Wish you could hear me...

I have wanted to start blogging ever since I first heard about it. Ask anyone who knows me I am quite the jabber jaw and love to share my opinion about everything. The only frustrating thing about blogging is that I am such a visual person and I talk with my hands and facial expressions more that my words. Although I do talk a LOT with my words. ;) Anywho, now that that is out of the way...

I have been a paleo girl for almost two years now. My quest for paleo began after I had my second bouncing baby boy, Tanner, who is now almost 5. Man, they say having babies changes everything but I think they could have been a little more specific ;). I suffered some pretty crippling postpartum depression after I had my sweet Tanner. Not at first but right about the time I had to wean him from breastfeeding. You see I had big plans to BF at least a year just like I had his older brother Tristan, BUT Tanner was sensitive to EVERYTHING. I had already given up dairy while breast feeding my first because if I even ate butter on my bread he would scream, but Tanner couldn't tolerate dairy, wheat, eggs, soy, gluten and just about anything else that I was eating on a regular basis except the bare bones. :) I did it though. For six months I gave it all up... Unfortunately I was a workout junkie and between that and the mega modified meals I was eating, my milk supply diminished to a mere drizzle. :( I had no idea at the time that my vigorous exercising was a contributing factor or I would have gladly toned it down. Anyway, the doctor insisted that I start supplementing formula. :( And not just any formula, Nutramagin! Stinky, wallet draining Nutramagin. He was a much happier boy for it but the whole process tore me apart. Between the drastic change in hormones that I experienced from weaning him and the whirl wind, horrific changes that came when I reintroced the foods I had cut out of my diet, I thought I would never be sane or the same again.

What a lot of people don't know and what I certainly did not know at that time is that the best way to find out what your food sensitivities are is to cut them out of your diet completely and reintroduce them one at a time to see which ones you react to... So.... I, having missed my sandwiches and cereal and milk and pizza and so on, jumped right back on them like it was nobody's business. That is when I began to fall apart. I was officially a crazy person. Over the next several months I had diagnoses of IBS, Depression, General Anxiety Disorder, ADHD and the beginning of Hypothyroidism. Man, did having babies change everything? No having undiagnosed food sensitivities changed everything. You see my body had gotten used to these foods over the few decades that I was ingesting them, but when I cut them out and added them back in the mild if any side effects that I had experienced my whole life were magnified my a million.

After many many many many trials with both naturopathic and pharmaceutical medications that failed me miserably I started to research food sensitivities. This was another long road. Figuring out the difference between food allergies and food sensitivities and how testing for food allergies won't do you any good if you have food sensitivities because they are not one in the same was truly an eye opening experience. One that I am sure left my dear loving husband Brian thinking I was a complete wacko. :) But I soldiered on. God was in the back of my head telling me keep moving forward you are not crazy and you are on the right path. So I did. He, God, placed many people in my path to show me the way. I went on a women's retreat for my Church and ended up rooming with a naturopathic doctor who specialized in healing people through food. Thank you JESUS!! She laid it out for me and I came home from retreat and began eliminating all the foods that I had cut out while breastfeeding and more. After a long journey I realized I could no longer eat gluten, grains, wheat, corn, soy, dairy, eggs, honey, legumes and most importantly SUGAR!!! And that is where my Paleo journey began. :)

I began paleo in the summer of 2011 and within a couple of months I was a new person. Better than I have ever been before. Happier, more balanced, stronger, faster, more alert, less moody, more comfortable all over. I had always experienced arthritic pain in my hands that I just chalked up to genetics... GONE!! I had never been able to read a book from cover to cover and tell you what I read... GONE!! I LOVE PALEO!!!! Paleo led me to one of the other loves of my life and that is my aMAZEn Bootcamp family. I was searching for accountability in my area for Paleo and this aMAZEn Bootcamp blog kept coming up and ironically this was the same bootcamp my neighbor and now dear friend, Michelle Lyell had just started coaching at. So I went and fell in love!!! I fell in love with people and workout and the PALEO ACCOUNTABILITY BABY!!!

I am not perfectly paleo, I cheat and I suffer the consequences but I rest at ease knowing that getting back on track the next day will help me feel myself again. And a HUGE bonus... After begging my hubby for months to get on the Paleo Wagon.... He was convinced by a fellow bootcamper and is now going paleo!!! Hallelujah!!

So that is my story and if it helped even one person the journey was totally worth it. Thanks!!

• Katie Allbritton