From the time I was born until around middle school, my parents had a huge waterbed. I loved this bed. It was temperature controlled so it was warm in the winter and cool in the summer. If you’ve ever slept in a waterbed, you know that they cradle you. We loved our parents’ waterbed so much that they bought me and my sister twin size ones for our rooms. And then one day, the waterbed, my parents’ waterbed was going.
Continue My parents drained the water from it, broke down the wooden frame and headboard that came with it. It was a change I wasn’t ready for and when I asked my mom why they decided to get rid of their waterbed, she said,
“It was time. You know that’s the same bed your dad had when he was single. So you already know what was happening on that bed. We should have gotten a new one as soon as we got married.”
No doubt. In their case, the marriage bed had been defiled.
After over a decade of marriage, I’m sure there was no residual…anything left on that mattress; still the idea that the bed my father shared with other women would be the one he started his marriage with is—symbolically…off. Still, they made it work.
Fast forward to earlier this week.
My fiancé and I are moving into our first apartment together. And after waking up and getting dressed for work, he asks, “Did your ex ever sleep in this bed?”
My intuition is spot on. I just be knowing. I assumed he was going to ask me this question years ago. But here it was now. I always knew I would tell him the truth, mostly because there was nothing to tell.
“Yeah he did. But we didn’t do anything.”
When I tell y’all nothing. I mean nothing. He slept on top of the covers, I slept underneath them, with my comforter balled up in between us. I had goals I was trying to reach and he was kind enough to accommodate. Nothing happened.
“I think we should get a new bed.”
My fiancé knows the story of my mom and dad and he brought up the similarities. But me abstaining and my dad…not…were two entirely different scenarios. And while he tried to draw a parallel I had to let him know it was a different situation, entirely. He knows that. I reminded him of that.
Still, he said he wanted a new bed.
I was just about to turn up, ask him if he thought I was lying, tell him how much I spent on the bed (I did do that, actually), go in. But I chilled. After all, I’d had that mattress since 2011. It was time for a new one. But I told him that since it was his idea to get a new bed, that he should be the one to pay for it…at least half of it.
He argued a fresh start should come with a fresh bed, and that didn’t have anything to do with who might have slept in the bed before him…So he says...But honestly, I can’t be mad at that.
But the whole thing made me think about the concept of things, particularly things that may have been involved with past relationships. Is it possible to take the loaded meanings out of them? When is our preoccupation with symbolism and the past obsessive versus reasonable?
*********
Veronica Wells is the culture editor at MadameNoire.com. She is also the author of “Bettah Days” and the creator of the website NoSugarNoCreamMag. You can follow her on Facebook and on Instagram and Twitter @VDubShrug.
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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!
I found Mark’s Daily Apple through a fortuitous and random conversation one morning with the guy I was seeing sometime around 2010. We were lying in bed, dreaming up delicious Sunday breakfast ideas and started talking about bacon, which then led to a heated argument about bacon, cardiovascular disease, dietary fat… oh boy! He name-dropped yours and MDA, and it made me step down from my high horse (I was a recent doctor of physical therapy graduate) and take a whole new look at nutrition that has- no exaggeration- completely changed my life.
Here is my story:
I had been swimming competitively since age 10, so I knew my body. I had always been tall, thin, and full of enthusiasm for whatever I pursued. Back in 2002, as a senior in high school, I started to feel something quite different. If I approached my physical limits, I would feel sluggish and weak and there was no way to push through. Each week, I swam slower. A few months later, I started noticing more and more of my hair falling in the shower drain and in my hair brush. As someone who had always been a night owl, I found it strange that even during matinee movies the second I sat down I would feel tired and fall asleep, like turning a switch. I could sleep ten to twelve hours and still would wake up exhausted. I even passed out a few times for no apparent reason. At this point I felt fatigued constantly, was having trouble finding enough energy to pay attention in class, and I knew something was wrong. I told my mom (a nurse), and we decided to wait out the end of the school semester. After graduation, I took a solid week off and basically slept and rested all day, after which I felt completely normal. I shrugged it off, and headed off to college a few months feeling healthy.
As a frame of reference, my diet at this time was atrocious. I didn’t like most meat, so I would eat processed meat approximately once a week. I hated eggs. I didn’t have much of a taste for any vegetables, so again, maybe once a week one would make it to my plate. I liked bananas, kiwis, and a few fruits. I loved processed food and would primarily eat cereal, bread, crackers, cookies, and pasta. I also struggled with having very little musculature on my body despite being active. At 5’10” my calves were so narrow that speciality narrow boots looked like fishermen’s boots on me! My abdomen fluctuated between being completely concave and sunken or distended to the extent that people would ask me if I was pregnant. My face had a constant red rash and break outs of both acne and rosacea. All of these things made me self-conscious.
When I went off to college, unexplained symptoms struck again. Except this time once I got to the point where I was passing out and fatigued, I kept going. My immune system went nuts. I acquired very bad strep throat, pink eye in both eyes, an ear infection, and a bad UTI all at once. Every week for the rest of the semester I felt worse despite several courses of antibiotics. Fast forward to end of semester: I finished finals, I rested for our 2 week holiday—100% better.
This became the pattern. Three more semesters exactly like this. It started to take a toll on my endurance, and I could not even walk up the stairs to get to my classes without stopping and resting for several minutes. I was embarrassed to be in social situations because I couldn’t focus and didn’t feel like myself physically and mentally. I was struggling in my classes for the first time in my life. I decided that fall semester my junior year would be different: no matter how sick I felt, I would push even harder.
That didn’t go well. I crossed into the next threshold of bodily rebellion. I started feeling sharp abdominal pains as if I were being poisoned followed by bouts of vomiting after taking my birth control, drinking milk, eating anything fatty, taking even a sip of alcohol, and sometimes after indecipherable aggravations. I stopped getting my period. One morning I woke up and could barely open my eyes. I felt confused to the point where I was staring at people talking and pretending to understand what was going on. Morning classes were a blur, and as I sat in my French class, I somehow fell asleep in the front row. My professor woke me up—not too happy—and sent me to the school doctor. Even though there was an entire waiting room full of students, she took me right away. I didn’t question it, but the second she sat me down she explained why: I had yellow skin, yellow eyes, and that awful, unmistakable death-like look of jaundice. She diagnosed me with mono (many of the other times I had been to the health center they suspected mono but the test was always negative). I was put on immediate bed rest until my liver started to cooperate. I could barely stomach eating, so I would munch on saltine crackers and eat unseasoned ramen but little else. My liver enzymes actually tested worse and worse, despite the rest. I got to the point where I could barely eat anything, but then slowly, I started feeling better. Hallelujah.
Spoiler alert, that’s not the end of my story. The very next semester it started happening. Again. Despite being told that you could only get mono once. I was emotionally devastated, scared, and yet determined. I gathered all of my medical records and went to see a doctor off-campus. He was dismissive and cold and told me that I was a woman, and women get depressed. That was his medical advice. End stop.
I was embarrassed to the point I didn’t seek further medical attention and tried to make some changes on my own, this time being a bit kinder to my body. I cut my work hours to almost zero, my class schedule in half, my workouts out altogether, and I just tried to get by. I was able to finish my last few semesters of college with fatigue, constant infections, and poor mental clarity, but I finished! I started working as a physical therapy aid full-time and teaching swim lessons to make money before grad school, and suddenly I was thrown off balance again. I could feel my body crashing as it had before, and I ended up making the radical decision to take 3 months off before physical therapy school to convalesce. This seemed to work, because I made it through 3 years of graduate school with only occasional and much less dramatic periods of illness.
That brings me to 2010, lying in bed, chatting about bacon. This little argument inspired me to read from the amazing Michael Pollen and delve into the wonders of the MDA blog. Mark’s words hit home as I had already begun to understand the importance of rest and recovery, listening to my body instead of overriding its messages (a work in progress), and the way food could make me feel. I drank the kool aid. I was inspired by the large body of evidence in the primal diet and primal lifestyle. Little by little, I started learning how to love vegetables and to prepare them well, to embrace fats, to eliminate grains, and to enjoy delicious meat and eggs. I started eating real food. Relationships don’t change over-night, so neither did mine with food. I had a long way to go, but I could feel a difference in my digestion and my energy. My acne and rosacea disappeared completely, and I felt like I had at least some control in my health.
Unfortunately though, my health continued to decline. It was not exactly the same as it had been before. I was constantly fatigued, but rarely did I have the ear/eye/throat/bladder infection extravaganzas as I had in the past, nor would the symptoms go away anymore with a little extra rest for a week or two. Instead, I started having random, scary symptoms. Over the course of the next four years, several times I would develop excessive water retention, followed by coughing up liquid deep in my chest, followed by pneumonia, followed by waking up in the middle of the night barely able to breathe. I would prop myself up on four pillows so that I was almost sitting up so that I could breathe. I would have fevers in excess of 104 degrees sometimes every Friday after a long week of work and would lie in bed until Monday morning. One time I felt desperately thirsty and was drinking water by the liter until I collapsed with squeezing in my chest. My left arm would randomly swell up. I had strange ulcers in my mouth. Other times my right eye would randomly start dilating, once to the point where I could not see anything out of it for hours. I would have sharp abdominal pain every time I was on my period that caused me to double over. I could keep listing crazy symptoms all day. I lived in fear. In addition, the years of being ill had led to metabolic damage. I could barely eat 1000 calories a day without gaining weight, so I slowly started gaining more and more weight. I had prided myself on being fit, so this crushed my self-confidence.
Doctors led me down many rabbit holes. Some were dismissive, cold, and made me feel embarrassed or crazy for telling them what was happening. Others were compassionate and did what they could to help, but they could only put small pieces of the puzzle together. I tested positive for several antibodies that suggested autoimmune disease and was told it was likely lupus, and steroids seemed to help my “infections” better than antibiotics which was quite telling, but my symptoms never stopped recurring and every day was a struggle.
I also attempted to conquer my body by running marathons, hiking mountains, and portraying a life of a “healthy woman.” These outward goals always led to me being very sick, sometimes for months, but for some reason I continued to fight my body every step of the way. I climbed Mount Whitney, the highest peak in the contiguous United States (with a broken tailbone no-less). Two weeks later I came down with a kidney infection that wouldn’t respond to antibiotics or steroids and kept me in bed for 2 months with fever, fatigue, and brain fog as well a complete loss of appetite. I kept frozen salmon, avocado, fresh orange juice, and almond butter in my kitchen and if I ate ONE of those things each day, I felt accomplished. I became scared that I was losing too much weight, but surprisingly, I felt stronger each day. Slowly, my appetite returned.
Finally, two months later I felt completely healthy, and I decided to go out to celebrate my birthday. My first day out. My first day with food outside of my kitchen. I ate fried chicken, drank beer, and polished it off with a birthday cupcake. The next morning I woke up with 104 fever, vomiting, the works. It started all over again, and I had an emotional break down.
All of these years I had tried to be patient and to trust my doctors, my body, God, and the universe to somehow fix this, but I could no longer handle living my life in constant fear and confusion, and I had reached a breaking point. The merry-go-round of looking for outside help, finding no clear solution, giving up, and then starting all over again was getting old. I truly believed I needed to accept that I would never have the health and energy of a “healthy” person, so I should start adapting my life to live with my limitations as best as possible. I started tracking every symptom each day, I started dialing back my work hours, my social time, and my exercise, and this seemed to help. I started eating much cleaner according to the Primal Blueprint, maybe 90/10. I slept 10 hours every day. I felt “ok,” but I was depressed at the outlook of my future.
One fateful day, June 21, 2014, I decided to try keto, which I had recently read about on Mark’s blog. It was actually easy for me to get into ketosis for the first time, because my diet had been consistently clean for the six months preceding it. I woke up on day 3, and it was crazy. I could see clearly. I felt well-rested in a way that I didn’t remember existed. I felt boundless energy. I was strong. I could breathe better. I still remember that feeling so clearly. I actually feel healthy! Even when I felt “ok,” I didn’t realize I was never actually feeling well. It had been so long. I peed on the stick, and it was purple: ketosis was achieved. After a week of eating keto, which I had never intended to maintain permanently, I decided that I would add one half piece of whole wheat pita bread to my diet (I know not primal at all but I feel lucky I made that random exception to my diet) every other week and to attempt to cycle into and out of ketosis. The next morning I woke up with mouth ulcers, a fever, brain fog, and the beginnings of a UTI.
It hit me. The writing had always been on the wall but I hadn’t I seen it. This was clear, objective measures I couldn’t ignore: Do I have celiac disease? I got back into ketosis over the next few days, and all of the symptoms cleared. Like magic. I grabbed a beer, walked down to my hot tub, and cracked it open. This would be my test (and with bittersweet sadness my final beer). As I enjoyed the crisp, cool refreshing beverage, all of the things I had been through over the past 12 years ran through my mind. Even if you reread my story, it seems so obvious once you know. All of that struggle and such a simple solution. Yes, the ulcers and the fever came back the next day. I did a week of completely primal, gluten free, but not keto to test out my theory. I remained healthy. (I have the genetic marker and antibody for celiac but am unable/unwilling to do a 12 week challenge).
Over the next four years, I gained muscle I never knew I could gain. I can wear narrow boots quite well now, and I have muscle in my core and arms. I live a completely normal life. I can run, jump, and play, so I do! I have slowly forgotten the feeling of that daily struggle and fear. I have continued to change my relationship with food. While I am always gluten-free, I am 90/10 with primal eating and cycle in and out of keto. I can finally say that when my body tells me something, I listen. Whether it’s to fully recover between workouts, to limit chronic cardio, to sleep, to get fresh air and daylight, to eat more, or to reach out and connect socially, I no longer try to fight those impulses for my own ego’s sake. I preach this to all of my patients and all of my friends.
Here is a picture of me on Halloween dressed as the iconic Leia finally with some lean muscle!
Most importantly, I have learned to open the discussion of this diet and lifestyle to people around me. Not everyone has celiac disease, but 1% of the population does and most are not diagnosed. Many people have autoimmune conditions, and we have connected deeply on how similar food journeys have changed their lives. Many people simply have weight to lose and insulin resistance. My next goals in my personal journey are to gain a six pack (something that symbolizes both inner and physical strength to me) and to share this lifestyle with as many people as I can. Keep spreading the light Mark!
Okay, ya'll, our girl NickyBNatural went all in and tried this DIY Rhassoul clay mask and the results are just amazing! Now what is Rhassoul clay and what can it do for you? Check out the video! And drop us a comment 😊.
As we move toward September, we might be thinking of Labor Day parties or fall tailgating weekends—events perfect for a barbecue spread. But when you’re eating Primal, keto or otherwise low-carb, traditional barbecue fare isn’t always the ideal choice. Even when you’re throwing a party centered on grilled meat, it’s all too easy for carbs to sneak into the mix. Buns, pasta salads, chips, cheese and crackers, beer, sweet tea, sodas and desserts often make up the bulk of a typical buffet. So, what’s a Primal type to do (or serve)? Here’s how to throw a low-carb barbecue feast everyone will love.
Drinks
Avoid high sugar drinks like juice, soda and tonic, and keep the ice chest filled with refreshing, sugar-free or low-sugar beverages.
Skip the chip and cracker aisle when shopping for a low-carb barbecue party. Instead, serve platters of cheese and nuts, raw vegetables with dip, and protein-rich appetizers.
Side dishes at a barbecue can be carb-loaded landmines. Instead of standard barbecue fare like pasta salad, potato salad, fruit salad and corn, load up the buffet up with crunchy coleslaw, colorful green salads and grilled or roasted vegetables.
Don’t ruin healthy low-carb salads with salad dressing or mayonnaise made from unhealthy industrial seed oils and sugar. Instead, whisk together homemade salad dressings. Better yet, make low-carb life easier by keeping Primal Kitchen® dressings and marinades and Mayo varieties on hand.
The most obvious way to avoid carbs at a barbecue is to serve hamburgers and sausages without buns. Even better, serve grilled meat that doesn’t need a bun, like steak, ribs or pork roast.
But beware of carbs lurking in the rubs, marinades and sauces that flavor meat. Sugar is usually the culprit. Read labels to avoid store bought rubs and marinades with sweeteners, or make your own rubs and marinades at home (or use any of the Primal Kitchen® Marinades).
Just try hosting a barbecue without ketchup, and wait for the outcry. Luckily, now there’s Primal Kitchen® Unsweetened Ketchup, Spicy Brown Mustard and Mayo to the rescue. Condiments that pack tons of flavor with very few carbs, like pickles, sauerkraut, and hot sauce, are also a must.
Desserts
A bowl of brightly colored berries (perhaps with unsweetened whipped cream on the side?) is an easy summer treat. If you’re willing to put in a little more work, then serve a decadent low-carb dessert.
I knew the moment Evelyn Lozada signed on to be an official cast member of Basketball Wives again that the “work” she claimed she put in to “fix her life” with Iyanla was shot to shit. After all, why would you retreat from having your own show that depicted your life as a mom, businesswoman and future wife back to an environment that once involved you belittling your castmates and throwing a wine bottle at a coworker? After the last episode of the franchise in which she made fun of her castmate’s race with a stereotypical name, I was proven right.
On Sunday night’s show, viewers watched as Evelyn referred to CeCe Gutierrez as “Lee Lee.” Gutierrez, who is of Asian descent, was perplexed. When another cast member told her she said it to compare her to “the nail shop girl,” it was clear that the comment was racist. For a person who apparently live tweets during every episode of the show, Evelyn was mute until she posted a statement partnered with a video apology for her remarks.
The apology came too little too late. Fans had already issued a petition to get her kicked off the show. This isn’t the first. After Season 4 featured Evelyn bullying her castmates both verbally and physically- i.e. hitting someone with a clutch upside her head and lunging across the table of that said person amongst other things that happened in previous seasons - fans called for cancellation of the show. An apology wasn’t thought of until the unfortunate domestic violence incident that Evelyn experienced at the hands of her ex-husband. Afterwards, Evelyn went on a campaign of transformation. She left Basketball Wives after Season 5, where she largely cried the entire season and was shown in therapy trying to piece her life back together. She appeared on Fix My Life twice, pre and post the domestic violence incident, where she expressed remorse for her behavior and the desire to change her mean girl ways. Soon enough, she moved to LA and OWN began to document the “new” Evelyn with Living Lozada: a working mom, engaged to a new man (they have since broken up) who was rebuilding her brand and empire. The show was cancelled after two seasons and she headed back to VH1, resurfacing her old ways.
Jackie Christie
The argument between Evelyn and CeCe is not isolated. Last season, she fought weekly with Jackie Christie after inserting herself into family drama with Jackie and her eldest daughter. Despite Jackie’s pleas for her to stay out of their business, she continued, leading to an almost physical brawl between the two after Jackie retaliated and made disparaging remarks about Evelyn’s daughter.
In previous seasons, Evelyn has always operated within conflict with another. She taunted former castmate Suzie Ketcham after their friendship deteriorated and did the same to Jennifer Williams and Royce Reed. The ever evolving rift between she and Tami Roman was clear from the beginning, with Evelyn never being interested in Tami being apart of their “inner circle” as she viewed her as classless with no fashion sense. So vein. The issue however, is that Evelyn seeks out what she perceives as weaker antagonists. But, once someone hits back slightly harder, she plays victim. And boy she loves to cry.
Take the recent drama with she and Tami as an example. After Tami expressed her true feelings about what she believed to have gone on in Evelyn’s marriage, Evelyn went on a PR campaign to label Tami as a victim shamer. She posted old photos from her injuries, interview clips post the fallout, testimonials from other domestic abuse survivors and so on. Could Tami have refrained from using that situation as a weapon? Yes. But, she failed to acknowledge the years of attacks she threw Tami’s way in regards to her appearance and what she viewed as “ghetto” behavior. And unfortunately, all is fair in love and war.
For Evelyn to even resort to such a low blow with CeCe is unfathomable considering her reaction to Tami’s jab. CeCe didn’t say anything near as damaging to even provoke such an attack. Furthermore, Evelyn has been doing work to raise funds and awareness to those affected during the hurricane in Puerto Rico as she herself is a person of color. So, she should know better.
But none of this surprises me. It’s been brewing for some time and shows that she only lived life in a positive light as an attempt to do damage control for the mess she played a huge part in creating. It was never real but instead a farce. She resorted to her true self once she no longer had the cushion of an athlete’s income and sold her soul for ratings and an extension of the 5 minutes of fame she desperately attempted to hide from after the failure of her marriage and ensuing criticism that came as a result. You Evelyn, never changed. And you’re too old to continue the shits. You have children, a daughter specifically, who watches your every move and is subjected to whatever judgement targeted at her as a direct result of your antics. Give it up.
Can a mean girl change?
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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Color is having a moment this summer. Whether tame or wild, all of your faves are switching up their looks—and we can barely keep up! But while it’s always fun to try a new look, the summer season can benotoriously hard on your hair—think sun, salt and chlorine—especially after your strands have undergone a strenuous chemical process like going blonde. To help manage it all, we caught up with a few A-list stylists whose clientele lists include everyone from Amanda Seales to Jennifer Hudson to give us the tea on how to maintain our color well into fall (and maybe even longer!)
Unfortunately though, my health continued to decline. It was not exactly the same as it had been before. I was constantly fatigued, but rarely did I have the ear/eye/throat/bladder infection extravaganzas as I had in the past, nor would the symptoms go away anymore with a little extra rest for a week or two. Instead, I started having random, scary symptoms. Over the course of the next four years, several times I would develop excessive water retention, followed by coughing up liquid deep in my chest, followed by pneumonia, followed by waking up in the middle of the night barely able to breathe. I would prop myself up on four pillows so that I was almost sitting up so that I could breathe. I would have fevers in excess of 104 degrees sometimes every Friday after a long week of work and would lie in bed until Monday morning. One time I felt desperately thirsty and was drinking water by the liter until I collapsed with squeezing in my chest. My left arm would randomly swell up. I had strange ulcers in my mouth. Other times my right eye would randomly start dilating, once to the point where I could not see anything out of it for hours. I would have sharp abdominal pain every time I was on my period that caused me to double over. I could keep listing crazy symptoms all day. I lived in fear. In addition, the years of being ill had led to metabolic damage. I could barely eat 1000 calories a day without gaining weight, so I slowly started gaining more and more weight. I had prided myself on being fit, so this crushed my self-confidence.
It hit me. The writing had always been on the wall but I hadn’t I seen it. This was clear, objective measures I couldn’t ignore: Do I have celiac disease? I got back into ketosis over the next few days, and all of the symptoms cleared. Like magic. I grabbed a beer, walked down to my hot tub, and cracked it open. This would be my test (and with bittersweet sadness my final beer). As I enjoyed the crisp, cool refreshing beverage, all of the things I had been through over the past 12 years ran through my mind. Even if you reread my story, it seems so obvious once you know. All of that struggle and such a simple solution. Yes, the ulcers and the fever came back the next day. I did a week of completely primal, gluten free, but not keto to test out my theory. I remained healthy. (I have the genetic marker and antibody for celiac but am unable/unwilling to do a 12 week challenge).
As we move toward September, we might be thinking of Labor Day parties or fall tailgating weekends—events perfect for a barbecue spread. But when you’re eating Primal, keto or otherwise low-carb, traditional barbecue fare isn’t always the ideal choice. Even when you’re throwing a party centered on grilled meat, it’s all too easy for carbs to sneak into the mix. Buns, pasta salads, chips, cheese and crackers, beer, sweet tea, sodas and desserts often make up the bulk of a typical buffet. So, what’s a Primal type to do (or serve)? Here’s how to throw a low-carb barbecue feast everyone will love.
