It seems that other than yoga, everyone has a magic diet fix for what ails you. It always comes across like snake oil salesmen too. “Oh, if you went vegan, you’d be healed in just a month! Just look at me! I went vegan, lost 50 pounds, my asthma went away, I don’t have joint pain anymore, I have more energy, I stopped taking all my prescriptions, and I poop rainbows that smell like roses!” Okay, so that last bit is an exaggeration…but you get the point.
Just on Weight Management
So I have a (moderately) strict lifestyle diet when it comes to my food. I am gluten free and am supposed to stick to about 60 grams of carbs a day, lots of protein, low dairy, and lots of saturated fat. My other half jokes that I’m the only person he knows that the doctor said I can have loads of bacon, and it’s the truth! Even with that lovely grace of bacon, it’s a really difficult diet to follow. As difficult as it is though, I try to stick to it as best I can because it came out of years of trial and error and help from my whole medical team (which currently sits at 9, including an acupuncturist that networks with some of the traditional medicine team). Being on it, I’ve lost weight and continue to do so VERY slowly. This isn’t because it’s the best diet out there, but because I’ve found a way to work with how my body processes food.
Getting Into the Illness Aspect
All that was just weight management, but my particular diet has also helped me regain some of my health though the years of following it. It’s been a long hard road, and I can’t properly express just how infuriating it is to hear these snake oil salesmen touting their miracle diet that goes against doctor advice because theirs will fix all my problems. Let me be quite clear here….
NO DIET WILL COMPLETELY FIX YOUR HEALTH
Now before you jump to the comment section, that’s not to say a specified diet will not limit, manage, or reduce your symptoms. Of course it can! But we, as a whole, need to really step away from trying to push our diet agendas on those with chronic illness. What can be beneficial for one, such as low salt for high blood pressure, can be terrible for another, such as POTS that needs a very high salt content diet. Soy for some is a great source of non-meat based protein but can disrupt the endocrine system for those of us with PCOS, causing weight gain and increased complications with our hormones. Carbs are great as a source of energy if you need to work hard, unless you’ve got insulin and/or glucose resistance and then your body just decides it can’t break them down so it stores it and leaves you exhausted. Fruit is fantastic for the average person, unless you’ve got glucose resistance and then your body decided that it needs to store all that simple energy or let it the insulin float around the blood stream instead of using it. Red meat is absolutely fantastic for someone like me, but not for someone else who it triggers their IBS symptoms.
I don’t care what diet you personally subscribe to. Paleo, keto, atkins, low carb, low sugar, vegetarian, vegan, low acid, grain free, raw, alkaline, smoothies… There is not one “all size fits all diet” in any way. That doesn’t even get into the extreme end of the home remedies. David Avacado Wolfe should be considered the bane of all of our existence…seriously. Stop acting like you know what diet is best for your friends, your loved ones…and for goodness sake…stop accosting strangers! I had a woman approach me because she had seen me walking with a cane and order a sandwich with roast beef. Didn’t I know beef was probably the cause of why I’m walking with a cane? Even after I said “No, I just had surgery not too long ago, that’s why I’m walking with a cane”, that didn’t stop her. She just told me I wouldn’t have needed surgery if I wouldn’t eat meat. Yes…obviously eating meat changed my genetic make-up that created weak collagen. I’ve been living a lie. Thank you for making me see the error of my ways. Stop giving us crazy food advice! Please!
Research Can Be Difficult
Learning about proper nutrition is complicated, there’s a reason that nutritionists have to go to school and not just read a few health articles on Natural News and watch a few Dr. Oz episodes. Every body is different, and sometimes drastically so. I truly wish I had an easy answer that I could share with all of you. I wish I could share my food lifestyle and know that it could help everyone as it as helped me. Hell, I wish there was a set option I would have instead of struggling along and hoping for the best!
But there is good news. There are plenty of things that we do know about certain chronic illnesses. We know for PCOS, a low carb diet often works because of how the syndrome often directly affects insulin acceptance by the liver and they think they even pinpointed the gene. We know complex carbohydrates are bad for diabetics, especially in large quantities. There are general rules out there we CAN find and follow without going to extreme changes in a desperate hope to be cured. Research on sites dedicated to your specific chronic illness and stay away from anything that sounds like a miracle cure unless you’ve got some credible sources stating some really promising study evidence. If you try something and slide backwards? Make note of it. Talk to your doctors about it. And don’t force yourself through feeling terrible unless your doctor gives you a reason to. When I first went to gluten free, I swear I had the worst flu of my life…but it was just my body throwing a tantrum and it only lasted a week. Then I started feeling a lot better. But I talked to someone instead of just suffering in blind hope.
I don’t personally like the phrase “Love at any size” as a way of saying it’s okay to eat whatever you want and consider yourself healthy no matter how much you weigh. I do think we need to show love to ourselves no matter what size we happen to be though. Treat your body well, it may be flawed, but it’s the only one you have.
