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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!
Hi, my name is Mike. I haven’t always been overweight or obese. In fact, when I was a child and teen I was skinny. To the point of being teased frequently because of how skinny I was. No matter what I ate or how much of it I ate, I couldn’t gain weight. Fast forward to January 2017 and I was at my largest: 350 pounds, barely able to fit into 4xl shirts and was about to have to purchase 48 waist pants because the 46 I was in I couldn’t button. I had to put them close, fasten my belt, and hope the pants didn’t slip through and unzip.
I didn’t get here overnight, although after finding and devouring Mark’s Daily Apple I realized that my overnight practices were definitely part of it. High stress lifestyle as a paramedic for 18 years, working nights, fast food almost every meal, then stress eating through Physician Assistant school. I was definitely the “Do as I say not as I do” healthcare provider. And done with it.
In February of 2017 I checked my Hemoglobin A1C and it was 6.4, just 0.1 short of official diabetes. I started to do some of what Mark said to do on MDA but wasn’t fully into it. I’ve always been the “why it works that way” person and, being the geek that I am, kept reading. Mark’s Daily Apple, Chris Kresser, and others increased my nutritional knowledge far beyond my education as a PA (a subject for a completely different article).
In May 2017 I had lost 10 pounds but my A1c was still 6.2 and my Triglycerides were 264. It was time to actually do something about my health instead of just talk about it and tell my patients what to do. Actually, several of my patients as well as my parents, who really listened to what I told them, read MDA and instituted the Primal Lifestyle and had lost lots of weight and were doing great, which inspired me to take my own advice.
Like many people who are obese and have tried to lose weight, I’ve done well for a little bit, screwed up, and beat myself up about it. “I don’t know why I even try” and, “Well I blew it again” were frequent thoughts. When patients would ask how much I’ve lost since I started trying I would say, “Thousands” because I had been trying and failing since my mid 20s. I’ve been telling patients recently that the flip in mentality came with the 80/20 concept that we read about on MDA. It’s true. Once I fully grasped that concept and instituted it in my life, things began to turn around.
In December 2017 I tested again. My A1c was 5.4, Triglycerides 146, and I was down 15 more pounds. 2018 has been even better. I’m only down another 10 pounds (40 total as of this morning) but that’s despite several trips for work and some vacations, and my body composition is definitely changing. In May my A1c was 5.0. I’m officially no longer pre-diabetic. I am down 6 belt loops (I keep making new loops and the tip of my belt is literally on my left hip). I actually fit into and button a pair of 40 waist jeans. 3xl shirts fit me somewhat loose. All of this without any workout program. My BMI has gone from 47.5 to 42.0, so still morbidly obese but getting close to, “just obese.” I increased my activity by moving more and working on projects around my property such as building a raised garden (pulling weeds, raking rocks, etc), but didn’t do any actual workout program until the first week of May when I started a High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT) program three days a week.
I still have a long way to go to get to my goal of 205. The 21-Day Reset that we are currently doing has helped me get back on track paying attention to what I am doing. I’m sleeping better. Energy is better. Clothes fit better. The area I work (mountains in Arizona) has a large population that lives where it’s warm in the winter and comes up to the mountains for the summer. My summer patients who haven’t seen me since the fall are making comments about how I look. My confidence is returning and I’m re-engaging in life.
I will be 50 next year and I’m confident that I will be healthier at 50 than I was at 25. I also would like to do the Primal Health Coach Institute as well as the Functional Medicine Program at the Kresser Institute (student loans currently keep those from being financially feasible), and I have started to figure out how to institute a primal based health program at my current practice. Grok on!
Like many, I was disappointed in the lackluster season 8 finale, which turned out to be the series finale (cancellation), of Girlfriends. Fans who grew close to the characters and related to their relationships, were left with no real resolution, or even a happy ending. After years of failing in love, Joan Carol Clayton had finally found it in her fiance Aaron, only for him to be deported to Afghanistan. Free-spirited, once homeless, always jobless and sexually free Lynn Searcy had found steady work and passion as an indie artist with a record deal and an uncertain future at her label. Our beloved “5th girlfriend” William and his wife Monica were pregnant; and, I can’t even remember what the hell was going on with Mya and Darnell post his mid-life crisis gig as a race car driver, their son acting a teenage fool and Mya’s rise and stagnant position as a black self-help author. The most devastating part of it all was that we never got to see a reconciliation between longtime frenemies Joan and Toni. Talk about a cliff hanger?! I mean, I have the series on DVD and watch it from beginning to end in a repeated cycle because I feel like I was robbed of a proper ending. Continue
Girlfriends Cast
Naturally, fans yearned for closure and after years of talk from the show’s creator and petitions from fans, it looked as if a Girlfriends movie was on the horizon. Mara Brock Akil, creator and writer of Girlfriends, has expressed her disappointment in the way the show ended and explained to ESSENCE’s Yes Girl podcast:
“It was hard not to give them an ending. I’m very connected and passionate about what I put out in the world, and I want to get things safely to shore. Back in the day, I would have done it for $5 million, or make a dollar out of 15 cents to tell this story.”
In separate interviews, the cast has said they were down to bring the show to the big screen and the script was already written. But, things are now at a standstill thanks to the gatekeepers in Hollywood who do not see the value or return on their investment to fund a Girlfriends movie.
Mara Brock Akil
According to Brock Akil, she’s practically given up on the project until she’s given a budget that will do the film justice. In an interview with Vulture, she says she’s tired of fighting for what she knows both she, and the culture, deserves, and she’s not going to rush to get it done.
“Yeah, you can tell any studio in town: If they got 50 to 60 million, I already have the script. We can make an epic story and we can make a lot of money, but me hustling and knocking on doors begging to do this story is not where it is anymore. It deserves somebody to see the value in it and write that check...Begging someone to see the value of Girlfriends, I can’t do it anymore."
A decade ago when Girlfriends was cancelled, I could see (and I say this lightly) why studios and funders would have this perspective. I mean, they phased all of our shows out by networks merging. Remember: UPN, which housed Girlfriends, Eve and Everybody Hates Chris, and was primarily black programming, merged with the WB, which was not, and thus The CW was born. Aside from BET, there was no black content. Scripted content, let alone black, was almost non-existent as reality tv took over with practically no cost for cast or production. Today, however, that is no longer the case. In a world post Black Panther, Girls Trip, Think Like A Man and any other film or tv show that’s drawing in hundreds of millions of dollars and are killing it in ratings, the logic that an-all black female led film wouldn’t top the box office is bs.
The relevance of Girlfriends is there. The show has remained in syndication with a steady fan base since its cancellation. So the issue can’t be gender, especially considering Girls Trip was one of the highest grossing films of 2017 with a sequel in the works. Additionally, in the past few years, we have proven that black talent surpasses all expectations at the Box Office. I don’t need to remind the world of the money that Black Panther pulled in. The problem instead are white studio heads and investors who view our stories as not important and unrelatable….to what they perceive as a general audience. They can fund a franchise of Sex In The City and Hangover movies with no problem despite the subsequent follow ups receiving subpar reviews from both critics and fans. But, they seldom take a chance on us, despite the power of the black dollar which a recent study shows circulates and has a lifespan of 6 hours.
This is why it is important for black film companies to not just fund black projects, but also leave the creative control of said projects to its owner. I wonder if Mara has presented Girlfriends to the Will Packer’s, Ava DuVernay’s or Lena Waithe’s of black Hollywood. Has the opportunity to co-fund such films between the powers that be in black Hollywood been presented? Where is the public outcry from Mara’s black filmmaker friends to get this project funded? Doing so will keep integrity of the projects and voids input from people who are not of color to tell our stories. More importantly, it also keeps the money within the black economy. I’m not even opposed to some sort of crowdfunding. After all, we are constantly chanting #SupportBlackBusiness. Why not put our money where our protests are?
Do you feel it's time we self-fund the projects we want to see?
Brenda is a Philadelphia native with a love for Marketing, Creative writing, wine and Jesus. Her work has been featured on Mayvenn’s Real Beautiful blog and she is the co-author of the book Christmas 364: Be Merry and Bright Beyond Christmas Night (available for purchase on amazon). Follow her on IG @trulybrenda_ and trulybrenda.wordpress.com
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Shonda Rhimes shared more than a few gems in her memoir Year of Yes. But it was her thoughts on marriage that have haunted me, especially since I'm embarking on marriage within the next few months. In the book, one of the reasons Rhimes says she won’t marry is because she does not want a man distracting her from her work. Mind you Rhimes has three children. But the love she feels for her children overrides the feelings of frustration she might feel if one of them were to need her while she was in the groove of writing. But a man being or causing a distraction to the work she loves and cherishes, she couldn’t rationalize.
“He would move in here? With me? And the kids? Live here? With me? I would have to talk to him all the time. See him every single day. Be aware of him. Hand him even more of my energy and focus. It is incredibly hard to fit him in now. And I don’t mean that as an insult. I mean that as truth. All of my free time, I spend with the kids and then my friends and my family. There’s a certain amount of time alone I need just to have the brain space to write, to have what I call mental pantry time. I already give up some time from each to see him. He kindly offers, “I can just hang out here while you write. We don’t have to talk. I just want to be with you.” You and I are close friends now, reader. So you know how I feel about writing. Writing is the hum. Writing is laying track. Writing is the high.”
She likens writing to running five miles, ignoring distractions like brownies, daydreams about Idris Elba, watching “Game of Thrones.” And then she imagines being tempted, distracted by a man, a man she loves knocking on her door to ask her if she wants coffee or water and then she has to start running those five miles again—from the beginning.
“I try to imagine if it weren’t my kids. I try to imagine willingly adding him to the mix. Why would I do that to myself? To him? It makes me feel trapped. Caged.”
Rhimes said the thought of being married for just two months used to give her a headache.
Since the day I’ve read the words, the idea of men and relationships as a distraction to work have had me slightly shook. Mostly because I know she’s right. Unlike Rhimes, I’ve always wanted to get married, and like I said, I plan on doing so in the next couple of months. But while marriage is something I want, the distraction is...a concern, an unintended side effect.
I write in as close to complete silence as I can get. But my fiancé is a musician. And as many romantic notions surround that concept--and as romantic as it can be, the larger reality is that he specializes in noise. In the moments where I’m trying to write and he’s just around--he’s creating noise. Whether he’s absent-mindedly drumming on something or literally playing YouTube videos featuring a screaming baby, there is noise. I’ve had to angrily or guilitly dismiss him for hours at a time and then apologetically (if I was rude) or sweetly reunite once my work is finished.
As someone who has never been good with juggling relationships, my me-time, and now intense work, it’s a lot.
But unlike Shonda, I’ve accepted to just deal. And I wonder if this decision to just deal separates the unknown bloggers and journalists from the woman who created an entire night of television. I’m sure there’s a correlation. (See also: Oprah...another unmarried woman.)
I think one of the reasons I’ve been able to allow this distraction is because of the way my fiancé has encouraged me and my work in other ways. Whether through his own work ethic, discipline and dedication to his craft, or the words and massages he offers when I find myself overwhelmed or discouraged, I’ve found more often than not that his love not only inspires but actually fuels me to do my work.
What I’m learning is that not all distractions are created equal. My last relationship was also distracting but certainly not in the best way. There were certainly encouraging words but his lack of personal discipline and complete confusion when it came to what should have been his craft, meant that I spent a lot of time and energy soothing anxieties and insecurities--at the expense of my own work. Looking back, I can say that playing therapist is far more time consuming than telling someone to use headphones or leave the room. I tell people within a month of ending that relationship, I became the most productive I’ve ever been in my life, eventually publishing a whole book.
What I’m saying is--and what Shonda said-- is that loving anyone is at least partially about allowing for distractions to other areas of your life--especially work. The trick is finding the people who prove to be or you deem worthy of the sacrifice.
Has a man ever distracted you from your work? How do you know when it’s a good distraction versus one that’s costing you too much?
Forbes 30 under 30 list was started back in 2011 to recognize 600 business and industry figures all under the age of 30. Out of thousands of nominees this year, Marley Dias is one of the few people who landed on the list. At the age of 13, she is the youngest, but that doesn't mean that her achievements are negligible.
Marley Dias has always loved reading. At the age of eleven, back in 2016, she realized that most of the books she was reading were mainly about "white boys and dogs." This bothered her deeply and she did what most kids do, that is, vent about it to her mother. Well, as it turns out, a solution came to mind. It was the #1000BlackGirlBooks campaign.
#1000BlackGirlBook
The #1000BlackGirlBook campaign collects books with black female protagonists in a bid to promote a more inclusive reading in the education system. The books collected have since been donated to different organizations around the world. Two years after its inception, the #1000BlackGirlBooks campaign has surpassed its goal by collecting more than ten thousand books. It is also what landed Marley Dias on the Forbes 30 under 30 2018 list. Her accomplishments are nothing short of amazing and that’s why we are proud of her.
For Marley, the first sign of change happened in her old elementary school. As a result of her campaign, One Crazy Summer (by Rita Williams Garcia), was chosen as the book for all the fifth graders in the school to read. The books she collects are also donated to schools and libraries with low resources. This way, they stock up on books and also get to promote inspiring conversations around those books since they cast black characters in a different light. At the moment, books with black characters and protagonists only make up a measly 11% of all children’s books. That’s why Marley hopes to break this monotony and have more books representing a wide array of diversity and culture.
Apart from the books campaign, Marley has made several notable achievements in her life even though she is only 13. So far, she has volunteered in a Ghanaian orphanage, won a Disney Friends for Change grant and even written her own book, Marley Dias Gets It Done: And So Can You! The book serves as a guide for children, encouraging them to make a positive change through activism, community involvement and inclusion. Although she loves writing, she admits that she didn't think that she would write a book at her current age. However, she found it necessary to share her journey so far and inspire other young kids and age mates to believe in themselves and strive to achieve what they are passionate about. Her book is also aimed at helping kids organize their own campaigns.
Despite her achievements, Marley Dias still wants to be viewed as a normal teenager. She wants people to know that she is a real person and has her high and low moments. For now, her main focus is collecting as many books as possible and seeing more black women portrayed as the main protagonists instead of sidekicks.
Winnie Gaturu is a writer, tech lover, mom, wife and student from Nairobi, Kenya. During her free time, she loves trying out new recipes, diy projects, filling in crossword puzzles and spending time with her family. You can catch up with her onyourhairandbeautywrite.wordpress.com.
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My partner walked into the room bearing a brown envelope, and the look he gave me, I immediately knew something was wrong. I had only seen that look a few times in our lives together. The day his mom passed was one of them. He sat at the dining table, opened the envelope, and indicated that I should take a look. I did so, and just from peeping over his shoulder, I saw a name at the bottom of the page. I knew that name. Now I wished I could un-see what I saw. I wished I could unread what I read, but it was too late.
Continue You see, I met my partner some 12 years ago when I was a freshman in college. We were both young and full of life...not that I’m old and lifeless now but ...but anyway, I digress. The usual revealing of what happened to previous relationships was shared. His last serious relationship was with a girl who had become pregnant by someone else. She did not even have the decency to tell him and straight skipped town. He followed her and she was forced to tell him to his face that she was moving in with the baby’s father.
With his heart broken, he swore off relationships for three years, until I came along. We started our lives a few years later, and now we have kids together.
I had pretty much forgotten his ex until I saw her name on the form. It was from the children’s department informing him to provide child support for his son who is now 15 years old. My husband had no idea he had a son.
I was in denial for a while, and wanted the whole thing to go away and our lives to go back to normal. I had not anticipated a stepson who was half my age. Perhaps it would have been okay if I had known from the word go that I was walking into a blended family. I interrogated my partner about whether he had known all along. Of course I knew he didn’t know but still, I wanted to blame someone. I was angry at the ex, because if she had said all those years ago that her pregnancy belonged to another man, what had changed her mind now? Why did she want to include the boy’s dad in his life now, after keeping them apart for all those years?
Still a part of me was happy because my five-year-old son could now have a brother, and my family was bigger, and they say the more the merrier, right? After all, the boy was here, and no matter what the mother had done, it was not the boy’s fault. If he carries my partner’s DNA, that means he is no different from my children. He deserves to know his real dad and have his love.
Now the real challenge lies in breaking the news to our children, especially my daughter who is eight and therefore old enough to ask some questions. I’m counting on the show Sophia the First because it has a blended family to make her see that it’s okay to have half-siblings. It will be sometime before she can hear the whole story but for now, she only needs to know she has an elder brother, not how he came along.
Of course, there is also the issue of my family finding out and what they will think. But I will tell them when I’m ready. As you can guess, I am only now coming to terms with the idea of having a new member in the family. I have yet to meet him, especially since his father wants a DNA test first. I feel that the test is unnecessary. First, because a woman can't be this confident unless she's is at least 99 percent sure the man is the baby's dad, and when my husband told her he wanted a DNA test she said she had no problem with it. But I also understand him being skeptical. Moreover, I am almost powerless in this matter and don’t have much of a say here. I am but a surprise stepmother after all.
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Recently, I decided to make a huge change in my life by applying for a job in a field I'm only somewhat familiar with. I touched up my resume and was rejected so many times I wondered if I was meant to permanently be a barista until after three months of applying, something finally clicked.
As it turns out, this job also wanted me to train in a different city for two weeks (all expenses paid!). I was elated! New job! Amazing pay, benefits, and a city I'd never seen!
So why was I also scared?
Continue No matter how you slice it, change is scary for the same reason that it's exciting. A brand new endeavor sounds great from the outside, but once you're in the thick of change, it feels like you're losing your mind, and why would you not? Everything is turned upside-down from what you know. So what can we do to be comfortable when things feel so UNcomfortable?
I remembered in the chaos of change that I asked for change. I wanted to shake things up in my life and I knew that I would change for the better with it. I couldn't just stay stagnant and complacent in a job that made me unhappy. That's why I started job hunting in the first place. I wanted more. I deserved more. I would be selling myself short if I didn't.
Even with this knowledge, I sat in my hotel room the first night staring out at the city below me and I felt that uncomfortable feeling sit heavy with me.
I opened my laptop and quickly turned on some music. Thank God for being able to take my playlist with me. The familiarity made me feel better.
I started asking myself what I could do at that moment to make myself feel even better. I opened my emails and stared at the hundreds that had piled up and sat to work sorting it out. I deleted all my rejections. I deleted old subscriptions I didn't read. The repetition and the sense of progress felt good too.
While it didn't stop the inner voice from asking, "What am I doing?!" Over-and-over-again in a frenzied panic, it did turn the volume from a twenty to at least a five.
I don't know what I'm doing, but I didn't know what I was doing when I was a new barista either. Or before I got accepted into college. Or even during my first day of high school.
These milestones that happen in life force us out of our comfort zone, but being uncomfortable isn't terrible. Being uncomfortable means that great things that we care about are just around the corner. That there are things in our life that are worth being uncomfortable for whether it's more money, finding the love of our life or following a dream.
As I finished clearing my inbox, my phone buzzed with a text from one of my friends, "How are you doing okay?"
I smiled as I scooped it up to message back: "I'm doing just fine."
I may not have everything figured out, but it's part of the process.
How do you cope in the face of change?
Kira is a passionate, outspoken writer keeping it real for the people. She's a UF graduate with a soft spot for cats. Read more of her work at her blog KiraSparkles!
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Humans are a tribal species. We form alliances, align ourselves along ethnic, familial, religious, and cultural lines. Still, for the vast majority of people, “tribal” carries a negative connotation. Bitter partisan politics, ethnic genocides, religious wars, and the long history of bigotry make that connotation almost unavoidable. But I don’t think tribal in its true essence is all bad. The basic instinct to form and belong to groups is a simple fact of human physiology. It’s how we work, so we’d better make it work for us.
Remember, I err on the side of evolution. If human evolution has produced and maintained a characteristic or behavior, there’s probably a reason for it. And maybe that reason doesn’t make sense in the modern world. It gets distorted or magnified. Tribalism certainly can. But it can be equally detrimental to ignore that characteristic, to brush it off and discard it. We don’t have to perform hard physical labor to procure food anymore—but exercise is still vital for our health. My guess is the same holds true for our predilection toward tribalism. And it doesn’t have to look like you think it might….
Research shows that one kind of tribe—diehard sports fans— see physiological benefits when their teams compete, such as boosts to testosterone and increased empathy. Sports fans even have a higher-than-average sense of meaning in their lives, something many modern humans lack. Sure, you might say “pro sports don’t matter in the long run,” but who cares? The point is that sports fandom is a healthy, safe, and decidedly non-genocidal mode of tribalism that appears to confer health benefits to those who participate.
Imagine the potential benefits of leveraging your tribal leanings toward a truly healthy, meaningful endeavor?
It doesn’t have to be CrossFit exactly, but one of those special kinds of gyms whose inhabitants aren’t headphone-wearing individuals doing their own thing, in their own world. CrossFit struck such a chord not only because it offered a great workout, but because it offered a tribe.
You didn’t just show up to a CrossFit box and “train back and biceps” with your headphones on. You and your tribe battled the clock, the iron, yourselves. You entered a place where motivation drips from the ceiling. Where a lot of the stuff I talked about in this article—having rules that remove decision-making from the equation, competing against others (and yourself), achieving intrinsic rewards—comes baked into the experience. Where you don’t have to muster the willpower to start and complete a workout because your tribe is there doing it and ushering you on to join in and give it your all. You get swept away by the pull of your CrossFit tribe—and you’re better off for it.
There’s actual research to back this up, not just conjecture.
A recent study found that CrossFit participants experience more intrinsic motivation related to group affiliation, personal challenge, and outright enjoyment of the activity—and that this experience can increase adherence compared to other types of resistance training.
In perhaps the only systematic review and meta-analysis of CrossFit research to date, researchers concluded that “CrossFit practice is associated with higher levels of community, satisfaction, and motivation.” They have a tribe and don’t want to let them down.
Fitness, in general, benefits from the tribal effect.
The solitary yogi doing impossible stretches with serene countenance as the sun rises is a romantic ideal, but who actually does that? Yoga isn’t exactly pleasant. It’s hard. It can hurt. It’s tough to get yourself motivated to do a full session at home. Get yourself in a legit yoga studio and suddenly you’re on the mat and it’s 98° and before you know it you’re downward dogging your way to nirvana.
Or the Tough Mudder/Mud Run/Spartan Race genre of extreme athletic event. Running barefoot across electrified barbed wire, plunging headfirst into a trough of mud and urine, getting frostbite, ruining your clothes, and paying a couple hundred bucks for the opportunity doesn’t sound very appealing on paper. But allow participants to form teams with their friends and compete against other teams, and the event sells out.
Don’t forget that some of the most traditional forms of fitness practice around—team sports—are entirely based on tribalism. You have a “team.” You’re competing against another group of individuals who’ve also coalesced around a similar concept of organization. You have uniforms, team colors, team slogans, special chants and cheers. You run plays, tactical maneuvers designed to overcome the defenses your opponents have laid out. You function as a unit. For the 60 minutes or so of game time, the tribe takes precedence over the individual. Joining an adult sports league might be a great way to add value, meaning, and fitness to your life.
Dietary affiliations are tribal, too. Primal is absolutely a tribe. Keto is a tribe. Vegetarianism and veganism are absolutely tribes.
This can easily go awry. If you get locked into the dogma of your particular dietary tribe, you may tune out dissenting evidence from other tribes, however valuable and applicable. That’s why I’ve always emphasized open mindedness and the importance of reading outside sources and maintaining the willingness to change your mind in the face of new information. That quality comes baked into the Primal way of living, eating, and thinking. It’s part of our “dogma.”
Whatever dietary tribe you belong to, consider incorporating that feature into your ideology. I highly recommend it.
And if you’re interested specifically in becoming closer to the Primal tribe, there are plenty of ways.
The Facebook Groups
Facebook can be the place where you argue with friends and family about things that don’t even matter, or it can be the place where you find your Primal tribe.
There’s the Mark’s Daily Apple FB group, which is a general Primal group where you can discuss anything and everything related to Primal.
If you’re more into keto specifically, joining the Keto Reset FB group is a great place to find your keto tribe.
In all these groups, the beauty is that each member is a real person with a real name, and everyone is supportive. So rather than bother all the other people in your life with chatter about ideal sun exposure times and cauliflower carb counts and “180 minus age,” you can connect with people who get it, and get you.
Come To an Event
If you haven’t made it to a Paleo f(x), you have to do it. First of all, it’s in Austin, one of the best (and most paleo/Primal-friendly) cities in the country. The BBQ is out of this world, if nothing else. Second, it’s a meeting of the top thought leaders in ancestral health, both established and upcoming. Great place to hear about new ideas and new angles on old ones. Third, you’ll be with your people. Your tribe.
If you do go, come say hi, cause I’ll definitely be there.
Become a Primal Health Coach
The ultimate way to find a tribe is to become the leader of one and create your own. There’s no better path to leadership in the Primal arena than becoming a legitimate expert, someone who can help others build better lifestyles and construct diets and training regimens. It’s amazing how little most people understand about health, diet, and fitness. If you know what you’re talking about and throw yourself into the business of health and fitness, you’d be surprised at the incredible changes you can effect in your clients—and how close you’ll become with them.
How a tribe helped your quest for better health? Or are you looking for one? (Post-challenge is the perfect time to tap into supports that keep you going….) What does the perfect health tribe look like to you?
You probably don’t know the ‘how’ or the ‘when,’ but you always know the ‘WHAT.’ And I’m not talking about the weight loss, the ring, or the bank account, I’m talking about the reason WHY you want that stuff... the happiness, the peace, the joy, the comfort and security you think you’re gonna have when you finally get it. But if you’ve been actually reading my hella long IG captions, you already know that the only way to be happy, is to be happy, now. ‘Then’ is always, perpetually around the corner. It never comes. You have to be genuinely at peace in this moment. You have to be whole to experience wholeness. You have to be love to be loved.
Your #1 purpose, in every ‘now,’ is to re-discover and stay consciously aware of your inner Wholeness... the ‘I Am’ that was aware of just being, before it was aware of being you. IT is experienced in the body as stillness, effortless quiet, or loud silence (even in the midst of hella noise... even in the midst of hella thoughts). IT doesn’t lack anything because IT is everything.
Here’s the best part— when you’re aware of IT, you’re aware of being naturally joyful, whole, secure... you’re aware of being HER. #BeHerNow #AndTheRestWillFollow
-Nikki Walton
from Natural Hair Care | Curly Nikki https://ift.tt/2Kdadt0
Let’s face it - pregnancy does a number on women’s bodies; the weight gain, the acne, the heartburn, the frequent trips to the bathroom, swollen ankles, you name it and we get it during pregnancy. And then we hold our precious babies in our arms after they are born and we know that it was not all for naught. Some women get their bodies back within weeks but the majority of women do not. Doctors tell us that it takes 9 months to gain the weight and will take the same amount of time to lose the weight but societal pressure has us wanting that instant snapback with a quickness.
Continue Hollywood doesn’t help. Magazine covers like to flaunt starlets in bikinis mere weeks after giving birth showing off their flat bellies. Tia Mowry Hardrict recently gave birth to her second child, a daughter, and her belly is nowhere near flat. She took to instagram to show her body after baby and the journey to embrace it. Tia captioned her picture:
“Some pregnant women after giving birth no longer have a belly after 7 weeks. While others it may take a little longer. Me, I’m the latter. I remember giving birth to Cree, my belly didn’t all of a sudden go flat. I did have a C-section (as well as with my second pregnancy) and I thought something was wrong with me. I had seen in magazines the many women on the beach a few weeks postpartum in a two piece. To be honest, it had to take time for me to embrace my new body. With this second pregnancy, I now have embraced the fact that I have housed a human being. A miracle. A life. If it takes a while for me to get back to my normal self, then so be it. This.Is.Me. And I love me.”
Princess Love
Tia’s post was admirable and made fans love her even more. It has resonated and has 653,403 likes and 18,445 comments. Women are happy to finally see someone in the public eye who is just like them and being honest about it. On the flip side, two women also in the public eye had babies recently as well and their bellies are close to flat. They too have taken to instagram to show their post baby bodies. Crystal Smith, wife of singer Neyo gave birth to the couple’s 2nd son two weeks ago and posted videos of her almost flat stomach to her instagram stories just a week later. Princess Love, wife of Ray-J Norwood and cast member of Love & Hip Hop gave birth to their daughter at the end of May and just appeared on The BET Awards red carpet this past weekend looking like she was back to her pre-pregnancy weight.
We are all different and it is important to remember that genetics comes into play as well. Many women have inherited bodies from their mothers and grandmothers. They barely have to work out and are a size 2. We can’t fault them for the bodies and genetics they were born with and we can’t fault ourselves for the bodies we were born with. We can just work on our bodies to ensure that they’re the best bodies and we are the best versions of ourselves. We can take a page out of Tia’s page and take her post as a gentle reminder to embrace and take care of our bodies because we only get one.
Are women being unrealistic by expecting a pre-baby body within weeks of giving birth?
Mwabi Kaira is an African girl navigating her way in an American world. She is of Zambian and Malawian heritage and moved to the USA in 1993. Writing has been her passion since she could put a sentence together on the page. Mothering her sons is her pride and joy. She has been an avid runner since 2013 and has run 10 half marathons and a full marathon. Keep up with her athttp://africanbeautifulme.blogspot.com
from Natural Hair Care | Curly Nikki https://ift.tt/2MpM5zY
We all know that protective styles are a great option for natural hair. The beauty lies in being able to leave hair untouched for weeks on end, and the endless amounts of time (and brainpower) saved from not having to 'do' your hair each day. And while you can't put a price on time, there's no denying how expensive weaves and wigs can be. It's not uncommon for human hair pieces to run several hundred dollars. Blogger Freddie Harrel wants to change this with her natural hair extension brand Big Hair No Care.
We’re in the last few days of the 21-Day Challenge now…. Successes so far? Stumbling blocks along the way? Lingering ideas/questions coming to the fore? I’ll be announcing winners to the contests throughout the rest of this week, and tomorrow you’ll all be voting on the best Grok Pose of 2018.
But for today, we’re kicking back and focusing just on R&R. A few of the staff volunteered to share their favorite ways to recharge. The Primal Blueprint isn’t a diet after all. It’s a full lifestyle—a path to living awesome, and rest and relaxation are critical parts of that endeavor. Grok excelled in this area in fact. How are your relaxation routines working for you these days? Hope you find some inspiration this morning, everyone. Wishing you well.
“I love doing yoga – taking time to move my body and breathe deeply. It’s amazing how quickly I can relax and refocus after spending even 10 minutes on the mat. I think it’s super important to stretch and get to you know how your body moves. Yoga has helped me a ton as an athlete, and I really think it’s made me a more balanced human overall.” – Annie M.
“I love this little remote spot by one of the lakes in Pheonix, AZ. It’s so peaceful during the early springtime when the snow has partially melted. The air is crisp and clean, the foliage is new and green. A great place to chill and relax.” – Michelle F.
“Seeing Buddhist sculpture/art is an instant reminder for me to breathe, be calm, stay mindful and aware of the moment. The combination of the Buddha with the flowing water puts me in a more tranquil mood.” – Sabrina T.
“I have so many relaxation routines, I didn’t know which one to choose! This pair of intertwined spruce trees are what I call The Turnaround Trees. From my front door to these trees is two miles; if I “turn around” here, I can log a 4-mile meditative country walk to my day. I don’t need any special shoes, wearables, or gadgets to get this done. I’m not trying to crush a PR. It doesn’t have to show up on Instagram… I just go as I am — barefoot, sometimes; sometimes carrying my evening glass of wine. If I time it just right, I can catch the sun setting over the Rocky Mountain foothills. Normally my phone isn’t allowed to come on this walk with me – a non-negotiable element of all of my relaxation rituals! – but I made an exception just this once, so the MDA crowd can see that a meditation practice can be as simply unstructured as this.” – Erin P.
“Relaxation for me happens outdoors. I do my deepest meditation outside, and I feel the most recharged after a morning on the trails or (more to the rest theme) under the trees. I got to spend a few hours in this hammock a couple of weeks ago, and even the image itself helps re-ignite the relaxation response.” – Jen W.
Thanks for stopping by today, everybody, and I hope you’ll share what you do to kick back and de-stress. And if any of the images or ideas got some thoughts going for you, let the bees and I know.
Are you (like us) rejoicing yet that it’s almost summer? Try this tasty Mediterranean salad topped with Primal Kitchen® Dreamy Italian Dressing & Vinaigrette, and serve it up with slices of avocado, cherry tomatoes and grilled chicken.
Hi, my name is Mike. I haven’t always been overweight or obese. In fact, when I was a child and teen I was skinny. To the point of being teased frequently because of how skinny I was. No matter what I ate or how much of it I ate, I couldn’t gain weight. Fast forward to January 2017 and I was at my largest: 350 pounds, barely able to fit into 4xl shirts and was about to have to purchase 48 waist pants because the 46 I was in I couldn’t button. I had to put them close, fasten my belt, and hope the pants didn’t slip through and unzip.
Humans are a tribal species. We form alliances, align ourselves along ethnic, familial, religious, and cultural lines. Still, for the vast majority of people, “tribal” carries a negative connotation. Bitter partisan politics, ethnic genocides, religious wars, and the long history of bigotry make that connotation almost unavoidable. But I don’t think tribal in its true essence is all bad. The basic instinct to form and belong to groups is a simple fact of human physiology. It’s how we work, so we’d better make it work for us.
We’re in the last few days of the 21-Day Challenge now…. Successes so far? Stumbling blocks along the way? Lingering ideas/questions coming to the fore? I’ll be announcing winners to the contests throughout the rest of this week, and tomorrow you’ll all be voting on the best Grok Pose of 2018.
