Change your Lifestyle - Be Healthy - Be Strong : Be Paleo

Good day to you, fellow member of Steemit.

Today is a big day for me, as it is my first post here. And for this first one, I want to talk about something that revolutionized my life now 7 years ago, both physically and mentally. And it is about Lifestyle and Food. It is about me sharing my experience to try to improve others' health, and eventually reducing our environmental footprint, but that's a few steps ahead.
Thus, this is the first post of a series, and I will begin by writing on my personal story, not because I like to talked about me, but to set a frame and explain all the steps that led me to where I am today.
So... let's start !

I wasn’t an early sportsman, at least compared to professional athletes. I was introduced in the sport world by doing rowing at a competition level when a was 13 years-old and a bit overweight. I really liked that activity: being outside on the water, trying to perfect the rowing movement (which is very complicated) and feeling the speed and the boat gliding and whispering on the water. I trained 5 days a week, mixing actual rowing (4 days a week) and workouts.

I have to admit, hard times came with the winter with freezing temperatures and hail storms. But it was always good to be outside exercising and sweating. After two years my team qualified for the national championship on a 8 seats boat. We finished 4th, which was good for me but you can imagine that it was never enough for the coach. At the end, this activity became more of a “win at all costs” than a pleasure one. Competition was not for me. But after those only two years, I was already addicted to outdoors activities.

Well, I might have hidden you some details. Why did I decide to go from lazy to that extreme? The patterns are always the same: lack of confidence, weakness and psychological belittle.
My father was a professor in the not-very-well frequented secondary school where I studied. I wasn’t very much appreciated by its students, because of my father being a fearless straight-talker. Of course, he was a massive man so he didn’t fear any vengeance from not-very-nice students. So I inherited the anger.
I was once hit but it was mostly psychological fear. Anyways, after a while I decided to evolve a little bit in order to stand up by myself.

So first, went on rowing. After that, I practiced a lot of difference activities, several times a week: sport climbing, bouldering, swimming, running, rugby, karate, boxing, tennis, hiking etc.
Lately, about 4 years ago, I discovered mountain biking. I found it to be my new passion right away. Now I have at least two passions: krav maga and mountain biking.

But for every activity, at one point I felt like a was hitting a wall. I wasn’t able to improve my level, my skills and my strength, because of injuries like tendinites and chronic pains. Specially while bouldering, which is a very demanding sport for the upper body joints and tendons. Once, I even developed an allergy to sunshine, like eczema.

My worst injury was an acute bilateral athlete pubalgia, triggered by a massive impact during a rugby match. Right after the impact, I felt that something not normal was going on, but I was able to finish the match. Then my body and muscles began to cool down and just walking became a challenge. Every movement from the abdominals to the adductors was unbelievably painful. Even sneezing was terrible. I was almost crying at every muscle contraction. I went through a lot of doctors, about 200 hours of physiotherapy with very painful treatments like chock waves and deep tissues massages.
The pain diminished a little bit but after 2 years a was still not able to do serious outdoor activities. I was clearly depressed. And during that period I repeated a year of university. According to “specialists”, the only way to heal was to do a surgery, which basically consisted in adding a metallic mesh on the pubic bone to reinforce the connection of the abdominals and to make a Y incision on the upper adductors to release the stress. It looked like I was entering a butcher shop. I was almost ready to do it to put an end to my pain and misery.

And I did some research on the web. The most interesting things were not information about the procedure itself, but the testimonies of the post-operative patients.
Here are some information about the post-operation:

during 1 month you can’t walk
during 6 months you can’t do sport, but reeducation
nobody can assess if you will have collateral damages after a few years, i.e. chronic pains and inflammations. And you know what? If you do, nothing can help you because all your muscles in the pubic area are scar tissues impossible to regenerate.

Ok, I had a bad feeling about this. But then I came across a testimony of a military man that, to keep his work, he had to do the surgery. So the surgery went well, and after a while he was able to walk, then run. But he noticed that even a few months after the surgery, the incisions were not healing. He ran some tests and discovered that, during the surgery, he has been contaminated by the Staphylococcus aureus, a type of fungus. Moreover, he has been deeply contaminated, and the bones were affected. The fungus attacked the pubic region, and a few months later, he was back in a wheelchair, with no hope to get back on his legs. Thank you hospitals.
You can imagine that I just stopped there and decided to heal by myself while I was still able to walk.

I eventually discovered the paleo way of life. The effects were not as fast as some people want to make you believe, but they were still HUGE.
After only one month, my bouldering level went from V2 to V6 (if it makes sense to you, if not, well it’s a big improvement). I had no more tendinites and chronic pain, and I was actually tanned ! (a little bit). No more ridiculous allergies. No more depression.
But the pubalgia didn’t disappear. I began to forget it as often as possible, and while eating natural anti-inflammatory food and exercising, the pain diminished, I recovered muscle mobility and strength.
It has been 9 years since the incident, seven years from my first introduction to the paleo diet, and as of today, I can officially say I fully recovered naturally from an acute bilateral athlete pubalgia.

In your face depressing, negative, there-is-only-one-way-to-recover-and-it-is-surgery doctors.

That is my experience. I had the chance of being introduced to the paleo diet at a critical moment in my life, where I felt hitting a depressing wall, and that small, little, easy-to-implement diet just changed the game. Now, I want to give you that chance, If you are experimenting difficult moments, linked to a health condition (chronic or not) or a mental one.

This finishes my first post (a bit long but an introduction was needed), and next time I will jump into the very controversial Paleo lifestyle, and how to apply it to our modern way of life.

Take care,
Cheers.