The Primal Project

Lately I've been considering what optimal health is, what it really means to me and how exactly we can achieve it on a practical, everyday basis.

You read articles from the paleo/primal blogosphere about how many health improvements are made just ditching grains and eating more good fats and vegetable matter. But, you will also read articles espousing the benefits of fermented cod liver oil/bone broth/liver consumption/nature communing/etc., etc.

I read these articles and just thought that these people were kind of a fringe of the paleo community and though these ideas were intriguing, there was no way in hell I was going to eat liver! EW! Well, I have decided to pursue my bachelor's in dietetics, but because we'll be trying to open our gym next year it is something that will have to wait a couple of years. In the meantime, I've decided to attend as many paleo seminars and read as many paleo/primal books as I can to self-educate. In my book searches I stumbled across one called Deep Nutrition by Catherine Shanahan. Here's the description:

Deep Nutrition illustrates how our ancestors used nourishment to sculpt their anatomy, engineering bodies of extraordinary health and beauty. The length of our limbs, the shape of our eyes, and the proper function of our organs are all gifts of our ancestor's collective culinary wisdom. Citing the foods of traditional cultures from the Ancient Egyptians and the Maasai to the Japanese and the French, the Shanahans identify four food categories all the world's healthiest diets have in common, the Four Pillars of World Cuisine. Using the latest research in physiology and genetics, Dr. Shanahan explains why your family's health depends on eating these foods. In a world of competing nutritional ideologies, Deep Nutrition gives us the full picture, empowering us to take control of our destiny in ways we might never have imagined.




It never really struck home before this exactly what kind of impact food can have on our height, physical features and degenerative diseases. Since I have two growing boys, one of which has soft tissue problems in his leg from an early trauma, optimal health and wellness is extremely important to me. If you were told that you were genetically predisposed to getting xyz, check this book out. The first half of the book seems to be very focused on physical appearance, but further along in the book (especially when I got to The Four Pillars chapter) I had so many food revelations.


Because of this, and an article entitled Guts and Grease by Sally Fallon, I'll be attempting to actually consume these traditional foods and try to practically live other optimal health practices that are promoted in the paleo community. Just as an introduction:


I'm a 28 year old female, two kids, living a "normal" life in a city. I'm a stay at home mom with a husband in the military. We've been eating "paleo" with lots of ice cream for almost two years now. I grew up eating bowls of fruity pebbles for breakfast and spooning sugar over strawberries because they weren't sweet enough. I have been "dieting" or interested in losing weight since middle school. For the first year and a half of my first son's life, he ate puffs and I fed him turkey sausage because I thought the fat in pork sausage was bad for him. I've tried eating "clean" and low-fat high carb and the first year of my marriage to my husband we had a spaghetti night and a fried foods night where we ate mozzarella sticks, chicken fingers and french fries - because this was cheap and easy and I had no idea how to cook. If I can do this, you can too. 


Please join me on this adventure..