My name is Abe Wagner. I’m 31, 6’4” and 250 lbs. I pay my bills by fighting other large men in a cage in front of a crowd. My journey to the Primal Blueprint way of life was somewhat long and round about. I was originally introduced to the paleo diet concept through Crossfit. To say my understanding of the key concepts was flawed and incomplete would be an understatement. In retrospect, I was on what is commonly called the “fail-eo diet”. I was still trying to “stay low fat”…you know, for the health of my heart. Wow, I couldn’t have been more off! I was also getting the majority of the fat I was eating from nuts (read Omega-6). Needless to say it didn’t work out too well, and while my body composition had improved, I felt like crap all the time and had no energy, which eventually led me to declaring that the way of eating didn’t work.

A few months later, in December of 2010, I happened upon Mark’s Daily Apple and began reading. I decided to try that way of eating out again, but this time with a better understanding of how the Primal way of eating works and the roles and effects that different foods have. I have been eating this way since then, so I guess about 10 months. The results have been incredible!

From a health standpoint, for years I struggled with respiratory issues. I would literally spend the first half hour of every day producing mucus from my chest and have to stop between rounds of MMA training to spit crap out. I had tried everything: allergy medication, allergy shots, heart burn medication, acupuncture and homeopathic treatments. I had been to pulmonary specialists that could slightly improve the symptoms, but never give me 100% relief. I would be on antibiotics to clear up whatever infection there was in my chest and I would improve, but not get all the way better. And so I was literally on antibiotics every other month for 7-8 years. That’s no way to live. Now, knowing the role Omega-6 plays in inflammation on a cellular level, and given that I haven’t had any chest/mucus issues since switching to the Primal way of eating, it’s not surprising that my chest was chronically inflamed and always making mucus. I notice on days that I make exceptions to my diet (like maybe eating something fried in vegetable oil), the issues start to return and that’s all it takes to remind me that this is how I need to eat for the rest of my life. So Primal eating has literally kept me from having these chest issues for almost a year now. Mark’s analogy of “digging a hole so you can put a ladder in it to climb up to wash the basement window” really hits home for me when I think about all the medical treatment I received for the problem when all I had to do was stop eating processed vegetable oil.

Also, I had a case of eczema on my face that I had to use a prescription cream on twice a day to prevent it from getting all red and flaky. The active ingredient in said cream is an anti-inflammatory steroid. Again not surprisingly, this problem has cleared up now that I’m managing my inflammation on a cellular level by improving my O3/O6 ratio.

All that being said, where the rubber meets the road for me is athletic performance, after all its how I pay my bills. The better breathing from not being congested all the time went a long way to start with, but it’s my energy levels and recovery that have really benefited from a Primal Blueprint diet. My endurance and explosiveness are measurably improved. After a two hour training session, my first thought used to be “if I don’t eat in the next 10 minutes, I might die.” Now I feel pretty much like I did at the start of the work out except sweaty. My body has been converted to powering itself off of fat (and I always have access to the fat on my body) instead of having to carb-up every 3 hours. Unexpected bonus: when being powered on carbohydrate, your body only has energy while you’ve eaten carbohydrate. This means that while you sleep, your recovery is slowed due to lack of energy intake. Now while I sleep, my metabolic processes are still humming along on body fat and I’ve noticed my muscle recovery has shortened by about 50%. Not surprising when you consider I’ve now effectively went from recovering 16 hours a day to 24. Also, my body feels less sore and achy after a day of being banged around by other fighters. I attribute this also to management of inflammation.

My overall body composition has changed only slightly since I was in fairly good shape prior to making the change. I only lost 5 lbs of body weight, going from to 255 to 250, but I lost 4” off of my waist. Originally I didn’t know how that could even be possible, but now taking into account the inflammatory effects of grains on your stomach and intestines, it makes sense. My waist shrunk not because of fat loss, but because the chronic inflammation in my intestines was relieved and finally went down.

(After Abraham KO’d Tim Sylvia)

Something that didn’t work for me was trying to stay at a 30/30/40 ratio of macro nutrients. Getting 40% of your calories from carbohydrate is A LOT of broccoli and cauliflower when you are as big as I am and eat as much as I do. I was much more successful once I shifted more to about 65/30/15 and started consuming much more fat.

I know a lot of people try this diet out for weight loss purposes and that’s fine and good, but I eat this way because it makes me feel better. It lets me perform better. I hate that it’s a given in our society that to eat “healthy” your food has to taste bad and that to lose weight, you had to be hungry all the time. I eat nothing but delicious real food, lots of it, 6000 calories a day (give or take, since I don’t really count all that much anymore). I never really feel that super-hungry feeling that I used to. I don’t fade at the end of workouts the way I used to. And I can breathe normally for the first time in years. The Primal Blueprint has been a big part of all of that.

Thank you,

Abraham Wagner

(Full disclosure: Abraham’s story goes to show that anyone, including elite athletes, can benefit from going Primal. After Abraham sent in his success story I offered to sponsor him with the Primal Blueprint Platinum Package. In exchange he’s going to help me spread the word to the MMA community.)

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