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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!
It was November 9th, 2009. I remember that day vividly because it was the day I reached my breaking point. I was 28 years old and I broke down into tears and decided “enough was enough”. The words that come to mind when I think of that day is the quote from the movie “Animal House” when Dean Wormer says to John Belushi’s character: “Fat, drunk, and stupid is no way to go through life”.
Let me give you a little background. I was always active in high school and college. I played high school football and tennis, and continued my tennis career into college. While that kept me fairly active, my diet and partying ways always kept me on the larger side. After college, I got married to a wonderful, beautiful woman. However my inactive lifestyle and partying ways continued. We had our first child in September of 2008. As our daughter became more active, I simply did not have the energy to play with her. My greatest fear was not living long enough to walk her down the isle. I did not want my daughter growing up without a father. And it broke my heart.
You see, shortly before I made the decision to go Primal and begin an active lifestyle, I had ballooned to 291 lbs. I was having serious panic attacks and living in a constant state of anxiety. I had been to every kind of doctor imaginable. Cardiologists, chiropractors, family MD’s, and naturopath doctors. I had received two stress tests and visited the emergency room twice because I swore I was dying. They could never find anything wrong. I just thought that that was how I would have to live whatever life I had left. Miserable, fat, inactive, and basically a useless blob taking up space in the house. I was a terrible husband and father. My doctor threatened to put me on cholesterol meds and BP pills. I was diagnosed with sleep apnea and forced to sleep with a C-PAP machine. There I was, 28 years old, sleeping with a C-PAP machine.
My wife had already started eating more Primal and was very active. She actually is now the owner of Barefoot Fitness in Watertown, SD. She has been a great mentor of mine as I have made this transformation. I started slowly. At first I cleaned up my diet. I dropped 50 pounds in about a year with a Primal Blueprint diet alone. But then my progress stalled out. I was feeling better but still didn’t think I felt good enough to workout.
