2010: A Primal Retrospective

on December 28, 2010

Although I’ve been Primal for almost 8 months now, I’ve pretty much approached it in an intuitive manner this entire time. I read some of the introductory stuff by Loren Cordain at http://www.thepaleodiet.com, and it just “clicked” for me. In fact, it made so much intuitive sense, that I never bothered to double-check with any other sources. This will sound lame, but I actually felt like I had unlocked a part of me that had been dying to get out, and this one little cognitive spark was all it took for the rest of the pieces to fall into place.

I was an easy sell in part because I discovered the Paleo Diet on my own (I always like things I find on my own initiative), and in part because I had legitimate health problems that I wanted to solve, for which I had not yet found satisfactory answers (“use corticosteroids for the rest of your life” did not sit well with me). Moreover, beyond making intuitive sense, the Paleo Diet is practiced by a community well versed in the art of critical thinking and BS-detection, which means that every discussion about diet, nutrition, lifestyle, and fitness has been at a very high level—the kind of level I like.

For these past few months, I had thought that everyone had a similarly latent primal spirit in them, blocked from release only by their prolonged existence as “zoo humans” (a phrase coined by Erwan LeCorre at http://movnat.com). The mere mention of ancestral health and wellbeing should have connected some dots and caused an eruption of renewed life. Only it didn’t. What was going on?

Over the last month, as I’ve gotten the chance to interact with friends and family back home in New Jersey, I’ve had plenty of people ask me about my health. It never occurred to be that this would become a big issue, but it makes sense given that the last time I was home was six months ago, when I was only knee-deep in Paleo—that is, enough time to have stopped the bleeding, but not enough time to have healed my wounds. On a superficial level, these off-the-cuff interviews caught me off guard simply because I was not expecting to have to talk about the Paleo Diet so often, but on a more profound level, I was deeply satisfied because it meant that my newfound health and vitality was literally visible on the outside—to the point of garnering a compliment and a question!

Nonetheless, the thought that others were just trying to be nice and/or flattering crossed my mind, but I wasn’t about to miss out on a chance to talk about the most reasonable, logical, and provable nutrition and health advice I have ever heard of and now experienced. The need to educate myself about good ways to introduce Paleo to others became clear, and “uh… just be a natural human?” wasn’t advice that was conscionable for most folks.

I mention this story because I wanted to set the tone for the next few posts, which will all be Primal/Paleo-themed. I wanted to do something good for those of you who are at a point in your lives—much in the same way I was—where one cognitive spark will totally change everything. I realize that there are those for whom the time has not yet come, and even those whose time may never come. But for all of you out there who have never felt like you really belonged in today’s world of waste, exploitation, depression, sickness, materialism, financial slavery, and whatever else makes you really sad, I invite you to join me on my on-going quest to find a natural place in our not-so-natural world.

Here’s to all your New Year’s Resolutions about health, fitness, and wellbeing. May 2011 be the last year you actually need to worry about making those things a resolution.