Never thought I would do one of these, but this forum has been such a wealth of info for me, and I've gotten such good feedback on my posts, that I think it might be both a way for me to repay this forum and learn more. Plus, I think I finally am following an approximately optimal diet for me that is producing amazing benefits that are so exciting I feel the urge to blurt them out to someone (friends and relatives get tired of hearing about my success stories after a while ;-), especially if they aren't following the diet and therefore aren't experience the same benefits). Thanks especially to Lex Rooker, who's journal and other posts are a goldmine of information.

Ironically, sharing my success in this way might encourage others to do the same and thus drive up the costs of the foods I eat. However, I doubt I'll actually influence many people, so it's a tiny risk.

OK, here begins my story. Sorry about the long length--you can skim through it by reading the bolded text and a few of the stats in each post.

I had been extremely thin my in my youth and teased and criticized about it ("Doesn't your mother feed you?" "You look like a concentration camp survivor/Ethiopian/etc.," ...), but at age 30 I started to put on some weight for the first time. This thrilled me, but my lifelong GI issues started to gradually worsen (and would eventually be diagnosed as IBS-C with D, GERD, gastritis and gluten-sensitive enteropathy), none of the prescription drugs could control my chronic, painful, cystic acne (not even Accutane), and I seemed to develop another new chronic health problem every year or so. Like many modern people, as I reached early middle-age I felt like my body was falling apart. I attributed much of it to unavoidable, "normal" aging.

Here is what my health stats were before I started getting serious about my health, in 1997 - 1998, not long after my general practitioner started expressing concern about my numbers (I had earlier worse numbers than these, but they were skewed by a Px drug I was taking at the time):

1997-1998 Standard American Diet (falling apart)
Systolic 137
Diastolic 74
RP 60
TSC 194
Tri 269
HDL 32
LDL 162
LCLDL 238
Non-HDL 162
TSC/HDL 6.1
CRP ??
Weight 172
BMI 24.3

In 2003 my GP was concerned about my health stats, which continued to be bad, and gently suggested I may need to soon consider taking drugs to treat my cholesterol and triglycerides. I wanted to give diet and exercise another chance before giving into the drugs. He agreed and referred me to a nutritionist. In the meantime I cut down my portion sizes, soda pop and snack foods and thus reduced my weight some before I saw her. She prescribed a near-vegetarian diet with no red meat, low fat, very high carb, lots of whole grains (which I was aready eating), fruits, veggies, soy burgers instead of hamburgers (which I wasn't eating much of anyway), soy powder as a supplement, soy milk and some low-fat cow's milk. The diet stunk, which helped me to lose more weight and my stats did improve some, but they were still bad and I had worsening problems with my GI tract and nearly every other part of my body:

March 2003 Near-Veggie, lower calorie (somewhat better stats but feeling worse)
TSC 206
Tri 210
HDL 37
LDL 127
LCLDL 212
Non-HDL 169
TSC/HDL 5.6
CRP 1.2
Weight 165.0
BMI 23.3

At one point my acid reflux got so bad that I vomited in my sleep, but luckily woke up during this so that I didn't suffocate in my own vomit. I was desperate for help and I knew I had to get serious. My GP gave me a stronger reflux drug and said it was time to take the cholesterol drugs, but I said there was one last thing I wanted to ask about first, which was that I had done online research and found that people who had the GI and other issues I had reported dramatic improvements when they cut out gluten grains and dairy from their diet. I also found studies linking gluten grains and dairy to GI issues and other problems. I asked if I should get tested for gluten and lactose intolerance. He instead recommended dietary elimination challenges as superior to lab tests (which can provide false positives and false negatives)--eliminate dairy for 2 weeks, then eliminate gluten for 2 weeks "and see how you do." I later realized that this was the best advice a doctor had ever given me.

I believe that his training in Russia and Israel probably accounted for his greater willingness to consider nutritional therapy than the American-trained doctors who had only recommended drugs, surgery, taking more and more fiber, and drinking more and more water (to try to prevent my chronic urinary tract infections and chronic kidney stones--to no avail). When I asked American doctors about diet I either got angry denials that diet could do anything ("That's an old wive's tale!") or brief angry quips to "eat more whole grains" (which I was already eating a ton of), drink more water (I could already hear the water sloshing around in my gut I was drinking so much), or "eat cooked corn" (fresh cooked corn already being one of my favorite foods--and I'd never heard of eating raw corn, what the hell???), often followed by the doctor running off to the next patient before I could explain I was already doing that nonsense (plus I was still too cowed by the magical aura of doctors at that time to argue with them, not yet having learned that American doctors know next to nothing about nutrition and preventative medicine).

Under social pressures I gradually started to include more carbs in my diet. Most of my health stats continued to improve a bit more, though my HDL fell. I figured that my initially higher HDL was because of a temporary boost due to the dramatic improvement in my diet (I later realized it was because I was eating less carbs and more meat and fatty fish during that initial stage). My weight fell to a level that most people would consider extremely thin, but it was actually a return to my usual weight from the age of around 19 to 30, although I did hope that I would eventually be able to boost my muscle mass.

July 2005 (Paleo with increased carbs; feeling off my peak, but still far better than on SAD or near-veggie):
Systolic 98
Diastolic 60
RP ??
TSC 158
Tri ??
HDL 46
LDL 100
LCLDL ??
Non-HDL 112
TSC/HDL 3.4
Weight 135
BMI 18.3

Tired of increasing health problems and with the new year approaching, I vowed to get more disciplined about my diet. Cutting back on nightshades and winter squashes in late 2007 and early 2008 gradually improved my health symptoms and how I felt again, with better sleep, lessened GI issues, etc., but I had a ways to go and I was too busy with an intensive training program I was in to devote time to improving my diet dramatically yet.

November 2008 (feeling bad, so begin to cut down on nightshades and winter squashes and start doing better soon after this):
Systolic 114
Diastolic 77
RP 70

After the training program was over and I had settled into my new job somewhat, and I had seen how small dietary changes enabled me to maintain my health even during a stressful, intensive program, I got more motivated to try pemmican again. I had trouble digesting animal fats and coconut oil, but I figured pemmican would be more digestible. Ray Audette was too vague about how to make pemmican, so I searched online and most other people were annoyingly vague as well, with widely varying advice and recipes. In the meantime I bought some pemmican online which was musty and salty and I hated it, with most of it going moldy before I could eat it and the price being too high for me anyway.

So I searched online again and found a discussion of pemmican at another forum by a guy calling himself DelFuego. The results that he and his family achieved on home-made pemmican were even better than I had expected and they loved it. Now I was really motivated to get going on making my own. At the same forum I came across Lex Rooker's writings on pemmican and his Pemmican Manual, which was the first really clear and detailed explanation of how to make it I had encountered.

So I made my first pemmican--disaster. Tried again--success. At the same time I began biting the fiscal bullet and buying what I figured were healthier foods, regardless of the cost. I was determined to get healthier no matter what.