Finding Family Health—Living Primal

I bought this book today.  The Primal Blueprint 21 Day Total Body Transformation.  Why?

In the last three years I have been working hard to figure out what “healthy” is and what it looks like in my family. This is hard because if I were to ask 100 people to define “healthy” I’d get probably 125 different answers. And if I were to go to the grocery store, which as a mother of four I do quite often, I would get 5,000 different answers from products and publications.

I’m 36, soon to be 37. I have four kids with my amazing husband of 15 years. While there are not any major diseases that would be considered genetic by main stream standards in our family, my mom and two grandmothers have arthritis, my husband’s dad has diabetes and there is breast cancer on both sides.

So, as my children grow and I’m making an effort to learn more and more about “healthy” I am feeling pressure to figure out how to get healthy and stay healthy. In the winter I tell my kids that it’s easier to stay warm than it is to get warm. I think the same thing goes with health. It’s easier to stay healthy than it is to get healthy.

My journey has led me over and over to the connection between real food and real health. No, my kids don’t eat Cheetos and Oreos all the time. But they do definitely like them. And that’s an easy one anyway. Everyone knows that Cheetos and Oreos are not good for you. But what I've learned is that even the vast majority of food products that claim to be healthy are just as bad as Cheetos and Oreos. I’ve learned more and more about these and what they are vs. what they claim to be.

I also have many friends with gluten issues. I haven’t had an issue with that—like no allergies and no Celiac disease and such. But I was beginning to wonder if we do have issues and I'm not making the connection.

One of my biggest problems is that I’m not a huge fan of exercise. I think of myself as a pretty active person, but I don't "exercise".  If I do, it needs to be something I can do with my kids or in spite of my kids. As a family we do get out and go on adventures. We hike and walk and play. I’d say that we’re on the above average end of activity. But I’m not going to Shred and I use my husband's P90-X videos for about 20 minutes of Yoga.  Lots of people I know have had success with Weight Watchers and programs like that. But for some reason they just never really rang my bell. So I have pretty much avoided stuff like that.

I read The Fungas Link—fabulous information. Made me feel SO much better. But missing the support and the such.  However, I did lose about 15 pounds.

I read Good Foods/Bad Foods and made an awesome connection between Good food, bad food and fake food and what our bodies do with what we give it. 

In the last year, the husband lost about 50 pounds by changing his eating habits and exercising like a crazy man. I could not in any stage of my life exercise like he did for that year.  I'm super proud of him and supported his efforts, but it's not for me.

I tried Atkins—The New Atkins for a New You. I gave up grains and sugar and felt great. But again, it was missing something.  But I lost about another 15 pounds.



So with arthritis in my pinky and thumb on my right hand, the stress of moving for the fourth time in three years and feeling pressure from only myself because of this desire to feed my family right, I began my search again. I want so badly to be VIBRANT and healthy.  I want to have FUN with my family.

Then I found The Primal Blueprint—Reading it, the first thing I realized was that every time I gave up grains and sugar I felt SO MUCH BETTER. The second thing I realized was that I could TOTALLY do the exercises he recommends. The third thing was that I need to get my family in on this!  And fourth, NAPPING AND PLAYING ARE PART OF THE PLAN!!!  (By the way, if you want a FREE intro, just sign up for the newsletter and download a free PDF full of all kinds of great info!)

It also went right along with all the previous theories that I had bought into.  Bonus.

Bingo! I feel better. I feel stronger. My figure is different (I don’t have my scale because it’s in storage, but my clothes definitely fit better!), and the inflammation in my hand is GONE.  The "program" is so comprehensive and really quite impressive.  Plus, it completely makes sense to me.  Basically, feed your body what it expects and move your body the way it is designed to move.  Well, duh.

Mark Sisson’s goal is to help 10 million people get healthy. I’m going to add six to that list. I'll keep you posted.  And if you get this book, he'll send you a bunch of free stuff.  (For the record, I'm not making any $$ off this.  I just think it's the best thing I've found in FOREVER and have to share it!)

I'm also requesting he make a babywearing Mama Grok for mamas like me.  Maybe I'll work on that.