My Parents Have Been Right This Whole Time!
It’s Friday, everyone! And that means another Primal Blueprint Real Life Story from a Mark’s Daily Apple reader. If you have your own success story and would like to share it with me and the Mark’s Daily Apple community please contact me here. I’ll continue to publish these each Friday as long as they keep coming in. Thank you for reading!
Hi Mark,
First of all, thank you for ALL that you do. This lifestyle has truly changed my life – I am forever grateful!
I started Primal/paleo the day after Thanksgiving 2010. I have since lost 45 lbs. and feel better than I’ve ever felt in my life.
I grew up in a home where we ate pretty “healthy”. We didn’t go to fast food restaurants every day, we ate normal portions, and ate our fruits and veggies. When I hit my early teens, my parents started following The Zone diet, which then led to a mostly paleo lifestyle, which they continue to this day.
I went quite a different route.
I started using the money I earned from allowance or a job on food. Fast food, ice cream, candy, cakes – if it was horrible for you, I ate it. I couldn’t get enough! This is how I chose to deal with things emotionally. I continued this way through junior high, high school, when I graduated and got a full time job. I was constantly on the newest diet plan – would lose a little weight, still feel awful, then give up and gain all of the weight back, plus more.
By the time I started working full time, I had developed asthma, food allergies to corn, soy and every outside allergy known to man, AWFUL aches and pains, had symptoms of anxiety and depression, and was sick (or felt sick) almost every single day. I would dread waking up in the morning, because I knew how bad I would feel. I thought to myself, “I’m never going to heal”.
I went to multiple doctors, tried multiple medications to ease my pain – nothing ever worked. It just went downhill from there.
As my parents (pictured right) sat and watched me go through this painful experience, they would tell me over and over – “you need to change the way you eat”. I completely ignored them, of course, arguing that the “medication will eventually work”, or “this diet will eventually work, just wait”. Or I would act completely offended and say, “What?! You think I’m fat?! How could you say that?!”, slam the door and grab a meal with a huge diet coke at my favorite fast food restaurant.
Years pass, all of my symptoms worsening, and still trying to ease my pain with food, diet coke, medication and diets. Around this time last year, I had just started Quick Weight Loss Center, which created a completely new set of weird health problems (heart palpitations, my fingernails and toenails thin as paper and more). A few weeks into the QWL diet, I was up to 170 lbs at 5’2″. When I stepped on the scale and read that number, I burst into tears. This was the heaviest I’d ever been.
I finally decided to do something about it.
I went straight to my parents, asked then how they eat and exercise and where/who they get their information from – I quickly picked up “The New Evolution Diet” by Art De Vany, went to MarksDailyApple.com, read every entry, bought one of your cookbooks and the rest is history. (BTW, my parents are both now in their 50′s and look/feel absolutely incredible. They’ve been right this whole time?! Impossible! 
)
I can’t believe how amazing I feel 45 lbs lighter (and still going), NO asthma, NO aches and pains, NO medication, NO stomach pains, NO illnesses, barely ANY outside allergies, I actually LIKE exercising – did I mention I can actually wear really cute clothes?! I tell everyone I can about how life-changing this really is. I can finally live! Finally!
Thanks so much for your time – my husband and I are doing the 30 day challenge and are loving it, of course! Again, thank you for all that you do!
Lindsey
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Posted By: Mark Sisson
Lindsey, that is awesome. It is so good to actually feel good. Yay for you!
Great job, Lindsey, you look (and sound) wonderful! What’s more amazing to you, your personal transformation… or the fact that your parents were actually right? LOL, sometimes they do know what they’re talking about!
Keep up the great work.
Awesome transformation, congratulations! I never get tired of reading these stories
Lindsey, your story and success is inspiring! Congratulations!
Nothing more beautiful that parents teachings their kids healthy habits. Kudos
Congratulations Lindsey! Thanks for sharing your story, and I hope you enjoy a long life of health and happiness.
Congrats. Bummer about your parents being right all along…!
Awesome story, Lindsey!
congrats Lindsey! you look beautiful.
isn’t it amazing how with the right diet all of your former illnesses go away?
I wish my parents would’ve been right my whole life, I would’ve not suffered for 30 years of my life like I did.
My parents thought corn oil, fruits out of cans and whole grains are heart healthy…
You’re so lucky to have parents like you do. Big congrats on your success!
Keep this up for the rest of your life and you won’t be another statistic
I hear you. I’m a celiac and my dad is still trying to feed me bread. I thought I hated veggies because the only ones we ever ate were out of a can. Yuck! At least it is fun as an adult to try these foods and realize I actually like them.
Congrats also to Lindsey! Great story!
My grandmother sent my husband, daughter and I a care package today full of chocolate (some of it containing corn syrup and partially hydrogenated oils, and some decent) and, inexplicably, a package of “cheese” sandwich crackers. None of the ingredients were cheese, but the first one was enriched wheat flour. I called and thanked her for the package (“O good, was there any of it that you can eat?”) and asked, out of curiosity, why she had included the crackers. “Because they were on sale and I thought you might like them. They have cheese in them.” I then asked if she knew what crackers were made out of. “No.” FLOUR, Grandma! “They are? I didn’t think of that.” She gets the concept of us not eating flour, but she thinks of flour as the thing in bread — she fails to understand that it’s in other baked goods too…and pasta…
Erin, I know exactly what you mean! I seem to get two types of comments, either “oh, so you just can’t eat bread?” or on the other end of the spectrum “is there anything you CAN eat?” I think people have become frustrated and skeptical of all types of “diets” and are pretty sure that nothing will ever make a difference. Have Celiac? Just eat the gluten-free pizza crust and shop in the gluten-free section. Follow Primal/paleo? Eat only meat, rare, and spinach smoothies. LOL! All the more reason to keep up the good fight!
I at least give Erin’s grandmother points for trying. Old habits die VERY hard. And how can you send primal in a box. Gift cards to Whole Foods? Whey Powder? Primal Fuel?
O, I definitely give her points for trying, but I found the whole conversation a bit amusing. CW FTW!
Lindsay you are gorgeous! Congratulations on your success
I’m a little jealous of having a whole family of cavemen though; I’ve got a vegan mum, a CW-entrenched, carb-glorifying gran and a bread-gives-me-wings dad. Though, I must say, I’m grateful to my parents at least being a lot healthier than the standard white-bread-with-mystery-meat-sausage diet..they always gave me veggies and fruit with everything and everything was home-cooked. But I would love to go hiking with someone from my couch potato family. ah, alas.
Hah! I love that – “bread-gives-me-wings dad.” I know a few of those.
Agreed – how wonderful to have a whole family of cavemen! Having you on board with their healthy lifestyle can only strengthen your bond as a family.
My father has just been diagnosed with a severe vitamin B-12 deficiency (more serious and harder to cure than it sounds) after 3+ decades as a fanatical vegan.
I’m still struggling with the guilt of eating meat, even though I know I physically feel 100% better.
One thing I AM eternally grateful for is that my parents taught me to respect the origin and quality of my food.
Congratulations Lindsey! I respect your integrity in admitting that you were wrong for many years.
When we are humble and brave enough to question our deepest beliefs, anything is possible. That applies to life after primal just as much as it does to life before.
Lindsay you are gorgeous! Congratulations on your success I’m a little jealous of having a whole family of cavemen though; I’ve got a vegan mum, a CW-entrenched, carb-glorifying gran and a bread-gives-me-wings dad. Though, I must say, I’m grateful to my parents at least being a lot healthier than the standard white-bread-with-mystery-meat-sausage diet..they always gave me veggies and fruit with everything and everything was home-cooked. But I would love to go hiking with someone from my couch potato family. ah, alas.
Inspiring! You look AMAZING! Keep it up, girl! You’re GLOWING!
Lindsay, you are looking great! And if you continue to look (and eat) like your parents, you will look as fabulous as your mom 20 years from now — and beyond.
Congratulations, you look amazing! And so do you parents, wow! And I now feel amazing is the best part of it all!
We struggle with similar issues as both my husband and I are Type 2 Diabetics. We want to save our kids from heading down the same awful path by teaching them to eat healthy at young ages.
Unfortunately my in laws aggressively try to derail our efforts for fear that we might induce eating disorders in our kids. I respect their concerns but I do think there’s a big difference in focusing on healthy eating vs. focusing on what one’s body looks like…and the fear of Type 2 in our kids given our own genetics is top of mind for us as parents….
Having been in odd positions with in-laws, I can really appreciate this. If you haven’t, you may want to sit down with them and firmly ask that they respect your wishes and trust you to be good parents. (It may have never occurred to them that they are displaying a basic distrust in your parenting skills in their want to do “what’s best” for the kids.) Of course, that may not work at all.
And as Lindsey story shows, ultimately children grow up to make their own decisions on diet. You do your best to educate, but ultimately their lives become their own. The day that Lindsey came back and asked for help must have been a joyful day indeed for her parents.
Way to go! Looking better is great, but feeling better will always be my favorite result of going primal.
This both pleases me, and pains me.
I have three teens, who look at me like I’m insane for how I eat. I’m praying for a time when they might see why I’m doing it (primal) and maybe acknowledge (like you did) that I might be right. Until then, I just sit back and watch their aches and pains get worse and worse.
Very inspirational story. You look amazing.
I love it! And, I love seeing beautiful women transform their lives – it is an inspiration.
Lindsey, you look great girl. Congrats and keep up the good work. You own it for yourself now and not just because someone pushed it on you. That is as it should be.
you look great! congrats!
Congratulations Lidsey! Very inspiring, and the results you achived are amazing. My allergies also improved on the primal diet. Alot actually. I no longer have allergies to dust, which was my most severe allergy.
Lindsey*
My sister has been diagnosed with dust allergies, she has hives (which she never had as a child), and high blood pressure (on meds) at age 35.
She has also been eating Weight Watchers food since her early 20′s. I know the connection because I’ve been low carb/extremely low gluten since turning 30 and my childhood allergies have pretty well disappeared.
But like Lindsay, she doesn’t want to hear it. (I can’t tell you how glad I am she was able to overcome her resistance!) I’ve stopped even trying to hint that my sister’s diet could be the root of her problems.
Inspiring! Thanks for sharing. I just started reading the website and plan on getting the book this weekend. I appreciate the fact that you also give your parents a lot of credit for teaching you a healthy lifestyle that you are applying. Sending wishes for continued success.
Congratulations Lindsey! You look great and what’s most important, you FEEL great! Wonderful story. Grok on!
And the success parade continues. I never get tired of reading these success stories. Congratulations, Lindsey. You look amazing and all of us can imagine how much better you must FEEL! Keep it up!
Thank you for sharing your story. I’ve just started going Primal and am in info gathering mode. It all makes common sense to me and I’m looking forward to some awesome changes. Just got rid of my wheat-withdrawal headaches so on my way.
Congrats again!
Thank you for sharing your success Lindsey! You are an inspiration. Bravo to good health. It goes hand in hand with primal living.
Your parents look absolutely radiant…both of them! What great examples they’ve set for you and, maybe, for someone reading this contemplating the Primal lifestyle. I love success-story Fridays!!!
Congrats!! I know I feel sooo much better and my immune disease/allergy issues are controlled when I’m paleo/primal. Trying really hard to get the parents on board. Mom has decided she wants to. Dad is the hard sell.
Way to go Lindsey! Thanks for sharing your story – it’s wonderful to hear that a primal approach has been so effective for you.
You – AND your parents – look great! I love it that the old dogs still had something up their sleeves to “teach” you.
Keep it up!