A New Day

On my way to take the kids to school this morning I saw the first purple blooms of the vinca minors popping up, instantly putting a spring in my step and a smile on my face. Despite the dreary, rainy day and patches of snow lingering, Spring really is here. Sure, the trees have started to bloom and the snowdrops and daffodils have started making an appearance along with the pretty crocuses, but for me it isn't really Spring until that patch of vincas bursts into life. It spurred me on to finally start this blog; something I'd been thinking about for months, but with more urgency in the last couple of weeks.

I have started this blog as a means to share and externalise a number of significant changes that my family and I have been going through and bring a certain thing called Primal Living (or going paleo or turning caveman or whatever you want to call it!) to the UK since it doesn't seem to have reached very far beyond the confines of the US of A. Which is a shame, really it is. The UK's obesity rates are fast approaching the USA's rates along with the incline of Diabetes and Heart Disease.

I'm not the best person to tell you what Primal living entails so I'll tell you who is, but I think it's worth mentioning how I got here, to this point at which I have totally reworked my life, have started on my children's lives and gotten not only my husband on board (off his own back too, amazingly enough) and my mother; and through her my step-dad who has Type 2 Diabetes; but several of my friends are now looking into it, for themselves, or for their own family members with T2D.

I have always been burdened with creativity, and if you have read my other blog you'll know more about this, but over the last couple of years health and longevity have been at the forefront of my mind. Having children will do that to you. Gone are the days when I could ride a rollercoaster without terrifying images of greusome death flashing through my mind. So it's safe to say motherhood unhinges (or perhaps tightens?) the danger sensors in your brain to the point when even a walk to school can be fraught with many a mini heart attack as they stumble when they aren't looking, or nearly walk out into the road despite the number of times you've played the "stop, look and listen" game. Naturally their health has come to fit in the same category.

My smallest one, about a year ago.

I digress. My creativity led to take up making herbal preparations as a sort of fun hobby since I was suffering so much with my skin and wanted to try a more natural approach to skin care. As a result the only commercial stuff I use on my skin now is plain old dove bar soap, dead sea spa magic minerals shampoo and herbal essences conditioner. I've completely wiped all liquid soaps from our bathroom due to the SLS/SLES (sodium lauryl/laureth sulphate) content, which is a detergent that can be found in anything liquid for the simple purpose of making bubbles. Once I've mastered a toothpaste recipe that my hubby and kids will happily use the commercial toothpaste will be gone too, for the same reason.

I know that there's been a lot of hype over the years about how just about everything causes cancer, but more and more I've come to suspect that there just wouldn't be so much smoke without a fire. One day I'll get really technical and list the studies I've read (if I can find them again; one downside of link-hopping your way through an evening) but honestly all it takes is a google search to find what you're looking for these days. Sometimes it's bogus, sometimes it's valid; the trick is learning how to filter the gold particles from the mud. There is honest-to-goodness REAL information out there, and usually, I find, once you reach a reputable source, you will find links to other reputable sources.

I subscribe to DIY Natural; an American couple who blog recipes, tutorials and information on natural living in the modern world. Matt and Betsy's site is a really excellent source of down-to-earth, sensible information that is applicable to just about anyone anywhere. It was their post on natural butter vs margarine (and in particular the picture of the ants ignoring even the reduced fat butter and going straight for the real thing) that really caught my attention. After reading the link from their site to another all about how margarine is manufactured I felt utterly sick to my stomach and highly liberated at the same time.

For years I have been unable to decipher from the vast sources of misleading information as to what really is good for us and what really is bad. I was raised on E-numbers, high sugar, highly processed foods since they were cheap and we were not well off, at all. Nothing on my mom, she did what she had to do and fed us whatever she could afford because usually that was the only way we'd eat after her and my dad divorced. But I always took the view of, "well it didn't do me any harm..." And then I started thinking, was I right? Am I a picture of health? Erm...no.

So the more I delved into this new found world of "healthy fats" and good versus bad nutrition I was slowly accruing a rather vast amount of information that I knew somehow had to fit into place, but I just couldn't get it to piece together quite right. And just when I thought I wasn't going to get any farther, that I'd found the best information that was available to the lay person at the moment (unless I wanted to read a scientific dictionary), I discovered Mark's site and suddenly everything; EVERYTHING; I'd learnt made complete and utter sense. Mark is my new hero, and fast becoming the hero of my little bubble of close family and friends. He is the one to tell you all about Primal living in the modern world.

After the whole horsemeat scandal (which didn't in itself cause me a concern as we never eat ready meals aside from fish fingers and chicken nuggets on overly busy days) I really did start to wonder...if they can cover up such a huge conspiracy and mislabel something so badly and get away with it for so long, what else are they doing? And then finding Mark's site and realising that actually, the way we're engineered to eat and live is far simpler than the way we do things now. And though it takes some doing to go primal in the modern world, if a mother of three, who spends her hours cleaning, doing washing, cooking, writing, standing in as acting chair for my daughter's pre-school and generally trying to have a life in between can do it, then just about anyone can.

It takes more thought, though. And that mental energy is sometimes the least available; but it is worth it, more than I can say. I'm only just beginning and I'm still learning a lot, but the gist of eating the right foods when you are hungry, avoiding grains at all costs for their toxicity, and getting adequate sleep and the right kind of exercise really make a great deal of sense. I've gone from eating around 1900 cals a day (yes, I sadly went and measured it) of which 75odd% was carbs (bad) and 15% was fat, to eating around 1500 cals a day of which only 21% was carbs and 56% fats. I feel like a new person, that is the only way to describe it. After just a couple of weeks I've drops a few pounds, lost the constant bloating of my stomach, hardly ever feel hungry and have a lot more energy. I actually want to run around with my kids and spend time in the kitchen preparing a carefully proportioned meal because I understand now how our bodies work and what they really need to be healthy.

The whole concept of LOW FAT- HIGH CARB diets are a mystery to me, now that I know how utterly idiotic it is. It's only the last 20odd years that we have been doing it, and guess when obesity rates started increasing steadily from...? If you guessed when we started the low fat-high carb way of eating, you'd be right. Why is it that we have all been duped for such a long time? That our governments are still listening to the faddy advice from the late 70's when such life-changing and life-saving information is now being recorded (or re-recorded, snigger...)? WHY are there posters in the hospitals telling people that their plate should be made up of 60% carbs, only around 10% fats (and they very cleverly include sugars in there...once you read more on sugars, carbs and beneficial fats, you'll understand my chagrin) and a low percentage of protein? How is it that even the Healthcare system doesn't realise that they are touting the very recipe for obesity as "Healthy"?

One of Mark's big openers to a post is "What does a lion eat?" and of course it eats meat, and no one would question it, because lions are designed to eat meat; they evolved that way. Once you take that view on nutrition, it gets easier to change your thinking about what you, as a human being, eat now and how you should be eating to be healthy.

At the end of the day (and a rather long introductory post...sorry) we all have to make up our minds about what is healthy and what is not. But in my humble opinion, if it wasn't something we evolved on, then we don't need it, and potentially it's even harmful, as in the grains that we rely on so heavily. This day is a new day; make the most of it, and every day to come.

Next time I'll go into more detail as to what I've changed in our daily diets and post a couple of recipes that were a success with the kids. In the interim, go spend some time with Mark ;-)

Update:
This is one of the reasons I started this blog: so that more people can find a path to the success this amazing young woman found.