Hi there. My name is Willie. No, it is not short for anything other than Willie. I’d like to introduce myself to you since Paleo is about much more than just good food. Paleo is also about how people discovered the diet, how its changed their lives, and how they feel today vs before their lifestyle change. So here is my own personal story.

I had always considered myself to be healthy: I worked out on occasion, stayed somewhat active, had a fast metabolism, was never overweight, and felt as if I ate healthy foods. This image of healthy and fit was shattered when I showed up to my first Crossfit workout about two years ago. My entire world changed when I threw up that day.

Wait. Threw up? Changed your life? Yes and yes. Of course this requires some explaining. And explaining this life changing event is really easy for me: I vowed to never be “that guy” ever again. I felt weak, inadequate, and unable, once I could not finish the workout and puked out. And I was not a man used to failure or not finishing something. From that point onward I was determined to get stronger, more fit, and fix whatever was failing inside of me.

Little did I know until about a year later that it was my diet that was failing me, not my determination or my mind. I kept failing in Crossfit: failing to finish workouts in the allotted time limits, failing to progress in repetitions or increasing weights, failing to get faster or stronger beyond a certain point. Once again, I found myself frustrated.

My wife came across an article about Whole 30 while reading an article on Crossfit; shortly before this I got her into the local Crossfit gym with me. We were both shocked what we were reading about food and how it affects our bodies. We opened up the Whole 30 book “It Starts with Food” and could not believe what we were eating and what it was doing to our health and our body’s potential: We were killing ourselves.

Now I do not use the word “kill” lightly. However, I am using it here because it is exactly what was happening: We were killing ourselves with toxins, poisons, and artificial foods that had a longer list of side-affects than any drug you could get a prescription from your doctor. Trust me. This was a truly awakening moment in our lives.

My wife and I talked about easing into this Whole 30 thing, as it is a drastic change to what the normal modern American diet is today. But once we discussed it, and I had read through “It Starts with Food”, I felt sick to my stomach in eating those foods ever again. I told her that if we do this, we do it completely. We were totally not prepared for this lifestyle transformation.

We went through the pantry and the entire house and packed every single item that was not on the Whole 30 program. In total, we gave away over $1,500-$2,000 worth of food out of our home to family. Are you seeing a small problem here? Yeah, we discovered it rather quickly too: Now we had no food.

Grocery shopping was a whole new experience now that you eliminate all of the processed foods and restrict yourself to buying only real foods. Honestly! 3/4 of a grocery store is filled with processed artificial foods! You cannot appreciate or realize this until you restrict your diet against purchasing or consuming these processed foods.

The short of the long story is this: We ended up on 3 cycles of Whole 30, back-to-back-to-back. My wife dropped a significant amount of weight, and both of us never felt or looked better in our lives. We were sleeping better, we had more energy, we were more aware and alert, and we were much more happy and healthy with our bodies and each other.

Naturally, as we were approaching our third and final cycle of Whole 30, we discovered the Paleo diet. While not as restrictive as the Whole 30, Paleo is meant to be a sustaining lifestyle choice, not a detox diet change like Whole 30. So we both agreed to switch over to Paleo at the end of our third Whole 30…that was over one and a half years ago.

This Paleo lifestyle change made us both discover just how strong we are, both physically and mentally. My wife and I are in better shape than we have ever been in our lives. She lost 65 pounds, gained a significant amount of muscle, and looks absolutely stunningly beautiful in her tight fitting dresses that she now regularly wears. As for me? My bad cholesterol plummeted from 224 and has not stopped falling, my good cholesterol has skyrocketed, I dropped 20 pounds of fat, gained a bunch of new muscles, and I am regularly breaking my own personal Crossfit and weightlifting records; I have truly become faster and stronger, and more importantly, happier with myself and my life.

And it all started with food (pun intended).

Read more about the book “It Starts with Food” and the Whole 30 program at http://whole9life.com/itstartswithfood/