This is part of an ongoing series of real life success stories from people all over the world who have been impacted by the Paleo lifestyle and The Paleo Solution. Read Janis’s story below.
Robb,
I just wanted to thank you for the information in your book. I enjoyed reading it and you made me laugh out loud at times! Always good to incorporate humor and I am especially looking forward to the summer when I can try a norcal margarita! (cold and snowy Central NY bound)
Anyway, I recently turned 50, 25 years of that was being a vegetarian. I thought I was saving the animals, but instead I was the one who needed saving by my diet, which I thought was so healthy for me! I have had many bouts of arthritic pain, allergies, asthma, gastric disorders and two years ago, diagnosed with vitiligo to name a few.
Due to reading your book and acquiring all of the information I needed, I have never felt better in my life! So, thank you so much! I suppose this is my success story! I’ve lost 10 lbs in one month! I feel it was just bloat. I still run three miles, which I probably shouldn’t be doing, but my German Shepherd looks forward to it everyday and am working on your cross fit style trainings.
I have recommended this way of life to many people, so I hope they adapt to it as well. They will feel great! I must admit, as some of the commenters on your site did, about the Nightline episode, that they didn’t have to make it silly or juvenile. Sheesh. I feel like pulling my F-150 now!
Thank you again for your book and the information you provide! Much appreciated!
Janis
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Hi there,
Don’t know if Janis is reading this….but I’ve a question. Did you completely give up being vegetarian? My partner and I have been eating Paleo for some 3 months now…I am veggie and whilst I adapt the paleo ethic to fit and my ethic to fit paleo it is sometimes still quite hard. Any hints? Not sure that I can go back to eating meat….I’ve been vegetarian for 20 years and have always had good health.
Thanks
Faye
Faye-
If what you are doing is working, great, but you might have BETTER health with paleo. Won’t know till you try, can always go back to what you were doing. This from a former vegan.
Hi Faye,
Yes, I’ve completely given up being a vegetarian after all of those years. I thought I was very healthy as well, minus the gas and bloating! I don’t know how to explain it, but I had to come to terms with eating animals again. I understand how you are feeling and that is something you will have to determine if it’s right for you to eat meat, but I can’t begin to tell you how much better I feel! As far as hints for you, I did take baby steps in the beginning and tried tuna fish first, because that was the first thing I stopped eating when I choose to become a vegetarian (kind of a full circle thing I suppose). And then I would try a little something else each day. I didn’t feel sick at all (like they say you will) and no longer had cravings for pasta! It’s been about a year or so now and I can say that I thoroughly enjoy eating tasty locally raised meats! I thank Robb for providing the necessary information I needed to succeed. I truly believe the gluten/grains/legumes, and I ate tons of the stuff, were not very beneficial to my gut! I understood Robb’s bout with veganism. I hope that helps you in some way! Good luck to you!
Janis
Thanks Janis, you are awesome!
I was a vegetarian for ethical reasons for 16 years before starting Paleo. I still think factory farming is morally wrong, but now I buy grass-fed meats from local farmers – that way I feel like I’m actively supporting a better model instead of just withholding money from the folks I don’t like.
Never had any digestive problems either as I re-introduced meat into my diet. And I thought I was healthy before, but a lot of stuff I thought was “normal aging” (achy joints, fatigue, inflamed gums…) went away once I switched to Paleo.
Faye,
I am a recovered vegetarian (12 years) and haven’t looked back since I started eating meat again. I *thought* I was very healthy as a vegetarian, but once I started eating meat again, I could not believe how much better I looked and felt; not to mention my stunning increase in performance at the gym.
If you have a means to source ethically-raised meat, it is infinitely easier to make the transition back to eating animals. We try whenever possible to buy wild-caught fish and grass-fed, free-range meats and eggs from local farms, where we can see firsthand how the animals are being treated. Once you realize that these animals in fact have very good lives and are killed both quickly and humanely, it’s much easier to swallow (so to speak).
I absolutely agree with you!
I too am a former vegetarian (with dabbling in veganism). It is true that I was only vegetarian for about 5 years, but I can say that the way I felt before and after is night and day. I also thought I was pretty healthy prior to Paleo but I don’t think I really knew what that felt like. My experience with the transition was not at all difficult, as is often proclaimed. On the contrary, it was like jumping into a bath of aloe vera after having a bad sunburn… or like an ice cold drink of water after being very parched… instant wonderful relief.
Props Janis, thanks for sharing your story!
I’m new to the Paleo diet and as a Holistic Health Researcher and student working on my certification, and have a couple of questions that might help me. I first learned about the “good fat” approach from Ramiel Nagel’s Cure Tooth Decay (.com) book, which definitely IS reversing my tooth decay and strengthening my teeth and gums too. The achy feeling is gone now after about a month 1/2 and my two re-broken ribs have healed up much faster than expected. I also take trace mins, MSM and occasionally some Diatomaceous Earth for silicon, important in bone knitting. I still ate some carbs, a little rice, and one or two pieces of fruit, like green apple, which I think aided my transition to the slower digestive process with meat, though the fat seems to have increased the health of my GI tract, which was vulnerable to the gluten grains. I also experienced the bloating from a high raw veggie and fruit diet. I don’t have that now, but did reduce my meal size, and frequency of meals, cuz I’m just not that hungry all the time anymore. I think the extra weight I gained drinking conventional milk and 1/2 and 1/2 on my homemade granola can now drop off. I still have sugar cravings, and think that I might be able to correct it with hormone balance, in fact, I’m taking some natural progesterone–I’m 60 and I think it helps, including with the bone and dental healing, since we are generally dealing with so much Xeno-estrogens, including from unfermented soy, the BPA in plastic containers, etc. I eat a lot of homemade sour kraut, and am getting some delicious raw, A2 milk from our local dairy. I’m now fermenting it into kefir and yogurt, because it digests both the protein and sugar–I think I was addicted to the lactose, rather than to other carbs as much, though I used to eat rice. I seem to be able to digest buckwheat pancakes without problems. Frankly, I miss the sweet flavors–and use some honey, but also use apple sauce and berries to help flavor my kefir, etc. Apparently even some of the stevia forms are dangerous to the pancreas, according to Nagel. Here’s my questions:
1.) Am I missing trace minerals by avoiding grains, and if so, how should I replace them.
2.) Does meat bio-concentrate minerals from the healthy grasses in the grass fed sources? (Seems it would)
3.) Does grain fed beef and other meat carry over the reactive nature of the proteins in the grains they eat?
4.) How about the ketones issue? I read Gary Taubes, What if it’s a big fat lie,’ article, but this question wasn’t fully answered to me there.
5.) Also, is there some hope that we can regenerate any damaged tissue from sugar stress after years of pounding our metabolisms with over-sweet foods? The reason is…
6.) Whaaa! I want a little “desert” sometimes. It seems some CHEESE CAKE would be good–is the
conventional cream cheese also ultra-pasturized? I may be able to find raw organic cream cheese…from the health food store. But what can I sweeten it with? I might find the answers to this in Fallon’s Nourishing Traditions, but I’m concerned about negative affects of ANY sugar / carbs right now, and I keep getting conflicting recommendations from different authors. I wonder if I got nerve damage from over-stimulating myself with carbs and sugars, including conventional milk in the past, because anxiety is related to this along with depression. Some sugar experts, e.g. Dr. Nancy Appleton in her book, Suicide by Sugar (and other great books), and Beat Sugar Addiction NOW! by Jacob Teitelbaum, M.D. say that one or two t.s of sugar are ok / day (Appleton); whereas Teitlebaum orders up whole grains. He also separates styles of sugar addiction, including help the stress caused by it by taking B vitamins. Teitelbaum’s book is a gold mine of how to treat all the associated diseases to sugar addiction with various, sometimes unusual supplements, including Ribose. You could almost say MOST disease / imbalances are a direct result of pancreatic / hormonal / metabolic stress, including depression, anxiety, weight loss, candida, etc.!! So as I continue to benefit from this book, I recommend it, but still hope to get some answers to the above, perhaps dumb questions. It HAS been a little bit to adapt to this diet, but I still have that tendency to wake up in the middle of the night, then get sleepy at different times of the day. Is that my metabolism adjusting? Phew! I may be overworking these issues, but do hope you have a more straight forward encouragement. I have not drank sugary foods for a LONG time, but would like to have some rice and maybe not have to worry about honey on my buckwheat pancakes. I’ve discovered that there is even a book, “Life Without Bread,” –where I wonder about alternatives to the old sandwich addiction Americans have, including me. I like BLTs, but just put the same guts to the sandwich onto a salad or pile of cooked chard.
ANY answers anyone has I would appreciate, and I hope I’ve offered up additional resource in this post to help others.
Best Regards, in love, hope, courage to best health.
Ronni Blair
Ronnie- listen to all the podcasts, read the book. Its all in there.