Paleo Diet (Why I am on it)

My following of diets to help keep my MS at bay started years ago…first I was introduced to the SWANK diet which can be read about in this book which is very influential to people like me who want to avoid progression from all angles!!

From that most of what I learned, or caught onto I should say is that beef was not good for me, so I haven’t eaten that for a looong time, with one exception when a close friend served some at her house (was delicious!).

If anything, I was then following as close to a vegan diet as possible, it is what seems to be recommended in so many places, low fat, low cholesterol, low sodium etc. I was eating lots of whole grains, vegetables, fruits etc. My steps to being vegan went by animal type…first I stopped eating mammals, and next would be poultry, fish was always a maybe though because I caught on from the beginning to how consistently it was recommended, either taken as fish oil or eaten as food.

It wasn’t until 2009 that I realized there was more information to be had..this was 8 years after my initial MS diagnosis and 10 years after my stroke when I was 18. I had been a part of an empowered living seminar and a woman who later became my Naturopath came and spoke to us. I learned a lot about allergies, Vitamin D, Lipoic Acid, Acidopholus, Dairy and much more. Soon after this I took an allergy test which had amazing results…I showed an immune system response (my body was fighting something) with almost every food there is aside from fish/seafood, with the most extreme (read as high as the test measured) responses coming from the grains (including rice, oats, soy), egg, and dairy categories. I also learned that I had dangerously low sodium, cholesterol, potassium, and lithium, and so I started taking a lot of supplements and brought bacon back onto my menu to help swallow all those new supplements I was taking as well.

First major step was for me to go as egg/dairy/gluten-free as possible. This was a challenge, but I had my husbands support and he made a real effort to cook as much vegetables as possible, at this point we were eating a lot of quinoa and amaranth as my reaction to amaranth was lower than other grains. I was eating as much fish as possible and also a lot of chicken too. It was around this time that articles were popping up about how these allergy tests don’t really mean anything which really frustrated me. I was feeling SO much better, and losing weight, health dramatically improving and people were mocking me for not eating bread, but how did I lose that weight?

I stuck to it and research kept leading me closer and closer to a Paleo diet, an article posted by Tim Ferriss about grains/leaky gut/MS gave disturbingly supportive evidence that eating grains not only aggravates but in my mind could be causing all these autoimmune conditions. Other articles were found supporting this kind of diet seemed to pour into my world after this and I’m pretty much sold.

Logic is that anthropologically we have not changed much, however our diet has. We were in our best physical condition as hunters and gatherers and many diseases and things like cavities didn’t seem to come about until we introduced grains to our diet. Add to this what happened with processed grains (flour etc.) and prevalence of fast food in our diet and real problems with obesity and more as we can see are everywhere, just walk outside and look at the people you see walking down the street.

Another article I read recently from PCC Markets talks about the dangers of the ‘low fat’ diet that has been fed to us over the last 60 years or so and points out the increase in heart attacks and much more strongly correlating to the increase in man made fats and simple carbs. It was important for me to read this article because I do have the programs that were instilled in me as I grew up that “fat” was bad. While taking on a diet like Paleo though it feels essential, because it does provide energy and fullness that otherwise would require eating all day long, every moment it seems.

So basically what that means, is that at this point, along with my Copaxone and plethora of supplements (I take about 10 pills a day or so) I eat meat (though still almost no beef), fruit, and vegetables. That’s about it. I think it is pretty darn delicious too!!

Some examples of what I eat:
Yesterday for breakfast I had slices of ham with apple slices and coffee for breakfast. I don’t recall eating lunch, though I probably had one of my Arbonne shakes. For dinner I cooked up some ground pork sausage meat with garlic and lots of crushed tomatoes to make a ‘spaghetti’ sauce along with a spaghetti squash which I ate with the thick yummy sauce on top.

Today so far, a shake, apple slices, and coffee, I think I have some ribs in the fridge from when I ate at Jones BBQ the other day so I’ll probably warm those up for lunch, and I have salmon to cook up for dinner tonight probably with some kale from the yard.

Please post any questions!! I love talking about this stuff. Oh and one more article that supports a lot of why I do this was published recently by Seattle Woman Magazine, I definitely recommend checking it out!!

Related posts:

1. A Perfect Nightcap…
2. Back on Track!!
3. Garden Therapy