Neely Quinn is a certified integrated clinical nutrition therapist who specializes in Paleo and primal nutrition. She decided to focus on these diets after realizing certain foods like grains and dairy caused health issues for her. Neely's journey to becoming a nutritionist started after her own health problems led her to pursue nutrition to feel better. She enjoys helping others find their path to wellness through her work. Neely recommends reducing stress by finding a balanced lifestyle and making sacrifices if needed to have an easier life.

1. Rose: Today we have Neely Quinn. She is a certified integrated clinical nutrition
therapist, specializing in Paleo and primal nutrition. Besides being a nutritionist she
is a writer, a rock climber, a wife, an entrepreneur and a traveler. She loves her job
as a nutritionist and writer because it allows her to take what she has learned from
her own health to help other people find their own path to wellness. Neely welcome
to the show.
Neely: Thank you, thank you for having me.
Rose: We are delighted to have you as well, so let’s get started. Tell me about the
moment you decide to specialize in Paleo and primal nutrition?
Neely: Well I had realized that I was a nutritionist for a while and then I realized
that I couldn't tolerate greens or dairy or soy or any legumes. And I stopped eating
those things and my health began to improve pretty drastically and so at that point I
had been giving a lot of my clients food sensitivity tests that resulted in very strict
diets and confusing results and it was also very expensive. And so that point I
realized that what I needed to do for my clients was to focus on Paleo and primal
eating since it seemed to work so well for me and so many other people.
Rose: Great, what are your thoughts about the primal nutrition?
Neely: What are… my thoughts are that it’s extremely powerful. I think that because
it’s the diets similar to the diet that we evolved eating and it lacks the food that has
lots of toxin in them that are hard for us to digest. I think that it is the optimal diet
for a lot of people, I think that a lot of people can get away with eating grains and
glutton and dairy and pasteurized dairy and all those things but I often wondered
how much better off those people would be, even if they’re seemingly healthy, if
they didn’t eat those things that we aren’t necessarily designed to eat.

2. Rose: Can you tell me about that day when you decided to dive into the Paleo
lifestyle? Like what did you eat? What was your first meal like?
Neely: Oh… you know I can’t even remember what my food was like, I think that I
was a little bit thrown off because I think this is a common problem too, because my
breakfast was a piece of gluten-free bread at that point with I think almond butter,
something on it. And I didn’t know what to eat for breakfast. So I probably… my first
probably was bacon and eggs. And then it just went from there.
Rose: What was the vision you had for your lifestyle. When you started going Paleo?
Neely: My vision for my lifestyle was just to become healthier. I had a lot of
uncomfortable symptoms, and they were making my life stressful and
uncomfortable. And so all I really wanted was to figure out the answer to that. And I
don’t like discomfort, I don’t know where that comes from but I really don’t… and so
my main goal is to make myself feel as good as possible and to be a like sort of a
detective in my own health. And now other people's health. To try to find comfort
for them too.
Rose: When you’re able to be a detective in your own health style. How did that
make you feel?
Neely: Well it makes it feel more powerful like I have… may be not control but it
makes me feel like I have some say in my life and how I feel. And instead of trying to
rely on doctors or other practitioners who may not understand what I need.
Rose: Ok, now what were the steps that got you from being a psychology major to a
clinical nutritional therapist to actually starting a blog and helping other people?
Neely: Well I knew form very young age that I wanted to help people. I've have
always been able to relate with people sort of empathize with people and for some

3. reason I’ve always had a lot of compassion and the desire to make people feel better.
And so I started as a psychology major and then after school I was thinking about
going back and getting my masters in psychology so I could be a therapist. And then
my health started to deteriorate quite a bit and I had digestive symptoms,
depression, acne, eczema, asthma and bad headaches. I had issues my vision and so I
went on this path to try to figure all that out and it turned out that no doctors or
therapists could really help me… it was nutrition. And so from there, I decided to
incorporate nutrition into psychology and actually what I wanted to do before I
found my nutrition program was to go to school for psychology and get my masters
and then go to school for nutrition and get my masters in that. Which would have
been a long road but that… I wanted to be a nutritional psychologist that's what I
was calling it. And so luckily I found my school, which was a four-year program that
focused on the energetics of healing and nutrition and the psychology of food and all
of it combined. And so that was what brought me to becoming the nutritionist that I
am now and I just sort of evolved from that.
Rose: Wow, there is an emotion in your voice… was it always like that?
Neely: Was it always… what do you mean?
Rose: There is an emotion in your voice what do you make of that? Did you always
have a strong emotion when it came to your health and…
Neely: Well that’s a good question right now because I’m actually dealing with some
things in my health right now, and that’s kind of… it for me it’s just been this long
journey and I have months or years of feeling good and then things will happen, and
then I deal with them, and then I move onto the next thing and feel like that sort of
where the emotion comes it's stressful. And so like I can relate with everybody else
who has these symptoms and are feeling stressed.

4. Rose: Now does this stress come from when you take your lifestyle off the Paleo
plan?
Neely: No I never do that. I'm a pretty… I don’t know sometimes I’m a little black or
white. And so for me when I take a food out of my diet it doesn't ever go back in.
Unless I’m testing it to see if I can tolerate it. So yeah that’s not what happens, I think
that for me and what I realize for so many people is that stress in general causes a
lot of symptoms to happen and so, I’m just trying to navigate that right now.
Rose: Okay, what would you recommend for our listeners to remove one thing to
remove stress from their lifestyle?
Neely: Well I have a lot to say on this topic right now, but I think that for me I put a
lot of stress on myself; I put a lot of pressure on myself to do it all and to be really
good at what I do. And I think that taking a step back from trying to do it all, is a
good thing and finding a balance between what’s enough like what keeps you
fulfilled and what also gives you the time to take care of yourself and do fun things
and be outside. And be with your husband or wife or whomever. So that’s the
biggest thing is making tough choices about… possibly even sacrifices with salaries
or the big houses and nice cars and things like that in order to have an easier more
stress free life.
Rose: I’m sure readers and listeners will appreciate that. I just wanted to thank you
for your time and all the information that you've shared with us. Where can our
listeners get to learn more about you?
Neely: My website is NeelyQuinn.com NEELYQUINN and that’s where I blog, I have
recipes actually; I have a recipe book coming. But I talk about know my own
personal struggles and how I overcome them and then yeah and then the other
place is I was with a company called PaleoPlan.com for several years and I wrote

5. about 400 blog posts over there about nutrition and myself so that’s another place
to find my work.
Rose: Okay thank you for that information. And I’m sure our listeners will go to your
website and get more information about nutrition. Thank you so much.
Neely: Well thank you.
Rose: Thank you, have a good day bye.
Neely: You too bye