Celebrating one year of LCHF. As today has already started in some parts of the world I will post this blog for my tomorrow. 

ONE YEAR OF LCHF TODAY
I had more than one thing wrong because of what I was eating

Julie’s Blog 17/4/2017

Yeah! This time last year I started my new “Way Of Eating’ (WOE). I had been sick with IBS for many years and three months earlier I’d had a blood loss that had got me really worried. After a bowel scan where nothing was found to be wrong I thanked my God and then asked the doctor what do I do now? I was almost agoraphobic about going out for fear of embarrassing accidents, my intestines were always in a state of inflammation and painful and I was overweight just tipping the BMI at obese! And this IBS had been going on for some 40 years with no help from five operations in the area. But answer from any doctor or surgeon came there none.

Like many others these days the only recourse left to me was Dr. Google. A year ago last January I started an intense three months research on diets that might help. On April 17th 2016 I stopped having sugar in my coffee! That was the hardest thing to do. Of more importance I cut out all grains and sugar in anything. That meant all processed food. I ate only meats, fish, dairy, eggs, fats and minimum of vegetables. My life changed in so many ways.

This year I have stepped into a whole new world online. I discovered people all over the world who had come to the same decision to save themselves. It also made me realise that all my life had been blighted by my diet and particularly since 1970 food had changed. Although I cooked mostly from fresh I ate all the processed food everyone else ate and stuffed myself with LOW FAT when trying so hard a dozen times to lose weight that always crept back on. With a year of reading, watching wonderful lectures and interviews on video and following groups on Face Book I came to realise it was not only IBS that I had suffered because of this bad WOE. 

I had low thyroid that had made me think I had ME for many years until it was diagnosed because of muscle weakness and fatigue. I lost hair and my eyebrows. I had Arthritis in many joints bad enough that ten years ago I had to have two new knee joints. It is in my shoulders, hands and ankles. I had to lose my gallbladder. I had high Blood pressure as well. I got an stomach ulcer and Hiatus Hernia, ulcer now gone but hernia still there. And recently I had a realisation that my life long painful periods which disabled me every month even when young might not have been so bad with a better diet. A hysterectomy for this problem Plus two other operations. And now for the good news

My IBS is so much better that I now lead a normal life and can go out whenever I like. There is some residual damage to the gut which still flares up now and then and is painful. I came off of PPIs and and my High Blood Pressure medications. My Thyroxine has been reduced. I want to get off it altogether. My arthritis is less painful and I go walking, climb stairs normally and do Tai Chi. The arthritis can flare up sometimes. My blood pressure is within bounds but a little on the high side. I lost a little weight and am now only overweight. I think age has slowed my metabolism. This WOE does not seem to have helped these last two things. About the only thing that was better for me than most women was I didn’t suffer the menopause symptoms, don’t know why this is. Oh yes, My hair is growing back and stands up short on the top of my head.

There is one thing that makes me sad and that is seeing the rest of the world go by with every ill that can be laid at the door of the food people are eating. I wrote a short leaflet that I gave to my friends that asked for help after seeing my recovery. I commented where ever I could to help people on line and made up my page LCHF81 to post articles to help people understand and finally started a UK support group which is slow at catching on but has some good people joining now. 

At my age I don’t think I can do more but wish I could. Meanwhile I have stepped into this new world where I find social interaction hard, seeing the goodies in the shops even harder but know what I have done is right. I feel wonderfully well and able to enjoy my life. That is a blessing.

And so for my second year. I understand so much more now. I have honed my diet and think I get into mild Ketosis as I also Intermittent fast every day on 16:8, and only have two meals a day. I have reduced fat a little recently in hopes that some more weight might come off, not expecting it to be a lot. My meals are delicious and I enjoy eating them. I allow myself a small bit of 90% chocolate which has gone up from 85%. Well its hard to leave that other world entirely!

WHEN DID MY FOOD START KILLING ME? 1st April 2017

It is no joke.

When I was having a good think about this I asked myself, when was it that our food changed? When did the manufacturers think they could mess around with good food and then sell us an adulterated form of it? 60s, 70s, all the writings on say it changed in the early 1970s with the low fat theory. That is when the upward curve started for obesity and metabolic diseases like Diabetes. So my thinking started to take me back and with 80 years in which to go that is a long way.

My first worries about food were during the second world war. I was four as it broke out and very shortly found myself in a boarding school while my parent were on war duties. I was always hungry. The food did not sustain us and we looked for anything to eat. I rememberer being in a school play and in one scene some were at a dinner table eating a meal. They had one thin slice of bread to represented the food each had to eat and the rest of us just drooled watching them eat it. But the bread we had then was said to be adulterated with chalk, don’t know the truth. Margarine was like axel grease, not that I knew what that was. Meat was small and mostly fat and gristle. I think that this was where manufacturers began to find out what could be done to food.

After the war we returned to what is now termed ‘real food’. A meal was meat or fish and two veg, potato and a garden vegetable. A pudding was homemade on the whole like jam tart and custard, steamed suet pudding. I remember breakfast cereals at this time, quite plain like Shredded Wheat. Sugar remain rationed for a long time and in the late forties, early fifties, my last days at school, sweets were like a very small bar of chocolate or 2 oz of boiled sweets per week. I entered adulthood always keen to get food and wanting as much sweet stuff as I could get. I think I can see a problem emerging here. But I was a keen athlete and swimmer most of my young life, I think that helped me stay slim. 

By 1960 I was a young married woman. The food I cooked food for the family it was mostly traditional as I had been taught to make at school and home. I baked cakes and biscuits, bread and made jam. I found it cheaper than buying ready mades. So ready mades were becoming more in evidence in peoples homes. Unfortunately at this time my marriage fell apart and I was left on my own. Although money was tight I still tried to cook a meal for myself. During this time I took a job as a waitress in a seaside hotel. Here I rememberer my first pre-cooked or dried food. It was awful but part of my wages. This must have been the precursor of processed food other than biscuits bread etc. The daily dinner that only had to be rehydrated.

And so I ate my way through the 60s, 70s, 80, 90s and into the 2000s eating what we all have been eating, utter rubbish. It has got sweeter and sweeter, sugar and wheat flour added to everything. I have gone through several metabolic or autoimmune problems none of which have been solved by operations or drugs. Then I had a sign which made me think the worst had befallen me. It hadn’t but it frightened me. I started searching for an answer.

At this time last year I had been reading books and articles, and watching video lectures etc. about eating Low Carbohydrates High Fat for 3 to 4 months. I was preparing myself to eat a different way. On the 17th  of April I started and within two weeks I felt better. Bar eating three rolls on my annual holiday that threw me right back into my illness, I have continued to eat LCHF and damned glad I am too. No, not all is right but I am so much better and able to lead a normal life again. I lost some weight but not a lot and yes, I could do with a little more off. But health is my most important factor in all this.

Here are some of the books I read on my Kindle. Some are freebies I downloaded whenever I saw them. I wish I could afford a lot more. The videos and articles are too numerous to mention. I think that one should continue to research and read everything one can on the subject because it keeps in mind why one is eating LCHF, what ever that may be.