My Journey to Primal

This week's blog is a personal one. I've written a lot about food, diet, exercise and just enjoying life, but this week I have decided to share my journey to Primal Living because I think it may well resonate with many of you. The efforts to stay in shape and in good health, especially as we get older, often seems a huge ask, but I'm sure for many of us the struggles began much longer ago – probably when we were children. For women in particular, the pressure to 'Stay Young and Beautiful' as the song goes, is immense. I read the depressing statistic recently that girls as young as eight are body-conscious and trying to diet – that is unbelievably sad! And I wonder, when they get to their middle years, what fun and joy they might have missed out on because of the pressure to look a certain way. So this blog is about sharing my journey so that maybe we can try to change attitudes towards women and girls away from just appearance.

In the beginning...

I was never thin. I was one of those children who always have that 'roundness' about them - not exactly chubby, but definitely not waiflike as some children naturally are; and I always liked eating! Holidays, Christmas, birthdays, family get-togethers – I looked forward to all of them and mostly because of the food. And looking back, it was nearly all carbs that I wanted – biscuits, cake, trifle, chips, potatoes, toast, which I think, had I known then what I know now, might have been a clue – but more of that later.

At home, mum always cooked good, ordinary food. My parents were pretty hard up and fast food had yet to be invented so our diet was basic but generally healthy, so we ate pretty well and weren't exposed to junk as are children today.

I was also a real tomboy – I hated dresses and skirts and would rather paddle in the brook or build dens than play with dolls – my games tended to be outdoors and dirty (still are!) but occasionally I wanted to be a princess – and everyone knows that princesses are thin....

Teenage and Puppy Love – or should that be puppy-fat?

It was when I reached 12 and puberty that I really put on weight and sadly, like most children/teens, I was also very impressionable and insecure. It's funny how throwaway comments at that age can stay with you forever. Some examples:

• I had a relative who never missed a chance to comment on my weight

• My first teacher at middle school said he thought I'd make a great rugby player because my shoulders are quite broad – to be fair, as a rugby player himself, he obviously meant this as a compliment and I took it that way as I liked rugby, but it didn't exactly build on my self-image as a princess

• There were two of us named Anne at school so to distinguish between us, she was called 'little Annie' while I was 'big Annie' – again, not meant to be hurtful at all, but it gradually confirmed to me that I was big, not dainty and princess-like

And isn't it odd – if I was bringing up a daughter now, I would positively encourage her to be a tomboy – to play in the brook and get dirty and not care what other people think – but I think those teenage years can really set the image we have of ourselves in later life and it can be very hard to shake.

Let the dieting begin...

So inevitably, in my twenties, I became really interested in diet, health and fitness. I had excelled at human biology at school so I was very happy to read articles and magazines about health and to try to understand the science behind them. Unfortunately, this was also the advent of the 'low-fat and aerobics (and leotards)' era and although the whole low-fat dogma has now been completely debunked, the powers that be were claiming then that the science proved fat is what makes you fat (It doesn't). So I enthusiastically absorbed every word and went low-fat. Butter was replaced by some tasteless, trans-fat margarine, whole milk was replaced by skimmed, crisps became Ryvita and bacon was replaced by some dubious vegetarian concoction from the health-food shop. In came wholemeal pasta, rice and bread; I ate big bowlfuls of porridge with banana; I made stews and sauces using the tiniest drop of olive oil. I joined Tesco's weight-loss online programme and dutifully stuck to my 1200 calories a day of cardboard-tasting low-fat food and I lost weight! Of course I did - but I was always, always hungry; my skin was dry and dull; I was tired all of the time and I was grumpy! I also realised that the more carbs I ate, the more I wanted – read that again - Carbs = More Carbs! My big bowl of porridge with banana, something recommended as a healthy breakfast with the promise that it 'keeps you full', just made me ravenous by 10.30 but if I had nothing, which is actually what I preferred anyway, I didn't really get hungry until around lunchtime. And gradually I realised – low-fat inevitably means high-carb because you have to replace the fat with something and, as I have written about in earlier blogs, we now know that high-carb means higher insulin which results in hunger and fat gain.

But my dieting experiments didn't stop there – por supuesto! I tried pescatarian, vegetarian, vegan, the Blood Group Diet, Ayurvedic diets – I managed to stop short of the Cabbage Soup Diet but I was convinced that somewhere there would be the perfect diet which allowed me to eat normally, lose weight, feel healthy and not be permanently hungry.

Moving Forward

As I have said before, I hated PE at school but it wasn't until I was in my twenties that I realised why – I'm not actually a team player. For obvious reasons, school sports tend to be team sports so that everyone can take part, but I just hated them. I realised in my twenties that I did like sport but I preferred things that I can do on my own so I gradually took up running, swimming and yoga. I liked dance and I really enjoyed aerobics because it was movement to music. Looking back, I wonder how many people were put off sport at school because they actually prefer solitary sports and never got chance to try.

I did, however, still fall into the trap of trying to 'burn off' calories through exercise which, to be fair, when you're in your twenties and thirties, you can do for a while. But eventually, as I got into my forties and then approaching fifty, it became harder to keep my weight down. I wasn't over-weight but I always had the fear that hiding inside me somewhere was a barrage-balloon-sized woman who would burst out like the Incredible Hulk if I indulged in too much cake.

So there I was, constantly looking for the 'perfect' diet, exercising regularly and being mostly healthy, but still always feeling that I needed to watch what I ate and finding the battle getting harder by the year. Then in 2012 , the BBC Horizon documentary 'Eat, Fast, Live Longer' was released – I watched gobsmacked as the evidence for occasional calorie-restriction i.e. intermittent fasting, as a way not only to lose weight but actually make outstanding improvements to overall health, was made clear. I remember saying to my husband 'We would be stupid not to do this.' So we started on 5:2 and I found it easy to do; that might have been the end of my story had I not noticed in The Fast Diet book a small reference to Mark's Daily Apple – the blog by Mark Sissons who has been championing the *Primal Blueprint since 2009.

The Leap to Primal

I can honestly say that discovering The Primal Blueprint was like finding the final key to the things that had been puzzling me for so long. Here was a lifestyle based on hunter-gatherers ancient and modern which made sense both scientifically and intuitively; the doubts I'd had about a carb-laden diet so many years before were suddenly answered – we're simply not evolved to eat large amounts of carbs, especially grains; constant punishing exercise without proper recovery is completely counter to our bodies' needs; staying out of the sun and slathering on suncream is hugely damaging to our long-term health.

Now food is nutritious and filling without triggering a massive insulin response; exercise is intuitive and in line with the natural movements of hunter-gatherer communities – no more slogging around the streets trying to burn off the last vanilla latte; the body uses its own fat stores for energy which means I'm not constantly fighting to keep fat off; intermittent fasting is a natural part of living – not contrived or a trial; play and sleep and sunshine are prioritised and calorie-counting is long forgotten. All the things that I had always intuitively believed about eating, exercise and lifestyle are in place and firmly backed by good science – my only regret is not finding this way of life years before.

But I think one of my biggest and most important lessons is that I am a case study of one – what works for me may not work for other people and vice versa – I know I can't tolerate many carbs because I quickly put on weight, but you may find that you can tolerate more; I enjoy dairy but some people find that they feel better without it; some people prefer a more plant-based diet, others might go down the carnivore route; in the end you have to experiment to find what suits you and leaves you feeling great, and Primal really does give you the freedom to find a lifestyle that works for you.

The Bigger Picture

There is no doubt in my mind that being healthy and looking good go hand in hand – if you look after your health then you're more likely to look good and if you look good you're more likely to take care of your health. But what is 'looking good'? Today's obsession with youth and skinniness can be daunting to us more mature women. We can feel depressed and demotivated when we realise that we can never look like the 18-20 year-olds in the magazines and on the runways and maybe we feel that it's too late to try. Well I'm here to tell you that looking good isn't about being a size '0' or having a flat stomach and an enhanced booty; looking good is about being confident in who you are as a woman – your life experiences, your knowledge, your place in the world, and when you actively take charge of your own health, you'll be amazed how that confidence grows and grows. Confidence gives you a beauty like nothing else and if you couple that with the zest for life that comes with feeling healthy and strong, you will always look fantastic.

I don't live Primally because I want to be thin – I wasted way too much time trying to do that – I live Primally because at 57 I am finding new things to do and I want to be in the best health to keep doing them. A few years ago, I would never have had the confidence to try paddle boarding or surfing; I wanted to but always found an excuse – now I don't want to find excuses and if I want to try something, I just do it.

Some Takeaways (and I don't mean pizza)

I hope my story resonates with some of you – the years of following every diet that promises the world; the constant worry about slow but steady weight-gain after menopause; the misery of looking at (enhanced) photos of models and feeling like a failure; the gradual loss of confidence. I would like to leave you with some takeaways to perhaps help you on your own journey:

• Looking good is about health and confidence not size and youth

• Beauty shines through when you believe in yourself

• Feel the fear and just do it

• It's OK to say No

• It's OK to say Yes

• Laughter looks great on anyone

• When you feel down, get up, put on your make-up, drink some coffee and bluff it!

• Do what's right for you – never mind what the world thinks

If my story does resonate for you, please let me know in the comments - I'd love to hear your stories too, especially if you can add your own good living tips.

• The Primal Blueprint - Mark Sisson