And why I do what I do.
Are you bored yet?
Haha. I'm interesting, probably, to some people. I married a pretty cool dude (H) I met in college (but it turns out, our parents were besties when we were little, and there are baby pics of us together, and already I am telling you too much about my life). We had a little girl in 2008 (C).
There're the basics.
I studied English Literature in college, and went on to get my Masters in Library Science (yes, such a thing exists) several years after graduating. I love my job. I'm a Children's Librarian and I get to make crafts and read kids' books all day long.
I've always had weight issues, and several autoimmune conditions: vitiligo, acne, seasonal allergies, eczema. The eczema persisted after I had C, and I also was diagnosed with hypothyroidism, which explained the constant tiredness and inability to lose weight.
I am Polish and Hungarian, and I loved potatoes. And carbs. And bread. And pasta.
The weight crept and crawled onto my waistline...and my ass...and other places. I tried Weight Watchers, Nutrisystem, calorie counting, starvation diets, you name it.
While that was all going on, C was diagnosed with Autism and my dad (whom I am really close with) got super sick. The weight started to pile on like rush hour traffic. H also is plagued with weight issues, among other things - stomach issues, as well.
I am SUCH an emotional eater. I'm stressed? I eat. I'm sad? I eat. Happy? Let's celebrate by....eating!
I saw Pinterest posts from a friend regarding recipes for her Paleo diet. Recipes? I LOVE recipes. And this stuff looked pretty tasty, so I asked her about this...."diet." She said the magical words: "It helped my eczema drastically."
Hot damn. There are days that i want to cut my hands off with the itching and burning. I'll do it.
The more I read "It Starts With Food", the more it all started to make sense to me. What have I got to lose? I've done all kinds of diets before. Might as well try this one too.
But. It's not a diet. I know, I know, Weight Watchers told me the same thing. This was so heavily tied into emotions, and WHY you eat and HOW you eat; it was so much more than WHAT you eat. It spoke to me.
It yelled to me.
I explained it to H, and he agreed - what have we got to lose. Not only did I want to, need to, do this for weight reasons, I needed to do it for health reasons. The friend also said to me words that will stay with me forever:
"You don't know how bad you are feeling, until you start feeling good."
So I started on a 30 day elimination diet. No gluten, no grains, no legumes, no dairy, no alcohol, no sugars (except those found in fruit), nothing fake or processed. Real, whole food. Organic and/or grass fed, if possible. My wallet restricted me from the grass fed part, but I try.
It was hard. I whined a LOT. I lost the ability to roll my eyes (not really, but for a minute there, I thought I might).
But after 2 weeks, I started feeling...amazing. I slept more soundly and completely. My mind was able to whip around and just think more clearly. My mood was much more even keeled and pleasant. I didn't sweat the small stuff. My eczema was...gasp...GONE. The weight was coming off, not too fast, but not too slow either. My face cleared up and just looked...clean. I felt....clean.
Because I am crazypants about information, I read more. I listened to podcasts. I bought magazines, e books, cookbooks.
I talked with H, and we decided to try a gluten free diet for C (more on that in a future post).
And it all made SO much sense. An intolerance to gluten? Yeah, that's probably me. And to dairy? Would make sense. I had eaten one or both at almost every meal and snack every day of my life.
I was feeling better than I had felt in my entire life. I wanted to shout from the rooftops how GOOD I felt, by eating real, whole foods, nothing processed.
As with anything, real life gets in the way. Holidays happen. Pizza happens. Cupcakes happen. This is a journey, not a destination. And I still am trying to find my perfect concoction of paleo. There is no ONE paleo. H has a different paleo than I do. But our final goal, and anyone who eats paleo's final goal, is health. I saw the grass; and it's greener for me on the gluten and dairy free side.
So that's my paleo journey, in a nutshell. It's ongoing, it will continue for the rest of my life. And that's ok. The paleo lifestyle, not just the food, but the WHY, then WHEN, the WHERE, it has all slowly infiltrated the way I see and react to the world around me. It has taught me that, yes, *I* am important enough to treat myself to food that makes ME feel good and healthy, emotionally and physically.
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