From Hungry and Getting Nowhere to Satisfied and Strong!

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Hi, my name is Brooke. I am a 33-year-old stay-at-home mom. I don’t feel like your typical MDA success story. Don’t get me wrong, I love reading how others are changing their life for the better, but I don’t often hear from women that are like me. I’m not sure why that is, but it has motivated me to share my story.

Okay, so let’s start at the beginning. A couple of years ago, I was doing a lot of thinking about my diet. My main concern was my weight. I was definitely overweight but never by a lot. My heaviest was around 155 pounds, and I’m 5’5.” I was just unhappy with how I looked and it felt like no matter what I tried, I just couldn’t lose any more weight. I was following conventional advice for a “healthy” eating plan: low-fat, whole grains. Gosh, I remember I used to bake my own bread all the time. I loved it! But I was always so hungry. I would always need a morning and an afternoon snack, and still I was hungry. I thought I must be doing something wrong, because diet experts on TV would say, “If you are hungry, eat a yogurt, eat some hummus and pita bread, or eat an apple, and you will feel satisfied.” I would feel even hungrier after a snack like that!

I was working out at the gym several times a week: aerobics classes, some weight lifting here and there, but I had never been, and still am not, a committed exerciser.

So, I searched the internet for some solutions. I remembered hearing that an acquaintance of mine was on a paleo diet, so I searched for that. I was ready to try anything. I did some preliminary reading that day, then bought and read The Paleo Diet by Loren Cordain and The Paleo Solution by Robb Wolfe. Soon after, I found MDA. It made so much sense to me. I am a scientist, so I immediately loved the logic behind the Primal lifestyle, and it absolutely tapped into my constant need to know “why” things are the way they are. I mean, I had never really thought about chronic illness as a result of modern living. I figured cancer and arthritis were just inevitable if you have a family history. This is the first point in my transformation. The reasons behind ancestral living absolutely blew my mind. From that day forward, I reframed the way I thought about almost everything in my life, from shampoo to pooping, mostly because of my daily visits to MDA. Not only has it been a great way for me to feel connected to the way of life I am cultivating and other like-minded individuals, it has also been my go-to resource for my ancestral health questions.

That was August 2012 when I went mostly paleo. I didn’t eliminate everything all the time at first, because that would have been too drastic for me, but I still lost weight immediately and got down to 135 lbs. Here are some other things I lost in the process: chronic sinus infections, acne, hypoglycemia, severe recurring depression, hemorrhoids, “pre”-bunions, heartburn and indigestion, and seasonal allergies. In addition, I discovered during the spring of 2013 that I was gluten-intolerant. I mean, I didn’t even know I was sick!

It is so amazing to finally discover what feeling good truly feels like. I eventually reached a kind of homeostasis with my Primal living. I was doing just fine. I would tweak things here and there, but things stayed mostly constant, with me lifting weights 2-3 times a week and walking or taking a cardio class at the gym several times a week as well. I was even doing some sprinting sessions, which is pretty big for a self-described non-athlete like me. I was eating paleo but with some dairy and the occasional serving of rice.

June 2012 (pre-Primal), January 2013 (my wedding, with my husband, niece, and nephew)

Then in the fall of 2013 I became pregnant with my first child, and my body was taken over by the little person growing inside of me! All bets were off during the first trimester, when I had morning sickness. After that, I had a fairly easy pregnancy, except for persistent heartburn, swelling, and spider veins. I gained about 30 pounds overall. I found that all of a sudden I was so much more sensitive to non-paleo foods than I had been before, but that didn’t always stop me from eating things I shouldn’t have, like ice cream and candy. I had an absolutely wonderful labor and delivery experience (thanks to HypnoBirthing…check it out if you want a calm and natural childbirth) and welcomed my daughter, Ljiljana (it’s Croatian), in July 2014. Of course there was some major adjusting to being a mom. I still had the stronger food sensitivities I had acquired during pregnancy, so I set about optimizing my diet, but now I had one more factor to consider: my daughter.

I breastfeed Ljiljana, so of course anything I eat goes to her, too. She was spitting up a lot, at least more than I was comfortable with, and I wondered if there was anything I was eating that could be doing that. I was still eating yogurt, cheese, and butter at the time, so I cut those out. The spitting up decreased but didn’t go away. I tried eliminating a few other possible offenders, and I discovered that almonds were the culprit. Here’s the interesting thing, though. I would have gone on eating those things, even though, if I was completely honest with myself, I got heartburn after eating them. But if it was affecting my daughter, then it was so much easier to live without. It is amazing what a motivating factor she has been in that way. Oh, and through all this, I found out from my mom that my nickname when I was a baby was “Barfy Brookie.” I was formula-fed first, and then started on cereals. Knowing all my food intolerances now, it is no wonder I acquired that nickname!

I am still incredibly sensitive to non-paleo foods, and I have to be very careful about what I eat, otherwise, I will be suffering for days. I’ve cut out all refined sugar. Rice is out of the question because it makes me shaky. I also have to be very careful about how much fruit I eat. I can imagine my body is damaged from so many years of the wrong foods that it just needs a lot of TLC to heal.

My baby girl is 9 months old now. During the last 9 months, my weight went down to 140 but then back up to 145. I would like to lose more weight, but I don’t think that’s really in cards for me right now. You see, exercising is a little tricky. I started lifting weights again once I started getting enough sleep. (It was 6 months before Ljiljana or I slept more than 4 hours at a time.) I was doing it 3 times a week, plus taking daily walks with the baby girl, but I think it was too much. I was getting achy, feeling hungrier (I’m still hungry a lot these days. I blame breastfeeding and not getting enough sleep.), and I was gaining fat. My workouts were not overly intense or anything, I think my body just has so much going on right now that that type of exercise is a stressor and it can’t handle at the moment. So “lift heavy things” is just going to have to be squatting down for, picking up, and holding/wrangling my 21-pounder.

July 2014 (barefoot and 9 months pregnant), and April 2015 (with Ljiljana)

Primal living for me is constantly changing and evolving in response to my needs and the needs of my growing daughter. That’s where I think my story is a little different. Primal living is constantly evolving for most people, I’m sure. We all have our own motivators and reasons. But it’s not every day that I get to hear about the journey of other women like me, who are in a part of our life where our body is not fully our own and we have to adapt in ways others might not. I might not look very different, but I feel so much better, free of all those health problems. Like I said, I never would have gone the extra mile with my diet and finally eliminated the offensive foods I was putting up with if it hadn’t been for my baby. And I’m hoping, because of this, I will avoid the cancer that runs in my family. In addition, I hope, by teaching my cave-baby the same lifestyle lessons I’ve learned, she will avoid the PCOS and other auto-immune disorders that run in my husband’s family, and we’ll both thrive and get to enjoy life together for a long time to come.

Brooke

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