Rebel Musician Goes Primal After Years of Hard Livingby
Mark Sisson Recently by Mark Sisson: Nuts and Phytic Acid: Should You Be Concerned?
It’s Friday, everyone! And that means another Primal Blueprint Real Life Story from a Mark’s Daily Apple reader. If you have your own success story and would like to share it with me and the Mark’s Daily Apple community please contact me here. I’ll continue to publish these each Friday as long as they keep coming in. Thank you for reading! Dear Mark, Here follows a detailed timeline of how I came across MDA and your book The Primal Blueprint along with more details about my health history: I was born in Houston, Texas and adopted by a family of Czech origin. I was diagnosed with hypoglycemia as a kid. I don’t so much buy into that diagnosis. I think I was just bored and constrained within the typical public school system. However, unbeknownst to me at the time, the breads, kolaches, pastries and potatoes that were so prevalent in my mother’s native food were spiking my blood pressure to the moon. I was always involved in gymnastics, competitive swimming, baseball and basketball as a child, so I was never really overweight. Since I was adopted, my mother, who is very wise, took the time to cook differently for me and I ate a lot of seafood and vegetables growing up. When I got to college I started eating out a lot and since I was physically active and involved in Jeet Kun Do and Brazilian Jiu-jitsu I was always in relatively good shape. However, a few pounds a year adds up after twenty years, and at the age of forty I found myself creeping up on the scale to 240 pounds. I am 6’2” so I was able to hide it fairly well with a big frame, but I felt sluggish. I was living a musician lifestyle and waking up every day at 11 AM.
I have a good friend who is authentic and real. I went to see him in Vegas, and the minute I walked in his door he told me I didn’t look good with three chins and I would never attract a decent woman fat. He has a way with words and I decided to take control of my life and my fitness. My friend and his wife had lost forty pounds a piece utilizing the Atkins diet. I understand enough about psychology to realize that I could simply model their behavior and achieve similar results. I did and I lost a lot of weight and I felt a lot better. However, I found the shakes and the bars that had the fake sugar in them to taste very repulsive. I believe how you do anything is how you do everything. I have dedicated my life to music and consider it a fine art. I try to make all my relationships a masterpiece and consider friendship a fine art. I was happy with the results of the Atkins approach, but found many of the meals and supplementation boring, and far from fine art when it comes to cuisine. I have a lot of friends who are foodies and gourmet chefs and I knew there had to be a better way. One night I Googled “no carb recipes” and MDA popped up in my search. I was hooked from the front page and once I started taking a look at the recipes my mouth began to water. Real food in its natural state, no strange ingredients, nothing in a box or can – I was hooked. I was using Evernote at the time and I copied recipe after recipe from your site. I fell in love with eggs all over again. I had such misinformation about eggs. You mentioned on your site how every grandmother who lived to a ripe old age had that can of bacon fat on top of her stove that she cooked everything in. Mark, that was my grandmother Sophie Slansky. I loved all her food as a kid and she grew up on farm. Your site elegantly and with fortitude debunked every foolish myth there was about food. Fat, including animal fat, is essential to our well-being, and you have the moxie and the courage to step out on the edge and challenge all of these myths. The number one thing I learned from MDA and that I encourage everyone who wants to get lean and mean with a great low body-fat percentage is to understand this: 90% of all body composition begins with what you put in your mouth. You could join all the gyms in the world, buy every ab machine, personal trainer and run thirty miles a day and never have the body composition of someone who adheres to the aforementioned principle. Listen to Lew's recent podcast with Mark Sisson
May 22, 2012 Copyright © 2012 Mark's Daily Apple
|
