First of all, who is Stacey Cook?

Well, hello there. My name is Stacey Cook.

I decided to start a blog to share my journey as I start to live a healthier lifestyle. Here I will be able to share some of the amazing things I’ve learned plus my favorite recipes. I will also be able to show you where I made mistakes, so you can learn from them and fast-track your own journey.

The Story of My Primal Discovery (In a Nut Shell)

Sorry, awful pun intended 🙂

Most people I have spoken to, start a ‘diet’ to lose weight. And it’s usually (in their mind) just a short-term solution until they reach their goal – BIG MISTAKE because they end up ditching it pretty quickly – they either get overwhelmed and lose faith or reach their goal and go back to eating the same rubbish as before, and end up putting all of the weight back on. I didn’t start this journey to lose any weight (I soon realized that was just a nice added bonus). It was a gradual process and a “lifestyle-shift” to improve my overall health – FOREVER. That’s the mindset you need to be in when you change to a healthy lifestyle. It’s forever, it’s not a quick fix – and you must tell yourself “this is how I will live from now on”.

I’ve always maintained what most people would call a slim figure, in fact I’m the same weight now as I was when I left school 12 years ago. I’ve always been fairly active – I used to race 100m & 200m track at school and through college. After college is when my life started to become hectic with work and a social life. The regular sports seemed to fade away though as I became busier with work. Relying on – shit food – for some years, I realized that I wasn’t as healthy on the inside as I appeared on the outside. My physical strength had deteriorated, I should have been easily able to lift my own body weight, but I couldn’t even perform 1 single push-up. I know most people will be saying here – “Well I can’t do a push-up either”. Well when I was running 100/200m races – I could easily do push-ups, and if I still look the same today – why can’t I even do one anymore?

After not paying attention to the food I was putting into my body for years, I also started to notice my skin was starting to look terrible – like a spotty teenager! As soon as one breakout would clear up another was just starting to flare up, I didn’t understand why – I had immaculate skin through my awkward teenage years and now I’m getting it in my 20’s – wtf?

I seemed to have NO energy, I felt lethargic all the time and everything just seemed like too much effort. I was also starting to feel depressed; yet most things in my life were exactly where I wanted them to be – why was I feeling like this?

The Shit Food I was referring to before was usually stuff like – Pizza, Curry, Pizza, Chinese, Pizza (you get the idea), Burgers, Snacks…anything as long as I didn’t have to cook! Don’t get me wrong, I do quite enjoy cooking – but lack of motivation and energy meant I just wanted something QUICK and somewhat tasty.

I had neglected my body for too long, filling it with all sorts of rubbish not even thinking about it.

With Mike being a semi-professional football (soccer) player, he has always been very active but his body shape was being noticeably affected by the bad food, much worse than it was affecting me. He also started to develop strange dizzy spells early in 2010 where he would almost black-out. He went for CT scans, MRI scans, and all kinds of tests to try and identify what was causing them. All tests suggested he was fit and healthy. That just left us both confused and frustrated.

Whilst I was visiting family back in the UK (Christmas 2010), Mike discovered a book he couldn’t put down – the 4 Hour Body by Tim Ferris. One of the chapters introduced us to the Slow-Carb Diet, which consisted of Lean meats, legumes and vegetables. Cut out all processed food apart from the one cheat day a week where you are allowed to just go wild(ish).

It was a hit! Mike dropped the excess pounds pretty quickly and his dizzy spells seemed to clear up. He now believes the dizzy spells were possibly related to IBS (irritable bowel syndrome). I felt much better due to the lack of Gluten and the cheat day was amazing (at the time – not an hour or so later). But, it got boring, FAST. There’s only so many lunches and dinners of Chicken, veg and beans you can take before you start adding in more and more cheat meals here and there. A dangerous game, and there’s only ever one winner, and that’s your naughty conscience.

In the 4 Hour Body – Tim recommends Mark Sisson’s Daily Apple – quoting it as one of the most popular Paleo blog’s out there. It certainly was, there are literally tens of thousands of people all doing this same thing – Going Primal – it’s here at Mark’s website where we discovered his wonderful book “The Primal Blueprint”. The more of Primal Blueprint I read, the more things started to click – it all made logical sense – it all really resonated with me. I was up all night, week after week, non-stop research, finding out anything I could about Primal living – it just seemed to good to be true, some examples:

• You can lose weight AND eat bacon – hell yeah!
• If you’re hungry, EAT – my favorite rule 🙂
• Eat fresh local produce – so tasty!
• Go outside, get some sunlight – ow, you’re twisting my arm

Now I often hear things like:

• “But, don’t you know butter is bad for you?” – not true, quite the opposite in fact.
• “But, you’re only allowed to eat 1 egg day, any more is dangerous – sigh, really?
• “How can you not eat sugar?” – I still have dark chocolate occasionally, and fruit often is a good sweeter when baking – worst case use honey. Sugar = Naughty, stay away from naughty stuff.
• “You’re eating too much fat, fat makes you fat doesn’t it?” – no it doesn’t, and I’m eating good essential animal fats and cocunut oils, an essential source of energy when eating a low carb diet. Essentially teaching my body to burn fat as energy (more efficient than carbs) by eating a high fat diet.
• “How can you not eat bread?” – Well, at first I thought I missed it, until I went full primal for 30 days, then ate one tiny bit of bread and noticed the insane gas and stomach upset immediately – not for me thanks.

Refined carbohydrates in particular are a primary factor in contributing to obesity, type 2 diabetes, anxiety & depression, lack of energy, inflammation, autoimmune and heart disease. I follow the Primal Blueprint diet as closely as possible, which essentially follows the evolutionary model of meats, fish, greens, nuts, vegetables and limited fruits. I believe the evidence is compelling that carbohydrates in grain form, especially the highly-processed varieties found in most restaurant and prepared items, are simply not a good energy source for human health.

Food is not meant to be boring – far from it, and nutrition is vitally important for our bodies and to protect yourself against illness and diseases. The Primal diet allows for the best of both worlds. Get a little creative in the kitchen and the natural fresh (hopefully local) produce and veg that you consume will taste unbelievable – that’s how REAL food SHOULD taste.

Here is a quick and fun guide to what is and isn’t Paleo (Primal):
Another huge reason I wanted to detox and only eat clean foods is because we would like to start a family in the not too distant future. One thing we really strongly agree on is, being the healthiest you can possibly be when carrying another life. Allowing that little life the best possible start and growing up healthy and happy not plagued with what most accept as “bad genes or hereditary illnesses” such as eczema, asthma, infections and type 2 diabetes, which stem from poor nutrition.

We dabbled with eating primal mid-way through 2012. After seeing and feeling the immediate affects it was having on our bodies, we flew back to England for my little sisters wedding and let’s just say we slipped off the wagon a little. It almost felt like the effects of a bad diet were magnified after going primal. Or, did it just feel worse now because it was being compared to an ultra-clean diet? Maybe we just accepted the irritating health issues associated with poor diet before – shrugging it off as “oh, I must have eaten too quickly”? Who knows – I’m just glad those problems no longer appear in my everyday life.

Now is the time to fully embrace our new lifestyle – time to start Primal living for life. So join me as I share my failure’s, successes and some yummy food discoveries along the way.

START YOUR PRIMAL JOURNEY – COMPLETE THESE 3 TASKS

1. Leave a comment below if you are thinking of – or have already started your Primal Journey, I would love to hear from every single one of you!
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3. Follow on Twitter.

Feel free to ask any question, I will try to reply to everyone individually.