My Journey to Discovering Paleo

If you’re like me, you love hearing about people finding success through the Paleo lifestyle. Every week I look forward to readings Mark Sisson's Friday Success Story and often find myself drawn to any post talking about people transforming their lives through Paleo. Whether it’s for weight loss, curing chronic pain or suppressing a disease or illness, the stories are always so inspiring. So this week I thought I would give you my story of how I found Paleo and what it's done for me.

Like many people, I was looking for a diet to help me shed a few pounds (those last 10 lbs. that seem to want to stick around) and I had tried a lot of different trends but mostly crash dieting. It seemed to be a quick fix but never lasted and the havoc I was wreaking on my body internally was not helping me in the long run. Let me start at the beginning, I was always a skinny kid, I never ate much and was a really picky eater, I was active and played different sports. I weighed in at 105-110lbs all through high school and never thought about working out or eating right, I just assumed this was how I was made. My mother is very thin and I assumed I just took after her. Then I went to college in 2002 and gained 25 lbs. in 6 months. It was like my taste buds woke up and I found myself loving food, and I wanting to try everything. Add in the increased alcohol consumption and you can probably guess how I gained the 25lbs so quickly. At my heaviest I weighed 135lb, maybe more, but I stopped weighing myself for fear of insanity. I know a lot of people out there don't think that's a big deal at 5' 4" but for me it was a significant gain, none of my clothes fit, I went from a size 2 to a size 7/8, size small tops to medium and barely a 34 B to a 34 D. I felt like the Hulk except I couldn't change back to my normal self. Luckily I had a neighbor who worked at a gym and he introduced me to working out. He showed me how to use the machines and boy did I use them. I had no clue what I was doing but I assumed doing every single machine in there would help so that’s what I did, add in some weighted sit ups on a decline bench and about 30-45 minutes on the elliptical or treadmill and that was my routine. After a couple months I still looked the same except now I had some muscle under the layer of fat. I didn't understand why this happened. I felt like I would have a 6 pack if I could lose the fat. I decided to try the Atkins diet, and it helped a little but I was in college and on a college budget, it was hard cooking every day and I was always hungry. I would dream about what I was going to eat the next day! That summer I decided to switch schools and my major, from political science to exercise science. I really wanted to understand what was happening to me. I moved in with my best friends and started actually having a fun college experience, one where I wasn't depressed all the time about how I looked. This definitely helped me emotionally. At my new school I was able to maintain my workout regime or mostly cardio and some body weight exercises and college diet of beer and the occasional meal, basically I was completely under nourished and my body was in a permanent state of starvation. At one point I got back down to an unhealthy 112lbs, of course that could not last. By the time I was finishing up with school I started to understand the importance of nutrition and started on the low calorie, low fat Standard American Diet and I was holding steady at about 118lbs.

Summer of 2008, my girlfriend and I decided to move to St. Simon’s Island for the summer and work as waitresses at a bar/restaurant near the beach. The heat got to over 100 degrees; I worked 12 hour shifts most days which means I was probably losing a pound in water a shift. I was still rocking the low calorie low fat diet. On days I only worked 1 shift or had the day off I was sure to go for a run and do a few body weight exercises. By mid summer I got down to 103lbs, you can imagine how pumped I was! Looking back, friends tell me I looked scary skinny but I didn't think so. A normal person would be concerned when their monthly cycle stopped but I just thought, "hey, one less thing to worry about"

Fall of 2008, I moved back to the city, got a job working as an executive assistant (desk job) and guess what...slowly but surely the weight came back and a year later I was back to 120lbs. I wasn't so concerned with diet when I moved back because I was so tiny I figured I could let loose a little. I started going to LA Fitness and had a personal trainer so I'm sure some of that was actual muscle but my size 0 clothes started getting tighter and tighter.

Fall of 2009 I started dating Ross, now my husband, and I got lucky because he was very into working out and eating RIGHT being a former collegiate athlete, he knew I was not eating nearly enough food and would tell me so but of course, I thought he was crazy. I mean, who ever heard of needing to eat more to lose weight! Besides I went to school for this stuff and I don't remember hearing “you lose weight by eating more food”. Well truth be told, I did learn that in the form of biology class. I had all the information and tools but I just didn't interpret them that way, I didn't really know how to interpret that stuff at all, I just wanted to pass my classes. I was still stuck in the mindset that the more you exercise the more weight you could lose and wasn't as concerned about the nutrition side of it, calories in, calories out, right? The fastest way I knew to burn calories is running so run I did! I was still brainwashed by the Standard American Diet that FAT IS BADDDDD!!!! So Ross brought me to his gym and showed me there is more to working out than machines and running. He taught me how to back squat, one legged squats aka pistols, bench press, triple press, dips, and this evil exercise call Push the Box. Holy legs on fire Batman! After my first training session with him I was almost in tears and cursing him, I was so sore the next day I couldn't walk and I thought I was going to have to break up with him. I mean isn't that some form of domestic violence?! Obviously I didn't break up with him. I even went back and actually started liking this torture, plus I really enjoyed watching him work out (he he!) Before I knew it we were living together and I started cooking my low fat dinners for him, which he loved. He loved eating something besides baked chicken breasts and broccoli. As I was feeding him what I thought was healthy food, he was reading a little book called 4-Hour Body by Tim Ferris. He told me he wanted to try it and I said be my guest, that's a guy thing and I could never lose the weight I want gorging myself on weekends and eating high fat and beans during the week. I was still on the mission to get back to that high school weight. At this time I was holding steady at 125 lbs. but I did at least have some defined muscle. My clothes we fitting well (size 4, small, 34 C) but I wanted to get back to that high school weight. I went to see an integrative medicine doc about my thyroid or hormones; whatever it was preventing me from losing just a little more weight. I was in the gym 5 days a week for an hour and half and ate my low calorie meals. Mathematically I felt like I should be burning way more than I was eating so why could I now shed the pounds? The Doc convinced me that instead of testing hormones or doing blood work, I should go on the Ideal Protein diet he was promoting that included shakes and bars and replacement meals and eating very low everything else with every 2 week weigh-ins. Week 2 weigh-in I had lost 7 lbs., I was siked!! I thought I will hit my goal of 112lbs in no time! The fun stopped there as I got to week 4 and had gained 2lbs back. I was devastated. Here I am eating your stupid shakes and bars and salads for lunch and fish and spinach for dinner and my stupid boyfriend is having ice cream and fries and burgers and whatever he wants on the weekends and doesn't gain a pound. Suddenly this 4- Hour body diet doesn't seem so crazy! And it’s way cheaper than buying all these shakes and bars. So I ditched the Ideal Protein diet (I still to this day have a couple shakes left) and immediately started the 4-Hour Body, and it was such a relief!! The happiest moment was going to Mexican and having tacos and Queso dip followed by Cold Stone ice cream! The worst stomachache followed it ever. I think I over did it a little! After following this diet for 9 months I dropped to 120lbs but my clothes fit great and at a size 4 I was finally happy!

Ross started writing me workouts to take to the gym I thought they looked insane and was wondering how he came up with these. Little did I know he was watching CrossFit videos and coming up with workouts for me. Sneaky, very sneaky! Fast-forward to Nov. 2011 and we get a Groupon for CrossFit for 10 classes. I think I felt nauseous every class but around class 5 I started loving the way I felt. For the first time ever, I started to feel strong in the gym and started noticing results. Ross loved it and after his 10 classes were up immediately found CrossFit Johns Creek through a friend and started going there. It took me a little longer to get through my 10 classes but by Feb. 2012 I was hooked and loved my new family at CFJC. The more we got addicted to CrossFit the more we started hearing about the Paleo Diet. It's very similar to the 4 Hour Body minus the legumes (beans) and the all-day gorge fest on the weekends. We decided to give it a try and started seeing even better results! Sure we have cheat meals and aren't perfect but tinkering with our diet for more than weight loss is something I never thought I would do. I actually feel like an athlete and look for ways to improve my health and performance. It’s fun and it’s become my passion. I've always loved cooking and cooking Paleo easy. I think its fun trying new recipes and finding replacements for some of my favorite comfort foods. I love that I'm not obsessing over my weight anymore and I'm not starving myself to try and attain 'the perfect body'. Everything I want happens naturally when I'm eating Paleo and it’s a lifestyle I can keep up FOREVER! I finally know how to interpret the information I learned in school and want to learn more! This is my Paleo journey and for those of you just starting out, I can't wait for you to discover yours!


And now here's a funny picture of a some random cat!

Because no post is complete without a picture!