For those that know me, you will know that I'm fairly passionate about my diet, and what I put into my body regarding food and nutrition. I'm gluten and lactose intolerant, so the only thing that really works for me is The Paleo Diet. That right kids - no dairy of any kind, no grains (including rice, pasta, oats, bread, corn chips, cake, bagels, muffins etc) and no sauces or seasonings containing wheat derivatives.
As soon as I eat anything that has been even slightly processed, or has the remnants of grains/wheat or dairy, my insides feel like they are trying to explode out my belly button, I feel uncomfortable, like I've put on 10kg in about half an hour, and like I just got a REALLY bad case of gastro for the next 24hrs - not pleasant - for me, or anyone else who's around me!!
But this was not always the case.
For years I ate just as anyone else does - I ate bread, I lived on sushi, oats, I even tried to go vegetarian because that was the "in" thing, and from the look of things - what appeared to be the most healthy option.
When I was at uni and REALLY deperate - I used to live on toast, with tomato sauce (the pasta sauce, not ketchup - I wasn't THAT povo!!) and melted cheese on top...hey, it was the uni student's pizza!! It would be nothing for me to go through bags of pasta and loaves of bread. And every now and then, a bit of chicken or tuna (when I could afford it). If i was starving at Uni and only had a bit of pocket change to play with - off I'd go to the chinese take away place and order a serving of rice, with either sweet chilli or peanut satay sauce. If only I'd known what this was doing to my insides.
Fast forward a few years, and I'm working in a full time job, going out for lunch to the local sandwich bar - getting a giant "fresh" bread roll with chicken salad. I always looked forward to it, and smashed it down - thinking I was being healthy, getting my complex carbs and veges and meat...I thought I had it all figured out. But for some weird reason - it always made me feel worse after I had it than before - WTF??!?!
It was not until I decided that something was seriously wrong and I went to a Naturopath, who basically told me that I was gluten intolerant. All the bread, and complex carbs that I'd been smashing down day after day, meal after meal - thinking I was doing the right thing...coupled with the effects of the few crazy and intense years of partying that I put my body through - effected my body in the worst possible way and caused major inflammatory problems throughout my entire digestive and intestinal tract, and if I didn't stop eating this shit, well I was on a very steep slope to some major problems...basically my body wasn't absorbing any of the nutrients from my food, and my liver, kidneys and small and large intestines weren't working properly either. So yeah, you could say this scared the shit out of me. Not only because at 24 years of age - that all sounds a bit much to take - but more so the fact that my own mother died of bowel cancer when I was 10 years old.
Now I'm not saying all this to get the sympathy vote - and you might ask what spurred this rant on?
Well, I've recently purchased a copy of 'The Paleo Solution' by Robb Wolf - aka the Paleo Nutritional King (at least in my eyes!!). I'm only 40 pages through the book, but the beginning of it talks about his past and what brought him to the conclusion of trying the Paleo Diet and his family's experience.
Put it simply - his story is not much different to mine (except for the fact that he's a genius biochemist and was a bit more hippy/vego than me, where I was a bit more grunge and party animal!) in that he had family members constantly being sick, deteriorating from various ailments and immune problems - and it got me thinking about my Mother.
Now, I don't want to go too much into detail here - but basically, my Mother was diagnosed with Bowel Cancer when I was 6 years old. When she was diagnosed, the cancer was that severe and that far gone that the Docs only gave her 6 months to live. But she was stubborn, and ended up living for a further 4 years. To be honest, its all very blurry and alot of it I have blocked out due to the emotional nature of it all, but as I read Robb's book, there were more things that I started to recall as it made me think that Mum's diet (and stress) was a big reason for her getting so sick.
Now, I don't know what her diet was like as a child, or really into her adulthood, but I do know that she ate bread, pasta, and was an amazing desert cook - I still remember the taste of her strawbery slices and her chocolate rum balls!!
She wasn't fat - quite the opposite - she was tall, lean and was (and still is) often described to me as regal.
When she was diagnosed - she turned to the "Natural" way of living - lots of juices, veges, fruits etc. She completely went off meat as well as a result of joining a religious order (i think they were Pentacostal) as many do when they hear that they are on death's door, and instead lived on these strange HORRIBLE tasting steak like things, that were basically known as 'gluten steaks'.
For YEARS she was (mis)diagnosed with Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS) - and in the end her whole body was riddled with cancer, resulting in her having her entire female organs removed and parts of her bowel and small intenstine cut away.
The doctors didn't really focus on her diet so much as give her a cocktail of drugs and medicatons to take to make her "as comfortable as possible".
Now, I know this is all getting a bit morbid - but there is a reason to all this...what if she knew what I know now as a result of reading Loren Cordain's book 'The Paleo Diet' and changing the way she looked at the food pyramid and what is considered to be healthy for us, and what really IS healthy?!?!? After what happened to my mother, I'm ultra careful with what I eat, how I treat my body and what I do on a day to day basis as I know that genetically, I have the same disposition as she does, and could possibly follow in her foot steps - and just that little too closely. I was already given a MAJOR wake up call after being told that I was basically walking the same line, as well as being diagnosed with PCOS, that I stopped treating my body like a play ground, and took a bit more care of it.
What if.....what if.....
Hindsight - its such a luxury that we have to be able to look back and say, "if only...."
But reading Robb's book made me angry - not at him nor at the book - but at the stupidity and narrow mindedness of society and the regulatory bodies out there who insist that in order to have a healthy, well rounded meal, you MUST have your complex carbs and your diet should be predominately 60% carbohydrates, 25% protein and 15% fats...but why?? Especially considering our bodies are not designed to eat that kind of shit?!?!
What if my mother had stopped eating those gluten steaks (god damn, i can't describe the smell or the taste but they were revolting!!) which was basically the perfect recipe for insane levels of inflammation throughout her entire digestive system, replaced that with some good wholesome meat, actually ate her veges rather than juicing them all, stopped eating oats, grains and rice and and instead increased her fat intake to include avocados, almonds, and various other nuts and seeds - would we have seen a change in her health?? Could she have gone into remission and lived on for a further 10, 20 or 30 years?? I'll never know, but these are the kinds of questions that were SCREAMING through my brain as read through Codain's and Wolf's books...what she thought was healthy, and what she was advised to do were in fact that main things that were killing her.
And that is probably the saddest thing of all. And is also a common occurence in today's society.
We keep on hearing about how our diets should include whole grains, complex carbs, pastas, wholemeal is better than white, sourdough is more nutritious than them all...and lets not forget that oats are the best thing for you if you're trying to lose weight, and give you energy and fibre so you can go to the bathroom regularly...
Newsflash...none of that is true, and you will not turn into a zombie if you don't eat carbs....I eat around 20g of carbs a day, and I'm functioning just fine and on average do at least 1 - 2 WODs a day. I eat a shit load of protein and fat though - and that's where I get my energy - clean, efficient and MASSIVELY fat burner energy!! And I haven't craved sugar/carbs or the like for over 7 weeks!!
I guess I just don't want to see any more people I love be affected the way I and my family have as a result of the poor advice and food choices that my Mum accepted as the way it should be.
If you feel sluggish, tired, heavy, bloated, generally sick, or fluey - then do yourself a favour and LISTEN to your body!! You ever heard the saying "you are what you eat"?? This doesn't just go for junk food - it goes for EVERYTHING!!
Try a month of no grains, legumes, dairy or sugar and just see how much BETTER you feel!! Oh, and go out and get yourself a copy of 'The Paleo Diet' and/or 'The Paleo Solution' - it will change your life.
