The Primal Family Case-Study

Guest Post: Written by Tiffany Blackden

“If it’s important to you, you make time to do it.  We eat whole foods every meal, cooked the old fashioned way, we have two businesses, two young children, we both workout 5-7 days a week and have a family adventure at least once a week… we make conscious choices about our health, business and relationships.”

A year ago, someone mentioned to me that they had given up all refined sugar and everything processed.  My thought was, “Oh, poor them…I’m SO glad not to have health issues that necessitate THAT kind of CRAZINESS.” Little did I know that I’d be in their boat a year later.

When my 20 month old son started to show scary proof of a number of food allergies and sensitivities 6 months ago, we began shaking processed food out of our cabinets.  In the last eight years, we had already eliminated all high fructose corn syrup, trans fats and other sinister food additives from our family diet, but now we were eliminating organic, whole grain cereals and snacks we kept stocked in our cabinets.  For the record, his food reactions included but were not limited to:  dairy, soy, gluten, corn, beans and eggs.  This meant we were feeding him a whole food diet already (minus a variety of fruit and veggies also on his ‘no’ list).  

Forward four months:  after countless hours of research and meetings with our Naturopathic Doctor, we figured out that part of his issue was that he was getting an assortment of antibodies from me throughout pregnancy and nursing.  I had been experiencing an auto-immune reaction, for about 6 yrs, which we could now clearly link to gluten in my diet.  My 6 yr old daughter was also experiencing some symptoms around gluten and dairy, primarily itchy skin and upset stomachs. 

Around the time of this health discovery, I was beginning to return to my fitness quest, after having a baby whose disrupted sleep patterns of only about two hours at a time had tortured us for a year and a half.  I still had about 20 ‘pregnancy’ pounds to lose.  My husband has been a competitive cyclist for years, but also had some serious sugar addictions and issues with ‘hitting the wall’ daily, due to low blood sugar.  We were both seriously addicted to coffee, caffeine and sugar. In case you were wondering, I’m 36 and Gary is 43.

After reading a ton of information on the anti-inflammatory/auto-immune benefits of the Paleo Diet online, and reading both the Paleo Diet Book and the Paleo for Athletes Book, we decided to make some serious changes.  On New Year’s Eve (today is Feb 10th), we packed up all of our processed food from our cabinets, fridge and freezer, and replaced it all with veggies, fruits, nuts and seeds.  We found the local resource for grass fed beef, game meat, free range organic turkey and chicken and packed up our freezer. The hardest change for both of us has been giving up coffee…and our ‘off plan’ snacks twice or three times a week involve either tortilla chips with Paleo approved guacamole and salsa, or popcorn with butter and sea salt.  All in all, we are probably 90% Paleo, with a weekly latte and one of the snacks above.

In the last six weeks, we’ve noticed a ton of benefits to eating ‘Paleo’…before changing our diet, Gary had DAILY heartburn, but after a week realized it had disappeared…I’ve lost about 18 pounds, and Gary’s lost 7, going down 3-4% in his body fat measurement.  Neither of us have had our usual blood sugar crashes, and the days of waking up ‘starving’ have only happened when we’ve gone off plan the night before, which we don’t do often, because the reduced energy we experience is so dramatic.  We’ve both had more peace in the gastro-intestinal world, I have less negative menstrual related symptoms, and we have less cravings than before.  Our daughter is virtually free of food-related issues, and our little guy's eczema is completely gone.

As some of what we’ve read online, we agree that the plan is socially prohibitive, but we either bring something we can eat, eat before we leave our house, and/or load up on a Paleo ‘allowed’ salad at an event. There’s always salad.  I’ve indulged in a couple of gluten free brownies at a party, but over all, we haven’t wanted to touch sugar, knowing we’d feel run down afterward.  Our daughter complains about all the broccoli and asparagus we’ve been making her eat, but don’t all 6 yr olds need something to complain about?  Her lunches for school are mostly Paleo, as well.  We all eat leftovers for breakfast, with some fruit, and everyone has more steady, sustained energy than when we’d eat other ‘breakfast foods’.  The kids get a few more grains than we do…usually a rice cake here and there.  I won’t make excuses.  It’s just really a challenge some days to feed two active, growing children 5-6 meals of freshly cooked protein, veggies and fruits…oh, yes, I didn’t mention that we stopped using our microwave at the same time we ‘went Paleo’.  It’s doable. It’s like any health related lifestyle change. 

If it’s important to you, you make time to do it.  We eat whole foods every meal, cooked the old fashioned way, we have two businesses, two young children, we both workout 5-7 days a week and have a family adventure at least once a week… we make conscious choices about our health, business and relationships.  This choice of nutrition has had numerous positive effects on our family, so the plan and preparation time has been worth it.  Too many of us move mindlessly through our meals, without being fully aware of the damage we are doing to our bodies.  In my endless hours of research on auto-immune and chronic disease, I learned that the number one way to reverse the symptoms and the disease itself is through nutrition.  Food has the power to heal, even if the anti-nutritional harm has been going on for some time…for us, this diet was a large part of healing our bodies from a long-lived thoughtless food spree.

Tiffany and Gary Blackden are going on 8 years of ‘living the dream’ as entrepreneurs.  They haven’t had cable TV for 7 years, never read the paper and have a pact to never buy their children a video game.  They moved their family to Northern Colorado 3 years ago, to escape the chronic stress of living in the sprawling metropolitan DC area and enjoy 300+ days of sunshine a year.