Getting Along in Life

Maybe you are satisfied with the way your life is, so you have no interest in changing the way you eat. In fact, you eat rather well, especially compared to those around you at work and compared to what you see people buying at the grocery store. You tend to follow the government's recommendations to eat plenty of grains, and you eat vegetables and fruit, you try to buy low or no-fat milk and dairy products, and you cut all the visible fat off meat.

Yet year after year you see a weight gain of a 2 or 3 or 4 pounds. Maybe you have a lot of clothes in your closet that are too snug now (or are yours like mine--I just assumed they had all "shrunk" in the dryer). Have you considered that by gaining just 2 or 3 pounds a year, you will be an extra 20 or 30 pounds heavier in 10 years? And  40-60 pounds heavier in 20 years? Getting fatter is not a necessary process of getting older. 

Maybe you have allergies, or asthma, or you are getting arthritis and just assumed that's part of getting older too.

Maybe you don't have energy to do a lot besides go to work and go back home.

Maybe you suffer from migraines like I did. I started having migraines when I was about 20, although I had headaches as early as 6th grade. The migraines ruined my adult life, they caused me to quit my job, they put a burden on my husband and kids, because I had migraines generally 3 or 4 days a week and some would last for up to 9 days.

Or maybe you have serious digestive problems like celiac, IBS,  Crohn's, or diabetes. 

Would it be worth giving up grains and sugar if some of these problems would improve or even disappear? There are a lot of examples of health problems being resolved with the primal/paleo style of diet, not to mention the nice benefit of weight reduction. Is the rest of your life going to continue going downhill? What if you could actually start feeling better.

If you are considering a grain free/sugar free/processed-food-free diet, you can go about it several ways: go cold-turkey, from one day to the next, remove the bad foods from your house and start eating only real food (real meat, eggs, vegetables, and fruit). Or maybe you prefer to take it one small step at a time: perhaps you decide to remove wheat products first, then in a few days, remove other grains (rice, corn), stop eating potatoes, and start reducing sugar use. Maybe you first want to read everything available and line up the new recipes before changing your eating habits.

It's sort of like taking off a band-aid: some people want to rip it off, some pull a little at a time.

Decide that you are going to make the effort to stick with this way of eating for at least 2 weeks after you have removed all grains and sugars. Then evaluate your life.... maybe your pants are a little loser around the waist; maybe you are sleeping better; maybe your IBS is not so bad; maybe you went for days without even thinking of a migraine.

If so, you are not alone; thousands of people are recognizing the damage done to our health by following the government food pyramid plan and are learning how to be really healthy with a new (very old) way of eating.