Dear Mark,

I have had fast, great success with the Primal lifestyle and I would like to add my story to your growing library in order to encourage others who have lost hope of ever getting that middle-age weight back off.

For most of my life, I kept myself in fairly good condition. I was a 1979 graduate of The Citadel, with military experience at Fort Bragg, so staying fit enough to achieve a top score of 300 on physical readiness evaluations came easily and naturally. I kept to the correct weight of 158 to 160 for a long time. But as the decades wore on, I lost sight of the importance of staying fit and it showed. As a writer, I had spent a lot of time in front of the computer, and it was getting difficult to sit down without unfastening the 38-inch belt on my jeans. On September 23, 2011, my family visited out-of-town relatives while I stayed home to work. At one point I got up to stretch and I saw my reflection in a mirror: fat, pear-shaped, and pasty-faced. I had known that my five-foot, nine-inch frame was getting too heavy, but I had no idea until I saw it that day. I weighed 207 pounds.

I had recently heard an interview about folks who followed a particular eating lifestyle. It wasn’t a diet. It was another way of thinking that supposedly worked without much hunger. Even better though, it was iconoclastic. Was it that macrobiotic thing, or the caveman paleo thing? I couldn’t quite remember so I did some research and landed on marksdailyapple.com. What I found impressed me in two ways. First, people were having rapid, healthy success even though they were not starving themselves. Second, the no-fat rigamarole that we’ve heard for so long appeared to be wrong in many ways.

After reading many of the success stories and viewing the before-and-after pictures, I decided that it was time to make a change. The hardest part was the first 3-5 days, as I went completely off of sugar and white flour products. The next few days after that, I began adding many of the recipes from the website. I enjoyed T-bone steaks, butter-sauteed rosemary chicken breasts and all different kinds of omelets, along with lots of creative leafy salads containing leeks and other heretofore unexplored culinary delights (not very expensive, either). Within a week I had lost almost five pounds, and I was not hungry. I think that staying busy with my writing had a lot to do with it as well, as boredom appears to lead to overeating.

Within eight weeks, I had lost twenty pounds, and my clothes started getting baggy. I had stored smaller clothes in boxes for years without much thought that I’d ever be able to wear them again. Imagine my surprise when I could get into fifty percent of them without pulling in my gut. The only problem was that they were fifteen or twenty years old, so I looked like a refugee from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. I added thirty-minute walks, five days a week. Before the weight loss I had to be careful, as the brisk walks caused my knees to swell when I was so heavy. Not only was my weight dropping, but my endurance was increasing. North Georgia is quite hilly, but I wasn’t huffing and puffing any more. I felt like the old Saturday morning roadrunner cartoons where the coyote took some muscle enhancer and grew his legs into Popeye muscles. I was booking. By the third month, which was right before Christmas, I added a bit of Airborne shuffle to the walks. For the non-military, this is a cross between a fast walk and a jog: just enough to get the heart rate up a bit without the punishing effects that full daily jogging can cause the knees. By Christmas, I had lost approximately 33 pounds and was down to 174 pounds. People were asking, “what happened to you?” All I could do was smile and say thank you, although I did tell many of them about your website. I have no idea whether any of them went there or not, but I hope so.

So here I am, only 3 1/2 months after beginning a new healthy lifestyle: slimmer, more energetic, and getting into clothes that I never knew I could wear again. The first picture is from last Christmas. The second picture is this Christmas. Another added benefit is that I have a lower food bill, since I no longer eat the chips, ice creams, cookies, and so-forth. I honestly don’t even think of food that much. It has been a challenge to change the mindset, though. I still feel an old tug sometimes when I pass a fast food place, but all I have to do is remember how fine this all feels, and the quality of life that has been added. With that in mind, it’s really not so tough to stay on the no sugar and grains wagon. An old friend of mine, who is a rock-solid 67-year-old retired Navy SEAL, says, “You can either live to eat, or you can eat to live.” The latter sounds good to me. Thanks Mark Sisson for helping this to happen. God bless you as you continue to help people live happier and more productive lives.

All the best,

George Steffner

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