At the urging of a new friend who started reading my book “The Paleo Dieter’s Missing Link” a few days ago, I’ve decided to post the preface of the book here on my blog. My journey from where I was to where I am was long and difficult and full of setback, disappointments, shady characters and people who were all to willing to push me into accepting less for myself, my life and my health. Here’s how I got from where I was to where I am…
My book, “The Paleo Dieter’s Missing Link” is a book I knew I was going to write for a long time.
In the fall of 2004 I owned a big house with a big mortgage, worked a high-stress corporate biotech job, slept fewer than 5-6 hours a night and had just started an evening MBA program. I drank tons of coffee. Everything about my life was rushed and stressed. Of course, everyone would have expected me to remain healthy despite the schedule and the stress – after all, I was working out all the time, jogging almost daily and eating a “very healthy” diet of chicken breasts, protein shakes, whole grains, protein bars, granola bars, name brand yogurt and taking plenty of vitamins and supplements.
I soon found out I was far from healthy.
After nearly dying from Ulcerative Colitis, I began a long battle with digestive illness, chronic fatigue, depression and a lot of other health issues. Of course, I (at the time) and anyone in the mainstream establishment I knew, attributed my problems to “bad luck.” All the conventional doctors I saw (save for one) couldn’t – and wouldn’t – do anything but medicate symptoms with drugs that usually made things worse or caused other problems. I was told over and over again: “There’s no known cause for your illness and no known cure. All we can do is ‘manage your disease’ with drugs. Diet has nothing to do with it.” I even had the head of Gastroenterology at a major university hospital recommend I eat “bread” because my diet of only raw fruit smoothies and steamed vegetables – which seemed to be making me feel better and reduce the pain of digestion – wasn’t of adequate nutrition and nutrient “deficiencies” might result without bread. Bread…
I also made the rounds to various alternative medical people. All of them proved useless as well and were only interested in selling high-priced supplements or advancing their own dogmatic ideas. None had any answers, but all were more than happy to accept money in exchange for a useless opinion, some tests and some useless bottles of crap that didn’t help or made me feel worse.
I spent years sick and exhausted. My usually boundless creativity and energy were gone. I had all I could do to drag myself in to a job that I hated so I could sit at a desk and collect a paycheck. I still worked out and did Karate, but my training was lackluster and always interrupted for various time periods by digestive problems from moderate to severe. I made more than one trip to an emergency room due to dehydration, anemia and sever inflammation of my intestinal tract. Each time it was the same story: “Diet has nothing to do with it. You’ll need to be on medication for the rest of your life to ‘manage your disease’.”
That’s me, sick and miserable sitting at a desk doing a job I hated. The company I worked for was failing and I was surrounded by difficult and negative people…
My grandfather once said about me: ”Adam is over-confident and over-optimistic, but he usually turns out to be right.” Looking back it was pretty crazy – I stopped taking the prednisone and other crap they were loading me up with, stopped going to anyone for help and began reading everything I could get my hands on and experimenting. I experimented with all sorts of diets, fasting, positive thinking, meditation and everything else that had even a remote chance of helping me. Every so often, I’d show up in an emergency room because things got out of hand. I’d do just enough conventional treatment to get back on my feet and get back to my still-stressful job and resume my dietary research and trial and error.
This was all nearly 7 years ago. It’s relatively easy to talk about, but the day to day process I went through was excruciating. Over that 7 years I examined every aspect of my diet, my past, my goals, my thinking, my friends, my relationships, my work and my life. It was a battle and I was literally fighting for my life. And not just my “life” as in not dying, my life as in having a good one that I enjoyed and actually wanted to live. I have no doubt that the doctors could have kept me alive – but I’m certain the life I would have had under their care would have been a living hell.
I reached the point where I was determined to regain my health and live the life I wanted or die trying. There would be no lifetime of drugs and surgeries and emergency rooms and gastroenterologists who could barely speak English. They all told me I would die if I didn’t take their medications and do what they told me. They told me that nothing I did with my diet or lifestyle would help. It was a risk I was willing to take. Life on my terms or death, those were my options. At times, I really didn’t care which one it was.
Things began to really turn around in 2008, even though I was working yet another stressful and miserable corporate job and still had plenty of negative people and situations in my life. I was doing relatively well on a diet of meats, fruit, vegetables and goat yogurt and had been eating that diet for years. I was still far from healthy, though. At this time, I still thought my training days were over. I was too tired and too out of shape to want to do much of anything. I used to be big and strong and fit and live in the gym. College, then corporate life and then illness changed all that. I had lost all of the muscle and strength I built from a lifetime of weights and training. And now, the diet I needed to be on to stay healthy wasn’t anything like the one I “needed” to be on to get strong and train again. Or so I thought.
Like most, I was deluded by marketing and mainstream nonsense. I thought there was a specific diet you ate for each health problem, a diet you ate to build muscle, a diet you ate to burn fat, a diet you ate for psychological health, a diet you ate to run marathons and on and on. Special diets and special supplements. Like everything else in our modern world, everything was specialized and fractionated as far as I could tell. Something Paul Chek’s work helped me realize is that there’s a basic, foundational way to eat for health – and that health is a foundation you build on for specific needs. Eating to heal a digestive illness may have been my priority at one time, but it was entirely ignorant of me – and of our culture in general – to think that the diet that healed my digestive system wouldn’t be the diet that would help me achieve strength and performance or psychological health or any other goal I had. Certainly the application of certain principles or foods might change, but a healthy diet is a healthy diet regardless of goals or specific circumstances.
A healthy diet is a healthy diet and is universal.
Let me say that again in a different way:
There are solid, unchanging principles that make up a diet that is healthy for humans. This is a fact. There is a right and a wrong way to eat.
Yes, there is latitude within the context of “what is a healthy diet to eat” and there will be differences and variations depending on goals, individual health, tolerance for certain foods, genetics and a million other details, but the question of what to eat is not as complex as many would like us to believe. In fact, science tells us – with absolute certainty – what is healthy for us to eat and what is not healthy for us to eat. It’s just that the science that tells us this isn’t medical science. The science that gives us the answers to the questions we ask about what to eat is anthropology and the related disciplines. To see our way to a healthy future we need to use science to look at the past.
The idea of this diet vs. that diet, the 1000’s of diet books, the experts and doctors and pundits and arguments and conflicts on The Dr. Oz show and most everything else within the commercial diet landscape are nothing but distracting nonsense, bullshit, hype and manipulative marketing efforts.
Evolution tells us how to eat and how to live. History shows us what we were designed to eat and how we were designed to live and history shows us how we’ve declined as a species the further we’ve drifted from what is natural to us. The future of health and of medicine is in this evolutionary concept and it will someday be the commonly accepted way to understand and treat health and disease.
**********************
“All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.”
– Arthur Schopenhauer
**********************
Everything changed for me in 2009 when I read Randy Roach’s book “Muscle, Smoke and Mirrors. Volume I.” In this outstanding history of bodybuilding and Physical Culture, Randy showed the diets and nutritional philosophies of the strongest and healthiest from the 1800’s and early to mid 1900’s. This is before modern medicine was what it is now, before marketing and medicating symptoms were what they are now. The early strongmen ate the things we eat now and consider “Paleo” in many instances.
For the first time, I was aware of athletes who were capable of moving weights I couldn’t have dreamed of in my best training days – and they were doing it long before anabolic steroids, “advanced” protein shakes and bars, pre-workout drinks and stimulants and all the equipment “advances” we’re told we need to be strong and be healthy. Many of these men drank raw cow or goat milk, ate foods straight from the farms they were grown or raised on and practiced a lot of the “strange” things I read about in many of the very fringe books I was reading about health and healing. Many of them fasted, they obsessed about food quality. Many avoided grains. Most avoided alcohol. This is the first time I really saw the connection between eating for health and eating for strength and performance.
I also saw the connection between lifestyle and health or the lack of it. Once I started making these connections, things started to really pick up momentum and change in my life. I quit jobs and ended relationships. My friend Chris Wright-Martell let me start training clients as a strength coach out of his school, Modern Self-Defense Center in Middletown, CT. He had a few kettlebells at the school and I started using them. I got hooked. A few months later I got certified as Kettlebell Teacher by Steve Cotter and Ken Blackburn from the IKFF. I started training harder and feeling better.
It wasn’t too long after this that I found my way to the CrossFit community when I taught a kettlebell seminar at CrossFit Relentless. I became good friends with the owner, Merle Mckenzie, and he encouraged me to get into CrossFit. I did. And that’s when I came full circle. CrossFitters were eating Paleo and doing it for performance. I started following Robb Wolf’s work.
In 2005 all my friends and coworkers wanted to know when I would be able to eat “normally” again. Girlfriends were annoyed and frustrated because there was “something wrong with me” that kept us from taking day trips to Sturbridge Village to eat fried seafood and ice cream. They wanted to stay out all night and drink in loud clubs and I wanted to be home sleeping at 10pm – because there was “something wrong with me.”
Today, I’m healthy. I’m happy. I live in the tiny beach cottage in Old Saybrook, CT that my great grandfather bought for the family as a summer home. I run at the beach. I feel good. I eat good local foods. I do yoga in the yard in the sun with humming birds flitting here and there. I go to bed early, I get up early and I lift heavy things in a little barn behind the house. I write constantly. I actively avoid negative people and places and practices. There’s nothing “wrong with me” anymore…
And this is me NOW (Summer of 2011) – Strong, happy, healthy and doing what I LOVE…
Me and my great friend Carrie.
In truth, there never was anything “wrong with me.” There was – and still is – something wrong with a culture where health isn’t a priority, foods we’re told are healthy by “experts” aren’t, disease is rampant, lifestyles are out of control with stress and strife and no one will look at the facts, tell the truth, drop the politics and create change. Misinformation in the diet and health fields is ubiquitous. Almost no one tells the truth. Almost. Change is coming and there will be many established power structures that suffer and disappear when it does.
The “Paleo Dieter’s Missing Link” is my contribution to creating change in the way we think about health and diet and the way we eat and live. Some of the things I say in the book are risky and unpopular. It’s a Paleo diet book but, as I’ll show you, Paleo is a diverse diet genre. It’s not a single diet made up of black and white principles to follow without question or individualization. I’m not here to make friends. I’m here to help you understand Paleo and related approaches in a way that they’re not typically presented or explained. I want to empower you to make your own decisions, ask your own questions and find your own answers. I want to make connections and integrate knowledge from different places and different historical periods. I want to help you understand health and diet on a much deeper level than it’s currently presented.
I had to understand diet, health and lifestyle to heal and live again. I understand it on a very deep level because of the stakes I was playing at. I had to because I couldn’t have turned that mess of a life I was living around any other way. Many people still don’t get me or my lifestyle or my diet, but that’s really OK. I don’t care. I’m living my life the way I want to live it and that’s what’s important. I’m living life on my terms…
ttys
Adam
Wonderful post Adam!
Thanks, Donna!
Thank you! I am where you were 7 years ago – the commonalities are scary- down to the naturopath trying to sell me her Magic vitamins and detox therapies haha!
Can’t wait to check out your book! Almost two weeks paleo/cf and still a long road ahead.
Hang in, Melissa! It really does get better! And you’ve got a lot more Paleo resources than I had when I started back in 2004.
Let me know if you have questions as stuff comes up!
Adam
AWESOME!
Thanks, MK!
Excellent! Shared to Facebook. This is true in the entire culture: “There was – and still is – something wrong with a culture where health isn’t a priority, foods we’re told are healthy by “experts” aren’t, disease is rampant, lifestyles are out of control with stress and strife and no one will look at the facts, tell the truth, drop the politics and create change. ” Bless you! (oh! you already are blessed, heh)
Thanks so much, Cecilia!
Adam
Wow–I just read the preface and I have to say, “Kudos to you, dude!” Now, I *really* want to read your book!
I’m not a CrossFitter (it kind of intimidates me, I have to admit, as a petite chick), but after having been gluten-free (for medical reasons) for over 7 years, the paleo diet just makes perfect sense to me. To be honest, I’ve never felt better or stronger–and that’s only after 2 months paleo! 😀
Thanks so much for being such an inspiration to all of us!
🙂
Thanks, Torrey! Get over to a GOOD CrossFit and try it out! Don’t be intimidated! If you don’t like the environment, try another one. CF can be a really life changing deal!
Read this so you know what to look for when checking out gyms: http://adamfarrah.com/crossfit-the-good-the-bad-and-the-ugly-kettlebell-swing
Adam
I have been “looking” for health for years also. 45 Days on Paleo, I think there is light at the end of the tunnel & it’s not the train. ;-} THANK YOU for sharing your journey!
Glad you liked it, L! Hang in there! It’s a long road but it’s worth it!
Adam
Thanks for the link, Adam! 🙂
I clicked on a few of the CF places by me (I’m in Jersey), but they all scare the absolute bejeezus out of me…I’m way too chicken sh*t to even WALK into any of those places. 🙁 I’m super bummed, but at least I have the diet down, right?…And I *do* work out, just not in the CrossFit way.
Check Strong is the New Skinny on Facebook in a few – I won’t post your name, but I’m gonna find you some encouragement and a good box in NJ!
Adam
Um, you’re super awesome, by the way.
Thank you so much!
😀
Stop… 😛
awesome post Adam! I’m sure so many of us can relate…to the job that we dislike, and to the “well meaning advice” of the medical community. So glad you are so happy!
And to Torrey, I was also a bit intimidated by Crossfit at first. I’m petite as well, and I barely even exercised before finding mine, and I love it! Its totally scalable to your ability. Just do what Adam suggested, visit several to get a feel for each one. Remember all the folks there also started out at some point on day one, probably just as nervous, just like you! Good luck!
Thanks, Sue! And great advice to Torrey, too! 🙂
Hi Adam, I had surgery to remove Crohn’s Disease about a year ago and have read book after book on how to keep it from coming back. I’m currently taking probiotics and digestive enzymes along with other supplements and I’m working on my eating habits. I also have Remicade injections every 8 weeks and would like to get off of it. I’m a little scared right now, but I know that eventually i will get off of it. I feel nothing after having them so I don’t know what it’s doing to my body. Luckily I have had no side effects. And I don’t have pain. I’ve started buying and eating only organic fruits and veggies and am working on the meat. Financially I just can’t do it right now. Do you have any advice for someone like me that would like to get off the Remicade?
Hey Melissa!
Sorry to hear this. I know how scary it can be. I can’t really tell you much about getting off Remicade because I never was on it. My personal opinion and experience though has been that when you have your diet AND lifestyle right, you don’t need any meds and you don’t need to worry about “flare-ups” – at least with Colitis.
Do you have my book yet? There are lots of resources and references in that that can give you more to read and pursue. You’re on the right track though – read everything you can and experiment with your diet and lifestyle as much as you can to eventually figure out what your body needs to be healthy.
Keep in touch!
Adam
I was diagnosed with Crohn’s a bit more than a decade ago. Recently, I decided I was over taking all the medication that I was told I would have to take for the rest of my life. I am too young to do that. It’s been too long already. Cut out all processed foods and felt better. Even got off of one medication. Starting last week I ditched grains. I haven’t worked my way to dairy yet, but if I see improvements with no grain, I may do that next. Thanks for the story. It helps me know I’m on the right track.
You’re definitely on the right track, Katherine! BTW, dairy – even goat yogurt I recently figure out – is highly aggravating to my intestinal track. You’ll likely see massive improvement if you ditch all dairy for a month.
Adam
Have been eating paleo for eight months now and feel better than anytime in my life previously–now in my 50s. While always a petite person, when I hit 50 it was like the warranty expired and suddenly found myself with a muffin top, aches in my joints, headaches, low iron, chronic fatigue, and all the usual stuff attributed to getting old(er). In an effort to lose a few pounds, read Taubes book Why We Get Fat … and then a bunch of other books and Holy Cow! What a load of BS we’ve been fed the past 30 years. It has been easy for me to embrace this way of eating because I feel & look so fantastic and there’s no way I’d choose cake over good health. Not only that, my skin, which had been plagued with acne (and cystic acne) my whole life, has completely cleared up; I feel so vain taking pride in my clear complexion and soft skin 🙂 Only someone who has had this his/her whole life could appreciate what a difference this makes to self-image. The only cloud in this whole change has been hubby’s reactions. It’s nonsense, he says. And such a pain when we go out because we have to find a place where I can eat (what? anywhere they serve meat and salad!) I’m not to instruct friends on my dietary preferences or even mention this “weird” diet I’m on. Although when they comment on how I look and ask what I’m doing, I do tell them. The reason I feel great is attributed entirely to the placebo affect. He refuses to read any of the (literally) dozens of books I’ve bought, or scientific articles I’ve printed off. Anytime I cite a study, he says anyone can find a study to support their viewpoint. Which is true … so my challenge is to try it and see how it works personally for him. But, no. So this is my biggest disappointment–not being able to share the benefits of eating well. Sorry to vent here … noted your comment about friends jeering your choice. Apparently this is not uncommon.
Leslie,
First off, congrats on all your success and in finding Paleo! It truly can be a life-changing experience! It sucks that your husband is being closed minded about the whole thing. It’s too bad…
This post might help you feel a little better about your choices and keep you strong in the face of the critics and the “peer pressure.” http://adamfarrah.com/never-be-good-enough
Stay strong and keep in touch! Great work so far!
Adam
Great post, thanks Adam it is always nice to know where people have “come” from.
@Leslie – I can totally relate – I began my crossfit/paleo journey in October 2009. It started out as just crossfit and then as great as i was feeling in terms of working out the weight I was hoping to lose was not coming off (about 65 pounds). I knew I had to change my diet to see any results so I adopted Zone eating as at that time that was the typical CF recommendation. It worked well in terms of portion control and I think I dropped like 25# but I still didn’t “feel” as good as I could. I found paleo at that point and have never looked back. Ended up losing 65# and feel the best I have in a long time. My kids eat paleo (for the most part) but my husband who is almost 300# and grumpy, tired, and has severe sleep apnea is “Not Convinced”. It is so hard for me to watch him slowly kill himself when he has proof of how successful paleo is right in front of him. I lost my weight in 2009 and have effortlessly kept it off since then even through a recent achilles tendon rupture which has obviously created a huge impact in my ability to exercise. I have tried so many ways to “help” him, through education, through directly giving him meal plans, exercise plans etc but it just doesn’t work. I have resigned to not worrying about it and realizing that he is just going to have to come to the realization on his own, at his own pace. I hope that this happens before he has a serious health crisis, but I honestly just can’t put anymore energy into trying to help him. I know that it is something in his head that has to change as I believe is probably the same for your husband. So the long and short of this post is that I think that at some point you have to embrace your success, be grateful that you have found health, strength, happiness within your self, and realize that you cannot be “responsible” for someone elses health. As painful as that can be, there is some freedom in letting go. I hold out hope in the back of my mind that he will come around, and realize that his kids need him to be around. If anyone has any suggestions to help us help them we are all ears.
This was an amazing read! I feel the same about fighting to stay alive. I feel like I’m fighting for my life the stress that I carry from the major life experiences that I have had in such short time. I’ve also had kidney cancer so I’m very cautious as to the foods I consume. It worries me that the produce is chemically treated I would love to buy organic I do when I can but it is so much more expensive. Thank you again this reaffirmed what I felt.
Glad you liked it, Dominique! Good luck and stay strong!
Adam
I love this post! In some ways I feel the pain you felt being around negative people, with a boring job, etc. Sometimes I just want to give it all up to do the things I love, like exercising. I’m not a weightlifter, but I love cardio, martial arts, yoga and racquet sports. People often thought I was/am weird because I’ rather go to bed and get up earlier, and I’m always involved in my own little projects (like trying to webdesign, learning other languages and studying for my doctorate). But it’s great to know there are other people out there like me!
I’ve just recently come across your blog love it! Found it via the “Strong Is The New Skinny” group on Facebook 🙂
Glad you liked it! You definitely have to follow your heart. My biggest regret is not following my passions soon enough and embracing my uniqueness early enough in life. I think I’ve finally made peace with that because I DID learn a lot about life and how things work and maybe I had to suffer as much as I did to have the resolve to follow my passion no matter what…
Happy you found the blog and are a SINS fan!
Adam
Wow that is so inspirational! I really want to start this diet, I have Ulcerative Colitis as well. Are your symptoms completely gone? And your on no medication? I am sick of steroids and would do anything to get off them.
No medication what so ever, Sara. No prednisone or “flare ups” that didn’t resolve themselves with rest and stress reduction. I haven’t taken ANY medication in YEARS and the few times I need a short course of steroids was because I introduced dairy or grain into my diet. 100% Paleo and no drugs have been needed.
I have virtually no symptoms of UC. I still have weak digestion and have to watch that and my stress levels, but as I get better and better at the lifestyle stuff I continue to heal and do better and better.
I have an article series coming out in Paleo Magazine starting in April/May issue. Check it out and keep in touch!
Also, here’s a video series I did on UC: http://adamfarrah.com/colitis-and-the-paleo-diet
Adam
Adam,
Glad to hear you have conquered your problems(although no one of course has no problems)! Looking forward to seeing the ‘new you’ sometime! Looks like all of us got something out of the Boston Social Club! I got married and built a thriving business, soon a family and a new house….
Congrats again.
W.
Thanks, Warwick! Glad to know you’re doing well also!
Adam
That was beautiful and unbelievably inspiring. As a young college student living in NYC, I feel that I am too young to already be suffering from things like adrenal fatigue and depression. Diet, yoga, and meditation have definitely helped me along the way, but after reading your story I am reassured that I need to get out of my negative environment. Thanks again for sharing your story.
So glad it helped you, Lauren! Thanks for the incredibly kind words!
This one might give you a little more impetus to leave the negative environment too: http://adamfarrah.com/feelings-are-warnings
Thanks again for reading and taking the time to comment!
Adam
Thanks for the highly inspiring post. My boyfriend recently converted into a “caveman” 🙂 and I have to admit it’s not AS bad. The only problem I have is that I do not want to eat poor quality meat (which is really what we’re getting nowadays) so I tend to avoid meat, as well as milk-related foods. He had some serious stomach problems in the past, was diagnosed with bacteria etc. Now he seems to be getting better. He’s not coeliac, but apparently he feels great without grains. My view is – whatever works for you is good for you 🙂
Marta, there are plenty of options for high-quality, hormone free meat out there. Also, there are good dairy products out there too if you know where to look.
Check out US Wellness for meats: http://www.grasslandbeef.com/ as well as places local to you who have Organic and grassfed/pastured meats and eggs.
Also, check out http://realmilk.com for good dairy in your area as well as dairy info in general.
Adam