I Was a 310 lb. Unhappy Guy

Recently by Mark Sisson: How To Go Primal With Food Allergies and Restrictions

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!

My name is Jeffrey, and I am Primal. I started my Primal journey over two years ago, beginning on Aug 21, 2009. I weighed 310+lbs and was an unhappy person. I luckily started young enough that serious conditions never developed for me. I frequent MDA forums, under jeff2006, but typically am more of a stalker and not a replier. Primal changed my life forever, and this is how:

Childhood for me was many things, but health never was much of a concern. All the way through adolescence into young adulthood I put very little thought into the fact that my dietary choices were in fact playing a large part of my health. As a young boy I had always been bigger than the other kids; I had a stockier frame and was heavier set than most. Luckily for everyone else I was also a gentle soul (bullies didn’t bug me much either). It wasn’t until junior high (around age 12) that my size began to really increase. By age 15 I was easily 250lbs, but at 6’2? that was not too much of a concern, especially in the minds of my football coaches. On life went as I carelessly ate whatever I wanted. I remember a few distinct times being allowed to buy no-bake cheesecake, and on the following Saturday morning I would sit down and eat the entire thing. (Not exactly sure what my mother was thinking, allowing me to do that.) When junior year of high school hit I made varsity football which kept me in a very physically active lifestyle. With the heavy weight lifting, plus the frequent intense cardio I was able to maintain a 270lb body weight, even with my compulsive eating.

They call it the freshman fifteen, but this hardly applies to me. With my dead football career, so followed all my physical activity. The lack of exercising paired with my still unchecked eating habits I not only begun to gain fat, but lose muscle. My favorite meal at the time was either: A.) A minimum of four plates of food at my favorite Chinese buffet or B.) A 98 cent Totinos pizza topped with shredded cheese, and a quart of store bought potato salad. After a year of community college I dropped out and started working full time at my local Starbucks. This introduced a whole new world of food and drinks to consume. Even at this point my appetite and waistline were only growing in size. I was a size 44 and weighed somewhere in the ballpark of 310+.

One day however, my mother sent me a link to a website on five tips on how to get a great night’s sleep. This was very interesting. This website was full of facts and science I had never heard of before. What was this Primal living? So I spent some time investigating the website, and eventually decided to buy the book to find out more. This is the point where everything changes.

I was living with my dad at the time so I had zero influence on the foods I was eating. However, upon moving out I made the decision to take over my health and go Primal. I had read as much as possible and with this new found knowledge I implemented to the best of my ability. At first it was very hit and miss, what I thought was okay then I know now wasn’t very good (although at the time it helped me transition into Primal). Also, what I thought may have been a no-no back then I couldn’t care less about now (like my large veggie consumption). No more grains? Check. No more sugar? Check. No more bad oils? Check. Stay under 50 carbs, check. With these changes came instant conflict. Still in my career at Starbucks, I was daily under pressure to consume non-Primal fare. The only way I made it through this phase I believe was some unknown will power to resist. I knew that if I gave an inch in this area I would in fact take a mile. So all things but coffee with HWC were out of the picture (which is 98% of the menu, mind you.) Early on I implemented a once a month cheat meal, which worked for the first 5 or so months, but as time went by I became more and more lax, which at the time may have slowed progress, but I feel was completely necessary for me to stay Primal without being overwhelmed by the strictness. In some ways it was kinda eating Primal, I never really cared for bread, and who doesn’t want to eat bacon everyday?

Read the rest of the article