I have to confess that April was not a stellar month for me in the food and nutrition department. In addition to the events discussed in this post, which rendered my kitchen basically useless for a week, I also realized that I’m not nearly as disciplined about my diet when my husband is out of town, which was most of last month. I certainly got a big reminder what it’s like to try cooking for a single person. Although I have categories of recipes for Fast & Easy and Cooking for One, I forgot how hard it can be to grocery shop and prep meals for yourself day after day, week after week. So I didn’t!
I found myself in places I usually avoid like the plague: wandering the pre-made foods aisle at the grocery store, eating pizza by the slice(s), and even in the drive-thru at fast food joints! Yikes! What on earth was I doing? Failing to plan is what I was doing. It’s that simple.
Humans are creatures of habit. Once we start doing anything, such as choosing what to eat day after day, we repeat it over and over throughout our lives. It’s like being on auto-pilot. So when we decide to change that behavior, our life history is working against us, making it very easy to revert to the original behavior. It takes a conscious effort and planning to keep on the new track day in-day out.
So what I learned in April is that even though I’ve been on a new food track for nearly 17 years, eating primarily vegan and vegetarian fare, when I stop consciously thinking about what I want/need to put in my mouth, I can get lazy pretty quickly and revert to very old food habits. Yes, I will admit that I had a Burger King chicken sandwich and two McDonald’s cheeseburgers!!! My dog helped, but how much of that can a six-pound Chihuahua really eat??
Needless to say, I didn’t make any progress in taking off the 6 pounds I put back on after losing 14.5 in January. I’m lucky I didn’t gain any more this month. And to be clear, I didn’t eat horribly every day in April. In fact, I would say that about 70% of the time, I ate foods that are approved on Dr. Fuhrman’s Eat to Live plan. But going off the plan just 30% of the time was enough to cause a noticeable change in my energy level and increase in my asthma symptoms.
So in May I’m back on the wagon. In fact, every recipe I post in May is going to be Eat-To-Live-plan friendly. I’m going back to planning out the meals for each week and writing out my grocery lists so I’m not tempted to pull something off the shelf that could de-rail me again. I hope – no, I PLAN – to have good news to report next month!
Responses to Reader Questions
Now that my painful April confession is over, it’s on to something far more fun – responding to questions from readers. Last month, I requested readers of these reports to let me know what they would like to hear more about and I received some really good suggestions. (Please keep more suggestions coming!) Some of these queries took me on a walk down memory lane and reminded me of how far I’ve come from where I started on my nutrition and health journey. Every month I’ll include a section devoted to responding to another reader question. So here goes! (BTW – you can find more information about the diets and books discussed below in my Resources section.)
What types of diets have you tried to improve what types of health issues?
As discussed in the posts My Tale and I Was A Bad Vegetarian and Vegan, I sought out nutritional advice and alternative medicine therapies in an effort to improve or reverse a pretty severe case of asthma. Western doctors told me there was no cure for asthma and my only recourse was to take pharmaceuticals the rest of my life to control the symptoms.
I refused to accept that and found a doctor who was also trained in alternative therapies. She suggested I start by consulting with a nutritionist, who suggested a macrobiotic diet. Within 2 weeks of being on a macrobiotic diet I was off all of my medications except one inhaler. It was a miracle, and that’s when I first understood that food is much more powerful and effective (and cheaper!) than drugs.
I stayed on the macrobiotic diet (which is vegan) for almost a full year. My health improved dramatically, but I was not able to get off that last inhaler, so I kept researching if there were other diets that might get me across that finish line.
I tried the South Beach and Dukan diets (mainly to lose a few pounds), both of which include meat and animal products. Neither diet helped my asthma and actually started exacerbating my symptoms. I did lose some weight on both of the diets, but it wasn’t a permanent fix.
Then I started reading about acidic and alkaline foods, so I bought Dr. Robert Young’s book The pH Miracle. I tried the diet and it worked better for me than the macrobiotic diet. Both diets are vegan and recommend some of the same foods. I later came to realize, after reading Dr. William Davis’ Wheat Belly, that the reason the pH balanced diet worked better for me was because there is a lot of emphasis on grains in the macrobiotic diet. Going on the Wheat Belly diet showed me that I have a sensitivity to wheat and other grains, and reducing them in my diet has made a huge difference.
I followed the Forks Over Knives diet recommendations by Dr. T. Colin Campbell and Dr. Caldwell Esselstyn, which is a vegan diet. At this point, I finally realized that I feel my best and get the best health improvements when I follow vegan diets. Each of the diets I’ve mentioned above have their own emphasis, but at their core, all recommend that the fastest way to true health and a disease-free body is by eating a diet high in leafy green and high nutrient content vegetables.
So if I feel best on a vegan diet, why do I keep slipping back to a vegetarian menu where I can get my cheese fix? What is it about cheese that has me so hooked? And is cheese really that bad that I need to eliminate it from my diet?
That’s when I read Dr. Joel Fuhrman’s book Eat To Live, (another vegan diet) which explains addictions to food, including cheese. And yes, it is that bad for me and I should eliminate it from my diet. I won’t get into the details here, but I definitely recommend reading this book if you want to understand the impact food has over your health.
I have dabbled in some other diets, but those discussed above are the ones that I followed extensively. Check back next month in the May report for another answer to a reader question. Please keep the questions coming!
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