MINI JULIE'S BLOG 20TH MAR. 2017

Mini Blog by Julie Gale

STARTING AT THE BEGINNING

It may well be that you have not actually started your LCHF Way of Eating (WOE) yet or that you are well on your way but not completely sure what you are doing yet, Or again you may be like me and been on the WOE for nearly a year but had a bit of a fall back into old ways. I guess my fall isn't too bad, for one week I allowed myself to have 20 grams of porridge, full fat yogurt and frozen raspberrys each morning, and during the week 1 oat cake and one banana. 

'Humph! So you think that's a fall? I had (enter your own naughty here'.)

Yes, but it was for me and I put on half a kilo! Keep doing it and I would have back where I started. So today, Monday, I start back at the beginning again because it will take me some time to get back into fat burning keto and I shall be hungry, possibly craving other carbs. I am also back to my 16:8 intermittent fasting I have done for many months. A regime that I know makes me feel well and brain bright.

Where ever you are on this spectrum of eating just know you are not the only one, continue educating yourself on all things LCHF etc. and eat well. BTW, don't forget your salt, potassium and magnesium unless told medically not to have them. You need you electrolytes.

A WAY OF EATING JULIE'S BLOG 18 MARCH 2017

JULIE'S BLOG 18 MARCH 2017 A WAY OF EATING

We have all been subject to many ideas of how we should be eating over our lives, nearly always called a 'DIET'. But if you are now looking to heal yourself of the many modern metabolic and autoimmune chronic diseases or are looking to lose weight before you do get them, by eating a low carbohydrate way, whatever it is called, is not a diet, it is a way of life! And it is called lots of things, LCHF, Paleo, Ketogenic, Mediterranean, Banting, Atkins and probably many more. Some are a little bit more protein, some more fat, some different amounts of carbohydrates. So what do they have in common?

Embarking on any of these named Way of Eating (WOE)(yes I hate it too) I would say the thing in common is 'you stop eating processed foods and eat real food!' Beyond that you takes yer choice. I think you should think about the reason you want to do it, what is driving you to it, overweight or feeling so ill you find you have to do something. Doctors haven't really helped in the main, and you have either started researching online or have seen articles in mags and papers. I had vaguely been hearing about going gluten free and wondered if it would help my IBS. I asked one of my doctors 'should I stop eating bread?' He answered 'well you can always give it a try'. I did but when I started looking into it I found the whole subject was much bigger and deeper than I had realised. So much more than just gluten free.

Then it is not a 'Diet' as one has to almost leave the world everybody else is living in and reorganise ones life. It isn't just buying different foods but carefully choosing the right ones. Labels become more important if you do buy some boxed or tinned foods etc. But the biggest, hardest thing is the change in your social interactions. It comes as quite a shock the number of things off your list of what you can eat when eating out. Your friends and relations start by saying 'good for you, you go for it' but you suffer rather like being a vegetarian or vegan. I was a vegi for 15 years and I know. But they often don't really know what you have been suffering with your particular health problem and may not see your desperation. Surely, they say you can have one roast potato, one bit of birthday cake? Ah yes the birthday cake problem, shall I shan't I? Well it will depend on which WOE you have chosen, on keto it is a big no no, others it may be OK. But every time you eat carbs it is amazing how it starts your craving for carbs again. 

So where to start or if you have started, to carry on from? I started this group and my #LCHF81 page to help people find a place to start their research. I follow quite a few Doctors and sites but.... they are nearly all American or Australian. The only British one anywhere near them, unless you know of another one then please tell us, is Zoë Harcombe's site. I am not going to put up links because you must research for yourself. Just type the names in Dr Google :-) Then I think my best are Dr Perlmutter for brain problems, Dr Berg videos, Ivor Cummins (Irish) for heart and diabetes(not a doctor but superb lecturer). Dr Jason Fung for diabetes and fasting, Oh I forgot that one on my list of WOEs. A good group for Keto, Keto Saved Me and watch Jamie Moskowitz who beat diabetes and more, good videos. 

A couple of things, they often try to sell their services, books and products but I just say, well there is no NHS and they have to make a living. Also disregard all peculiar adverts in articles, (like five foods not to eat). I like the two boys on 180Nutrition Videos, one them is Welsh and of course Robert Lustic on the evils of Sugar. And Gary Taubes for the same reason. Dr Amy Myers is good for Thyroid and Dr Mary Newport for Alzheimer's. I'll do books another time.

These are some of my favourites and there are many more. When you read or watch them only take what is right for you and don't be afraid to change your mind. I have vacillated all over the place but perhaps that is for another blog. Thanks if you have got this far. I am going to change some rules for the group later this week so look out for that please, until my next blog
Happy eating and better health to you all. Julie Gale Admin

PS to new members - I have several blogs if you page down but it will be quite a long way. Thinking of bringing them out onto Blogspot then only puting links. I'll let you know in due course.

FASTING JULIE'S BLOG 3RD MAR 2017

FASTING

Had a Fast this week on Wednesday. I was into fasting in 2013 after the Dr Michael Mosley programme on BBC. Well what I now think of as semi fasting. I did the 5:2 system for quite a while.Yes it worked up to a point, that point being that all diets where you keep eating carbohydrates don't work. You regain the weight when you go back to a 'normal diet'. In quotes because too many, and me at that time, a normal diet meant a standard diet. 

The 5:2 diet meant that you ate normally for five days and fasted for two days. Mosley's book, which I had purchased, said on a fasting day you ate 500 to 600 calories. So really it was an Eat Less Day, to my mind fasting means no eating. But I didn't know what I know now. I followed the 5:2 for quite some time, I joined a 5:2 site and wrote up my diary, not very well, never very good at keeping up diaries. 

I did find that on the fast days I felt hungry, I longed to get to six O'clock when I allowed myself to eat a small meal. This experience put me off of trying fasting again and since my success with LCHF/Keto eating I didn't see the need. As mentioned elsewhere, I have plateaued in my weight loss. I am a great Dr Jason Fung follower so recently I watched a good many of his interviews and read his blogs. I'd love to buy his book but funds are not good at the moment, it is on my Kindle wish list. I do have one by Joanna Alderson which is a short guide based on Dr Jason's writings. She say it is really her notes on Fungs writing. It was only £2.77 on Amazon.

One thing came up in this re-researching that made me decide to give fasting another go, it was that if one was on a fat burning way of eating, fasting was a breeze! And so it turned out to be. Much easier. I started at 8pm the night before and went right round to 8 pm the next day. I drank a bulletproof coffee first thing, various green teas during the day and a cup of marmite at lunch time. At 8pm I made 2 scramble eggs with cheese and had another green tea. The next day I returned to my intermittent fasting as usual and didn't eat until 1pm. I lost half a kilo but its creeping back but up.☹️

The thing is I don't want to cut down the size of my meals and their diversity of nutrients. Also my husband cooks and I don't want him to think I don't appreciate his delicious meals. So I figured that if I fasted that might take care of the problem. First I tried the Intermittent fasting but that wasn't enough hence the day long fast. It was really no problem and I shall certainly do it again next week. BTW, husband likes it because he can cook himself things he likes and I don't.

You might wonder about my cutting down the amount that I want to eat. I am 82 in a couple of months and all the pundits seem to say for older people its better to eat smaller amounts of all good nutrients. I have found that anyway on an LCHF/keto WOE I just don't want to eat as much as I did.
Thanks for reading this
Julie.

CAT AMONG THE PIGEONS 26TH FEB 2017 JULIE'S BLOG

CAT AMONG THE PIGEONS

I mentioned in another post that my weight loss had plateaued…….. Last week I tried a bit harder by following a Dr Berg video to bring the fat content down a little and kept to my two meals a day and no extras. Already being on two meals a day it wasn’t very different. It did also say avoid stress, not really having much as a retired lady, by not listening to the news. So no TV news and no radio at night that I like. I did think I’d probably had enough of The Trump news. Do you know it was very relaxing, I admit I worry about what is happening to the world. Particularly in the case of health and welfare.

Perhaps this blog will be a Cat among the Pigeons. We, my husband Philip and I, were discussing this morning what would happen if everybody listened to the LCHF message and ditched the carbs and processed foods? How many people in the food industries would be put out of work? How many companies would crash? How could we feed the world? Could we find enough organic, real food to give the millions? It certainly could not be done quickly.

People say we should eat like in the 70s but I can remember it in the 50s. I left school at 15 to go to Art School and then work. Food was still scarce after the war. I joined the Royal Air Force for four years as a Physical Training Instructor which is where I first learned a bit about nutrition. Of course I was fed three good meals a day, loads of carbs, even then I went to the canteen in the evening and had egg and chips. It was here I experienced for the first time putting on weight despite all the sports. I could tell by the fact that my uniform became to tight! You had to shell out money if you needed new uniform. I realised that I was adding a small bar of dairy milk chocolate every day to my food intake. I cut it out and returned to my proper size. I wish it had been that easy later in life.

So we have been subject to processed rubbish for a long time. Longer than most writers say. But perhaps just after the war we were limited by rationing and it was one only small bar of chocolate a week. Is it just a matter of the amount of this rubbish people eat, or has the actual ‘rubbish’ got worse as well as more available? Yet now they say there are more people over fed than under fed in the world. More people dying of abundance than starvation. What a crazy world. I still get visions of the TV program a little while ago of frosty corn flakes being made in UK. They had to make millions of tons of the stuff day and night to keep up with the demand. 

Yet I think we must make the effort to spread the news that individually we can save our health, stop pain and reverse such things as diabetes by ditching the carbs and sugar. I shall try to help as as long as I’m here and can work a computer. You Low Fatters and high Carbers will not fool me any longer! 

Yes thanks, I have lost half a kilo, lots more to go.

Love to all
(my other hobby, Painting)

JULIE’S BLOG 22ND FEB. 2017

JULIE’S BLOG 22/2/2017

Hi everyone. When I started searching Facebook for groups to do with LCHF etc. I found they mostly were talking about foods and supplements that were not available here or I had to find its equivalent in the UK, or I didn’t know what the heck they were talking about. I joined several, from USA and Australia and although I learnt a lot I got frustrated. Also, luckily, not being diabetic myself I found a lot of people’s test reading posted and being told to ‘eat to my meter’ a bit strange. That completely fogged me at first as to what it meant. But then in UK with our NHS we don’t get more than basic blood tests. Last time I was told one of my reading was ‘In the green area’ and OK. I could not get them to tell me the reading. Got it eventually from my doctor but the nurse hadn’t a clue.

I had, as previously mentioned, started LCHF because of IBS and followed Zoë Harcombe’s book. I just ate to a very simple plan of three meals including porridge for breakfast, and basically meat, fish, eggs, cheese and vegetables. I wanted to particularly stop eating wheat at the time, or anything made of wheat. So I wasn’t really worrying if I was in Ketosis, eating Paleo or even LCHF. But in following a keto site I later realised I was going into ketosis and even had a dose of keto flu. I still allow myself an occasional porridge with berries and Straight Up yogurt from Waitrose that I find good. No sugar and live.

I think we are very slow here in UK in catching up on these issues. Yet all around me I see people so ill or definitely heading towards being very ill. All you get told is ‘I’m fed up with all the different things they tell you to eat or not eat’ and they mostly don’t want to be bothered at all. Even if it would lessen their pain, reverse so many illnesses, they would rather continue to eat horrible processed food. I have seen large tables filled with sugary baked processed goods disappear in an afternoon. The few who have been interested are in this group! 

As the name I gave this group suggests I don’t mind what type of LCHF any one follows, it is what is right for them. As long as its low carb and they eat good fats. I still don’t really know what type of WOE I follow, I only know what I do works for me and my heath is very good for my age. All I want to do is to try to help people understand what turns out to be a very all encompassing subject by finding things that may be of interest and putting them up on group. Getting people to help each other on what is a not always an easy path to embark on and, as a retired person with time, do the researching for people who have not. I have been doing this researching to the detriment of other things for over a year now. I had some previous training in nutrition and exercise. 

A warm welcome to all new members, I hope you find something here to help you on your way

BTW I am dyslexic so forgive any mistakes and I'll be glad if you tell me corrections 😍 I Go through it a million times but still miss things.

FALLING OF THE WAGON 4th Jan 2017

FALLING OF THE WAGON  4th Jan 2017
Or the 'well one won't hurt me' syndrome. This idea is one that also comes to us along with the wrong diet information we have been given for so many years. If we have changed our Way of Eating (WOE) to embrace better health then there is no wagon to fall off of. Because that is the way we have decided to eat. Low Carbs, Moderate Protein, High Fat. No rubbish foods. If we decide not to offend a hostess and eat her biscuit, or her lovely pasta supper dish, or even succumb to that bit of dessert, we know it won't be good for us but we can just step back onto the waggon the next day. Return to good eating. Perhaps limit our carbs a bit more for one day. Because this is the way we have decided to live for the rest of our lives, not just for the period of a 'diet'.

But has it harmed us? Yes and no. No because we have all eaten these carbs in our time, that's why we are either ill or fat. We won't die or be ill unless you ate the food that was your particular problem, like mine is wheat. But Yes, because you are working towards or are now a 'fat burner'. You have taught your body to use fat for its fuel source rather than carbs (glucose). It was hard giving up sugar in coffee, no biscuits, no bread etc. And you felt better and lost weight! If you wake up after a lapse feeling poorly, found your weight has gone up and have your pain is back, then you have been harmed. You body had to switch fuel source again because it had to use up the carbs you ate, the extra sugar cannot stay in your body.

But it is not like the old eating too many calories or not sticking to prescribed menu. That made you feel bad mentally. Don't beat yourself up about it but - get back to eating the LCHF WOE as soon as you can and don't be surprised if next day you feel hungry or desire carbs again. That is the down side of Falling off of the Wagon.

Julie's Blogs 5th Feb. 2017

ABOUT MY OWN SEARCH

I said in the pinned post I would upload some blogs which I have been very remiss in doing. So I have sat down this Sunday afternoon to write a blog. Perhaps some information about me and why I feel I had to start this group. 

Last year I had a colon scan because of a show of blood. I have had bowel problems for some 40 years and only recently had I managed to get my doctor to agree that I had Irritable Bowel Syndrome. I have had many operations over the years that never gave an answer as to what my pain and bowel problem was and really calling it IBS didn't either. The scan showed nothing untoward which was a relief but the surgeons and doctors still didn't have any more advice as to what to do to help myself. 

A year or so previously it was found that I had a hiatus hernia and an ulcer in my stomach. Here a diet was suggested which was to cut out many particular foods. Tea, coffee, oranges, tomatoes and many more. What is called a GERD diet. It worked, well as far as the ulcer was concerned. It completely disappeared. When I came home distraught from being told that nothing could be found on the colon scan, distraught because there seemed to be no answer, I remembered that diet alone had cured my ulcer. I wondered if diet could help me now because my IBS was making me almost agoraphobic, I needed always to be near a toilet or I had embarrassing accidents. Yes, I turned to Dr. Google. What would we all do without him?

The first thing I turned up was Dr Lustic on the evils of sugar. I ate plenty of sugar and although I knew sugar made one fat I still ate it in all the usual things, cakes, biscuits, desserts.....
I noticed at the side of the Youtube video other suggestions. I had not to this point been a Youtube watcher, more a user to put up a few of my own videos. I moved on to videos about wheat and grains. Now these really startled me. I had been vaguely wondering if I should stop eating bread but we had not long brought a Bread Maker and my darling husband had become a very good baker. His bread rolls and loaves were delicious. I studied for 3 to 4 months articles, books, and videos. 

I began to realise it was not just cutting out this or that but a complete change of my Way of Eating if I was going to be successfuI. I had to come away from the 'Low Fat - Counting Calories' and eat what to me sounded a great way of eating, a Low Carb - High Fat diet. It jogged my memory. Many years ago when trying to lose my 'after baby fat' I had found a small booklet in Boots chemist that said do not eat bread, cakes, biscuits or potatoes but eat as much proteins, fat and vegetables as you wish. This was 1962. It had worked! Here I was now on the edge of obese, sick to death of my life and I hadn't remembered this. I was conned along with the rest of the world into eating 'low fat' filled with SUGAR and CARBS galore. Had this been my downfall? I'd had unmentionable parts of me removed over the years none of which made me any better ending up fairly recently with gallbladder removal. Plus the gastric ulcer and hiatus hernia. All of which I felt could be put down to eating the wrong things.

On April 17th 2016 I announced I was going to try an LCHF diet. My husband who now does the cooking took it quite well. I did a bit preparation in making out a diet for myself based on the Harcombe diet. Within in two weeks my Diarrhoea stopped. Within a month I felt the best I had been for years. I lost a little weight but not a lot I did however lose some of my big belly fat, I changed shape. I became a convert to LCHF but I still had a lot to learn. I have continued studying and have many books on my Kindle I haven't had time to read. I also, in looking around my friends and family, realised that most them were sick for the same reason, too many carbs. I started my page LCHF81, the 81 being my age at the time and recently started the group. I have formed several views on the subject and will try to talk about them in the future. Meanwhile I continue my LCHF WOE and my IBS seems to be in abeyance. I don't seem to lose more weight but I have the energy to go to my Tai Chi Classes. 

My best wishes to you all on your own journeys, whatever method of LCHF you use. Julie

Me Dec. 1st 2016 on my husband's birthday

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