With all the conflicting information floating around at present how do we make the right decision about our diet? This has to be down to what you need, or what you are looking for is it for health, longevity or fitness, and I am including obesity and weight loss in with health. I must stress that the information on this site is based on the successes and failures I have experienced in my personal fight against obesity and diabetes, and any changes you might think of making to your diet or fasting should only be done after consulting your doctor or health care worker, as any changes while you are on medication can be extremely dangerous.
Low Fat and No Fat, I spent years on the low fat route after I was diagnosed with Type 2 Diabetes, back in late 2003 and it was no fun. Every time I saw the doctor or dietician, it was the same mantra carbs are good fat is bad, and I would keep saying but my weight is going up. I would keep getting the same answer, you must be eating too many calories and not exercising enough, it’s all down to calories in against calories out, so just eat less and move more. At this time I was doing a three mile power walk every night before I went to bed regardless of the weather, and I was still not really losing much weight, but even more worrying was the fact that my blood sugar was getting worse. I was getting to the stage where I was dreading going to see the doctor, because I would get the same lecture, you’re not sticking to your diet, or exercising enough, you must try harder. I was following my doctor’s advice to the letter so what was going wrong? Plus the amount of medication I was on kept going up, 2 medications for diabetes twice a day, and 2 for blood pressure twice a day and a statin for cholesterol just in case.
I realised that I needed to understand diet a lot more than I did at that time, so I spent a lot of my spare time in my local library, this was around 2004 and a lot of information was finding its way onto the internet but nothing like what we have today. One thing that I had kept seeing was when the fat is taken out of food, sugar or a sugar substitute, often high fructose corn syrup is added, but this just didn’t make any sense, you already have a problem with blood sugar, and you are recommended to make it worse, putting even more strain on your pancreas. This was starting to give me some questions for the doctor on my next visit, obviously there was an explanation but not being a doctor I must be missing something obvious.
What about the carbs, because I kept being told carbs are good fat is very bad, but which carbs because they are in everything, including some dairy, beans and pulses which are proteins. Could this be a case of The Good The Bad and The Ugly, because all carbs are definitely not equal, and this is where a lot depends on your end goal. Being diabetic I decided to keep away from the carbs that raised blood sugar, I mean how could these possibly be good for someone already suffering from high blood sugar, but I kept being told that carbs are good and fat is bad. Whole grains, how often have you been told how good whole grains are for you, now is that before the wheat is sprayed with Roundup (glyphosate) a couple of weeks before harvest, to kill the plant and increase the yield? With the way that the grain is processed today very little of the goodness in the grain remains compared to when it was harvested naturally and stone ground.
Everything made from refined wheat flour is out, bread, pasta, cakes, biscuits, so where does that leave us, well white rice and potatoes also convert to sugar very quickly and raise our blood sugar levels. So now we can see that if you are diabetic or have high blood sugar but still below the base line for diabetes, low fat and some carbs are not such a good idea, they will actually make things worse. Before I move on let’s talk about potatoes, white rice and pasta. Potatoes if you boil them, and I always leave the skin on just give them a good scrub, let them cool and put them in the fridge, I usually leave them for 24hrs before I use them, they would have changed into resistant starch, which feeds the gut bacteria. Pasta and white rice are very similar, once cooked let them cool and keep in the fridge for at least 12hrs and they become resistant starch and are great for feeding the gut bacteria, and make a good base for a healthy salad.
Let’s look at some of the good carbs, although I say I use a LCHF (Low Carb High Fat) eating plan I do eat a lot of green vegetables, cauliflowers, all types of onions, spring onions, mushrooms and bell peppers. By cutting out the carbs that where raising my blood sugar, but still eating green carbs I have managed to lose around 100lbs which proves you don’t need extremes but a sensible balance to get your weight and blood sugar under control, but I have also done a lot of longer fasts. I do eat too many carbs for a ketogenic diet plus I still enjoy some fruit on a daily basis, but I still find myself at times in ketosis even when I am not fasting. I try and keep to fresh organic whenever possible, but sometime I have to result to frozen when it comes to Brussels Sprouts because of availability, as they are one of my favourite vegetables along with Broccoli.
What about fat, I have to admit that for years I used to use vegetable oils, well it has to be healthy doesn’t it, made from vegetables or so you would think, oops!!! Once I realised how the oil was extracted and how toxic it was, what I had went straight in the bin and I have never used any since. I have been told many times that margarine is the healthy option especially if you are diabetic, but if margarine is made from vegetable oil with hydrogen molecules added to make it into a solid, how can that be healthy. I have now gone back to the fats I knew as a lad, butter, lard, tallow, plus now I use a lot of Organic Extra Virgin Coconut Oil, and Extra Virgin Olive Oil but only for dressings not cooking. One of the things you don’t really get anymore is beef dripping, when we used to have a rolled joint of beef it had plenty of fat on it which you would save in a bowl, and when it cooled you had a layer of light coloured fat on top, and some dark jellified dripping under it.
If the old fats where so bad for us, that they would clog up our artery’s and give us heart attacks, why was it not happening in the 20s, 30s, 40s and early 50s, and how is it that our general health has become far worse since we gave them up in favour of vegetable oils and margarine type spreads. These old fats only became criticised after American President Eisenhower had his first heart attack back in 1955. Dr White his personal physician and his friend Ancel Keys, who was a physiologist who studied the influence of diet on our health, concluded that it was caused by dietary saturated fat and here started the slippery slope to today’s health problems. One of the things that were never even considered at that time to being a contributing factor was that President Eisenhower smoked four packs of cigarettes a day. How the times have changed, we now know what cigarettes can do to our health, but unfortunately we are only just discovering the overall damaging effects that the recommended modern diet is having on our health.
With obesity and type 2 diabetes now almost a global pandemic everywhere that follows the recommended healthy modern diet, it has got to be obvious that something somewhere has gone terribly wrong. I fully understand that I could be pilloried for even thinking this, but is it just possible that under the constant ever increasing high pressure on the food industry to make even greater profits, money now comes before our general health and wellbeing? In conclusion I am personally going to stick with a diet made up of quality fruit and vegetables, organic where possible, grass fed free range quality beef, free range organic chicken and eggs, and the old fats that I have mentioned, until someone can show me solid unequivocal proof that what I am doing is wrong. Not being a doctor, dietician or even a health worker, I can only go by how I personally feel health wise, and when I was type 2 diabetic following the recommended diet, taking a bucket full of pharmaceuticals, most of the time I used to feel like crap. Since I have changed my diet, and not using pharmaceuticals, which cannot cure a dietary disease anyway, I feel great, more energy no more debilitating headaches, clearer thinking, and best of all I really love my food….