I think the guidelines from paleo, primal, wholefood, ancestral or Weston A Price are helpful and a good starting point but I think you need to consume a diet that suits you. The best way to find the right diet for you is by listening to the subtle messages from your body. The question 'how do I feel?' is one I have been asking myself a lot lately and your body will let you know what suits you and what doesn't - if you enable it.
To be able to listen to my poor body I first needed to have a really good clean up, to recalibrate, take the common offenders out (grain, dairy, sugar, alcohol and legumes) have some time to let the inflammation go down, heal a bit and then I started adding a little bit of this and that here and there and monitored how I felt. When I thought about it I realised hey I don't even like legumes anyway so that one was easy, I haven't been missing any bortelli beans that's for sure! Grain was tough but as I mentioned in the previous post the results were life changing. Dairy wasn't a massive drama. It was sugar and alcohol that I found the hardest and what I believe contributed to getting me into my SIBO mess to start with.
So now I start my plate with veggies, I try and grow a few, or ask Rosie for some from her garden, buy local spray free and then I try and stick to the 'clean fifteen' when I go to the supermarket. For me it's cool to buy local, in season and keep the pesticide load as low as possible as I don't want all that toxic crap in my body.
Protein wise we are extremely lucky to have organic grass fed beef, pork and lamb from Shipleys Farm which is very close to our home. I visit the farm every week and buy the cheaper cuts of meat and slow cook those and also make bone broths with the bones. I also get heaps of their gluten free sausages to cook up and use as we used to use ham and shity salami!
Prior to this I had bought everything from meat to milk to veg from the local supermarket. I asked the butcher if the meat was grass or grain fed and sorry to report guys that most supermarket meat is grain fed (more on this to come). However our local Butcher gets meat from local hobby farms which are pasture raised, so don't be afraid to ask the question. I seriously didn't know any of this only a few months ago. The organic meat is seriously amazing and a joy to eat and you don't need as much of it as it tastes so good, which sounds weird but its true, it's more satisfying somehow. I always smirked and thought 'yeah right' when read 'get to know your local farmers' and I'd think 'I don't even know the name of the checkout chick let alone who owns this store and where they source their bloody meat from, but now I do!
We have 19 chooks which eat our scraps, greens from the veggie patch and also some grain (eek) so eggs are a big feature in our diet. If I need some chicken or pork I go for the free range stuff, I can get good chicken from the farmers market but its not feasible to go there every week or make a point of it and make life hard just to eat 'right' so it's a case of doing the best with what you have at that moment in time, if you ask moi anyway.
When I first started on this journey I baked lots of paleo treats but have backed off from that lately as I have finally embraced the idea of eating FAT! Argh no way! I remember in the 80s when the anti saturated fat campaign started and there was a frying pan with cold lard in and the words F A T scrapped into the lard. Since then I have always eaten low fat. Oh how I could cry now for those low fat Tone Milk and Nuttelex Lite years. My poor poor body. Anyway, I cook with coconut oil or ghee and use olive oil and macadamia oil for cold use and use grass fed organic butter liberally on veggies (did you know that your body needs fat to access the vitamins in veggies). Spinach tastes so much better with butter on. Fat is so satisfying. I'm still unsure on how much I really can use (any help?) but I've been using about 1.5 tablespoons of fat in total per family meal (four or us). I wonder if I could get away with more? Answers on a postcard please.
When I bake for the fam now I try and use nuts instead of flour or spelt, coconut sugar (not a fan of stevia) and organic butter.
I have some rice and some quinoa, maybe once or twice a week and I bake sourdough spelt which is freakin delicious and I have a couple of slices of that per week, it doesn't seem to cause me any problems but I am trying to dodge gluten and bread is so filling that it knocks other more nutrient dense food off my plate.
Milk doesn't feel right, but I buy organic milk for the rest of them. I don't mind a bit of fermented dairy in the form of yogurt, sour cream, cheese etc.
Grog consumption has gone from (eeek) four to dare I admit this to the world five bottles of red wine per week PLUS about four beers to no more than two drinks in one sitting. I actually think one would be better, in good time. I started on a 3 drink limit now it's 2 this is good work. Since I don't guzzle as much I've upgraded from the $3.50 per bottle clearskins (you love me more for my honesty don't you?) to the $20ish dollar bottle of organic or preservative free red wine, I also tried a bloody good gluten free beer last weekend. I drink when I really feel like it, not just cos it's Wednesday, Friday, Saturday etc. I usually drink between nonce and three times per week.
I have one or two coffees a day, I love them. They are usually organic and always with nut milk and consumed before midday. Perhaps one day I'll be a decaf drinker....maybe.
Turns out I don't really like fruit much and hardly eat any now, a few berries or a kiwi here and there but I do have two bananas per night in some crazy chocolate (cacao of course) type milk shake that I make, I have serious supper or dessert issues.... Sarah Wilson would so shake her head. Oh well. I love them.
I do take a 80/20 approach to life as there is no point removing the stress of food and replacing it with some orthorexic food disorder right? So today I found myself at the local swimming pool merrily chatting to other mummys and watching my two kids have swimming lessons. I was there three hours. Milly wanted chips, I had a few. We later went to lunch and I was tremendously excited to see local sardines on the menu, I asked them to hold the baguette and load up the salad to which they obliged. However the sardines arrived in a sort of light batter (gasp) which had been deep fried (argh in hideous seed oils) it was accompanied with a commercial shitey aioli. I ate it. Maybe it was the chlorine fumes, surely that can't have helped, but I felt awful now. I'm starving even though I only ate 3 hours ago. I have brain fog. I'm parched and I'm sooooo tired. Now I wish I had gone the extra distance to the local organic shop and had a burger with salad. Oh well, ya live and learn. Enjoy the weekend folks. Love,Hx
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