My Paleo Journey   For the longest time my health was a challenge for me. My family and I have been on this journey of finding a diet that is healthy for us. Today I am completely healthy and able to run circles around people half my age! I am so thankful to the Paleo community for saving me and my family’s health!   I didn’t realize this as a child, but looking back I know that I would have thrived on a primal diet. I grew up eating the modern boxed food diet. As I got older my health problems escalated exponentially. By my late twenties I had lots of headaches and every day after work I would have dizzy spells. During a conversation with my mom she suggested cutting out wheat from my diet. This was just the beginning of my family’s diet changes. When I embraced the gluten free diet I no longer experienced the constant headaches or dizziness!   My family was gluten free as I am the main cook and the changes in all of us were incredible! Ben’s teacher noticed and brought up the changes in our next parents teacher conference. Ben, my son, was more alert in class and his teacher wanted to know why? It was the diet change. Not only was he more alert and focused he was so much healthier! His eyes would become crusty very easily and we would have to wash his eyelids every morning to get his eyes open. When we removed gluten from his diet this all went away!

Mike & Ben working with Tom on the farm

  My family was gluten free for 7 years and I was doing better than before but still struggling with my health. I was coughing every morning for hours and having difficulty breathing. So the next food group to be eliminated was dairy. When we stopped eating dairy products I had this new sensation of feeling breathes of air moving though my nasal passages. It was the first time that I could remember ever experiencing such freedom! One day I yelled at the kids and I could not believe the vibration I felt in my chest. I could not remember a time when I could feel that sensation in my chest! It was fun to yell, I enjoyed the feeling.   Now we were gluten free, dairy free and eating our own amazing organic vegetables, fruits, eggs and pasture raised meats. The grocery store was optional for us. We thought we had everything going for us.

It Starts With Food by Dallas & Melissa Hartwig

  Never mind the low blood sugar problems that caused me to eat every 2-3 hours all day long and the intestinal pains. I thought this was normal! So we ate dairy free and gluten free for another 10 years. Until my sister decided to find a diet that she could do to lose weight. She read the book, “It Starts with Food” by Dallas and Melissa Hartwig, and followed the paleo diet. After my sister lost about 30 pounds she told me all about this book and sent me a copy. I read the whole thing in one and a half days. We started the paleo diet the next day. I have always hated baked beans and was so please to find an excuse to stop eating them! Boy, did that book open up a whole new chapter in my life.   High carbs, gluten free breads, cookies and cakes were a big problem for me and my blood sugar. As we ventured into the Whole 30 Program my body was not sure what was happening. The first week was hard. My body was screaming for carbs. I kept my will power, filled my fridge with only low carb foods and we worked it out day by day. After a week or so my body got used to the high fat, low carb food and I begin to stabilize. I was able to go 5-6 hours without needing to eat. My blood sugar was stable and for the first time that I can remember I was eating because I was hungry not because my blood sugar had fallen. At first my mouth didn’t know what to do. I did not realize how constantly I was eating and that my mouth was very bored going that long without chewing. It took me about 3 weeks to get over the sensation that I need to have something to chew on.   The next thing that I noticed was that I was sleeping a whole lot better. Then I noticed that my hormones were more even. I also lost 20 pounds and regained a nice figure, all this at age 47. Also the knobs and bumps in my finger joints went away.   Another side benefit that I love is that I learned tons of new recipes that were gluten and dairy free. I discovered coconut and almond milk and new ways of making my favorite foods (I love to cook). This paleo diet was less restrictive than the gluten free dairy free diet we were on before.   About 5 months into the lifestyle change I noticed that my energy was about double than what it had been. I felt younger than I had in years. At five months I remember feeling solid inside. The best way to describe the feeling is that I felt complete and not full of “holes”.   Even though we were on gluten free, dairy free, pasture raised meats, organic diet it was not good enough to give us the best health we could have. I had no idea how good the Paleo diet could get, or how good it could taste. By cleaning up our diet to the paleo standards our health elevated to a whole new level! My son Ben was intolerant to tropical fruits (we used to carry an epi-pen for him). Now he can eat them with no problems and especially loves avocados and bananas. My health problems are now a thing of the past! Wow, I am so amazed at how good life has become!

The Gillespie Family

  I want to thank all the paleo and primal people who stuck their necks out to show us a new way of living. Thank you for how you have worked so hard to create the most amazing array of paleo recipes and research that made it possible for me to switch our family over to paleo. The endless hours of research and work that went into figuring out what we really should be eating has saved my family’s health!   Because of my Paleo Journey I want to contribute to the continuation of helping and sharing the paleo movement. It is time to take paleo living to the next level. There is a need for the paleo lifestyle to be more affordable as well as make high quality nutrient dense organic food more widely available. For the past 28 years I have been developing a high performance garden system that makes gardening more nutrient dense, easy, productive and organic that only takes 15 minutes a day. This garden system fits into our lifestyle now. This is my passion teaching you how do to this in a simple fun way! So get ready we are going to take paleo living to the next level!  

Lynn Gillespie is the author of 3 books and the creator of the Abundance Garden and the Leafy Greens Container Garden Courses. She lives and works full time on her family farm The Living Farm in Colorado. For speaking engagements or guest blogging inquiries use the contact form or email us at info(at)thelivingfarm.org