I Amazed My Doctor with My Primal Diet!

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!

Back in February of 2015, I went to a health spa in Arizona that I visit once a year. Since I was 40, I decided to get some blood tests done. The results weren’t great. In fact, there were some red flags and I needed to start getting serious about my health and weight loss.

In December of the same year, my husband and I went on a vacation to the Florida Keys and brought our mountain bikes. We were going to start 2016 with exercise and eating right! On the drive home to Michigan, I started looking up different ways to eat right. I had stumbled upon some information that said potatoes are terrible for you and, since I had 23 hours to kill, I decided to dive in and research this new information. That is how I found your website.

I had progressively looked into what foods were good/bad and found that Paleo seemed the best route to get healthy. (I actually looked up “are potatoes paleo” and saw that it was an emphatic NO!) Potatoes were very high on the glycemic index…and all this time I thought they were healthy. I ate them as hash browns or cubed in the morning and had them mashed often with dinner as a side dish. I felt like everything I had ever known was wrong! When we got home, we completely cleaned out the pantry and fridge and restocked them with only paleo foods. The results were instant. I dropped 30 pounds in about 8 weeks and kept it off. After the initial two months, the weight loss was slower but still steady. I had a lot more energy and I actually felt healthier.

Just as an example, I will share with you what I changed for breakfast and lunch:

Breakfast: Wild berry smoothie with an egg and cheese sandwich from Panera (54g carbs)
Lunch: veggie salad with croutons and cranberries from Big Salad with tomato basil soup ( 78g carbs)

Just those two meals alone and I was over 200 carbs for the day. I can’t even imagine what my dinners were when we had pizza, spaghetti and meat and potatoes regularly. I still can’t understand why the U.S. RDA says 300 carbs is recommended.

I went back to the spa in Arizona in May of 2016 and got my blood retested. My doctor asked what I had changed and I told her that I went from being a vegetarian to paleo. I told her for breakfast I was eating eggs and bacon with a cup of cashew milk. For lunch I was having salads (hold the cranberries and croutons!) and having chili instead of soup. For dinner I was having steak and steamed veggies and dessert was fruit or some coconut milk “ice cream.” She seemed very concerned. She wanted to recheck my cholesterol immediately. Here are some of the red flag items and the changes that happened in just 5 months. My doctor was shocked and I hoped my results spoke for themselves.

(Mark’s note: *Recommended normal ranges vary based on several factors. It’s best to talk with your doctor about your particular measures.)

I’m not completely out of the woods yet. I still have a long way to go and I plan on getting another blood test this year. I’m grateful for your website and your knowledge! Although I have strayed a bit a couple of times this last year, I always come back and getting back on track gets easier and easier. My husband (who didn’t need to lose weight being 6’6 and 180 lbs) also commented on how good he feels as a result of these changes.

Our biggest challenges are convenience foods, or rather lack of good grab and go foods. I know that I need to prepare for those moments and I try to but being busy at work and having 3 teenagers, a massive garden and chickens this year, it is proving to be difficult. I need to peruse your website for some more good ideas! Here are a couple of pictures for you. They are pretty close to “before and after” but as I said, I still have a ways to go. Thanks again for letting me share this story.

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