Lauren’s Primal Story- Reaching my highest potential

My primal story begins when I was 16. I was transitioning my life from doing 20 hours of rigorous dance training to… a lot less. While I had never paid attention to my diet prior, it didn’t seem to matter since I was so active. When my activity level went down, my usual off campus lunch at –insert fast food place here- started changing my body. At a time in our lives when everything is so confusing and body image is at the forefront, I started to notice these unfavorable changes, and I wanted to do something about it. So I started going to the gym and researching about healthy food.

me at 16.... lol

 
After a year of fast food lunches I finally got my own car, so I vowed to go home for lunch so that I could ensure I knew exactly what was in my food. In my parents’ house it was fairly easy to eat what I considered then to be healthy. There was always meat, veggies, and fruit to eat. However, there were plenty of grains around. I still ate cereal every day for breakfast, and my lunches consisted mostly of a mixture of cous cous, veggies, and avocado, some kind of lunch meat, salad or a quesadilla. Not great by primal standards, but at least it wasn’t taco bell, burger king, or even chipotle.

Fast forward to college when I decided to pick Sports Medicine as my major and to become a personal trainer.  At the point in my life when I had started training people I was still so confused about how to eat I refused to instruct my clients about it much. In fact, my ACE personal trainer certification clearly stated that giving nutritional advice was out of my scope of practice. The information I learned in school was the general FDA approved nutrition facts and I thought that lean cuisine was a suitable healthy on the go meal.

So these are the generals that I was dishing out to people.

· Eat more vegetables

· Eat less fat

· Eat more fruit

· Eat whole grains, which are at the bottom of the food pyramid

· Eat lots of low fat dairy

· Count your calories

(Some of this advice I still give, mostly eat more vegetables)



On top of my food confusion, I was never working out hard enough or had very specific goals to ever notice a necessity for high quality foods. It was not until I found crossfit that I started to discover a way of eating that seemed to make sense. I started hearing about the Zone diet and after trying to implement its principles in my diet I realized there were still some gaps. What I appreciated about the zone is that it gave me a clear picture of portion sizes and how to balance my plate.

When I started to hear people telling me to get processed foods out of my diet and focus on whole, natural, foods that our bodies were designed to digest I became a lot more curious and started reading beginning with the Paleo Diet by Loren Cordain. Being a crossfitter it was not hard to jump on the bandwagon. I was sick of my workouts feeling like crap.

Trying to implement the Paleo way into my life was a struggle for me at first. I had always relied on dairy as a “healthy” food for snacks and satisfaction. I started out making sure I knew what I was going to cook and what foods I wanted and didn’t want in my house. I sort of threw myself into an 80/20 style way where I ate clean 80% of the time and had some gratitude meals here and there. After about 2 months of this, I lost 5 pounds and I was ecstatic. But I started to feel like my gratitude meals were turning into cheat meals which turned into out of control feelings when I would eat. So I found Melissa Urban’s 30 day Paleo thing and did it. I just decided one day to do it and I did. It was awesome! I learned so much about how my body reacts to foods and I felt great.

I never felt better; I was able to lose the few pounds I couldn’t seem to lose in my 80/20 lifestyle. Over the next two months I continued to drop another 5 pounds. I was amazed, I had totally given up on the idea of weighing any less than I did before. I was by no means fat and I was comfortable with my body. Prior to this I had been working with my chiropractor on feeling congested all the time and not just in my head but throughout my body. She always told me that my body said it was because of all the sugar I was eating. When I finally got dairy out of my diet, the whole body lethargy and congestion were completely gone.I started to be able to see my arm muscles!!!!

Also at this point in time, I started to be a lot more productive and creative in my business. I was able to get a lot clearer messages about what I wanted to do and what my life purpose was. My intuition and sense for subtle energy started to grow at an exponential rate and my business began booming with new clients. Plus my workouts were feeling amazing. Mind you, I do a lot of personal growth and spiritual work, but I have no doubt this accelerated growth in my life was due to the quality of food I was eating.

At this point, I was in love with the 30 day thing so much I was convinced everyone should do it and I started telling clients, friends, and family to do it. At some point my 30 day high started to ware off and I had to assimilate my way of eating back into everyday life with restaurants and dessert everywhere I looked. What happened in these months afterwards  was not what I had expected. I expected to just be able to live pretty clean and paleo without hassle or struggle; this was not exactly the case.

I started to feel very fearful about eating non-paleo approved foods. Truthfully I was terrified to even start eating non-paleo foods at the end of my “challenge” because I was afraid of how I thought I would feel. I was afraid I would go back to feeling out of control. I started going to the store and seeing candy and cake and desserts and thinking to myself “No one will see me if I eat this… no one will have to know” and I would eat it, without thinking, and then feel so guilty about it I wouldn’t want to tell anyone.

Finally I realized that my 30 days was so good, yet so unrealistic to do forever, that it was such a huge let down when I couldn’t keep it up, or I ate something that made my body feel off. That’s when I started to rethink my approach the transitioning into this way of eating. I went back to the basics, what I tell my clients everyday: “start slow, make small changes because they always add up.” The baby step approach was looking a lot more like what I wanted to teach people about. I don’t want people to feel overwhelmed with so many dietary changes at once or feel so guilty about eating food that they keep it a secret, ashamed of themselves for it. That’s not healthy.

I've still got that dancer in me!

I’ve seen many changes in myself and my clients helping them transition to this way of ea
ting. I can’t think of one who has not kept it going. It’s hard to go back once you make the connection between foods you eat and how your body feels. All I want to do is empower people to make the best choices they can make with the greatest sense of ease and support as possible. I want it to be easy to choose a vegetable over a bagel in the morning because you know that it will give you the energy you need to be a good parent and be productive at your job. I want it to be easy to be comfortable cooking at home because you feel empowered to be able to know exactly what is in your food. I want you to feel like you know that you can anything you want!

 


This is the first of more postings on mine and Crystals experiences with going primal. What’s your primal story? Comment or send us an email at primaleatingmoderntable@gmail.com. We would love to hear from you!

Lauren Sheehan is your Advocate for Selfishness. Visit her personal webpage.