It has now been one month since I started this carnivore diet experiment to see if I could resolve all the histamine related issues I was experiencing and improve my overall health. So I thought I would continue with my dietary oversharing in case someone finds this experiment useful and needs encouragement to try. To start with the downsides, I still haven’t resolved the part where I am obsessively meal planning, but I am definitely getting better at knowing how much to eat. My main problem was breakfast as, other than fry ups at the weekend, I have only had smoothies or amaranth porridge for breakfast for years. Given that I can’t eat egg whites and don’t seem to tolerate huge amounts of pork, I was really stuck for breakfast ideas until I a) discovered bresaola, and b) decided to just be wasteful with egg whites. So, now I have 3
I read something the other day which I thought was arresting in its simplicity: ‘there’s no such thing as a healthy weight, only a healthy person.’ It gets at what I often struggle with when talking to people about whatever diet tweak I am doing at that moment. People often assume I am doing it to maintain my weight, when my weight has barely anything to do with why I dick about with my diet so much. I do it to try to control the various symptoms of ill health I have: IBS, eczema, asthma, allergies, mood, etc. It also points to the erroneous assumption that if you are generally slim, or have a healthy BMI, then you don’t need to worry about your health. That somehow you are genetically predisposed to health, unlike overweight others. From my own experience, I always knew this was bollocks. People have always remarked on
It has now been 18 days since I ate any fruit or vegetables, except for the occasional use of olive oil and some experimentation with seasonings (e.g. thyme or paprika). Everything about this experiment has been delicious and my only regret is blueberries. As I said a couple of posts ago, I started on this experiment because I was sick of feeling sick all the time: heartburn, indigestion, stuffy sinuses (and corresponding face puffiness), insomnia, low mood, eczema, and asthma. I wanted to see if this ultimate of elimination diets would help, and it has! The indigestion and asthma cleared up the minute I stopped eating fruit and vegetables, and the eczema soon after. The heartburn was markedly better immediately, but it took about ten days to fully dissipate. My sleeping and mood have mainly been good, and my nails are significantly stronger. Finally, my blood pressure and resting heart rate are
Aside from the bit where I am a neurotic, the main reason that I am so obsessed about nutrition / diet (and exercise), is because I have thirty-five years of experience showing me the direct relationship between what I eat and my health. This started with a Naturopath ‘curing’ my severe eczema when I was about thirteen, after a succession of medical doctors prescribed stronger and stronger steroids over a great many months, for an outcome of precisely fuck all. I am now convinced the eczema came as a result of me turning vegetarian, but I don’t have my medical records to be able to say for sure. Although the eczema cleared up in two weeks after starting the naturopathic exclusion diet, I was on it for 1.5 years. Once excluded foods were reintroduced, I discovered that cow dairy triggered the eczema and so I have avoided it ever since. Aside
This might sound like a not-so-humble brag, so bear with me, but one of the compliments I often get when I reveal my age to someone who can see my physique (for instance, when I am in bikini at the spa), is that I ‘look incredible’. One the one hand, I absolutely love this flattery (mainly because I am otherwise starved for it) and am therefore quick to reveal my age. On the other hand, it infuriates me because of the difference between the conversation I want the question/answer to lead to vs. where it inevitably goes. Like any evangelist, I want to talk about my twin gods of diet and lifestyle, but instead the next question I inevitably get is: ‘do your parents look amazing too?’ What people want me to say is ‘yes’, so that they can write my physique off to ‘good genetics’ and theirs off to ‘bad’. That