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!
It has been an ongoing struggle to “find the time” to write this letter. As Mother’s Day has recently passed and Father’s Day is approaching, I think the time is NOW!
My name is Cailey and I am soon-to-be 31 years old. I am a wife, a mother of two daughters, and a speech-language pathologist at an acute care hospital. Our journey began 5 years ago when my fabulous, 60-something, mother-in-law introduced me and my husband to the book, “Good Calories, Bad Calories,” by Gary Taubes. Our initial reaction was wariness and disbelief. My husband and I have always been relatively healthy children and young adults; however, by the time we married in 2007 conventional wisdom had led to a 30 lb and 5 lb, respectively, weight gain from when we met in 2002. My husband’s weight gain was gradual, evenly distributed, and no one really noticed. In private I would lovingly joke “baby got back.”
Read MoreIt’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!
I grew up as an overweight child and teenager. It wasn’t that I ate particularly badly, it was that I absolutely hated sport. Growing up in the 80s, I really thought that exercise was synonymous with ball sports. As I was essentially scared of the ball, I didn’t want to kick, throw or catch it, and so I didn’t want to exercise. I had no idea that doing a martial arts or boxing class (which didn’t involve balls), participating in Zumba or even going for a simple walk could be exercise and could be fun.
So I was basically inactive and fed the standard Australian diet of lots of healthy whole grains. As I was overweight my parents did all that they could to keep anything “fattening” away from me, and fed me as many “diet” and “fat free” products that they could find. I was eating a diet that consisted mainly of artificial sweeteners, no fat yogurt, diet coke and all bran.
Read MoreIt’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!
Dear Mark,
I have been completely Primal for just over a year, and working towards that for almost three years. It has changed my life from feeling like I was living in an unlit and windowless room, to really participating in life and finding fulfillment. It’s been that dramatic.
I was an active, healthy kid with a good diet until I was twelve. My home life became very unstable. I was moved around a lot, and lived with several different relatives and attended different schools. It was hard on me. I was a very introverted kid to begin with, and I didn’t make friends. I read books and did homework and ate. I quickly became very sedentary, and very sad, and I had access to a lot of processed, sugary foods that my mother had never kept in my childhood home. I was given a lot of autonomy over my diet, and I quickly became addicted to these foods.
Read MoreIt’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!
Dear Mark,
I first heard about the Primal Blueprint from Slick Rick, the long haired, five fingered shoe wearing odd ball my cousin married. He had ditched grains four years before and never looked back, and was always dropping jokes about how he loved bacon. I thought he was crazy with his caveman talk and dismissed his low carb philosophy as one that didn’t fit into my modern diet.
You see, I took carb-a-holic to an extreme, consuming well past the 600 carb a day average of most Americans. I maintained a medium body size until I hit college, when I gradually began to pack on the pounds. By the time I was married at 28, I was overweight headed to obese, suffering from gastric reflux, fatigued, and unmotivated. The big blow came when my general practitioner diagnosed me with PCOS (Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome) after several unsuccessful months of trying to get pregnant with an irregular cycle. I assumed this was some genetic curse (after all, that’s what every doctor I talked to told me) and started down the path of Metformin and fertility drugs. I felt miserable, the meds made me crazy, and I got fatter on my SAD. After two years of failure, we took a break. I hated the way I looked and felt now 60+ pounds overweight and still without a baby. I joined a gym and hired a personal trainer determined to at least feel good about my body. Following six months of cardio four days a week, light weight training, and a restricted diet of healthy whole grains and low fat tasteless foods, I had a pathetic 15 pound weight loss, raging appetite, and shin splints to show for it. By this time my husband and I had decided to adopt, and brought home our little boy in October of 2009. I had a renewed “healthy” outlook and was determined to feed our growing family the best balanced nutrition I knew. We had the food pyramid down pat. Our diet was filled with whole grains, lean meats, and processed carbs and over the next two years I continued to gradually gain another 20 pounds.
Read MoreIt’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!
Mark,
I never thought I would be writing or sharing a success story. Not because I didn’t’ think there would be success, but because I am really not the sharing type. But what happened to me and my wife is important, and I want you to know. I have been telling anyone who will listen:
First, a little background. I was and still am an active person. I used to work out daily at the gym for an hour, played hockey twice a week and was an avid skier, but I was really starting to loathe my workouts. I ate well, or at least I thought I did, but I also had a sweet tooth and we had no shortage of cookies, candy and everything in-between stocked in the pantry. I would go through phases of what I would call the Atkins diet if I felt I was getting too flabby. I would cut out refined sugars, bread and pasta, but was still keen on items like Diet Coke and anything a grocery store would classify as meat. My weight and body composition fluctuated regularly.
Read MoreIt’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!
I know I sound crazy. Like, Hare Krishna, ran off and joined a cult, crazy. But this is all true, and I know it is, only because I experienced it firsthand. Am I a good example, or a horrible warning? Hopefully, if I play my cards right, I can be both.
My memories of childhood are hazy. Especially names, places, and dates. I spent a lot of time, just sort of “drifting” with the current. I remember images, and faces. And I remember being sick a lot. Not like “I HAVE THE SCARLET FEVER!” sick, but just a runny nose, and teary eyes. Since I grew up in California’s Central Valley, no biggie: seasonal allergies were legendary there. Hay fever was just assumed. The fact that it turned into sinus infections on a regular basis was just a given- right? As I got older, it would last year-round. Inevitably at the first cold snap, I would lose my voice. There was always a chalky pink bottle of amoxicillin in our fridge door, right below the milk.
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