Buy & Eat This Not That

It seems that you can't look anywhere these days without seeing something about food & diet. There are so many varieties of disordered eating that it can be hard to know what is healthy. I grew up with the "traditional" food pyramid:

I mean, 6-11 servings of grain a day??? That is so much food! My weight always yo-yoed with the season despite consistency of my eating and exercise. My junior year of college I weighed 180lbs- which is a lot even for my large 5' 10" frame. By the time I was in my mid-20s I was suffering form chronic fatigue syndrome, sleeping from 4:30 pm to 6:30 am while struggling to stay awake for work by drinking lots of coffee.

It was pretty depressing to be doing what the "professionals" deemed healthy and still feel and look shitty! (As it turns out, those governemet guidelines were based on bad science- read all about it in the book "The Big Fat Surprise" by Nina Teicholz) At the suggestion from a friend I tried the "Slow Carb Diet". The results were almost immediate. Just by cutting out grain I already had ore energy! I stuck with this eating style for a time and discovered that I had been eating a lot of sugar despite not eating refined sugar. Grain? Sugar. Fruit? Sugar. Dairy? Sugar. 

As a result of the Slow Carb Diet I began to really notice how what I ate effected me. I then heard about the "Bulletproof Diet". Which REALLY focused on reducing the amount of sugar in your diet as well as toxins like mold to combat inflammation. One of the biggest benefits for me was giving myself permission to not eat breakfast. After decades of forcing myself to eat the "most important meal of the day" and feeling crappy/sluggish after I started drinking "Bulletproof coffee" and feeling great all day!

Get the book!

This style of eating also alerted me to the fact that my body does not process soy well. One of the benefits of living in Vermont (where my husband and I were living when we discovered this diet in 2012) is that it was easy to source ethically and sustainably farmed meat. I believe that factory farming is one of the greatest tragedies of our time. It is not only horrific for the cruelty to the animals but also for the environment (and vegetarians- dairy farming is worse).  When we lived in the Wood River Valley in Idaho it was also easy to source humane animal products.

I felt GREAT doing the bulletproof diet but I wanted to try being vegan for ethical reasons (even though we were sourcing from ethical farmers). So, in 2015 for the month of March I cut out all animal products and focused on nuts, seeds, legumes, & veggies. The results were disastrous. Despite eating in a way to stay "low sugar" my body needed more fat and accessible protein. I gained 10 pounds but lost muscle mass. By the end of the month it was difficult for me to teach a 1 hour Vinyasa class.

To live at all is to be bruised

I was very sad not to be successful on a vegan diet but realized that to exist in this world we are going to cause harm and the art lies in reducing that harm as much as possible. I have needed animal fat my whole life. When I was a child in the 80s my mother fed us what was thought to be healthy then- a diet heavy in soy and "lean meat" and light on fat. I would steal the butter from the fridge and eat it while hiding behind the couch (much to her chagrin). 

Because it frequently takes more than once for me to learn my lesson in December of 2017 I did a 10 day silent meditation training that consisted of a 1970s style vegetarian diet with my friend Caitlin Hegwood. You are not allowed to bring your own food and while they will make dietary accommodations I figured it was the food I grew up on so I would be fine. I was not fine. After 2 days of eating oatmeal, stewed prunes, veggies with nutritional yeast, salad dressing with soybean oil and the like I had such a flare up of candida I couldn't stay awake or sit still when I was awake due to pain in my joints and muscles. This was a Dhamma Institute training that requires you to sit completely still for hours at a time. 

I had to cut out EVERYTHING that has sugar to get the candida under control which left me with sunflower seeds for breakfast, steamed veggies at lunch (no salad dressing or anything on them), and hot water with cayenne pepper for dinner (there is no dinner although new students are permitted fruit, but I couldn't eat it). After 8 days of this food I was starving. My body was literally digesting itself and I was supplementing with the coconut oil from my cosmetic bag. My first words once we were permitted to speak were "I'm starving" to which Caitlin (who is familiar with my normal diet) responded" I know".  I had lost 15 lbs of mostly muscle and got tired standing too long.

What is the moral of the story? I am unable to live a quality life without animal products. I attempt to carefully source all my food to reduce any harm. I also try to give myself a break to avoid orthorexia, but that is a fine line and a whole other topic. (Currently my diet is mostly pasture raised red meat, broccoli, despite the fact that I don't really like broccoli and prefer cabbage or cauliflower it is REALLY GOOD FOR YOU... oh, and a bunch or probiotics, especially found in food like sauerkraut and kimchi, click here to see the supplements I recommend).

Post-training in northern California