As many of you might know, I spend a good amount of time researching things. I want to make the best choices for our family, and lately I've been praying about our diet. I feel like we've done really well on a whole food diet (and by diet, I mean lifestyle eating, not just a fad), and while we definitely do feel better, we don't exactly feel great. Since adopting a whole food diet several years ago, my migraines have disappeared, my energy levels are up (no longer requiring a midday nap as was once required), and I feel more clear headed, but I realize that my energy levels could be better and I still have random aches and pains as well as neck, back, and hip pain.. and recently pains in my feet. Sometimes I have these shooting pains in my head (which last a second or two but hurt none the less). I realize that I've accepted these things as my normal for so long that I never even questioned whether they could be a diet related ordeal. I know I have felt better, at times, during certain seasons of life, especially when we were on a certain food kick (like when we were eating very little grains and lots of salads with grilled shrimp or chicken), but I didn't really connect the dots until recently.
Some of you, as well as people on IG, have given me a lot to think about over the years. This information (or maybe just an encouragement to check things out) has changed our lifestyle in many ways, and our diet is no exception. When I wrote about eating more quinoa, someone informed me it causes inflammation. Honestly, I shrugged it off and filed it under "there are two sides to everything." You know how it is- one person says caffeine is good for you, another says it's horrible. One person says raw broccoli is great, other says it's bad for your body unless it's steamed. There is so much conflicting evidence out there, it's hard to find out what's truth. Besides, raw broccoli may truly be bad for one person's body and not for another person's!
Anyway, like I said, I shrugged it off but it kept bothering me. Brandon has some serious inflammation issues, and I am beginning to see that my aches, pains, and problems could very well be (and likely are) tied to inflammation as well. On top of that, so many friends of mine (online friends mostly, but some IRL) have adopted grain-free diets and are really thriving, so I figured it was worth taking a deeper look. I had skimmed through the Paleo diet about a year ago, but only briefly, and I have been feeling for several weeks now that I should take some time to research it.
Today I was thinking over the times in my life when I felt my healthiest, and there are two specific seasons I can think of. The first was when I became a raw vegan. Like I said, I was plagued with migraines, very low energy, and always feeling like I could never get enough rest and always feeling a general ickiness. After a month of a high raw diet, I was feeling the best I had ever felt. The other time was when Brandon and I were doing a candida cleanse. Candida cleanses are pretty popular in my family because both of my parents have struggled with candida (think yeast issues in your gut) which, for my dad, looked like a gluten intolerance. When he cleansed the candida from his gut, he was able to eat gluten products without logging in major time on the porcelain throne (if you catch my drift). The candida cleanses are typically 15 days, which sometimes meant I felt cruddy the whole time, but sometimes by day 12 or so I was feeling really good, rejuvenated and energetic. However, my mindset was that "this is just a cleanse; now I can go back to my regular diet" so by the end of the 15 days, we would often dive back into our old habits feeling a little cleaner on the inside. We felt much better on 30 day cleanses, but, like I said, the mindset was that it was just a temporary change- a cleanse- and then we could continue eating as normal.
Brandon didn't feel so great on the raw vegan diet. He felt like he was always hungry and still felt very sluggish, but he felt very good whenever he stuck to the candida cleanse diet, which sometimes he would do for a longer term. The candida cleanse diet is very similar to the Paleo diet, although a tad bit more strict in terms of what one cannot eat (most notably is that fruit is not allowed in the candida diet because it feeds the yeast).
As I examined these two seasons in which I felt my best, I wondered how it could be that I felt so great on two very different diets. Raw Veganism and a Paleo diet seem to be in contradiction, don't they? Then I realized they had much more in common than I realized. As a raw vegan, I did not consume any grains, dairy, or legumes. Ditto for the candida cleanse (Paleo diet). Hmm, ding ding ding.
Before I got out of bed, I was already pretty convinced our family needed to try out the Paleo way pronto! We already know that we (and our children) have issues with dairy. We know that Brandon has a gluten sensitivity. I'm pretty sure Merikalyn does too because she's had this horrible rash on her hands that we thought was from washing dishes but have come to realize it must be diet related. We know that legumes cause some pretty major issues in our guts too, even though we have tried various ways of soaking, fermenting, etc. I felt like it all fell into place this morning, and I am totally positive that is God answering my prayers.
After spending a good deal of time on http://whole9life.com/ I decided I would download/purchase their book, "It Starts With Food" (Dallas and Melissa Hartwig), rather than try to gather the information all over the web. Plus, I knew if I purchased it on the mini iPad, Brandon would be more likely to read it. So, I spent a good portion of today reading and skimming through the book. Finding myself nodding in agreement or excited over more connected dots, I realized this book was yet another answer to prayer. I know most of this stuff, but have never put it all together. Sometimes you just need all the information laid out before you plain and clear. I love that this book contains the psychology side of it as well as the "science-y" side of it (as they call it). There are real life examples of reactions and how things play out with our "normal" diet (S.A.D.- standard American diet) and how it would look and feel if I was on a healthy, normal diet. (Normal meaning REAL FOOD rather than chemically altered crap, heavy carbs/grains, etc.)
I have been eating so much more healthy, and yet I am still struggling with bloating and energy issues. I am tired of waking up tired! I have made so many excuses as to why I feel the way I do:
- I'm a low energy person.
- I guess this is just what happens when you get older.
- This is just what it's like after you've had five kids.
- It's probably because the weather has been back and forth.
And on and on it goes. Yesterday I stood in front of the mirror wondering why the scale says I've lost five pounds, but my stomach is bigger and I feel so bloated and gross. It's really discouraging when you are trying to eat healthy, whole foods and yet you aren't seeing a huge difference in the way you feel and look. It's the same with Brandon- none of the things we have done have helped him lose much weight EXCEPT when he was doing the Candida Cleanse. During the Candida Cleanse he was able to eat as much as he wanted, so he felt full and not deprived, and yet he was able to drop 10-30 pounds in a month (different results at different times). I laughed that he was the only guy who could gain weight on a raw vegan diet, but I understand it now. So many of the things we have done have only caused our bodies to FREAK OUT and hold on to fat rather than to release it. In Brandon's case, being a vegetarian was HARMFUL to his health because beans and grains cause so many health issues (chronic inflammation/pain). I feel a little bad now because I'm the one who typically organizes the meals and prepares the food, so....
Anyway, I talked it over with Brandon, and we agreed to try the Whole30 Challenge. I know Brandon will go all in, and I feel like it's totally doable to commit to 30 days. In the case of our candida cleanse (which is similar to the Whole30), 15 days is just long enough to do some real cleansing, but not long enough to notice all the effects of the change in diet. You often spend the first 8-12 days overcoming withdraws and cravings, so I see how the 15 day cleanse was just enough to make us feel crappy, have a couple days of feeling really good, and then propel is back into "real world eating", as I thought of it, and start all over again consuming things that inflamed and hurt our bodies. I can see how 30 or 45 days would be a much better span of time to work through the withdraws, cravings and addictions, realize the differences, and, above all, rewire the brain regarding emotional/hormonal reactions to food. Fifteen days just isn't enough. Thirty or more days is enough time to see how my body reacts. How many times have you heard of people trying out a certain diet lifestyle, having severe reactions (which are usually the toxins working out of the body or the result of withdraws) and throwing up their hands because they think it isn't working for them?
Months ago, Brandon and I cut gluten from our diet (and dairy too, I think) for a couple weeks. Then Brandon had a burger or something with gluten in it and had a bad reaction (hives, etc). He felt like going on our gluten-free diet made him MORE sensitive to gluten, but then he realized the truth was that he had always been sensitive to gluten, it's just that, because he consumed it so often, his body was always fighting it and the reactions to it looked differently then. After being without it for a couple weeks and then reintroducing it, his body acted as it should to something it did not like- which was to have a severe reaction as it fought against the food he put in his body. I've had the same reaction to gluten (although, at the time, I thought it was the beef in the burger, not the bun!) and dairy.
So, sometimes it seems after we've cut things out of our diet for a while and then reintroduce them that we are suddenly allergic to things we were not or our sensitivity to them has worsened, but that's not reality. My friend (and midwife) Nanci has encouraged her children to remove gluten from their diets. Her daughter has skin issues tied to gluten, but consumes it anyway. Her son didn't think he had gluten issues, but decided to give it a go, and after seeing the difference, he decided to stay gluten-free. (Nanci is gluten-free and has found that gluten causes severe migraines.)
There are millions of testimonials on how a Paleo (or even just a gluten-free) diet has changed peoples lives. I was telling my dad some about this today and he said he and my mom had been working their way to a Paleo diet too, and it occurred to me that my brother has been on a paleo diet for a while either. For some people, like my brother, a Paleo diet comes easy. He's never been big on grains or sugar, nor is he a legume lover or a big consumer of dairy, so there are few, if any, sacrifices for him to make. For others, like myself and my dad, a Paleo lifestyle can seem a little daunting. I mean, we really, really like fresh homemade bread. And we really, really like sweets. We could do without the dairy, but don't take away pie dough, artisan bread, or tortillas! Noooo! For Brandon, who is Cajun to the bone, doing without rice and the occasional cornbread doesn't sound super fun, but feeling GREAT outweighs all of that for all of us.
One of the points in the book really stood out to me, and I wrote it down because I know I will need these reminders.
Is it just fine that some of the foods you eat are controlling your behaviors, making you crave things you don't really want to eat, and proving impossible to resist even when you truly try?
Do you like energy slumps, brain fogs, insidious weight gain, frequent hunger pangs, the inability to burn fat, and a metabolism that moves slower than molasses?
Can you live with gas, bloating, constipation, diarrhea, abdominal discomfort, fatigue, malnutrition, and food allergies?
Do you welcome an increase in illness, infection, aches, pains, and the signs and symptoms of innumerable diseases and conditions, some which are irreversible?
UH. NO! That is NOT OKAY WITH ME! I DO NOT WANT THAT IN MY LIFE!
I've been wondering why I am struggling with things like hot flashes (and have been for the better part of the last 10 years), bloating, numbness, aches and pains, vision issues, asthma, allergies, etc.... and I really think that these things are tied to my diet. I'm eager to see if the Whole30/Paleo diet changes things for me. If I see significant changes, I will stick with it because no one wants to go on feeling exhausted, irritable, achy, and icky. But, I know that it's easy to get into the mindset of "This is just how life is, and it will never change," especially if you've tried a lot of different methods. Maybe it won't change, but.. MAYBE IT WILL!
I enjoyed so much about Raw Veganism, but I never felt full longer than five or ten minutes, and I hated that. Sometimes I craved hot food, and sometimes I missed cooking (rather than chopping, blending, etc). I learned A LOT of valuable things on the raw vegan adventure, most of all how important it is to consume a lot of fresh, whole, and raw fruits and vegetables (previous to that I rarely consumed raw veggies, and used a lot of canned veggies in our meals). Whenever I have toyed with the idea of going back to a high raw diet, I can only think about all I have to give up, and... while I do love raw fruits and veggies, it just isn't enough for me.
I feel like the Whole30 is a good direction for us. Maybe I won't like it. Maybe it won't help. I'm pretty sure it will, which is why I'm willing to go 30-days without cheating, religiously sticking to the terms of the challenge. I can say that I know it cannot hurt to cut gluten (as well as all grains, which are mainly just fillers with little nutrition), dairy, and legumes from our diet. That isn't to say that I don't enjoy those things, because I do, but I also realize that I don't enjoy the effect those foods often have on my body. So, I feel like taking the Whole30 challenge does not have a CON side for us.
I think Brandon is most excited about being able to consume a huge slab of meat since for several years we have typically kept our meat consumption to a minimum, more like a side dish rather than the main dish, if it is present in a meal at all. This has meant he has often felt very hungry, incredibly irritable (and by incredibly, I mean like the incredible Hunk on a rage), and very sluggish throughout the day.
The book I'm reading is very detailed in the matters of how our bodies work, and I learned a lot about the responses of my body, how cortisol works, and how food can help or hinder immune function.
We officially start our Whole30 challenge on Monday, March 25th. I am slowly weaning myself off of sugary coffee (I'm kind of embarrassed to admit how much sugar I put in my coffee- I turn the sugar dispense upside down over my cup and count to 20, sometimes even 25, and that's how I measure out the sugar. It's probably at least 3-4 tablespoons of sugar. Today I put in a heaping teaspoon of local honey and only a splash of half&half (I wrote this yesterday, so today I actually used coconut milk instead and it was pretty good. Not AS good but, yanno, I'm adjusting.), neither of which fit the Whole30 guidelines, but at least the sugar content is less. I'm not sure if I would even be interested in drinking my coffee black because it seems so bitter (maybe with some coconut milk?) so I may just switch to herbal teas come Monday.
Crazy enough, Becky has also been researching the Paleo diet. I am totally loving that my close friends and my family are on board because that makes it so much easier. The kids and I have actually been studying macro and micronutrients (as well as other nutritional things) in our homeschool, so the information I have learned from the book and the Whole30 challenge has gone right along with that. The kids have been very interested in the diet changes we are making, and we definitely talk about it with them.
The challenges I see in the future are mostly regarding our get togethers. This has always been the biggest challenge for me in the past, especially when we were gluten-free. Our potluck fellowship meals are filled with things that do not fit in with the Whole30. Lots of pastas, casseroles or crockpot meals laden with dairy products or legumes. Obviously we will need to be prepared. I've thought about bringing our own meals, but that feels awkward. The last few times I have brought a green smoothie for myself, so I eat what I am able to and then sip on the green smoothie. We could bring Paleo dishes to the potluck, which seems like a good idea except that we would need to likely bring several paleo dishes since it is likely that our dishes would be the only Whole30 approved things at the potluck. (Although, with Becky on board, she would probably bring Whole30 approved things too, which would be nice). Usually the only Whole30 approved foods at the potluck are a salad and a plate of raw veggies which ARE NOT enough to sustain me or Brandon so by the time we head home we both feel like crap.
We will have to work out something, and I know I can get together with Becky and plan things out so we all succeed at the Whole30. It will just require planning ahead.
As I've mentioned before, I've been trying to make Brandon's lunches each night so that he has something healthy to take rather than resorting to drive thrus and quick fixes that are unhealthy. Tomorrow he's having shrimp we made tonight with a romaine salad and 3 pieces of sushi (which is not Whole30 approved, but we haven't officially started yet). I've already noticed a change in him since I started providing his lunches. He's far less cranky when he gets home from work... as long as there is plenty of protein. I also send him to work with a green smoothie (sometimes a blueberry one, but usually something loaded with green goodness), and am now committing to make breakfast for him (at least prepare him something the night before when I make his lunches). We went to Costco so I grabbed a bag of boiled eggs (I hate boiled eggs, ick) because they are quick and easy, and he can take 2-3 for breakfast.
It's a little overwhelming to be in charge of my family's health. I mean, I know Brandon has to be accountable for his own health (he used to eat a burger or several chopped beef BBQ sandwiches before he came home from dinner, and that wasn't helpful), but I am in charge of the meals around here, and I know that if I provide a nutritious meal that fills him up and satisfies him, he will not be as tempted by the junk out there. I'm also accountable for my children's health, and so I'm always trying to figure out if a behavior issue is related to diet or just the result of being human. ;)
I know a lot of Nolyn's behavior issues were tied to diet (which is why we cut out dyes and sugars). Our fellowship potlucks have always posed a challenge in this regard because someone will inevitably bring something with MSG, dyes, or HFC, and "all the other kids are eating/drinking/slathering their bodies in it, so my kids want to as well. It's been good to have regular conversations about food and health with the kids because I realize it does help them make better choices, especially Nolyn. (Keagan and Evie, not so much.)
Anyway, I've written A NOVEL, and I know it's as boring as a monotone professor lecturing about the pros and cons of sliced bread, but... anyway. It's on my mind, and I felt I should document it. I will be documenting our Whole30 journey as well. Maybe here, maybe in a paper notebook. I haven't decided yet.
But, for sure, if you are paleo, leave me links and tips because I know I can use them! :)
