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I've been eating this way since January 2012, I will not be going back to eating CW'S ways anytime soon. Food was always a problem for me, it made me not feel right until I started eating primally.....now all the joint pains are gone, have a boat load of engery, no more blood pressure meds, pre type 2 diabetes is gone.
This is a lifestyle which is extremely easy to follow and I will continue for life.
Hey, Primal Papa, what I did before I tried this diet was I did a search for stories of failure. On this forum you are mostly going to get stories of success because the failures will just drop off. But even so, there are a few threads I can remember where people claimed this diet failed them and they are interesting to read mostly because those people either had unrealistic weight loss expectations or didn't actually follow this diet or both.
I started in the fall of 2010 but didn't get really serious about it until around February 2011. I've seen amazing changes in my body and my overall health, and my partner has seen improved body composition and got rid of the joint pain that he had been attributing to too many years of aggressive sports (rugby, martial arts, etc.) and hard physical work. We look and feel like we're in our 20s, despite him turning 40 this year.
To encourage you, a few years ago at about 28 years old I had high cholesterol. I'm now 35 with lab results that make my doctor comment on how healthy my lifestyle must be--great cholesterol and blood sugars, low markers of inflammation, etc. I attribute that mostly to primal living, not just the food but the overall lifestyle. I bet you'll be pleasantly surprised when you see your results as long as you commit to living primal, not just eating that way. The activity, sleep, and other elements are key elements to getting healthy, and just eating 80% without the other stuff won't do it.
I went primal in March 2010, shortly after my 25th birthday and 5 months after my wedding. So, <quick calculation> 2 years, 7 months. I can't say I've been true and steady the whole way, but I've tried most of the time. I also know, unless science proves there's a better diet out there for me conclusively, I'll stick with primal for the rest of my life. It cured my depression, got my thyroid under better control, allowed me to lose some vanity weight, and all around changed my life for the better.
As to your blood markers, when you get them, I suggest Griff's cholesterol primer. That'll help point you in the right direction about cholesterol levels.
It's been almost a year for me, and I don't see how I lived before this, and I'm certainly not going back. Even though I had lost 130 lbs. with a gastric bypass 7 years ago (and then gained some back) my health wasn't what it should be--lots of gut issues, aches, eczema, reactive hypoglycemia, etc. Within a month of going Primal, I was shocked to realize how crappy my life had been before. I no longer carry around a trial-sized bottle of Febreze with me in case I accidentally let loose a room-clearing fart. It doesn't snow dead skin whenever I take off my clothes. I no longer need to wear a medical alert bracelet in case my blood sugar tanks and I start going incoherent in public. So on, and so forth. The weight loss with Primal has been slow, but I definitely get my 20% and haven't been watching my carbs as strictly as I should for optimal weight loss.
I'm no saint, and have had some bad weekends lately. I just have to remember that grains/legumes/carbs/sugar will chain me to the blood sugar rollercoaster, and then I'll spend the entire next day chained to the toilet and the rest of the week hoping the rash will clear up and the bloating will subside enough to get back into my jeans. Even my husband is noticing that after a week of being good (eating what I cook and taking leftovers for lunch), pizza on the weekend does the same thing to him now.
Your bloodwork might look worse initially, personally I don't know if I'd use that as a benchmark, at least not after just a few months.
Owly, the sleep is the big issue. I have frequent insomnia, and even when I don't, between kids getting up for school, wife heading out to work, and two dogs, well, sleep is not easy to get in big amounts. I worked 19 years on the 3Pm - 11PM shift, and I was going to bed at 2 - 3AM... I haven't had that job in 3 years, and I still can't usually fall asleep until that time.... and the house gets up at 6AM....
I changed my way of eating in May 2012. I don't plan on ever going back, why would I? It's not so much the weight loss, but the swelling/inflammation that has gone down is quite remarkable. I put that down to grains! My migraines haven't gone away but they are more manageable, and i always get one if i stray off the primal path. I struggled with my weight for 6 years and conventional dieting such as weightwatchers/calorie restriction just didn't work for me. It's amazing to find something that works so well!
Some days i just want to come on here and start a thread and just shout out about how amazing this way of life is.
Just over 9 months- the only New Years resolution I've ever truly kept. :)
And yes, it's for life. I've never felt so amazing and it has effected EVERYTHING in my life for the better.
I've been primal for, I don't know, three, four months? It's for life. I've lost 30 pounds on primal and I feel so much better. It wasn't that I felt BAD before, but... I'd feel the need to occasionally take a day off work to just recharge. Sort of a mental health day, or maybe a "I just feel BLAH day." I don't feel that need anymore.
[QUOTE=Primal Papa;973068]I just finished my 1st 2 weeks. I have committed myself until I get teh results of my physical and blood work in January. If all goes well, I will stay on it. If the results are bad, then I can't see me staying on it past then.[/QUOTE]
I don't really get this. Are you not enjoying the changes you've made? If that's the case, maybe you've jumped in too fast, or bought into a definition of primal that's too restrictive. There's a lot of primal as religion in this forum and it can be overwhelming to someone who's finding their way.
I found MDA in June, maybe? I'm not sure - I followed a link for a recipe from the LoseIt forums. I had already decided that grains were a huge calorie-sucker for me and was happy to find yummy dinners that made grains irrelevant. Then I started looking for pastured meat, eggs and milk. I think it was August before DH and I drove an hour to see what we could pick up from a "local" farm. Just last week I discovered a farm not 5 miles from us that started offering CSA subscriptions last fall. We're gonna do that to supplement the 2 little raised beds we just put in. I don't think I've ever said the word "primal" to DH, but he likes what I've been cooking and he likes the idea of buying food from real farmers who live near us. We have not had a store-bought bakery treat in the house in months and nobody seems to care. DH and the kids are not really primal. They still have grains if they want. But on the whole, their food is much less processed than it was before. I see a steady drift toward an increasingly primal way of life for us.
I will say, I haven't bought into the high fat/low carb version of primal, really. Obviously, if you dramatically cut back on processed foods, your carbs will drop, but I don't stress over fruits or starchy vegetables. I still put 2% milk in my coffee, cause that's the way I like it. Once I get down to my goal weight, maybe I'll push my macros in one direction or another to try to push my body composition. I'm not worrying about that until I get there. I'll get some blood work done then too, but if I'm worried about the results, I'll be tweaking my ratios, not throwing the baby out with the bath water.
Yeah, I'm really liking where my drift into primal has gotten me and I don't see giving it up completely - ever.