Since last week. . . I am happy and proud to report that my friend and I made it through our one week of eating purely on our gluten-free, soy-free, corn-free, dairy-free (although I eat goat cheese), and sugary sweetener-free diets (I do eat stevia . For those of you who love Paraguay, check out the Guarani in the link). It really is such a practice in attention and effort. I always kept some veggies, peanut butter, and an apple with me. I cooked a big crazy pot of coconut peanut curry veggie, meat stock soup. I went out to eat at Nicholas Restaurant. It’s a Lebanese restaurant that only uses olive oil. We even both attended a potluck where we both made sure to bring foods we could eat.
My friend and I texted multiple times per day checking in about how well we were doing. We chuckled about the cookies she had in the house or the fact that my housemates had multiple good quality dark chocolate bars laying out and open. We each had to tell the Sugar Monsters to go to sleep for a while. It was pretty amazing how much more fun this was to do with a buddy. . . and how much more committed I felt since I didn’t want to let her down.
Last night (exactly the one week mark), I ended up eating some air popped popcorn loaded with olive oil and salt. By eating corn, I broke the diet. The good part is that corn generally does not physically affect me as obviously as dairy and wheat do. Coated with that amount of oil, popcorn doesn’t have the same affect that sugar does of making me crave more immediately. The bad part is that I have broken the diet. I now have to tell my friend. I wonder how it will affect her resolve. Even though we had only committed for one week, part of me had started to wonder how far I was willing to go.
The part about corn that makes me the most nervous is that it is hard to find corn products in the US that are not genetically modified. The lack of studies about how GMO foods affect our bodies scares me a bit. I have this feeling that it is weakening us as a race. In the long run, I wonder which will have a larger impact on health, sugar or GMOs.
I have really appreciated my friend Taryn’s blog called GMObeat. Even though just a couple months old, it has been informative and also offers ways to actively support the type of food that I believe in and want to eat.
As the pusher of dark chocolate mentioned, I'm always impressed with your ability to just say no. You didn't break anything, just gave yourself a momentary pause and now you can move on with renewed resolve.
ReplyDeleteLiz, I love this blog. You touch on so many issues that have only recently taken a front seat in my life. I've been 1 month gluten free (at least mostly, there were 2 restaurant trips where I'm not 100% positive about that, but what can you do?) and I feel so much better. This weekend I had a terrible set back. Friday, I am positive I was gluten free, but I did use coffee creamer out of desperation for an afternoon caffeine fix. That night was terrible - on par with food poisoning. I investigated the ingredients, and now I know I need to stay away from casein as well. Talk about learning the hard way.
ReplyDeleteI'm not ready to cut out corn and soy yet, but I'm trying to cut out most packaged foods, especially those with HFCS. The GMO issue is very frustrating. I teach environmental science and we spent extra time on food and agriculture because I think it's important we all understand where are food comes from, what it can do to our bodies, and what the impacts on the environment are. It's sad that there are so many real examples to show us that $ really makes the world go round, even at the cost of the environment and human health.
Wow Becky, I didn't know! Thanks for sharing. It really is amazing how powerful food really is and how foods that were soo culturally normal when we were growing up can suddenly be so difficult to digest. I think about it every day either proactively or reactively. Most of the time, I prefer proactivity these days.
ReplyDeleteIt sounds like you have a good health care practitioner who is helping you through this. If you ever feel like you are hitting a road block we should talk, I really like the Clinical Response Testing that I do and it doesn't involve needles. Jeanne basically asks my body through muscle testing what it likes and doesn't like, and my body tells her. There are people like her all over the US and there is a 1-800 number to find your local practitioner.
Way to go Liz on picking a particular framework for your new healthy diet and sticking to it. I think it gets more and more rewarding the better you feel. Have you found that? Is there anything you've eliminated that you think you might bring back in?
ReplyDeleteThanks Katie. You know, because its all through muscle testing, what happens more than me deciding to bring foods back into my diet is that I bring them to the office and have them tested against my body. By doing this I have had a number of foods open up in the last two years.
ReplyDeleteWhen I started I was so over sugared that I couldn't eat any fruit. After a couple months, apples, pears, oranges, grapefruits, and berries all started to test OK. Bananas didn't. For the entire first year of this testing I would bring a couple dark chocolate bars in, after a year a number of them started testing OK. Particularly the organic ones like Dagoba. Also, originally I couldn't do almost any grains, only rice and oats. Now I can do just about all of them - as long as they dont have gluten. I also have tested a number of alcohols, that worked out pretty well. Real Maple syrup started testing OK too.
If I start eating chocolate every day, at some point I don't test as well for it. Its a really interesting learning in denial, moderation, and overindulgence.