I’ve always tried to be healthy. I wanted to be making the right choices for me and my body and I generally thought I was doing ok. I would say I was pretty good about 80% of the time. I was making the healthy choices; salads, no fast foods, no fizzy drinks, no tea, no coffee, eating organic.
Like everyone I have my weaknesses; them being chocolates and wine! I have an incredibly sweet tooth and love desserts. I would rather have a dessert than a starter and if I was going out for dinner, I would see what the desserts were before making my choice for main meal. I had to ensure I’d have enough room to squeeze a chocolatey dessert in!
I was paying attention to what was being said about healthy eating. I read books on it. I would read the newspapers and try to take onboard the advice which was being given.
I made a conscious effort to eat more fruit, eat less sweets, not snack as much. I avoided tea, coffee and fizzy drinks. I was never extreme in my eating apart from doing a ten day juice fast every few months.
I was the definition of a normal girl trying to listen and take onboard the advice from the experts and make the right choices to keep fit, healthy and to control my weight!
When I started weight lifting last year, I became more conscious of carbohydrates, protein and the good fats. I wanted to increase my muscle mass and the way to build muscles was to increase the amount of protein I was eating. To burn fat at the same time (which is very difficult) I decreased the amount of carbs. So I cut bread, pasta and white potatoes out of my diet, which was not a big problem. Once I’d done that I noticed big changes almost straight away. I wasn’t getting as bloated, my blood sugar levels seems to have stabilise.
My body was telling me that increasing the amount of protein I was eating and reducing the amount of carbohydrates was good for me. I lost over a stone in weight and started to gain more muscle. I shrunk down and dropped from a size 12 to a size 10 in dresses. Then my stretchy size 10 yoga pants where too big, so I bought some size 8 yoga pants.
After years of trying I was finally getting the body I always wanted. I was looking the best I’d looked for ages. I was stronger, fitter and in my own mind, the healthiest I’d ever been.
Anyway, the reason I’m writing this, is I recently saw a naturopath and during one of our sessions she tested me to see how I reacted against certain foods and I was shocked!
As mentioned before, I though I was making the right decisions for my body and making the healthy choices. But the choices I was making, were wrong for me and my body.
The test results revealed I needed to avoid the following foods.
Dairy - cow’s milk, cheese, butter etc
Wheat, yeast & barley
Vegetables - mushrooms, sweetcorn
Fruits - peaches, banana, kiwi, pineapple, plums, prunes
Meat - Pork
Nuts - almonds (including almond milk) & hazelnuts
I’d stopped drinking cows milk over a year ago and had decided that the next healthiest option was to drink almond milk, so I’d switched thinking this was the healthiest option for me!
Almond milk is better than cows milk and generally is thought of as the healthier option out of the two. But for me - it was not right. I needed to be drinking goats milk or rice milk as that’s better suited to my body.
Same with flaked almonds - I love them, if I was having a bowl of fruit (berries only) I would have a lovely dollop of yogurt with a handful of sprinkled almonds. What I thought was a healthy balanced, nutritious dessert. It is, but again not healthy and not good for me.
What I’ve learnt from this whole experience is how different everyone is and how there’s no one product or one type of food that’s going to work for everyone. One size does not fit all and people need to be aware of this and work out what works for them.
So just be aware when you read articles in the newspapers and see people blogging about the latest super foods, or which foods to avoid. This may or may not be of benefit to you. You need to try different things and work out which is best for your body.