CAVEAT!!!
This post is about my journey and what I discovered about me, OK?!!
You may think I am full of crap, or that I am a food crank or whatever else you want to call me, and that is all cool and you are entitled to your opinion, but I do not insist you live my lifestyle. This is all about LCHF/Keto so dont say I didnt warn you. Move on if you have a tattoo on yo' butt that says "High Carb for ever" and if it keeps you healthy Im happy for you!!
I am assuming readers are savvy enough to decide for themselves if any of this is applicable to them and there is no gun to your head! There is a really easy way to deal with me if you dont like what I say - DONT COME TO THIS BLOG and if you decide to read this and hate it, dont try and get all venomous on my A**!!
Each to his own - this is mine...
So for those who want to read this, how many of us ladies (and gents) have stared down the barrel of middle age and thought WHEN DID IT ALL TURN TO CRAP? I know I sure as hell did.
My health and my looks went to custard before the light went on in my head and I literally stumbled on the path to rescuing me. I looked youthful and was fit enough to pass for mid to late 30s right up until I turned about 47 then one day I realised I felt really really unwell and I was starting to look it too.
Emotional vampires in my life, a thyroid function that was petering out by the day, bad food choices (although at the time I thought I was eating well enough!), a rising HbA1c diabetic profile ((bullet ricocheting off wall sounds inserted here!)) I was dodging bullets from all over!
By the time I hit 50 my weight ballooned exponentially and I started to think it was never going to improve from there, and it was just awful.
My hair thinned as my thyroid function failed, my hormonal balances shifted all over the place, the weight got harder and harder to shift, the more weight I gained the worse my joints and tendons became.... I was a shabby mess! I would like to say I wish I had a pic to share but hell no! Im so glad you cant see what I looked like - my face was lost in a sea of excess weight and I looked like a mini sumo. I didnt like myself very much.
In the end I dropped 30kgs with a lot of deprivation and stacks of mountain bike and walking activity though it fluctuated wildly, and then I went back to study. As soon as I did that and couldnt be as active as I had been, that weight started to pile right back on and by the end of my degree I was a steaming mess again. In fact I had gained it all back PLUS another 10kgs! I think I weighed in at 94kgs before I finally said ENOUGH!
I took the time to think about what was really going wrong with me. It took some quiet space and inwards-thinking to realise that even though I was eating what was mostly considered to be "a healthy diet", that it wasnt as great as I thought it was.
Have you seen THAT SUGAR FILM, a cleverly done documentary that shows Australian film-maker Damon Gameau being his own N=1 experiment?
He talks in depth about the so called HEALTHY diets that various organisations endorse and actually just how unhealthy it is and how we buy into marketing. Its a great watch and you can actually buy the movie through YouTube purchases then its really easy to re-watch it and get the message over and over again. It made my teen (The Beautiful Miss Holly) cringe and thats not easy to do either! Get it and sit your kids/grandkids down to watch it.
But for me it wasnt as simple as "clean up the diet and exercise" - I had to go through a lot of perspective shift and clean house mentally and emotionally.
Anyway, I digress. Ive lost another 34kgs to date, still have about another 5kg to lose, and know how to maintain it easily at the end of that loss. Ive been eating Keto for a few years now.
I could just bullet point how I got my shit together and what I did up to this point, but this whole food thing has become a political bugbear for me and its going to be a bit of a journey I think.
Im a Registered Nurse, and I have a fire in my belly for this subject. I am moving forward with the next phase of my postgraduate studies and I intend to orientate my masters around this passion of mine - I feel really strongly about this, in case you didnt get it! LOL.
I know a lot of you out there also share the view that most of the disease we suffer has dietary origins - well you cant fix dietary problems with drugs, all you do is try to disguise the symptoms. Im not saying that nobody should ever resort to pharmacopoeia for their health issues, all I am saying is you can optimise your recovery and health by assessing every bite you put in your mouth and hopefully reduce the amount of pills you have to take.
I see lots of people STILL being told that FAT IS THE ENEMY and that we should plough through truckloads of heart healthy grains, that we should deprive ourselves food wise and exercise to a standstill and that after all , its still all about "calories in, calories out" isnt it?! Oh dear.
I am shocked that we are persuaded and brainwashed into believing that a lot of the food we are told is essential for our health, is just rubbish basically. Stop and work out how much sugar is in the day to day things you eat.
Damon worked out that the average Australian consumes 40 teaspoons of sugar per day - well I bet you us kiwis are right up there with our aussie cousins too.
I am angry that real food is so pricey - later on I want to touch on planning, prepping and storing for least waste, on how simple processes can render a really cheap cut of meat into something tasty and nutritional (some people truly have lived in a cave when it comes to this, in spite of information out on the internet and a lot of young people have not inherited those skills so maybe its something you should teach the youngsters in your family if you have these skills down to Tee!) how to work out exactly how much protein you do need in your diet every day and why you dont want to overdo the protein too much, and how to go through the process of declutter - You will see what I mean by that later on! Healing your broken metabolism and dealing with insulin resistance is a big win if you stick with it.
I want to share the perspective I gained that helped me realise I wasnt losing out on anything by changing my life and the way I ate so radically, and in fact I got my life back.
I guess at the end of the day it matters not one jot if anyone reads this - as I said this has been about me and my epiphanies. But if I can help one other person regain their wellbeing back again, then Ive truly shared that food is the way to health, and that 60 can be the new 40 - its never too late!
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