Wednesday Column

***Our Paleo Journey***

A couple of years ago we went to the Netherlands for my brother-in-law’s wedding. My son was four years old and still recovering from the upheaval of the arrival of his younger sister. I was managing his emotional outbursts but feeling like my grasp on the situation was tenuous, and his ability to navigate the world was being impeded.

For a few years I belonged to a magnificent on-line community; a group set up specifically to help members respond to every day issues and circumstances through the shared lens of The Continuum Concept. One of the frequent topics was allergies and diets. The variety stretched from raw-vegan to paleo to the three-year-old diet-of-choice: the same thing with no deviation for days on end. So, these wonderful mama’s, for whom I have a lot of respect, introduced me to the idea of paleo, long before I was ready to even think about it.

The first time I heard about paleo my reaction was “You eat what???” and, plaintively, “Bread?” But, by the time I was (not) dealing with my son’s outbursts, and feeling tired and grumpy and sluggish, I was ready to delve into it. And delve I did, and I found a groove that I could follow in, and I got the rest of the family on board, and we decided that we would do it when we got back from Europe.

So, Europe saw us eating Whatever We Wanted. We spent a week in Paris and went to a different bakery every day and chose something delicious and sat at a park and ate it listening to the universal language of children enjoying themselves, negotiating ownership rights, exploring and delighting.

We ate Italian pasta, Dutch pastries, and pita bread galore in Israel.

And when we got back to New Zealand, we went Paleo-bananas. And it was great. We were ready, and willing, and the transition was effortless. And the difference in frequency of outbursts was amazing. We were sold.

Two years later, we are due back in the Netherlands for my sister-in-law’s wedding. We are still paleo, well, we are a kind of modified paleo that works for us. It has become our normal and for the most part I don’t miss bread or pasta at all. I really enjoy the level of energy I have now, this less-irritable version of myself, and how healthy I feel in general. I’m really pleased that this way of eating was strewn in front of me, and that I was given the space to take it or leave it. And that we, as a family, took it.