For many years I have competed regularly in endurance races ranging from Triathlons and Quadrathlons to Cross Country Ski races. I was always looking for that little piece of extra knowledge that could give me the edge over my fellow competitors. I am a naturally inquisitive person, and became fascinated in the science behind diet and the links between nutrition and high-performance exercise. I still like nothing better than sitting down to study an article or research paper that is discussing how to get more from your body. As a result, I experimented widely on a whole range of different diets and exercise plans to improve my own physical performance.

However, I rapidly realised that this is a very complicated area. There is so much information out there that even I was starting to become overwhelmed as to what the answers really were. If I was experiencing this confusion, then how could someone with much less specialist knowledge be able to navigate their way through this minefield? I realised that I would have to discard many of my original assumptions and beliefs to achieve the level of health and the quality of nutrition that I was looking for. It felt like taking back control.

At the time I was working as a Personal Trainer who specialised in weight loss. I used a combination of traditional models and beliefs that I had learnt from my time at college allied with my own knowledge that I had built up from research into more modern methods. I was successfully managing to get my clients to achieve their weight goals and take more responsibility for their own personalised nutrition, but I began to wonder whether this was in fact compromising their health in the long term. It seemed that much of the conventional wisdom that I had been working with was deeply flawed. I began to experiment with a new approach.

The turning point came when I decided to do something really special to mark my 40th birthday and entered the annual Escape from Alcatraz Triathlon in San Francisco. This is a legendary challenge replete with tales of shark infested waters and impossible escape routes. I had been dipping in and out of the Paleo diet, the Keto diet, Intermittent Fasting and so on, but old habits die hard. I was determined to make this triathlon an unforgettable experience, so I played safe and reverted to my previous dietary and training routines. I went back to consuming vast amounts of calories which were high in sugar. At the same time I started training up to 6 days each week, sometimes twice a day. I was completely addicted to the feel-good hormones and a rush of adrenaline that come from exercise, but of course I was overtraining and stressing my body to an unnatural extent. I did not realise how much I was taking out of myself.

I went into the race feeling in wonderful shape and convinced that I was going to perform really well. How wrong I was! For the first half of the race, all did indeed go very smoothly and I was well on track for my personal target of getting round in under three hours. But then things started to come apart. I became wracked by a combination of leg cramps, sugar cravings and exhaustion. How could I be in peak condition but falling to pieces like this? I managed to finish the race in just over three hours, but it nearly broke me. It was so disappointing. This should have been my one time to really shine. I was in such amazing physical shape, probably as fit as I had ever been, yet in such a mess in terms of overall health and performance. I realised then what I really wanted was to be able to achieve optimum health and peak fitness at the same time. This was going to require a lot more changes if I was going to make the sort of difference I was looking for.

My journey towards Ancestral Eating and a Primal Aligned Lifestyle began there and then.

I have now been living primally for many years. I train more sensibly, I have revolutionised my diet, I listen to my body and understand it better now. I never feel any urge to return to my old ways. I have seen so many benefits from these changes: