For the last 33 years I’ve been experimenting with different diets; I now offer you the fruits of my labor.
In my early 20s I realized that the Western/Argentine diet I’d been living on was making me ill. I didn’t know how or why but I was determined to find a solution.
IBS:
I was diagnosed with Irritable Bowel Syndrome by my psychiatrist who was the only person caring and competent enough to listen to what I was going through and smart enough to figure out that IBS was the cause of much of my mental distress. I of course protested at first, not wanting to give up the comforting drug-like foods which was mostly what I knew; but when I got home and googled IBS what I read was spot on. IBS explained why and how I had suffered through so much pain for the first 23 years of my life from eating a typical western diet; best of all it provided a way out.
I ordered Heather’s book “IBS – The First Year” and started consuming it like junk food. I was really resistant to some of the changes that were being called for but I was ready to try anything as my inability to eat any food without suffering intense pain or having to go to the bathroom constantly was leading me to seriously consider suicide.
My healing all started with an elimination diet. I ate only foods from the safe list for about a week: Quinoa with Chicken or Salmon. And oh my god, for the first time in my life I felt what it was like to feel healthy and well after eating a meal! Now that I had a benchmark for intestinal wellness I was ready to start making much bigger cuts from the menu of junk food I’d become so accustomed to and as I’d soon find, addicted…
To make things easy for myself I bought a rice cooker to consistently and perfectly cook hydrated Quinoa with a push of a button.
I was hungry for more. I yearned to enjoy food as I had for so many years until the stress of expanding my mobile auto detailing business while navigating a new romantic relationship created so much anxiety in my life that it triggered my IBS into full effect.
I found a chef on craigslist offering cooking lessons and arranged a session with Annette. I was blown away by her knowledge on different foods and preparation styles. She was a Vegan chef and deeply knowledgable on Indian Cuisine (my favorite). I suddenly had a whole arsenal of healthy and exciting recipes to choose from that were easy to prepare and was well on my way to wellness. Remember to soak and rinse your nuts and beans!
Veganism was healing me but I knew there was more out there. Then I stumbled upon Markus Rothkranz who was the first teacher to set me on the wild food path. His YouTube videos go into depth about why and how the wild weeds growing all around you carry all the nutrition and medicine you need.
Eating local food and medicine is one of the best things you can do for the health of you and our planet.
Why mine precious oils and gasses from the earth and make them explode in engines to transport so called ‘food’ when most of what we need to live grows wild all around us?
After being inspired by Markus’s talks I began to forage the few wild weeds I had learned from attending a couple of plant walks. Each morning I’d go out and pick a handful or two of wild edible greens like Dandelion leaves and flowers, Plantain leaves, Red Clover flowers etc; I’d pick basically anything nearby that I could identify as surely edible and which looked clean and vibrant. I’d then blend them up with water in my Oster Fusion blender (about $60 online – no need to spend $500 on some fancy smancy blender) and proceed to make my superfood fruit smoothie.
Compared with eating only a fruit and superfood smoothie for breakfast, I felt more energized, vitalized, grounded and satiated. I found that I was able to go at least 4-6 hours after my first smoothie without being hungry again; when hunger struck I’d make another smoothie til I started craving dinner which I’d eat 1-3 times per week.
Ken Rohla is an EMF warrior and raw food advocate. He’s big into sprouts and algea and boiling vegetables to extract their nutrients into a tea. I’ve heard him say we can probably get away with 10-20% of our diet being cooked, but the rest really should be raw since we are dealing with such huge environmental stressors that raw food is to be preferred.
I think diet is super personal and specific to the needs of our changing bodies, minds, and spirits and is meant to fluctuate over time. There’s no one size fits all and what works for you today may be a hindrance tomorrow.
Fruitarianism:
I’ve learned that I simply can not trust myself with watermelon. Once I split it in half and start eating I find it extremely difficult to stop. So much goes through my head like, “I don’t want to waste this food” and “Watermelon season will soon be over, better eat up!”; all of these thoughts are in stark contrast to what my body actually wants.
So I’ve stopped buying Watermelon and am looking forward to Orange season where I can practice self control and decide exactly how many Oranges I want without feeling like the food is hijacking my will. There must be some chemicals in the Watermelon or something.
I was a big fan of Dr. Robert Morse who gave me the courage to embrace a mostly fruit diet and whose teachings on spirituality I resonate with. He claims to have healed people of the most severe conditions (including quadriplegics) through prescribing a fruit based diet and herbs.
While my body and mind seemed to thrive on this diet for some time I eventually found that it had weakened me. Friends would tell me I looked emaciated and perhaps I was compared to the typical American but I doubt the 3rd world would have used such a term. I still felt very strong, sometimes feeling even stronger than ever while pushing my mountain bike up steep hills then descending with laser focus.
Fruit helped me stay clear and high; I loved going to bed on an empty stomach and feeling my deep inner processes; it was like my now empty body was able to purge out old toxicity which it couldn’t do when burdened by constant digestion. At night I would be more likely to catch glimpses of Heavenly realms as I drifted into dreamtime.
Unfortunately I would find myself becoming suicidal and noticed that I would feel better when I’d eat a cooked dinner which I was often reluctant to do for fear of ‘coming down’.
The quality of my physical and mental health and therefore my spirtual health and my life increased dramatically when I reluctantly started accepting animal foods back into my body.
As someone who cares deeply about animal life and embraced veganism since 2012 I was very reluctant to consume anything besides eggs; red meat was especially repulsive, and milk and cheese had been the biggest triggers for my IBS.
Who woulda thought that the foods that threatened my life due to IBS would be the very same types of foods that would rescue me?!
After several podcasts from Ronnie Landis (an ex vegan advocate for athletes) and Mikhaila Peterson talking about how red meat cured her suicidal depression I was convinced I needed red meat back in my diet; I knew it had to be grass fed AND grass finished, but where to find it?
A search on WestonAPrice.org turned up several sources and I soon became a lifetime member of the private food buying club myrealfoods.com/MeadowRidgeFarm/ which I’ve been relying on ever since (email me for a $10 referall discount.)
Though I’d prefer not to eat heavy meat my Argentine body grew up on it and seems to thrive on it; I feel more energized after I eat 1/7th of a lb of ground beef with dinner. The delicious raw cheese provides excellent fat and protein and the raw cow’s milk has been an absolutely heavenly replacement to my smoothie addiction.
None of these foods have produced any ill effects except when my taste buds have craved another bite and I overate.
So I’m now rebuilding my body so I can function at my best and enjoy more energy towards my service missions. What good is a vegan diet if it leads to suffering and weakening of the body; isn’t veganism supposed to be all about compassion?
I’m a ‘Jeet Kun Do’ kind of guy. That’s Bruce Lee’s martial art which he developed by extracting useful elements from other disciplines and combining them to make a new super powerful martial arts form while discarding what didn’t serve.
Blood Sugar Regulation:
I’ve heard from one Electro-Sensitive person who suffered severe effects from nn-EMF exposure that regulating her blood sugar levels made the biggest impact on her life. It made an even bigger difference in how she felt and functioned than installing a shielding canopy over her bed.
There are many natural foods that help to regulate our blood sugar, for example:
Licorice. (I’m not an expert on everything; look it up!)
Cinammon – There are different kinds of Cinammon some of which are actually toxic if used as more than a spice. Ceylon Cinammon is the safest and most medicinal form and has been scientifically shown to regulate blood sugar levels in peer reviewed studies conducted with diabetes patients.
Reishi Mushrooms (aka The Mushroom of Immortality) is one of the most effective natural medicines for regulating blood sugar. The Reishi most commonly found in the USA is called Ganoderma Tsugae (aka: Hemlock Reishi) and is just as powerful as the other species in the Reishi family (Ganodermacea). If you are serious about working with Reishi and are on a budget I recommend learning how to forage them! They are very easy to find as they grow exclusively on Hemlock trees in the Summer. However you may have to brave poision ivy, snakes and spiders to reach your medicine so it may be best to leave the foraging to the pros.
I practice extreme caution when venturing off a trail to check out a possible food or medicine. I’m learning more and more to trust that still silent voice known as intuition who knows when I should or shouldn’t venture into unknown territory. Ignoring this voice in areas with bears or poisonous snakes can be a deadly decision! I know from close encounters with the furred kind! Greed is a deadly sin for a reason!
A blood sugar monitor or Ketone monitor could be a helpful ally for you but I do not have much experience with these devices. I rely on my pendulum for biofeedback.
Charles Eisenstein has developed a program to help you on your path to a more balanced diet in his book “The Yoga of Eating”.
This short book is essential reading for anyone transitioning diets who wants to have a more balanced (Yogic) relationship with their food.
Start where you are; that’s always the best place to begin, and you can’t start anywhere else anyway.
“Let food by thy medicine, and medicine be thy food” – Hippocratus? Hippopotamus?