A Good Start...

Or A Great Start…

When I started the new regime I had no idea what to expect really, the Naturopath described a week of hell and then taking off like a rocket…well there has been no hell and no rockets either. Perhaps I am truly blessed because I have not had the horrible sickness she described, and I could say I have had more energy than prior but it has been hard to gauge because I was a solo parent for 12 days while Hubby was away in Thailand.

So now as I continue with hubby home and most things settling down again I may be able to see a bigger change, Time will tell…

Very nice but not the same as real coffee sadly

In the last post I promised a little more information about my intolerances and what kind of diet changes I had to make. Well it is quite drastic due to those things my body has trouble dealing with, some may just be for a season due to the fact that my body is so depleted at present and finds it difficult to cope with things I may have a slight intolerance to in the past but is exaggerated by a low immune system.

Totally yuckky...

Dairy, gluten, caffeine, most food additives and colours, vinegar, yeast, chocolate, alcohol, tea, fruits such as – nectarines, strawberry, kiwi, pineapple, berries, oranges, apple, rockmelon, red & green grapes

Pork, preserved meats, peanut, pistachio, aspartame, cane sugar, brown sugar, xylitol, molasses, honey, fructose, stevia.

All the nightshade vegetables such as white potato, tomato, eggplant & red pepper.

White wheat flour, whole wheat, corn, jasmine rice.

Sweet corn, mushrooms, sweet pickles, dill pickles, tomato sauce (catsup) anything that ferments in the gut such as soy sauce.

Most important part of  the day...

Well that’s it mostly, so what is left to eat when you eliminate all that from your diet you might ask…well quite a lot really, it just means that most of my meals are from scratch and quite basic, I do happen to be able to use most herbs and spices (with the exception of the ones made from things off the list) which really lifts the game when deciding what to make for dinner or lunch.

I can have chicken (skin free) and most of the whole meats except pork. Olive oil to cook with or canola oil, steamed veg that are on my list and you have a nice meal.

A big plus to all of the changes to my diet is a renewed ability to lose weight, my weight loss had stalled completely due to my body having a leaky gut but craving the bad things like sugar (in many forms). So I have seen the scales go down by 5.7 kilos in the 2 weeks since I made the changes.

I guess for me the hardest thing is thinking about what to have at every mealtime to keep it interesting and not become repetitive and boring.

I love the web and finding recipes that can be adapted to suit my needs, friends have sent me links or whole recipes that might be of help (and a lot are).

Sometimes it is tough going like when Hubby and I went out for the evening to the Glen Frey (of the Eagles) concert, it would have been so nice to have a drink before the concert and a coffee after, but alas it was not to be. Catching up with friends for a cuppa has become a lot harder, I have suggested we meet in a park and BYO or something like that…I certainly miss just grabbing a coffee while I am out shopping. My closest companion is my water bottle.

Next time I will try to share some of those recipe I have found that can be adapted to most diets.

Until then I hope you are healthy and happy, enjoying your life and sewing up a storm.

Happy stitching and cooking

Amanda

A New Beginning

A new Beginning

Life has many twists and turns and we often find ourselves at a point where we have to either make complete change or perhaps lose our life to something that is overwhelming and so hard to fathom.

I have had quite a few health issues over the last few years and I won’t really go into that but just to say that if I did not make a complete change, well I would not be here to enjoy Grand kids.

Over the years My body has been my enemy, no matter what I did to improve my health it didn’t seem to make much difference. I started walking daily for 3 klm a day and Wow the benefits were amazing. But my body started to object, in the form of my arthritis. So walking became a thing of the past.

Frustrated with not being able to get out and walk for a distance without paying for it for a week after with agonizing days in bed and having many other symptoms that have seen me hospitalized a few times. I sought medical help, but after a year of searching the medical world was slightly stumped and could not offer me much in the way of an answer.

I knew that I had exhausted all medical paths and after feeling like the living dead for far too long, I decided to bite the bullet and go see a Naturopath. I have a belief that God created all things and He created them for our own good. I do believe in modern medicine and that God has certainly gifted people with amazing talent and brains, but when all that modern medicine can offer has been exhausted I felt the only alternative was to seek a more natural way.

So I am a strange subject and quite often baffle the medical establishment. I have had many allergies for most of my life and had to be rather careful of certain food types etc.

After all the testing and having a rather good handle on my health issues (so I thought) I was not prepared for the outcome of my visit.

I knew my immune system was struggling, but I had no idea just how much. Let’s put it this way, if my body was a car and my immune system was the fuel…I was running on empty (barely).

I have noticed over the last 5 years that I have been having rather massive reactions to some foods that I previously had little or no reaction to. I knew I most likely had an issue with gluten and lactose but did not realize how much that can affect everything else.

I showed intolerance's to more things than I could tolerate. Some were not a surprise and some were. The intolerance's showed themselves in many forms, whether it was a rash, hives, diarrhea, constipation, migraines etc and the list goes on. You may wonder how I managed to go along in life with such symptoms for so long, well all I can say is that we kind of got used to my weird body reacting to things in a weird way and medical people could not help so I would just have to live with it.

Having said that it is most often the case for a lot of people that Living with it is not really living and until recently I just believed it was my lot in life. How wrong could I be, I don’t have to put up with feeling like I have been run over by a heard of elephants and all the time.

My most recent symptoms were the most concerning and I have had not way of knowing it was all connected, the thought of losing my eyesight was a little scary to say the least.

The New Beginning Begins

So after seeing the Naturopath and getting an understanding as to what is causing a lot of my problems it was time to make the changes that will lead to a better life with more years of joy with my family.

You can go here to get an understanding of intolerance's.

I guess from a young age we learn that if we don’t get sick immediately after eating a certain food then we have no problem with it, it is not even a spoken thing it is just a natural fact that if we eat something and we have a reaction (visible) then we would know not to eat that food again…but intolerance's don’t work like that as you may have read.

You can eat something for years (like me) and not been aware of the connection between the way your body reacts and the food in question.

Is there an answer?

Of course there is but it might not be the answer I was hoping for. Simply because it is going to take a massive amount of work and brain energy to work through everything and come to a place of understanding my body better and how it reacts to certain foods. Changing my diet drastically so as to give my body time to heal.

The biggest threat for me at the moment is a little thing called “Candida Albiacans”

What are Your Symptoms?

• Do you experience fatigue and "foggy" thinking?
• Do you crave sugar, have a bloated abdomen or abdominal pain?
• Can't lose weight no matter what you try?
• Do you have "intimate" (male or female) infections or rashes -- to the point where they are interfering with your love life?
• Do you have a white coating on your tongue, fungus on your toenails?
• Have you been sent home time and again by doctors who say "nothing is wrong" with you -- when something so obviously is?
• Do you feel 20 to 30 years older than you should?
  
  If any of these conditions sound familiar to you... You may be dealing with a Candida infection or Candida yeast overgrowth.

While most of these symptoms I do have like foggy brain, craving sugar not being able to lose weight, being sent home from the doctors with no answer and feeling 100 years old. I don’t have the obvious thrush symptoms ( that would have been easier to figure out) mine is strictly contained in my gut and digestive tract.

Where To From Here?

Well I have already started on the very strict elimination diet to starve the candida, the replacement of good enzymes in the stomach will aid recovery and the use of some pretty heavy duty vitamins (in powder form) will help bring my immune system back to life.

My eyesight should return to normal (hopefully no permanent damage) but the Eye doctor will be the judge of that.

I should be able to do simple things like have a shower without feeling like I have run a marathon. Concentrate on something and give it my all instead of feeling like my brain is missing. But the best thing is I should not have those debilitating migraines anymore.

I think I have jabbered on enough so I will save some of my Jibber Jabber for another post.

I think I will talk more about my specific intolerance's and allergies and how that affects what I can eat, and how I go about finding recipes and changing my life completely.

Happy Eating

Amanda