Paleo Success Story! Losing Weight and Healing Hidradenitis…

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We’ve been getting some great submissions to the Paleo Success Stories page, and below is one of them. I’ll try to share one of these with you guys every week, since we all love these Paleo testimonials. I’m sure you’ll be as impressed with her story and transformation as I am. Nice work, Leila! If you’d like to tell us your own story and have it featured here on the blog, please fill out the form here – we’d love to hear from you!

Enter Leila, who is a 33 year old woman who’s been Paleo for 16 months now…

How has Paleo changed your life, your health, and your happiness?

I was always interested in a low carb lifestyle, but was never really committed to it and I still believed whole grain was the way forward. I was diagnosed with Hidradenitis Suppurativa (HS) in 2011 (Google it – it’s a pretty crazy condition with no known cure!) and as it progressed to a debilitating and seriously painful disease in 2012, I was desperate to get some help.

I began frantically researching cures and I found this amazing online community living a Paleo lifestyle with health testimonials galore! Being in serious pain is a great motivator and armed with my newfound knowledge, I started my Whole 30 in June 2012.It was a tough ride, but with all the resources out there, I was a girl on a mission!

I developed a whole new repertoire of meals that the whole family enjoyed. I spent hours reading food labels. I re-educated myself on how to eat. When we ate out or with friends and family, I developed creative ways of saying no to processed foods, that I didn’t even know I had in me! I started cooking with weird and wonderful ingredients. I forced myself to chop vegetables everyday, which actually turned out to be like exercise – you struggle to start and within 10 minutes of the warm up, you start to feel a therapeutic glow inside!

I started to get less frequent HS flares, noticing that certain foods like grains and refined sugars would send my HS wild! I knew I was onto something and the fact that I was dropping so much weight was an added bonus. People who visited us enjoyed our Paleo meals and could not believe how much I ate and still managed to lose weight. I went from being a late riser, afternoon snoozer and general grump to a happy, morning person with so much energy!16 months on and I am following the autoimmune protocol of the Paleo diet. Since I have adopted the Paleo lifestyle, I have lost over 46lbs (21kg) and I am happier and healthier than ever before. I am also the slimmest I have been since I was a teen. I eventually needed medication to bring my HS into remission, but following a Paleo diet made the medication tolerable and now Paleo eating keeps my HS completely under control.

I found that there were limited resources when it came to HS and diet, so I started to write a blog www.healinghidradenitis.com. In it, I share my experiences, resources, and the general ups and downs of HS with the hope that more and more people will see that they can live a pain-free life simply by changing what they eat.

Paleo Community, I am not a religious woman, but God bless you and long may your positive support, vibes and amazing recipes change the world!

What are some of the resources you’ve used along the way? (i.e. books, ebooks, meal plans, websites, etc.)

There are all the main resources like Robb Wolf, Mark Sisson and Loren Cordain who are excellent foundation resources.

It Starts With Food, The Hartwigs http://whole9life.com/itstartswithfood/– essential reading for any Paleo beginner and plus the Whole 30 is the best way to start – it has structure and very clearly explains why you should be doing what you’re doing!

Aglaée Jacobs www.eat-real-food-paleodietitian.com and her book Digestive Health with Real Food is a fantastic resource for those with autoimmune conditions.

Melissa Joulwan of www.theclothesmakethegirl.com and her book Well Fed – beautiful recipes and an inspiring blog.

Tara Grant at www.primalgirl.com – without her I would never have believed that diet could change my life so dramatically.

Michelle Tam at www.nomnompaleo.com is an amazing resource for recipes – thanks to her I have found new ways to prepare and cook all the lovely whole foods out there.

The scope of online resources out there is immense and I am always finding a blog or site where I can get tips and motivation to find new and exciting ways to eat.

BEFORE

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AFTER

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