Here's Part 1.

Ricky is passionate about what he's done. More importantly, and since Americans make up the preponderance of readership, he's an Englishman -- and so you're seeing how badly it could have gone for you.

Joking. You know, I've blogged about traveling the world, and always when sitting at a bar enjoying a pint with an Englishman somewhere, I was asking then if they knew at what precise hour that night the sun would set on the Empire. They really hate that, and they don't. It's a time past and I should hope that when America is no longer the "light of the world," which it is falling all over itself to do in socialist frenzy, that it has as much grace about having lost the world torch.

I have for all my life admired and respected the English way...stiff upper lip, pride, courage, and all that. They have lessons to teach us still. And hopefully, America has lessons for others to admire in decades to come that go beyond how to manage a McDonald's. I sure don't see a singe Steve Jobs on the horizon in America. Wer're all about "troops," now. Will the great American Industrialists be enough to inspire, as the British backbone has inspired? I hope so.

And so I continue my extended interview with Ricky Graham.

There are a lot more embedded photos, in both Part 2 and Part 3. Here's a preview:

Ricky Graham

And now here's his story.

~~~

So, I said I'd put something together for you. I guess I should start by telling about myself and what lead me to a Paleo lifestyle.

I'm now 37 years old and work as a Creative for Apple. I was a sound engineer for most of my life before this and that is where my poor lifestyle stemmed from. I was a pretty heathy kid, played sports and ate as well as my parents could feed me by their knowledge. My dad was a butcher so we always had good meat but this was always surrounded by lots of bread and other grain based foods. When my parents separated I became vegetarian (not because of my dad leaving though) and remained this way until about three years ago. Studio life meant being locked in a room with little daylight, long hours and a high diet of junk food, coffee and cigarettes... With the occasional alcoholic beverage thrown in . I didn't exercise and after a while the desire to left me completely and the pounds piled on. It was ok, I was happy with how I was. I accepted myself after all I was just a little chubby.

I always ate as best as I could but being a vegetarian meant that I ate lots of pasta, bread, cereals, fruit and vegetables. A lot of meals involved pastry of some kind also and looking back I hate to think what my daily grain based carb intake was although I thought I ate healthily. It was certainly low fat, even skimmed milk. Everything I read and heard meant that I was doing the right thing. I was just a bit heavy as I never exercised and sat at a mixing desk for 16 hours a day. In time I wanted a career and life change and so left the music industry. I think this triggered something in me that lead to more weight gain. I wasn't eating the best food, still not exercising and I'm sure the mood change and realisation that I was unsure at what I was doing seemed to do something to my metabolism. Clothes got tighter and I had to buy bigger jeans. I was wearing 38" waist but they were tight. I couldn't bring myself to buy the bigger size as that was too depressing and made me think about how big I was. I really began to lose confidence in my physical appearance.

So, a few years ago we decided to leave London and start a family and begin a new life. At this time I was at my heaviest and the prospect of moving to a coastal town appealed. I'd get a bike and try and get fitter again (as if). I had started to eat a little meat again and was beginning to enjoy it a little although I'd never admit it I registered with the local doctor and had to have an assessment. That was when it hit home. I was 262 lb, my cholesterol was 6 and my blood pressure was high also. I was advised to start jogging. Yes, I heard it right, my overweight doctor suggested jogging, as you can guess I ignored him. Time went on and I just got unhappier and unhappier, I would only buy clothes online as then I wouldn't need to go into a shop and face someone admitting that I was a fat fucker. Around this time I had three weddings to attend, two of which I was best man. That meant I would have to have my photo taken. I had shied away from photos as I was too embarrassed by how I looked and wanted no evidence of what I had become. What I saw from the photos filled me with completed dread and a realisation that I was a mess. (I've included them here for you to see) I also kept thinking that my little boy was going to have a fat dad, I didn't want to be that role model... That sounds so bad.

Then, at a low ebb I saw an article in the local paper about an accountant that had a real health issue but had lost 80 lb on something called the Caveman diet. He'd done so well he was about to run the Great North Run, a local half marathon. I was blown away, it gave a brief overview of the diet but gave nothing much away so being an internet junkie I opened up the mac and got up close with Google. My search brought me to a website called cavemanpower.com ran by someone called Matt Emery. It explained the ethos of the diet and gave a real simple three stage way of attempting to kick start the lifestyle. Something ran true with me and so two days after the third and final wedding I started. It was October 19th 2009. I followed the stages and spent two weeks fasting through stage one and then eating anything I wanted to learn how "bad" food made me feel. Then, in stage two, I spent two weeks fasting and then eating Paleo to learn how I could feel and then hit the ground running with stage three. This first month was really difficult. I was completely addicted to gluten based carbs and was going through withdrawal. I was coming down

I just kept reading, trying to figure out what not to eat and what I should eat. A link on Matts site lead me to marksdailyapple.com, a link there lead me to paleonu.com and of course your site. I read, I ate well and I walked a lot. I couldn't do much more than that. I was so out of shape that that was all I could do. As time went by I kept having to buy new clothes. The weight was shedding from me. I lost 14 lb each month for 4 months. I stopped weighing myself as it was no longer about the weight but about my composition. I ate pretty strict paleo for about six months and then started to experiment with foods to see what I could tolerate. I tried some dairy which made me feel ill, I can have a small amount of cheese here and there but that is all. Coffee was ok as long as I don't have it too often or have it decaf. Red wine isn't too bad either, again as long as I don't go mad which does happen but only every now and then

At the one year mark I decided to step on the scales, interest got the better of me. I was 173 lb. Holy fucking shit I tried on all of my clothes that were left and laughed my arse off. Nothing fit, even the odd tops I had kept from when I was in my mid twenties were too big. A happy day that one

Since then I have maintained a 90% strict Paleo diet, I actually feel bad if I stray which I know I shouldn't but maybe thats just my make up. I started to exercise a little around then. I started running but this only lasted a few months as I found it a bit dull. I joined a gym in January and go once a week to lift heavy things, following the Doug McGuff method outlined in Body by Science. I bought a kettlebell recently and give that a swing a couple of times a week also. At last weigh in a couple of months ago I was 178 lb although I'm getting leaner. I spent a year losing the fat I'm now planning to spend the year gaining some muscle. I've never had a body that is lean and its quite exciting thinking that I can achieve one. My entire outlook to my health and fitness has been turned on its head. I'm almost evangelical about it and most of my friends think I'm a little nuts.

What can I say. Paleo has changed my life No going back.

I did this interview in 3 parts, but the 3rd is pretty short.

Here's part one, which embeds all his Fat Bastard photos. Not sure what exactly I'll publish in terms of his story -- with before and after photos on Thursday. I just don't know. For right now, this is all I'm putting out...the first 15 minutes of about a 40 minute chat with this Englishman.

If it matters to you, he's spent time in the recording studio with any and all rock stars you can name.

He's fun to listen to, this "funny talking" guy, which I why I decided to do this one different.

I'll have part two and the short of part three up on Thursday.

In the meantime, watch the video, dammit.

Ricky Graham

Update: Parts 2 and 3 are up.

I don't want to take up a lot of time with my own Bullshit. For one, I use the concept at the end of the interview. For two, this is perhaps the most important post I have ever done. So just a little Bullshit. Well, maybe medium Bullshit, because I don't care for Bullshit sitting on my chest.

My wife and I decided long ago not to have kids. This sort of decision is unusual, not the norm, and makes for a far, far different life than one would have otherwise. I just wasn't interested. Beatrice loves children. So much so, she became a school teacher and is coming up on 30 years of doing that same thing every day. She dotes on her nephews & nieces and I insist that mine interest me, and then I'm all in. I'm an asshole. Bea has her kid fix every day.

But frankly, one of the reasons I was negative to the idea of kids going back a long time is because, for the most part, the little fockers can annoy me to no end in sight. I can't tell you how many times over years and years I have slapped myself on the cheek, wondering why people put up with the 24/7 crap very nearly every kid puts out. And, it's far too long since my childhood days -- where you only remember the good stuff -- that I know how to reconcile it. I think we didn't behave as badly as people put up with now, commonplace. But that's just me.

This part of the video makes me wonder if I missed out, having a mignon or two. I live with no regrets and I take my chances and lumps, but perhaps, just perhaps, we evolved in such a way that children are not naturally a massive pain in the ass as I have uniformly noted them to be, and that includes every single one I have ever known.

I have an intro and a conclusion to the following video. The intro is about 20 seconds and while I understand many of you are just not into the videos I've been doing lately, I'm going to ask that you watch at least the intro, maybe a minute or two into the content, and then decide: "do I know anyone with kids who might benefit from this."

Cole, Finian and Wesley

Then listen to your conscience from there.

What we cover is every imaginable "normal affliction" kids face -- afflictions even I grew up with and saw in the early 60s -- and how Paleo seemed to resolve them all -- as if there's something magical about living and being a wild human animal.

Click on it.

Here's the links:

• The family story
• Cole
• Finian
• Wesley

This is part 1 of a two part interview that covers the wild transformation of a family of five over the last year and a half since they went Paleo.

Paleo Parents

I sat down with Stacy and Matthew last week over Skype to talk about their transformation both in terms of fat loss and other health improvements, such as depression, attention deficit disorder and behavioral issues with their two older boys. This first part covers how it went for Stacy and Matthew over the 15 months since Stacy stumbled on Paleo while researching intolerance to dairy.

Rather than quote from their story, you can read all about it here on their Paleo Parents blog. And here are their posts on their individual transformation: Stacy, Matthew. I think you'll agree that it took quite a bit of courage for Stacy to put herself out there like that. It's a credit to her commitment to help other parents and their families.

So now watch and listen to their description of their journey, including a number of other before and after pictures.

Part 2 will be about the amazing improvements in the body compositions and behavior or their two older boys, Cole and Finian, and how different the infancy of Wesley was as compared to the others, since he's been "Paleo" since birth.

After watching my interview last week with Timothy Zork, who lost 80 pounds by "going Paleo," Chris decided he wanted to be next on the list and immediately emailed me and we set things up.

He sent over a number of before and after pictures. I'll present a couple of them here and the rest of them are embedded in the video interview. Now here's some excerpts from his email. Chris is 35 years young and stands 6' 1".

I started my journey in August of 2008. I was tired of being overweight and out of shape. My new job had me living by myself in a new town and my family was 5 hours away. There was no better time to make a change to my horrible lifestyle. So at 280lbs I decided it was time to get in shape and lose some weight. Really, weight loss was at the top of mind and I could care less about better health. Little did I know that they go hand in hand. I started running and running and running some more. It was brutal and I was thouroughly abused, but I got up every morning and ran my guts out.

I believed that calories in/ calories out was all that mattered. My diet was made up of processed garbage and grains, oh all the grains I ate. I was downing 2 boxes of cereal a week not understanding what I was doing to my body. I wasn't getting the proper micronutrients and I was paying for it. After 9 months of this I was 60lbs lighter but I didn't feel much better and my weight loss was completely stalled. On top of all that I had a serious case of achilles tendonitis. If you have never had tendonitis then thank the gods because it is one of the most painful things I have ever gone through. The worst part is that I figured well I am a runner and these kinds of injuries are what runners have to deal with. Hell there are whole threads on runnersworld.com dedicated to chronic running injuries. What an idiot I was to keep running through all that.

The Before Chris

At this point I went looking for a better way. I knew there had to be an easier method out there. I got on the internet and for a week straight read through every diet website I could find. Then I found Paleo and it all made sense. I read The Paleo Diet for Athletes and started making changes to my diet. Things started to happen to me. Weight I had been fighting started falling off and all because of a change in my diet. Paleo was a diet but then I stumbled on The Primal Blueprint and here was an all encompassing lifestyle that was simple and easy to follow. It all made sense and I am now a complete convert to the Primal Lifestyle. I have stopped packing on the miles and miles of running and have gone to simple short workouts. I can spend more time with my family and less time trying to lose weight.

I am now 100lbs lighter then when I started and easily maintain my weight at 180lbs. The funny thing is I have stopped shedding pounds but I am still shedding inches. Last year I lost 1.5 inches off my waist and I can't wait to see how many inches I have lost this year. I am betting it is at least 1" while I stay at 180lbs. I never thought in a million years that I would ever be this weight or this size ever. The last time I wore 32" waist pants I was in the 8th grade and 180lbs I was a senior in high school. Now the 32's are starting to get loose and I am thinking that 30's might be in the near future if I am not careful. I can never think anything is impossible anymore.

The After Chris

You can read more about Chris' Paleo / Primal journey on his blog.

The primary reason I've chosen the video interview format is to capture the emotional excitement, relief, joy and the whole basket of good feelings that come from this sort of life changing experience. So have a look and get an earful.

I think this sort of media has a chance to draw in new folks to the Paleo / Primal experience as nothing else. You can help in that by clicking the Recommend button at the top of the post for Facebook, Tweet or reTweet, and perhaps most valuable of all, please consider giving the video a "Thumbs Up" on YouTube.

~~~

Are you ready to tell your story to the word and inspire others to life transforming awesomeness? I'm looking for impressive results, and it needs to be on a "Paleoish" or "Primalish" regime. This blog could have played a role, but not necessary and I will be happy to highlight and link to whomever it was that got you started...so you other bloggers, feel free also to email your reader success stories (with their permission, or entice them to do so) and you'll get the credit for starting them on their path).

Email before & after pics and your stories to my email on my About page.

 ~ Have you checked out Dean Dwyer and his Being Primal site? Coming out of nowhere, he's getting amazing comment traffic on his posts. Take a look at some of them and especially, videos, and you'll see why. For instance, his first bacon in 20 years. He's funny, wild and just enough crazy. And because of that, he contacted me a while back and we arranged to do a video together, which we recorded on Skype yesterday afternoon. It was pretty raucous. He wanted me to let lose, and so I did. Will let you know when it's up.

~ Speaking of video, I hope you got a chance to see and hear Timothy Zork's story of losing 80 pounds, having been fat since he was a kid. Now imagine a guy who looks like he's 45 with four kids, two of them in college, and then in a matter of months, looks like a college student himself on Spring Break at Virginia Beach sporting a Matt Damon-esque visage. That's Chris Tamme's story of losing 100 pounds. We recorded his interview yesterday afternoon, a mere 30 minutes after I got off Skype with Dean. That'll be top of the blog on Monday.

~ And speaking of huge fat loss, how about a family comprising husband, wife and three small kids who all in total, lost over 200 pounds? You won't believe the family photos. And their oldest son, age 5, went from worst to best behaved kid in school. We'll be recording on Monday and it'll hit the blog either later in the week or the following Monday. Because this one has several stories together we'll go 30 minutes and I'll do it in 2 parts. And there's more to come after that, including yet another nearly 100 pound loss and life saved over across the pond.

So if you have a dramatic story of weight loss with before & after pics and are enough of a ham to get on Skype video for 15 minutes, email me.

Alright, it has been a light week of blogging and I see no reason to stop now, so that's it for today.

This is something new. It's for the masses; knowing, as you do, how much I'm all about the downtrodden, helpless and disadvantaged.

But enough about them. We're here to check out the life & times of one 28-yr-old Timothy Zork: basically a fat boy since he was a kid. Yea, he was "that fat kid" who, if you're anywhere near my age, you'll remember as one of those few & far betweens and either, they found ways to compensate in terms of intelligence & humor, or they turned inward miserably. What an opportunity for video game manufacturers once the tech came available!

Which one was Timothy? You'll have to see and hear for yourself, if you can spare 15 minutes to listen to...not a scientist or book author or even blogger who has originated, written about and promoted a Paleo, Primal, Evolutionary way of life...but for once, from a "regular guy" who benefitted and got Real Results.

I went out last night to buy a new pair of jeans – size 34 - and I literally could not remember the last time I was wearing pants that size; 5th, maybe 6th grade? It felt great. I’ve been fat most of my life; unhappy, uncomfortable, and insecure. I was raised as a vegetarian and spent most of my life eating lots of soy, grains, and processed vegetarian “foods” made out of gluten. I don’t blame my parents; they were making what they thought were the best decisions they could. Despite this “healthy” diet, I grew up as a fat kid. I can’t blame it entirely on the fact that I was a vegetarian; it was a complex mix of genetic, emotional, and dietary factors, but by college I was tipping the scales at around 285 pounds.
 

On trying conventional wisdom.

Why bother being hungry all the time I was wasn’t even seeing results? It just wasn’t worth it. I did a pretty good job maintaining my 250, I was proud of the fact that all of the pants I bought before starting my job still fit me 3 years later, even if I had crept up a few pounds.

And how about the girls? How was that, being fat? You'll have to see the interview to find out.

I stumbled into Paleo by accident. I had been listening to a lot of programs on Dan Benjamin’s 5by5 podcast network, and heard him mention “Paleo” in passing a few times. I’d never heard of it before and didn’t think much about it, but eventually he picked up Angelo Coppola’s podcast “Latest in Paleo” and I started listening in earnest. I was a little skeptical at first, but the more I listened the more it made sense. It was hard to argue with science, history, and the shear number of amazing results that other people had.

Timothy Zork

There are other before pics spliced into the video, but you'l have to watch and see.

I think this sort of media has a chance to draw in new folks to the Paleo / Primal experience as nothing else. You can help in that by clicking the Recommend button at the top of the post for Facebook, Tweet or reTweet, and perhaps most valuable of all, please consider giving the video a "Thumbs Up" on YouTube.

~~~

Alright, this was the first attempt at this, and I hope to improve the production value over time. There was an audio issue on my end towards the end and I apologize for that, but Timothy is doing most of the talking anyway.

So here's what I'd like to do. I'd like to put one of these up every couple of weeks or so, featuring those of you who have achieved Real Results. I'm looking for impressive results, and it needs to be on a "Paleoish" or "Primalish" regime. This blog could have played a role, but not necessary and I will be happy to highlight and link to whomever it was that got you started...so you other bloggers, feel free also to email your reader success stories (with their permission, or entice them to do so) and you'll get the credit for starting them on their path.

Email before & after pics and your stories to my email on my About page.

As a final note, we'll be keeping all interviews to 15 minutes or less, so that you're more likely to take the time to watch & listen and so that they can go up on YouTube for the additional views that will bring, resulting in more exposure for Paleo and Primal.

Read Jennifer's story.

Hi Richard,

Long time reader....

Mmmmm...veganism! it took me a while to learn the lesson that not eating meat is just a delusional quest for health.

As a little girl, my very, very, very favorite food was filet mignon. My dad would actually chop it into tiny bites, deep fry it just so the outside was crisp and the inside was still blue and toss them to me like I was a little bird.

At 18, I found idealism and became a vegetarian. I was one until I got pregnant with my son at 22. Those four years were the first time in my entire life that I struggled with weight.  I just got thicker and thicker so just kept eliminating more and more fats and eating more and more grains in futility because that just led to me getting thicker and thicker.  When i was in my first trimester, I started craving meat so badly that I ate it as much as I could (filled with guilt...those poor animals!) as raw as I could and eating grains at the other meals to pay for my sins.

I omnivored it for the next 9 years. Then, I decided to go hardcore vegan. I never made it to the raw state and I can't even imagine the horror that my poor bowels would have had to go through if I had. As it was, I developed a horrible case of IBS with my seed oils, quinoa, and daily raw salad and tempeh salads.  My depression reached an epic low (I did lose weight but I was not digesting a THING...it was literally going right through me). I did this for a year.  I developed really painful eczema on my feet and hands and finally had to have surgery on my bowels.  I have since discovered how gluten intolerant I am. I was also in constant pain.  Sugar is vegan (well, brown sugar is...I wouldn't do white sugar because I'd read somewhere that bones were used to bleach it....honey was way off limits because the bees didn't make it for us... I was in a sad state!). My joints hurt, I was insomniac.  Truly it was ridiculous in hindsight....but, I worked in a health food store and it was supposed to be such a health promoting diet that i just kept slogging through it.  Possibly the worst side effect of my veganism was that I became such a self-righteous, pompous asswipe....and I knew asswipes, what with the IBS and all. But I digress....

One night at a party, my friend's husband, a chef, brought some pulled pork he'd smoked (I lived in the south) and I just fell into it as if it were a soft bed of delight.  It wasn't until a year and a half ago that I found Mark's Daily Apple and then Free the Animal a little after that.  I spent the entire summer doing it paleo. it REVOLUTIONIZED my life.  My skin was beautiful again, I had energy to spare, My digestion was a thing of beauty....and I lost weight without trying.

Last year, though, the earthquake hit Haiti, where I'm from, and when I went to help out the week after, I just had to eat whatever I could.  When I was driving back from Miami, I was in a bad car accident that I'm only just NOW feeling mostly healed from.  So, this past year has been very difficult because I've not been in a place to follow the lifestyle, as I haven't been in a position of controlling much of my food. BUT.....six weeks ago, I picked it all back up.  I had wings for breakfast today after a fasted HIIT and lifting heavy things.  Already in the past few weeks, I've debloated, sleep has been better, and energy is coming back in spades. YAY MEAT!

Okay....that was a lot more than a meat story, but whatever.

Thank you for your blog and your continued work!

Vegan Girl

Cave Girl

Well, more success stories sporting bikini-clad after shots, please! Uh, ladies only.

So there you have it. Simple. Effective. Forward it to a vegetarian or vegan today. Do it now! And Please share it with your skeptical Facebook Friends and Twitter Tweeps. Buttons up top.

And why shouldn't he? Tell me again how the food giants were there for him. How about his friends, who told him, most likely: "everything in moderation?" The drug companies? The media? How about academia and research institutions with with their CAFOs of Grant Whores?

Nobody was there for Kit Perkins who was supposed to be there -- who one might expect to be there -- and consequently, at the tender age of 21, Kit ends up looking like this. But I suppose that looks pretty average to most folks in our increasingly acclimated society.

Kit Before

Kit writes:

When I went to college, my focus shifted to academics and social matters, and before long I had stopped exercising completely. I didn’t realize it at the time, but I was headed down a risky road in a poorly maintained vehicle.

My junior year in college, the wheels fell off. Mounting personal issues, paired with a heavy load of engineering coursework, resulted in severe stress, and my friends and I medicated with beer and video games. I became more sedentary, slept less, and was constantly worrying about one thing or another. My lifestyle led to significant weight gain, and by the summer, I was at 200lbs with very little muscle on my 5’10” frame.

What I think is that Kit was very fortunate to head down this path very early in life. For me, I was always pretty reasonable in body composition until the latter half of my 30s, then dind't do anything about it for 10 years until I found myself at 235lbs on that same, 5'10" frame.

But while I don't think the Paleo mileu mandates a low carb approach, it can certainly be effective for the initial weight loss.

I moved back in with my parents and was set to take a few quarters off from school for an internship in the bay area. The week I was set to start work, the company all but went under and I was stuck with nine free months and no job. Suddenly I lacked purpose and began doubting my self-worth.

Salvation came in the form of pick-up hockey and home cooking. My parents had been low-carb for years (my brother and I complained for years about the bacon smell originating from the seemingly unhealthy diet), and though I didn’t realize it at the time, I’m sure my carbohydrate intake dropped significantly during this time period. I was lucky enough to find another job, and spent the remainder of my time at home working and playing hockey 2-5 times per week.

I lost roughly 40 lbs during my stay at home. I looked better, felt better, and regained the confidence and sense of self-worth I had lost.

And then he went back on his own. Oh, oh.

I returned to school last March, determined to maintain my rediscovered health (and waistline). Shopping for myself again, I ate nothing but salads and pasta. School limited hockey to once per week, so I started jogging and mountain biking. I watched my portions and used low-fat pasta sauce and salad dressing.

Over three months, I gained almost ten pounds. My new clothes were getting tighter, I was losing stamina on the rink, and I was hungry after every meal. It didn’t make any sense. This was the first attempt I had made at watching my diet and I was exercising more, but I felt worse and was gaining fat. Now I realize I was starving and getting fat at the same time.

Yes, I know: calories count. Or so they say. Lots of controversy about that and who knows if it will ever be resolved; so until then, I think I'll just stick with reader and commenter Nigel Kinbrum's adage: "calories count, but why bother counting?" It just seems that for me and a lot of others, we felt the most hungry when gaining fat and the most satiated while losing fat.

This also illustrates the inherent limitations with the low-carb dietary approach. Does it work? Absolutely, very effectively for most, but in so many cases, only to a point, and that point is not the leanness and muscular strength retention -- and even increase -- you see in Paleo folks. Why? Well, because low-carb is sort of a license to eat easy crap. Paleo excludes easy crap in favor of real food: meat, fish, fowl, vegetables, fruits, and maybe nuts & dairy if it works for you. Chiefly, exclude all wheat (and other gluten grains or grains in general), refined sugar, and anything with former industrial lubricants: vegetable and seed oils.

Let's see how that worked out for Kit.

I went home for a week in June before starting summer school, and my dad was in great shape. He told me he had been eating a “paleo diet.” He pointed me to Mark’s Daily Apple, Robb Wolf, and Free the Animal; I was off and running. I bought The Primal Blueprint, and the science of insulin management struck a chord with me. I looked back at the cycles of body composition I had experienced in my young life, and it seemed to hold true – carbohydrate was a problem.

I scheduled my birthday at the end of July for a last Neolithic hurrah, then embarked on a low-carb paleo/primal lifestyle on 8/2/10. For the first six weeks, I tracked my dietary intake and body weight, and wrote a post every day on a blog constructed for that purpose (now indexed here).

Maybe the carbohydrate was a problem, maybe it wasn't, but the point is, taking a Paleo/Primal approach does two things: first and foremost in my view it eliminates Dr. Kurt Harris' "Neolithic agents of disease." Second, it is typically, at most, moderate carb.

The story gets better, as expected.

In those six weeks, I lost 13.6lbs, and got my abs back. I had boundless energy and no crippling hunger. It was easy to get out of bed every morning, and I found I actually enjoy cooking when the food tastes good. I was actually excited to see people I hadn’t in awhile, instead of embarrassed to show my added pounds. For the first time since high school, I craved activity. Suddenly, the couch wasn’t enough for me; I wanted to be enjoying the sunshine and challenging myself athletically.

This lifestyle has also had the unexpected, but certainly welcome effect of lowering my stress. I used to worry about everything. I’m not sure how it happened, but now I am an expert at letting it go; I truly release the stress of everyday issues from my body and mind. Perhaps it is because I feel confident in my health in a way I never have before.

The paleo/primal diet has been like a drug for me. I can’t get enough of the science of nutrition and diet; I’m constantly thinking about how the body works. Since those first six weeks, I’ve been experimenting with my health and fitness, all on a strong paleo base. Most recently I’ve been experimenting with Leangains and I’ve added quite a bit of muscle. In addition to this passion for knowledge, I developed a love for writing, a rare romance for an engineer.

Well damn fine congratulations to Kit. He looks like a human again. Here, see?

Kit After

Do make sure you take a scroll up to see the before shots. [Update: Kit emails in that, "I didn't notice this until now, but the lefthand picture in the two "after" pics is actually sort of a middle pic - after living with my parents, but before really going paleo/primal."]

I thought it would be a good time to post something like this owing to the higher visits the last few days, probably as a result of the debate with raw vegan frutarian Harley Johnstone of 30 Bananas a Day. They seem to think that meat makes you fat. In science, the above is what you call falsification of that hypothesis. The cool thing about Popperian falsification is that it only takes one single instance to know you need not consider it any further. Translation: PLONK!

And for you new visitors, vegan visitors, this is no fluke. Check out Tim. Or, this "Sterling" transformation. Who hasn't heard of Super Mike? And Chris? He's singing a different tune. Murray to this day constitutes one of the most amazing transformations ever. Anyone remember how Austin in Singapore turned his life around? And how about Michelle and Timothy?

And finally, one of the most recent, Mel, a PhD biology researcher. All of the resources at her disposal and yet, she had to come to some guy's blog to find a sound path for living and looking the way a human animal is supposed to look.

You likee? Then shout it to the mountain tops. Let others know, because they don't know. Facebook and Twitter buttons are up top. Just do it.

I increasingly have difficulties answering emails from readers in a timely fashion unless they just happen to to hit me at the right moment with something apropos to what I happen to be up to or thinking about. I always love the progress stories and photos and those always go into a file for possible use.

I hate not getting back to people at all, even though I read every email. So, as a compromise I'm going to take some of those most appropriate from time to time and just include them in a post. Often they offer info and insight, sometimes to plug a decent product or service and sometimes it's just whatever.

~ I hear about you a lot through Marks Daily Apple - I think what you've done with your life and what you're doing to help others is awesome. I, too, follow a Paleo/Primal lifestyle and I've made it my career, too: I'm a nutrition therapist with a Paleo bent and I'm the blogger for Paleo Plan (www.paleoplan.com), which is a Paleo meal planning subscription site.

Anyway, the reason I'm emailing is that I'd love it if you'd look the website over and if you like it, put it up on your website in the list of blogs/sites. Even better than that, though, it'd be awesome if you'd do a review of the Paleo Plan. The service provides recipes (free on the site) organized into a meal plan every week (each week's menu is different) and a modifiable grocery list to accompany it. If you wanted, we could give you access to the meal plan and grocery list for a week, you could follow it and tell your readers what you think? I think it's a service that a lot of people could benefit from - we're just trying to get the word out.

[Looks to me like a worthwhile service. I'll let the proprietor know about this post. While I don't have the cycles to do a review and do fine in my own meal planning, perhaps he'll have some promotional ideas.]

~ I have a real life study for you! My wife came from Thailand 5 years ago, cooking with palm oil and coconut oil only (just asked her if that’s true and she confirmed). After she came here she seeks and makes the exact same food with friends but the only thing she changed was that palm and coconut oil is sort of banned here in order to “protect the people of Norway from heart attack.” Canola, soy and even olive oil has been the substitute and she haven’t even questioned it since the Thais haven’t had the same problem with the western style of eating.

What happens with my wife is nothing but spectacular seen from a western man's poor eyes. She gains 20 pounds without knowing what struck her! She has tried many times but with no success to lose the excess weight.

Today I introduced butter, I threw away the canola and soy. I am convinced that something Is seriously wrong with the way we eat. What do you think?

[There is a growing and I think valid notion that excess n-6 may just be the worst of the "neolithic agents of disease." For myself, while I don't have any of that stuff in the house except olive oil, I do eat at restaurants a lot. I intend to redouble my efforts to avoid.]

~ I shut down the survey just a few minutes ago. It was a pretty good run, with around 2,600 entries on just the first day! In all, there are 6,104 entries, but with quite a few incompletes or abandoned entries (~500). That puts the effective population size at around 5,500.

I copied down every bit of feedback on the survey, and will be doing a write up on the methodology and proposed mechanisms for improving the survey design. I'm fairly sure I'll do a follow up survey next year.

[If you recall taking the Paleo Survey, you can see the results here, and feel free to discuss implications in comments. Two pleasant surprises for me: this is not a man's game, but it's a pretty young game, both of which bode well for the future.]

~ Just wanted to pass on how your particular flavor of Paleo has been working out for me. I've been mostly eating beef, carrots, potatoes, oranges, dairy, and eggs since about Chirstmas time. I didn't think I was much fatter then than I am now, I just have a little bit of a belly. However, my Mom saw me a few weeks ago and said "where did your butt go???" She said that my butt is about half the size it was at Christmas time. I thought she was exagerating at first, but then I realized that the jeans I was wearing were barely even button-able when I got them for Christmas, and yet now I'm wearing them with a belt! She was highly skeptical about Paleo because she is a certified dietary manager and had to drink mass amounts of western diet kool aide. When she saw my results she finally gave in, and now she is doing Paleo as well. As a matter of fact I just visited her this weekend, and she can't tell me enough about how much healthier she feels and how her appetite has reduced. We made a quiche together with almond flour crust and it turned out very well.

Anyway, just wanted to share the positive improvements I've had with you, thank you for all your work spreading the word out! ... I forgot to tell you the most important part of this story! I used to follow the FDA food pyramid religiously, and all through my teens my doctors told me that I had dangerously high cholesterol and blood pressure. In fact, just 2 years ago I was told at a check up that if my cholesterol was much higher, the doctor would have "called an ambulance". Fast forward to last week, I go for a check up, and I return a week later for my blood test results. My doctor told me, in his words "all your levels look great. Whatever you're doing, keep doing it."

I will indeed!

Human Face Transformation

[Needless to say, a hearty congratulations to Ian, and to his mom, and plenty of encouragement to stick with it.]