Learning to Listen

Recently I shared some ‘before’ and ‘after’ pictures of my amazing weight loss with my online Mommy friends (from the Parenting Weekly monthly birth club group I joined when I was pregnant with Mr. Charm – yes, three years later and we’re still an active group!) and they were impressed and concerned.

Impressed, asking how I did it, and concerned, making sure I was getting the nutrition I needed and was making enough milk for Mr. Happy.

I assured them that I was making plenty of good milk for Mr. Happy, and then had to explain that because of all the fillers put in multi-vitamins on the market, I am currently unable to take any vitamin supplements to my diet.  I said how, once things are stabilized in my kiddos worlds, I’m planning to meet with a nutritionist to discuss what I need supplementation on, and then working with the compounding pharmacists to create a ‘safe’ vitamin for me to take.

Mr. Happy had to come first, and going on this diet was absolutely necessary to keep him alive and well.  I HAD to focus on him first – but soon I can start making sure I’m not causing damage to myself by taking care of my son.

Much as I love the weight loss (48 pounds in just under 4 months as of now!) and the fact that my son is THRIVING on this diet, I freely admit: it’s not the healthiest way to eat in the long-term.

However, there are some things I’ve learned by being on an elimination diet that I think are very useful for people in general, and they are things that will help  me to be healthier in the long run.

I now firmly believe that, generally speaking, our bodies are so out of whack from the way we eat in America that we have completely lost touch with ‘hearing’ our bodies talk to us.

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By being on a completely restricted diet, I soon realized that I do MUCH better when I eat three meals plus a snack per day.  Previously, I sometimes only ate once or twice a day (and wondered why I couldn’t lose weight).  I’ve actually had dizzy spells from low blood sugar from not keeping my body fueled regularly.  Since I used to drink Coca-cola like it was air, my body never had a chance to TELL me that it was in need of fuel, as I was supplying sugar to my body without nutrition.  Now, I only drink water and decaf tea with a little stevia for some sweetening; my blood sugar doesn’t spike from my beverages, so my body can now tell me what it needs from food.

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I once signed up for a gym membership and a personal trainer, who put me on an incredibly strict diet (worse, even, than the one I’m on in some ways!).  It was a completely carb-free diet.  NO carbs.  At all.  Plus, it was low-to-no fat.  I was allowed VERY small amounts of un-saturated fats every day.  And I was supposed to work out 5 days a week, alternating weights and cardio every other day.

I stuck to that diet.  I stuck to that workout regime.  I was in the gym for at least an hour, sometimes two hours, per day, and nary a carb and hardly any fat entered my body.  I was workin’ it, ladies and gents!

In two months, I lost a whopping – are you ready for it? TWO POUNDS.

Feel the urge to curse like a sailor over that?  I sure did.

Now, nearly a decade later, my metabolism ‘should’ be slowing down and weight should be harder to get off.  I’m on a very restricted diet again, but NOT working out at all (unless you count running after two energetic children as a workout), and I’ve lost 48 pounds in three months.

What’s the difference?

Today, I’m still eating carbs, and I eat fats.  

Our bodies NEED carbs to function; they just don’t need as many carbs as we usually consume.  Too many carbs equals weight gain.  Not enough carbs, your body goes into ‘famine’ mode and hangs on to your weight for survival.  It’s like Goldilocks: your carb intake needs to be “just right”.  

Carbs are sugars, when you get right down to it.  Our bodies need some sugar to use as fuel, but we are overloaded on sugar in this country.  It hides in nearly everything you can buy in the store, and in everything you can order at a restaurant.  Even if you don’t drink colas, don’t add sugar to your tea, don’t eat sweets…I promise you are still over-filling your body with sugars if you eat the S.A.D. (Standard American Diet).

Too much sugar stresses out your body and causes obesity, diabetes, and all kinds of other painful problems.  By cutting out all straight sugar from my diet, and limiting my carbs, I found the ‘sweet spot’ that Goldilocks would be proud of.  My blood sugar doesn’t ever spike, my body gets enough fuel to function but not so much that it feels compelled to store it as fat, and my health, skin, weight and general energy levels have improved in amazing ways.

Saturated fats are just healthier, in the long run, than unsaturated fats.  Your body can process them better.  While most of my frying oil is (currently) olive oil, which is not a totally saturated fat, I am consuming large quantities of beef, which is chock full of saturated fat.

What I am NOT consuming is strictly unsaturated fats, or NO fats.

I’m eating a whole heckuva lot like my great-grandmothers did, and my body feels a whole heckuva lot better for the effort.

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When I discovered Mr. Charm’s Fructose Malabsorption, we were all living on the FPIES elimination diet I started for Mr. Happy.  It was easier to cook just one meal three times a day.

When I suddenly had to cut out fructose and fructans from Mr. Charm’s diet, life became more complicated.  Now I needed to cook TWO meals three times a day.  One way to make this easier on me was to simply eliminate fructose and fructans from MY diet, as well, and make ‘safe’ hamburgers and french fries for both me and Mr. Charm for lunch.

Suddenly, I wasn’t eating as much onion, garlic, and carrot as I had previously eaten.

I also quickly gorged myself on the remaining honeydew melon and cantaloupe that we had in the house, as Mr. Charm LOVES his melon and he no longer could eat it.  I didn’t want the temptation around.

Within a day of eating the melon, I was sleeping poorly, waking up with a headache, feeling fuzzy-headed and groggy all day, and having unpleasant tummy symptoms.  

I finished eating all the melon, and within a day, all those symptoms went away.  Hmm.

Eventually I branched out into cooking two meals for each mealtime, and when I did, I started adding carrot, onion and garlic back into my meals.  Mr. Charm couldn’t have them, but the Geek and I could!

Onion and garlic are still ‘in research’ stages, but I notice a clear reaction in my body when I consume carrots, now.  

So I have determined that I, also, have at least a slight form of Fructose Malabsorption.  Which makes some sense; I’m 5’5″, and everyone else in my family is almost or over 6′.  If I wasn’t absorbing nutrients properly as a child from FructMal, it could explain why I didn’t grow as tall as genetics might indicate I could have been.

I have eaten (and drunk) fructose my entire life and never connected the dots.  My body was so out of whack, I literally could not see or feel any connection between anything I ate and how I felt and functioned.

Being on a reduced diet, I can hear my body speak.  And it tells me that fructose sucks.  

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I’ve been essentially dairy and egg free for over two years now, since shortly after Mr. Charm was diagnosed with MPI and egg IgE allergies.  After Mr. Charm weaned, but before I started my 3rd trimester with Mr. Happy, I had a brief two month period where I could eat anything I wanted to eat!  It was glorious not to worry so much!

Except…if I ate an egg?  I immediately had a stomach ache and cramping that lasted at least 4 hours.

And when I consumed large quantities of dairy?  My sinus cavities would become so congested I could hardly breathe.  Small amounts were okay; one ice cream in a day, or a glass of milk.  The amount of cheese on two slices of pizza didn’t seem problematic.  But if I tried to have all of that in one single day?  Hello, head pain!

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No, eating the way I am currently eating is not the key to long term health.  I eat too limited a diet to ensure my body is getting the wide variety of vitamins and nutrients it needs.

But it won’t kill me to keep it up for a while.  In fact, I consider eating this way to be one of the best things that ever happened to me (not counting the reason WHY I’m eating this way, of course!).

By getting rid of the competing messages, the conflicting data, I’ve been able to start truly listening to my body and hearing what it tells me.

This is only the beginning for me; as I add foods back into my diet, each one will be carefully ‘listened’ to to decide whether it works with my biology or not.  I hope that, in the end, I will eat a diet that is the healthiest possible way to eat – FOR ME.

And because of what I’ve learned about my body and my son’s body through this experience, I encourage everyone to voluntarily put themselves on an elimination diet for a few weeks, and then start adding foods back in.  I promise that if you do it, you will finally be able to hear your body speak to you, and in the end, you’ll be eating the healthiest possible way – FOR YOU.  

Plus, you’ll probably look SMOKIN’ HOT in short order, and who doesn’t want that?

Anyone brave enough to try it?  Let us know how it works for you!

This post has been shared with Whole Foods Wednesday, Real Food Wednesdays, Allergy Free Wednesdays, and Gluten Free Fridays.