Do you ever start eating and eating and then eventually look to notice that the entire bag is gone? I do.

This weekend I ate an entire bag of carrots in a half hour. Yep, carrots. I am an avid carrot eater. I especially like to eat them while hopping around hiding Easter eggs for little children.      

Just kidding.

Anyway, carrots are just one of the things I eat to maintain a healthy lifestyle. Since I was a child I’ve always eaten unusually healthy. At the grocery store, when my brothers begged for a king-sized bag of M&M’s, I would ask for a kiwi. Last December, I decided to take my healthy eating to another level so I began to model my eating style after the Paleo Diet.

People on the Paleo Diet pride themselves on being “modern-day cavemen.” In other words, they don’t eat anything that a caveman wouldn’t eat. In addition to ruling out McDonald’s, IHOP, and Chipotle, paleo dieters rule out entire food groups. Meat, vegetables, nuts and fruits are the only food groups that a paleo dieter will eat.

After reading nerdfitness, a website that promotes healthy living and the Paleo Diet, I decided to gradually limit my dairy, sugar and wheat intake, in addition to limiting all varieties of processed foods. I cut out processed foods from my diet entirely. By summer, I was following the Paleo Diet 96.78 percent of the time.

This was the best decision ever, and I would never go back to how I ate before. By cutting these food groups out of my life, I realized that they were holding me back in cross country. In senior year, I dropped over three minutes from my 5K time and earned a permanent varsity spot. The only difference from junior year was my eating habits. I did not practice any longer or any harder, I merely stopped eating most of the junk I ate previously.

After adjusting to my new eating habits, I rarely ever want to eat unhealthy foods. If someone offers me a cookie, I’m not even tempted to say yes because I honestly don’t want it. I love the energy and happiness I get by eating Paleo-style,and I rarely want to give that up for one bite of deliciousness.

Kelly Foulk is a News Editor for The Patriot and jcpatriot.com.