This is a blog following my attempts to get healthy by altering my diet. It all started about ten years ago when I doubled over in cramps every time I ate anything, no matter what. I sought out a complimentary medical therapist who arranged for a food intolerance test looking for potential intolerances from a selection of almost 200 different food items.
The resluts were quite a revelation. Matches ranged from 1, reacting a little bit, to 4, really rather intolerant to, and he provided me with a list of 34 different food items mostly 1s but also 2s and 4s. Really bad were certain food additives, MSG, Citric Acid and yellow food colours. Pretty bad were cow milk products. And then there was all other milks, i.e. sheep and goat, wheat, barley, sugar, cocoa, almonds, beetroot, grapes, kiwis, malt, mustard seeds, sultanas... The lovely man provided me with a list of safe foods and the advice to detox for three months by staying off everything I react to and then be careful and never eat anything I react really, or pretty bad too. I actually got a whole binder with alternative foods and recipies. Now, I did stay off everything for three months and that was about as long as I lasted. After that I stayed off e-numbers religiously, dairy most of the time, and gluten most of the time. The other things, not so much. Because I didn't know what the alternatives were, because it felt awkward asking for really specific stuff when visiting friends and because there is no way you can eat out when avoiding all these things. Because I am a woman and asking me not to eat chocolate is a crime in itself. And if I am perefctly honest, the binder was only helpful to a point. Dairy intolerant? Great, eat soya. But in ten years I have only found one brand of soya yoghurt without citric acid in it, and that one is hard to find.
So what has happened since? I have more or less kept off certain things but have cheated heavily and lived with a bad stomach, migraines, joint ache, fatigue, sleeping problems, dark rings under my eyes and other signs of the body reacting to something. Then two things almost coincided. One was my decision that I am fed up with feeling like this all the time and I want to get well, so I decided to try to sort my diet out. The second was that my mum suddenly became very ill with some kind of inflammatory bowel disease. She thought maybe food intolerances were behind her illness and asked for my help.
So for the last year I have been much stricter with my diet and I have been much more proactively looking into nutrition, alternative foods and health. I have always been very interested in alternative therapies such as herbal medicine and aroma therapy, and now I want to learn as much as possible about nutrition and new theories. I have discovered that my food intolerances in all likelihood have changed, as when I stayed off everything I was still reacting to things. I have discovered that new research is throwing new light on a range of issues, such as highlighting certain foods which have been hailed as superhealthy and saying that perhaps they aren't. I have discovered that the food industry is a scary, scary industry and that a lot that is reported in media needs to be taken with a big pinch of salt. I have learnt that it is actually very easy to cook for me. I have also learnt that it's very easy to slip off the bandwaggon. One late evening in town and I have to eat out, there's the diet out of the window immediately.
But I haven't given up and I keep looking for answers to my bad stomach. This is my story through the mine field of healthy food alternatives, media's coverage of food, findings of studies, and loads of recipies of things I actually can eat. Enjoy!
The resluts were quite a revelation. Matches ranged from 1, reacting a little bit, to 4, really rather intolerant to, and he provided me with a list of 34 different food items mostly 1s but also 2s and 4s. Really bad were certain food additives, MSG, Citric Acid and yellow food colours. Pretty bad were cow milk products. And then there was all other milks, i.e. sheep and goat, wheat, barley, sugar, cocoa, almonds, beetroot, grapes, kiwis, malt, mustard seeds, sultanas... The lovely man provided me with a list of safe foods and the advice to detox for three months by staying off everything I react to and then be careful and never eat anything I react really, or pretty bad too. I actually got a whole binder with alternative foods and recipies. Now, I did stay off everything for three months and that was about as long as I lasted. After that I stayed off e-numbers religiously, dairy most of the time, and gluten most of the time. The other things, not so much. Because I didn't know what the alternatives were, because it felt awkward asking for really specific stuff when visiting friends and because there is no way you can eat out when avoiding all these things. Because I am a woman and asking me not to eat chocolate is a crime in itself. And if I am perefctly honest, the binder was only helpful to a point. Dairy intolerant? Great, eat soya. But in ten years I have only found one brand of soya yoghurt without citric acid in it, and that one is hard to find.
So what has happened since? I have more or less kept off certain things but have cheated heavily and lived with a bad stomach, migraines, joint ache, fatigue, sleeping problems, dark rings under my eyes and other signs of the body reacting to something. Then two things almost coincided. One was my decision that I am fed up with feeling like this all the time and I want to get well, so I decided to try to sort my diet out. The second was that my mum suddenly became very ill with some kind of inflammatory bowel disease. She thought maybe food intolerances were behind her illness and asked for my help.
So for the last year I have been much stricter with my diet and I have been much more proactively looking into nutrition, alternative foods and health. I have always been very interested in alternative therapies such as herbal medicine and aroma therapy, and now I want to learn as much as possible about nutrition and new theories. I have discovered that my food intolerances in all likelihood have changed, as when I stayed off everything I was still reacting to things. I have discovered that new research is throwing new light on a range of issues, such as highlighting certain foods which have been hailed as superhealthy and saying that perhaps they aren't. I have discovered that the food industry is a scary, scary industry and that a lot that is reported in media needs to be taken with a big pinch of salt. I have learnt that it is actually very easy to cook for me. I have also learnt that it's very easy to slip off the bandwaggon. One late evening in town and I have to eat out, there's the diet out of the window immediately.
But I haven't given up and I keep looking for answers to my bad stomach. This is my story through the mine field of healthy food alternatives, media's coverage of food, findings of studies, and loads of recipies of things I actually can eat. Enjoy!
