did not jive. Why would I feed the same foods that used to make me so unhealthy and miserable to the ones I loved the most? Why was I not sharing with my own family the joy of feeling great after every meal? The very next day I tossed the entire family onto the paleo wagon.

My husband was easy to get on board. Being a chiropractor, an athlete, and a scientist, once he took the time to research the benefits and the “whys” of eating paleo, he was willing to give it a try. Even with all of his doctor’s smarts, like any other dude, the real proof was in his ego. He always looked good, but after consistently eating paleo, he looked even better. He achieved more personal records at the gym, and although he was dang strong before eating paleo, he became unbelievably strong after tweaking his way of eating.

Feeding my two youngest boys paleo was easier than convincing my oldest son that this was the way to go, but it did happen, and it happened successfully. I will fill you in later on the secrets to getting the whole family on board, but for now I can confirm that a family eating paleo is entirely possible, and the positive changes I continue to witness in my family are well worth the initial effort.

Sarah Before Picture: February 2008

Sarah After Picture: August 2008

For example, my children’s behavior became more manageable. I am truly blessed with three amazing sons, but let’s be honest-all kids can be difficult. My middle son, who was particularly sensitive, cranky at best, and the temper tantrum king, became much more mild-mannered and gained the ability to better control his little emotions. Maybe it was the lack of insulin spikes and dives throughout his day—his little body just couldn’t handle the sugar rushes and crashes that were brought on even with his previously “healthy” diet of oatmeal breakfasts and whole wheat sandwich lunches.

The next most notable sign was the baby. During his first year of life, he literally never got sick, except for a few minor sniffles. He was just goofy, happy, and easy going, and ate whatever I put in front of him, from salmon to sweet potatoes and Brussels sprouts to spinach frittatas. He was my paleo baby guinea pig, and what a discovery I made. If you avoid introducing the foods that you do not want your little ones to eat, they will have no choice but to like the healthy foods you offer!