I'm a Christian wife & homeschooling mama, saved by faith through grace. I changed my family's diet from SAD (Standard American Diet) to healthy, delicious & nutritious traditional foods. I've recently discovered there's a name for the way that I eat. It's called Primal or Paleo (I like the diet and think of the men and women who worked hard from sunup to sundown, constantly on the go, eating meat, berries they picked, cheese they made. I do not believe in evolution). No grains, legumes, refined sugars, and no/limited dairy.

Thursday, January 5, 2012

My Journey

I'm Mary, I have an amazing husband and four wonderful children, all with names that start with E. I started down the whole foods road about over 4 years ago, due to a wonderful friends' influence on a forum on www.thebabywearer.com . Thanks to her journey and the other awesome ladies on there, I learned about traditional foods and healthy fats


Two years ago in August 2009, I was pregnant with our third and started having more GI issues, causing me to lose weight. I became intolerant to dairy, gluten and corn and was already intolerant to soy. It turned out my baby was intolerant to all those things, PLUS (we found out when she was a few weeks old) rice. She's outgrown everything except rice, blueberries & bananas (as far as we know, we don't do gluten or oats in our home). I lost 56 lbs in 2010, while nursing E3, due to eating a Primal/Paleo diet (although I didn't know what it was called at the time). I looked the best I ever had & healthy, was wearing sizes I'd NEVER worn as an adult, and felt awesome. I even did the Insanity workout!


Shortly after E3 was born, the kids went dairy & gluten free with me. My oldest daughter had throat clearing issues when she had milk products and both of them had had eczema from the time they were babies.


My son changed. He became better able to communicate and his behavior went from tantrums all the time to being a pleasure to be around. It turns out he is on the Autism Spectrum with Semantic Pragmatic Disorder. SPD is very similar to Asperger's, but not as severe. It's the communication problems and many of the social skills, but he's not rigid in his schedule or rules, so doesn't freak out if we change things up. It's like he's come out of a fog. He's such a wonderful child to be with now! I hate to say it like that, but it's true. I'm tearing up, just remembering. We were feeding him poison for him. Chicken nuggets, gluten bread, etc. He couldn't communicate with us and was so frustrated. He's very bright and finished his first grade math and reading/language program a semester early. He's in speech therapy to help him learn some of the social skills he won't just pick up like neurotypical kids, and it's helped a lot.


My children, husband and myself are healthier. We rarely get sick (praise the Lord!). My older kids haven't taken antibiotics since about 2007, and my younger kids have never had them. My son and oldest daughter used to get lots of ear infections. Since starting chiropractic care, eating well, and trying to get lots of Vitamin D through the sun in the summer, and cod liver oil in the winter, they haven't had one to my knowledge. If they do start to get sore ears, we get them adjusted, and that takes care of it. We occasionally get colds and flu, but they're quick and not that bad, overall.


I am so thankful for what I've learned and the way we eat, because of the amazing changes we've seen in our family. 


I just had our fourth baby last month, and it seems she's intolerant to rice, also, so I'm back on the Primal band wagon full force. 


I choose Primal Blueprint www.marksdailyapple.com over Paleo because of the 80/20 rule (eat best 80% of the time, eat whatever 20%, though I try to be closer to 100%), the allowance of natural sweeteners like maple syrup, raw local honey, coconut sugar, and used to do stevia (but I'm allergic to ragweed and stevia is in that family or something, so I got allergy headaches from it).


Why eat foods that hurt me? I don't want to feel crappy or in pain, so I choose to eat this way for me, my family, and my little baby who can't choose what to eat herself.

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