Let thy Food be thy Medecine

Have you ever had the feeling that you are in the right place at the right time?

I believe that things happen for a reason. Life finds strange ways sometimes to send us messages...

A few weeks ago, we went to eat at Eve in Encinitas. (One of our favourite vegan restaurants in San Diego!)

The Legendary Hero Bowl with added Falafel at Eve

While waiting for our order, my husband takes a book randomly on the table and begins to flip through the pages. The book is called Immovable Heart Unstoppable Mind: A Personal Guide To The 6 Essential Practices For Living A Healthy And Fulfilling Life. 

After allowing myself to read some pages over his shoulder, I noted the title so that I could order it once back home. I finished reading the book in 2 days. I loved it.

This led me to order another book immediately after. A book called The Autoimmune Fix: How to Stop the Hidden Autoimmune Damage That Keeps You Sick, Fat, and Tired Before It Turns Into Disease  (Amazon, Thanks for your wonderful suggestions!)

You may or may not know this about me but I was diagnosed with  an autoimmune disease at the age of 12 called Type 1 diabetes mellitus. Obviously, by reading the title of the book, I had an immediate desire to read it.

Before telling you why this book is really interesting and how it brought a new awareness into my life, I need to tell you a bit of my personal story. 

Diabetes Mellitus Type 1

Through the years, I have tried many different diets or, as I prefer to say, ways of eating. 

As you may know, there are many many diets out there. The most common diets are: Detox, cleanse, and juice diets, High protein/low carb diet, Paleo diet, raw diet, Vegetarian diet, Vegan diet, Jenny Craig diet, Mayo Clinic diet, Flexitarian diet, Mediterranean diet, Atkins, ketogenic, GOLO, Military and Taco diets. 

It can be tough being healthy right now, especially if you have to navigate your way around these new and different ways of eating.

When I was a child, I was eating everything like most kids. In elementary school, I could easily eat a $5 brown bag worth of candies every Friday afternoon after school, pizza on the weekends and ice cream cones on hot summer nights. 

After my diabetes diagnosis, doctors put me on a special diet that included counting carbohydrates and food groups. I had to make sure I ate the right amount of carbohydrates and included all the food groups (dairy, protein, vegetable and carbs) because I had to inject myself with insulin according to what I was eating. Which is still the case today but the methods and technologies are much better.

As I grew up, I quickly realised that starchy foods like white bread and white potato, processed foods like cookies and pastries and carbohydrate foods with high glycemic index like rice and juices just did not help me to control my blood sugar well. On the contrary, they were affecting negatively my quality of life by putting my body into a blood sugar roller coaster! So I gradually started eliminating them from my diet. I practically ate only meat, cheese and vegetables which is considered a Low Carb/High Fat diet or Ketogenic diet. 

Veganism

Several years later, I got my hands on a book named The China Study written by T. Colin Campbell PhD.  In summary, In The China Study, Dr. T. Colin Campbell details the connection between nutrition and heart disease, diabetes, and cancer. The China Study is one of those "very talked about and life changing " type of books. It's based on one of the largest comprehensive studies of human nutrition ever conducted, launched via a partnership between Cornell University, Oxford University, and the Chinese Academy of Preventative Medicine, with data collected over a span of 20 years. IT'S SERIOUS! 

Trust me, after reading the book, you won't have any desire to eat animal and dairy products. In the 10 years since it was published, it inspired influential figures like Bill Clinton to go vegan. It is clearly shown that animal protein and dairy products promote the growth of cancer. 

“People who ate the most animal-based foods got the most chronic disease. People who ate the most plant-based foods were the healthiest” the authors state. 

After reading the book, My husband and I (We were not yet married at the time!) were convinced that we had to go vegan. 

It was a drastic change for both of us but for me, becoming vegan might have been a notch harder. As I did not eat high-carbohydrate foods like bread, rice, grains and legumes, by removing meat and dairy products of my diet, my choices became very limited. Without another option, I started reintroducing food to my diet like hemp seeds, oats, legumes and sprouted breads.

Raw Veganism

Couple of months later, I was introduced to raw food at a raw food restaurant named Rebar while visiting family in Vancouver. (Thanks Troy and Jade Mutter!) 

I was hooked after my first bite. I came back home, bought my first food dehydrator, a vegetable spiralizer, a few raw cook books and I became officially a raw food eater. I'm not going to lie, being a raw foodist was not easy at times. Since this lifestyle was new to me, I was not always successful in achieving good and yummy meals with my new kitchen tools but after much trial and error, I eventually found a few awesome recipes and started mastering this new way of living! 

Honestly, being a raw vegan made me feel better not only physically but consciously as well.

Though much of the world is focused on transitioning away from fossil fuels as a way to fight climate change, animal agriculture is the second largest contributor to human-made greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions after fossil fuels and is a leading cause of deforestation, water and air pollution and biodiversity loss.

I knew that through my new eating habits, I was helping to improve or reduce the warming of our beautiful Earth, even though my contribution was tiny and almost insignificant. 

Pregnancies

After months of enjoying my new raw culinary skills and feeling like a raw version of  "Martha Stewart", my life took a drastic turn: I got pregnant and litterally turned into a vampire. Pregnancy cravings? 


Seriously!

I started tossing aside all vegetables, fruits, nuts and basically everything "healthy" and all I wanted to eat was red meat, white bread and dill pickled chips with full-fat milk. Is not it that ironic?  Was my body telling me something? 

"No one really knows why pregnancy cravings occur, though there are theories that it represents some nutrient that the mother may be lacking -- and the crave is the body's way of asking for what it needs." says Andrei Rebarber, MD, associate director of the division of maternal-fetal medicine at NYU Medical Center in New York.

With those new unquenchable longings for the weirdest combinations of foods, the wonderful raw food eater that I had become was quickly put to bed. 

Transition

What is most ironic is that now, with this second pregnancy, I have completely returned to my old vegetarian-vegan way of eating. A transition that did not happen overnight but simply naturally.

Is my body telling me something again? 

After two difficult pregnancies, all I really want is to feel my best again. We all know the old saying "Let thy Food be thy Medecine" right? “Food is Medicine” is a term which was originally coined by Hippocrates, the father of Western medicine; it was his belief that eating wholesome food is the basis for good health.  

Is food the key element of our well-being? I beleive so. 

In the past few months, I have been thinking and reflecting on my life, about all the things that make me feel good, the changes that I want to make in order to feel better, looking for a guidance, a sign, an answer...

The Green Goddess Salad and The Love Bowl by Trilogy Sanctuary

The Autoimmune Protocol Diet/Paleo Diet

That's when I started to read this chain of books that lead me to The Autoimmune Fix. The right place at the right time, you remember? 

The Autoimmune Fix recommends following a Paleo-inspired diet called The Autoimmune Protocol Diet (AIP) during which you cut out gluten, sweets, and dairy--the three primary culprits behind autoimmunity. (Aches and pains!)

The AIP is a restrictive diet that is meant to be followed for a certain period of time – at least for a minimum of 30 days, perhaps several months, depending on your individual issues and response to the AIP lifestyle. Introducing the AIP approach in your meals means that you have to remove certain foods that cause irritation and trigger autoimmune antibodies. Removing these irritants from your daily diet allows your gut to gradually heal, and hence your body will notice that progress too. 

Overall, sounds good to me exempt that I have no desire to eat animal products anymore. 

Then it clicked. 

Why not take a vegan approach to this Autoimmune Protocol Diet? 

I am Glorious and I am Resolved by Café Gratitude

Peganism

The vegan diet has long been praised for its health benefits and emphasis on plant-based eating, but following the diet, like I mentioned earlier, can be a challenge.  The Paleo diet is more flexible, but it can sometimes be hard to know what counts as Paleo and what doesn’t. 

The new “Pegan” diet combines the two to create a healthy diet that leaves behind the inflexibility of veganism and the rule book of Paleo.

In January 2015, Mark Hyman, MD, a functional medicine proponent and bestselling author of The Blood Sugar Solution and The Blood Sugar Solution 10-Day Detox Diet , introduced the Pegan (Paleo-vegan) diet on his website.

"After researching nutrition for 30 years and analyzing thousands of scientific papers and treating tens of thousands of patients with food, I vote for being a Pegan!"

Here’s what that looks like.

• Focus on the glycemic load of your diet. This can be done on a vegan or paleo diet, but harder on a vegan diet.  Focus on more protein and fats.  Nuts (not peanuts), seeds (flax, chia, hemp, sesame, pumpkin), coconut, avocados, sardines, olive oil.

• Eat the right fats. Stay away from most vegetable oils such as canola, sunflower, corn, and especially soybean oil which now comprises about 10 percent of our calories. Focus instead on omega 3 fats, nuts, coconut, avocados and yes, even saturated fat from grass fed or sustainably raised animals.

• Eat mostly plants – lots of low glycemic vegetables and fruits. This should be 75 percent of your diet and your plate. 

• Focus on nuts and seeds. They are full of protein, minerals, and good fats and they lower the risk of heart disease and diabetes.

• Avoid dairy

• Avoid gluten 

• Eat gluten-free whole grains sparingly– they still raise blood sugar and can trigger autoimmunity.

• Eat beans sparingly – lentils are best. Stay away from big starchy beans.

• Eat meat or animal products as a condiment, not a main course. Vegetables should take center stage and meat should be a side dish.

• Think of sugar as an occasional treat – in all its various forms (i.e., use occasionally and sparingly).

After researching and reading about this new pegan diet, I have to admit that this way of eating makes the most sense to me. For my health and the health of our planet.  It is sustainable, kinder to animals and environmentally friendly. 

At the end, there isn’t a single diet that fits everyone. I think the most important thing is to listen to your body. Personally, I love experimenting new ways of eating food and discovering what makes me feel better physically and mentally, more energetic and overall satisfied. 

Just remember that good nutrition and what you put into your body is the foundation for good health. Food is consumed to provide nutritional support for your body. The food we eat is ingested and assimilated by our cells to provide energy, maintain life and stimulate growth. If food has the power to prevent much of the chronic illness we experience today (as mentioned in the the lastest books I've read), then it makes sense to alter our diets to use it to our own advantage to not only heal and restore the body but also to prevent illness. 

I would love to hear about your own experiences with diets and food. How has it affected your life or quality of life?