It started with a program called "Commit To It" at my yoga studio in Herndon, Virginia. A 40 day program designed to “give you the jump start you need to lose weight, get healthy and feel your best ever.” And that it did. The program is a combination of nutrition education, meditation and 4 studio practices per week, it is both physically and mentally challenging. This program, along with my amazing husband, gave me the jump start I needed to change my life forever. The yoga proved to be stress relieving, detoxing and physically challenging, which I enjoy being an ex-Division 1 athlete, but my battle has never been with working out its always been with food. A conversation with my husband went a little something like this:

Husband: "I think we should go Primal"
Me: "What's Primal?"
Husband: "Essentially we cut out grains from our diet"
Me: "Grains?"
Husband: "Yea, you know, stuff like bread, pasta, rice..."
Me: "Hell no."

A few days later my husband sent me Mark Sisson's blog (www.marksdailyapple.com) and I started reading what this "Primal" stuff was all about. Still not entirely convinced I attended one of our “Commit To It” nutrition sessions and shockingly the nutritionist was discussing almost the same principles I had read from Mark's blog. After a very grisly demonstration by the nutritionist (using a nylon stocking to imitate our colons) I was convinced. That very day marked the first day of my husband and I’s transition from an “all-American diet” to a “Primal way of living”. We haven’t looked back since. We used Mark’s blog to get us started, first was the printable grocery list we took to Whole Foods, which was a huge change from our normal Safeway runs. At Whole Foods we discovered new, natural, processed-free, grain-free, antibiotic/hormone free products that we’d never purchased before. We took his next piece of advice and rid our cabinets of everything that came in a box (cereal, chips, rice, granola, etc.) and introduced fresh and frozen fruits and vegetables, grass-fed meats, cage-free chicken eggs, raw milk, full fat cheeses and yogurts, and tons of nut mixes into our diet. For almost two months we’ve gone back to the way humans should have been eating all along, like a caveman. You know, times before the sale of raw milk was regulated and illegalized in 10 states, before pesticides were used on our farms, before society had to invent "Gluten free" menus, before all of our healthy saturated fats were replaced by “the biggest food-processing disaster in U.S. history” also known as trans fats, before our animals were genetically altered and certainly before the FDA and USDA had control over the food industry. It’s a sad state we live in here in the US especially when it comes to food.

Since going “Primal”my husband has lost 19 pounds. He started out at 178 lbs. (5’8) and is now down to 159 lbs., he’s looking more and more like a caveman every day! As for me, I’ve only lost about 3 lbs. but weight loss has never been my main goal. I started out at 106.8 lbs. (5’0) and today weigh about 104 lbs., again, it’s not about my weight rather toning my body and aging as gracefully and beautifully as I can. The benefits I’ve seen have been greatly different from my husband. For the first time since I hit puberty my acne has finally cleared up naturally (without the use of an antibiotic), my energy levels have significantly increased (on the weekends I am active and alive, whereas before I slept most of my weekends away), and best of all, my IBS (self-diagnosed) has been relieved. For once in my adult life my body is thanking me for what I’m putting into it rather than punishing me with severe bloating and hours on the toilet. People ask me all the time if I’ll ever go back to eating grains, for now, the answer is no. Do I miss things like Doritos and tacos and pizza, of course. But the benefits of a Primal lifestyle seem to outweigh the urge to satisfy a craving or two.

To yoga, to Mark's Daily Apple we are forever indebted.