Beginning a food frenzy

So in terms of a diet as previously described, mine currently is part raw/acid-alkaline/yeast free/paleo. I forgot to mention also 95% gluten free and dairy free except for the cottage cheese blend I make twice a day.

In a large part this started out as a way to improve my health and just detox my system. My fibromyalgia for example can be almost completely controlled by diet and exercise but, you know, that also necessitates the diet and exercise actually happening.

This current food plan seems rather restrictive from an outside perspective but once you're a few weeks in it is actually pretty easy. Sort of. You start out the diet cursing at dietary labels once you figure out that 90% of them have at least one ingredient that completely sucks and then get to the point where you can look at the label, just sigh heavily and move on to making your own foods again.

I would actually recommend my diet for anyone because it has made me feel better than I have in my entire life but if you don't have health issues it doesn't need to be quite as restrictive. If for some reason you're trying it out my way, please give it at least two months of straight out sticking to it. Why? Because it helps. Because you'll see a difference. Because it takes a little while to get the bad stuff loosened up and out of your system.

This is me at my heaviest in a fabulous red dress with the lovely miss Andrea. Adorable I may be but not my favorite look.

This is me currently

I need a better picture because my polka dot dress is a little baggy, but if you look at my face especially you can see a huge difference.

Here we go...

• My weekdays
• All day
• TONS of water. Reverse osmosis filtered water. Never tap water. Ever ever ever. Very important. 
• Morning 
• Essiac tea, 2oz, used in detoxing, cancer treatments
• Green Smoothie 16 oz 
• Spinach, zucchini, romaine lettuce, dandelion, tomato, sometimes some other veggies like beets
•  Cottage cheese (about 2-3oz, blended with about 2-4 tbsp organic whole milk, flax seed (1 tsp) and flax seed oil (2 tbsp), mixed in w/ a few ounces of fresh fruit usually berries of some sort, this is the Budwig Protocol, used for detox, cancer treatment, cholesterol among other things
• Drinks: 
• Peppermint tea
• 3 tbsp apple cider vinegar w/ 8 oz of distilled water
• Mid morning snack
• Usually carrot sticks and celery sticks with almond butter (not peanut butter because that tends to be one of the highest fungus/yeasty foods)
• Sometimes a small handful of almonds
• Mid day
• A tomato
• Sometimes a small salad
• Always some type of veggie
• Afternoon Snack
• Organic non gmo corn chips, sometimes with homemade salsa or guacamole
• Almonds
• Veggie
• Afternoon/Evening
• Cottage cheese blend again
• If I'm still hungry then I'll make something. If I eat something cooked, usually this is when
• Ideas:
• Hummus tacos (collard green leaves with hummus and sprouts, totally got that idea from Tumerico in town, she sells some great vegan prepared stuff at the health food stores here in Tucson)
• Veggie fajitas (organic corn tortillas, avocado/tomato/bell pepper slices with salt/pepper and garlic powder sprinkled on top)
• Salad
• Drinks: 
• Essiac tea, 2oz
• Peppermint tea
• 3 tbsp apple cider vinegar w/ 8 oz of distilled water

• Weekends
• Similar to weekdays with the cottage cheese, green smoothie, at least one of my snacks, but usually I eat a larger healthy cooked meal on these days. These are my reasonable cheat days. Usually the only days I eat meat (once a day). Sometimes I'll have a small piece or two of homemade chocolate. At night I'll have a frozen fruit smoothie (about 12 oz or filling up a cereal bowl to the rim, not over and no sweeteners).
• Important to note: I eat ALL DAY. Like I'm literally snacking all day long. No calorie counting. Despite this I still lost 45 lbs. Never get super hungry just always grazing.  Also, there have been no issues with cravings past the first three months of starting this way of eating. My biggest cravings were surprisingly not for sugar but for cheese. Oh I miss cheese! But I don't crave it anymore. If you eat the right things your body will know what to use and when to tell you its hungry.
 

 

• How to eat
• Eat all day!
• Breakfast is a must. Proteins, fruits, veggies all ok, try to avoid lots of grains
• Mid morning snack
• Lunch
• Mid afternoon snack
• Dinner (try to eat by or before 7. The reason is your body does a lot of its healing at night, you don't want to divert energy from that to digesting dinner)
• 2 cheat days a week. 
• Going hardcore just makes you feel super denied. So have 2 cheat days a week. This doesn't mean get a big mac or go pig out on funnel cake. No no no. But if you've been raw all week, have a nice healthy cooked dinner on these days. My cheat days I have my meat in my dinner and frozen "ice cream" which is really just a bowl of frozen fruit put through my dessert bullet (best purchase ever besides my food processor) that totally comes out like soft serve. Not unhealthy, but just not as restrictive as the rest of the week.
• Fruits
• Ideally only one or two servings a day unless an alkaline fruit (grapefruit, lemon, lime for example).   Fruit is still mostly considered an acidic food and depending on which one can raise your glycemic levels.
• Veggies
• Lots and lots of veggies. All day long! Not cooked. You want these raw as much as possible. At least 80%. If you eat them in salads, skip premade salad dressings. I make my own with lemon juice/olive oil/salt/pepper.
• Grains
• In cooked form, occasionally. Usually I get at most 2-3 servings a week of something like quinoa, brown rice or amaranth. Oats also possible.
•  Taking a fiber/seed like flax (which I do twice a day), psyllium, hemp or chia is important daily. Flax, chia and hemp also provide a great source of omegas and fiber. Seeds need to be either sprouted or freshly ground (try to grind your own with a coffee grinder) to provide maximum nutritional benefits. 
• Meats
• 2-3 meals a week tops. 
• Meat, even organic meat is considered highly acidic. I promise you that you can get all of your nutrients and proteins from plants too. 
• Make sure all meat and dairy is organic. This is extremely important because they are the most often and highest contaminated of all the foods available. 
• Mix it up. Not all red meat if you do eat red meat. That should be a small amount. I do chicken one dinner on my weekend and red meat on the other day.
• Nuts/Seeds
• Eat lots! Pay attention to the acid/alkaline charts on this. Be aware that peanuts and cashews tend to be the most susceptible to having high amounts of fungus and thus yeast, so you really should avoid these two except very occasionally.
• Dairy
• Give it up. Seriously. Please. At least for the first two months unless you are following the Budwig Protocol that I mentioned above. Then only the cottage cheese mix during that time. After that, if you occasionally want organic dairy go ahead and add in one or two servings a week tops. Ideally less than that. 
• Dairy goes straight into your system and primarily raises your sugar levels. Yes it is often enriched with vitamins like D and some of the B's but to be honest, often enriched foods are enriched with synthetic vitamins that are not easily absorbed by the body anyway.
• Example: Taking a synthetic calcium can get you generally at most a 40% absorption rate. So you might get 400mg out of that 1000mg that you took. Get your calcium from a plant based source can up that absorption to 60-80%. Your body just knows how to use natural sources better.
• Cook for yourself as much as possible. Make your own snacks. My new favorite kitchen gadget is my food processor because it can slice my veggies in about 2 minutes tops. If you need ideas before I post more, just ask me :)
• Supplements:
• Eventually when you get your diet down, you really won't need to take many supplements. 
• Choose wisely. My rule of thumb is there should never be more than 5 or 6 "other ingredients" in a pill other than fruits and veggies and never should it contain sugar, soy, artificial ingredients or food coloring. Who cares if it tastes or looks good? Its a pill.
• For the moment here's what I would suggest:
• One a day food based multi
•  Probiotic w/ prebiotics 2x a day morning and night
• Greens powder 1-2x a day
• There might be more than this depending on your situation. 
• Things to ditch
• All drinks that aren't water or unsweetened tea. No juice (the exception to this being that which you make yourself), no coffee, no sweetened drinks, no soda, no alcohol. These are all excess calories. With the exception of the coffee they all raise your blood sugar levels and give you pointless calories. Each time I gave up soda (yeah, it happened a lot) I lost five pounds in less than two weeks. And coffee actually dehydrates you. So that's not helpful. 
• Once you're out of the first two months if you want to have one or two drinks within reason (organic juices, no sugar added, limit alcohol, never again soda...ever) on a cheat day then go for it. The key is keep it to ideally to one or two a week tops.
• Non-Organics
• In an ideal world, all of your food should be organic. If you can't or don't want to start it all at once, please start in the following level of priority:
• Meats/Dairy/Corn/Soy
• Any fruits or veggies that don't have peels
• Any fruits or veggies that can be peeled
• All GMOs
• Seriously, they literally blend poison into the food. Don't eat a GMO if you can avoid it. 
• Processed foods. Enriched/processed/non whole grains. 
• If you are trying to detox I would recommend giving up the following at least on a short term basis.
• Dairy
• Soy
• Gluten
• Alcohol
• Sugar
• Additives. There should be absolutely no added sugars, weird chemicals (google is your new best friend for figuring out if that is a fancy name for an herb or just junk), soy for no apparent reason, etc. If you get food, it should just be the food in it. I once found frozen chicken taquitos that had sugar in them, why on earth...? Those should literally have been only chicken and corn tortillas. 

My new(ish) diet - an intro.

Diets are a curious thing. You can follow a recipe from one of those books...Lose your love handles, keep your tushie!, try a quick fix cleanse, or give up that one item that will change everything (soda pop I'm looking at you!).

I think what you need to do a lot of is follow common sense. Eating a salad does not make up for a giant milkshake for example. If I eat a giant hamburger with a pickle, (99% meat and bread, 1% pickle) that doesn't count as eating my vegetables.

In my quest to healthier lands I wound up with a combination of the following diets:

• Raw (like 60-70% of the time)
• Acid/Alkaline (20% acid/80%alkaline)
• Sugar free (honey and agave still used very sparingly, once maybe twice a week in very small doses EXTREMELY SMALL DOSES, they still affect your blood sugar levels)
• Yeast/Candida free (goes along with the sugar free. Basically there's good bacteria in your body and bad bacteria, if the bad bacteria overruns the territory then the good can't do its job as well. This negatively affects your energy, immune system, etc. One of the primary causes of candida overgrowth is too much sugar or yeast)
• Paleo (sort of. Paleo has some great recipes but when I see them they tend to trend towards fried, lots of meat and sugary things that don't have actual sugar in it but pretty much everything else.)
• All organics.  Literally all organics. That's the only food that enters my mouth.

These diets actually overlap a lot. Here's how they go together:

• Raw: Don't cook everything. Don't overcook everything.  Certain nutrients are only available when food is fresh, and yes sometimes cooking can unlock certain nutrients but generally they just wind up being overcooked and killing all the good stuff inside.
• Acid/Alkaline: cooking everything turns it acidic because there's no good stuff left for your body to nourish itself with. Eating a little bit, totally ok, but it should only be about 20-30% tops.
• Yeast/Candida free: lots of cooked/processed foods turn almost instantly into sugar in your body, raising the candida levels, not only not providing you anything useful, but pretty much the human body equivalent of putting sugar in your gas tank.
• Paleo: use what God gave you lots of. Veggies, some fruit, meat, skip the processed foods especially sugary bits, grains, overcooking.
• Acid/Alkaline: Some foods are acidic (usually those that are lacking lots of nutrients or raises your sugar levels too much) and some are alkaline (usually full of good stuff for your body, lacking high amounts of sugar/oil/cooking). When your body is in an ideal alkaline state (generally at 7-7.5) it can heal itself more easily, and the theory is that disease cannot thrive in an alkaline environment. An acidic state causes inflammation, pain, fatigue, and diseases. It is quite useful to measure your ph levels using strips to see how your body reacts to certain foods. I measure my ph levels A LOT. This is the baseline I use to see how things are working.
• Raw: Cooking your food kills the good stuff and turns it acidic
• Yeast/Candida Free: Eating foods that discourage candida growth enables your body to reach an ideal and healing state. Helps in avoiding disease. Sugary/yeasty foods tend to be acidic.
• Paleo: Too many processed foods (ie acidic) leads to imbalance of the system, obesity, disease etc.
• Yeast/Candida Free: Avoid foods that encourage growth of yeast. Sugars, grains, processed foods. Eventually your body will balance itself out in the see-saw between too much candida in your system and allow it to start functioning as it should.
• Raw: Eating uncooked foods allow the nutrients to all work together as they should, fostering a balanced environment.
• Acid/Alkaline: Yeast/sugar/processed foods/grains are acidic. Eating too much of these and not enough of the alkaline foods causes illness in the body.
• Paleo: Avoid processed foods as often as possible. Stick to nature.
• Paleo: Things you would find in nature, not processed, bringing out the hunter/gatherer skills of our human ancestry but you know, in the grocery store. No more kraft mac & cheese for example.
• Raw: Found in nature, enough said.
•  Acid/Alkaline: The most alkaline foods line up with what you would get straight off a farm.
• Yeast/Candida Free: Avoiding over processed foods. 

Oh and the all organic thing? In my mind...supremely important. Without going into too much debate, I'm not a fan of pesticides in my foods or genetically modified foods (GMOs). And when I say genetically modified, I do not mean hybrids, which are crossbreeds of foods, but straight out growing things with chemicals engineered inside. Eating organic is not a 100% failsafe against GMOs but it sure lessens the risk. We'll talk about that another day. I just know in my experience if I eat conventional food (non organic) I can see an almost immediate difference in my body, my hormones, etc.

All of these diet components together can boil down to a simple thought...what is your food doing for/to you?

Coming to terms

Hello. My name is Deanna and I am a reformed sugar-holic (also junk food but sugar was my kryptonite).

Don't get me wrong, for the majority of my life I have eaten pretty decently, my mother especially being into healthy eating, (she tried so many new things my brother and I lovingly refer to ourselves as mommy's favorite guinea pigs).

But somehow about a year and a half ago I found myself at 5'0" and 165 pounds. And while I'm adorable no matter what size that was not at all comfortable. It felt like constantly being under a heavy net, weighed down both figuratively and literally. For some reason my chest absorbed most of the weight so finding clothes became the bottom half being one size and the top being three sizes bigger, and really you might as well forget about zippers and buttons, those just pop open.

I've always had some health issues, the biggest of which being fibromyalgia which for me manifested primarily in headaches and overall pain as well as fatigue. Also chronic sinusitus, killer painful periods, and often yeast imbalance which I didn't realize until I found this great naturopath June Stephens who wound up starting my reform by putting me on a yeast free diet (but more about that later).

You would think that for someone who was used to being sick (I've pretty much had issues with all of the previously mentioned mishagosh my entire life) that I'd take better care with myself, but no.

At my worst I could for example down 4 thirstbusters (my favorite was pepsi!) in a day. Candy bars and burgers were my friends when I was out because honestly, always working left me just exhausted and not wanting to cook. When I was at home or around family healthy eating was easy because I didn't always have to make everything so about half my life was healthy the other just about the worst McDonalds commercial meets Snickers commercial that you could ever find.

It was easy to justify my food and beverage choices because of the following:

• oh so tired
• too close to my next appointment
• no time to cook
• I'd rather do something else with what little time I have
• Cheaper to buy fast food than organic, etc.  
• I "mostly" eat healthy

There were more than that, but those were the most frequent.

Its easy to justify anything given enough motivation but have you ever noticed it's harder to be lazy than to just do what you need to do to begin with? The need to be lazy takes work to figure out. Work to see how to get around it. Wiggle room. What would take 5 minutes to finish winds up taking an hour or two to get around. And usually it causes problems.

So my need to be lazy about my health definitely caused more problems. As of a year ago my health was at the worst its ever been and now I'm on the journey back to me. Currently I'm down to 120 (woohoo! lost 45 lbs), my fibromylagia rarely if ever causes me any more problems, barely any headaches anymore, the sugar fog has lifted and so many other things have progressed positively. I think this blog is going to be part of my therapy and hopefully me sharing can help other people. If nothing else we aren't alone :)