YES! YOU READ THAT CORRECTLY!
Welcome to another Monday everyone! I hope you all had a wonderful weekend and are ready to bring on another wonderful week! Over the weekend, I had a once in a lifetime opportunity to actually meet the amazing Diane Sanfilippo from Balancedbites.com. Don’t believe me? HERE’S THE EVIDENCE!
I have said this once before but I will say it again, if you are the jealous type, please feel free to send your paleo related hate mail to janelle@primalburgher.com 😉
All kidding aside though, this was an amazing event held at Penguins Book Shop in Sewickley PA and I came back from the book signing with a lot of thoughts about the Paleo diet that I never had cross my mind before. This wasn’t just your average book signing where you run into a store, have your famous author sign your book and then you leave. Diane actually held what I will call an “on-the-spot” nutritional overview of the Paleo Diet. Now, for those of yinz following this blog, you will know by now that the Paleo Diet actually helped reverse my problem with Hashimoto’s thyroiditis a few years ago (read about all that in the About Me section of this blog or view my testimonial from Rob Wolf’s website). With that being said, I have had a special interest and serious soft spot for all things Paleo related. This way of eating changed my life, so I was not missing a book signing of this nature at all!
Diane gave an awesome summary of what hte Paleo Diet is, how it works with the human body, what to expect from the Paleo Diet, and she even went further to explain how to trouble shoot certain health conditions with paleolithic dietary principles. In my opinion, it was the closes thing you could have gotten to being at a nutritional seminar without actually being at a comprehensive nutritional seminar (therefore, if you have a book signing event for “Practical Paleo” in your local area, GO!). Perhaps the best part of the evening was a question and answer session that was held for the attendees. I was fortunate enough to have one of my questions answered by this fabulous foodie celebrity, and the answer to the question I asked actually left me with more thoughts and reflections as I drove home.
My question was this: We have seen over the course of time that the nutritional principles of the paleo diet once applied are able to actually reverse serious health conditions such as autoimmune disorders, heart disease, and even cancer. Yet, our modern medical community continues to treat the symptoms of disease without looking at the systemic problem (namely inflammation) as the source of disease. Since inflammation can be tied to inadequate nutrition, the moment we begin to adopt a more sound diet (namely hte Paleo Diet) the less sick we are and the more capable we are to fight and reverse the health problems previously mentioned. Do you think our modern medical will ever start to focus their attention on the nutritional aspect of disease to combat so many health problems that are tied to inadequate nutrition in the first place?
The answer Diane gave, as blunt as it may sound was simply “No.”
A discussion opened up about how nutrition is often put on the back burner for one reason or another. We can be too busy for our own health, and then end up overly medicated because its quicker and easier to take a pill than it is to change your lifestyle. Sometimes, there is just sheer lack of education about certain dietary principles that aid certain diseases, and thus you end up overly medicated again. Whatever the case may be, this answer and discussion that followed really had my brain rolling all weekend. And, I am now left with more questions to ask you all out there reading this blog post.
Why? Why is it that it is so difficult to eat the way we are designed to eat? Why is it so difficult to find the answers to our health problems? Why is there so much emphasis on popping your pills to live well when really, that isn’t living well at all? I find it to be so sad.
I’d hate to get personal here, but this is one of those blog posts that are going to be personal. I spent four years, thousands of dollars, and hours upon hours upon HOURS of my time studying everything I could to find the answer to my own health crisis. It was worth the fight in the end, as yours truly now has this wonderful blog and a whole lot of fitness adventures lined up. HOWEVER, it took four years of thinking I was going to lose my sanity before I finally pieced together the nutritional jigsaw puzzle placed in my hands. I can tell you, it was awful, and there were a lot of people that told me that I was crazy for going against the advice of seasoned health practitioners. In the end, it worked out in my favor, but why? Why did there have to be a struggle in the first place?
I’d like to open up this blog to further discuss the “why” question. why do you think it’s so hard to get our health together? Is it ignorance? Poor education? Are we too busy to care? I want to hear from you! Seriously, send your comments below!
In summary, I had a great time in Sewickley meeting Diane Sanfilippo. The book signing and impromptu nutritional discussion left me yearning for more paleo research that I will now be hunting down online and elsewhere(Attention University of Pittsburgh Students: GET ME INTO YOUR LIBRARY STAT!).
That’s it for me today. I hope I got your brains rolling as well and seriously, send me your thoughts below. Remember to eat smart, train hard, and enjoy your life!
Love Always,
Janelle
