2018 Life Logs, Day 25—Focus on Food
Date: Thursday, January 25, 2018
Weather: Sunny but Cool; High 32, Low 18 degrees F
Location: At Home in The Studio, Falmouth, MA
Why is it so hard these days to figure out what to eat in order to stay healthy? I don’t have a complete answer to that question, but I struggle with it on a daily basis. Because I am constantly seeking the most up-to-date information, I am constantly learning new things. Most recently I have been searching out ways of fighting osteoarthritis and am two days into an elimination diet to see if eliminating certain foods from my diet will help with the pain in my left knee. This diet requires that I eat no dairy, no wheat, no soy, no corn, no eggs, no sugar, no nightshades (potatoes, tomatoes, eggplant, or peppers), no food additives, preservatives, or dyes, no coffee, no alcohol. Okay, I drew the line at no alcohol, but I am eliminating everything else. While doing this you have to eat as close to100 per cent organic as possible and focus on eating lots of colorful vegetables (minus the red tomatoes and colorful peppers). One day into this experiment, I got a call from a niece who is experiencing a bout of extremely high blood pressure. Her doctor put her on a low dose of medication and told her to exercise and eat a healthy diet to see if that will help her lose weight, and in turn, bring down the high blood pressure numbers. They will meet again in four weeks, and if my niece has been successful in adjusting her diet and exercising, the doctor will consider removing the medication. My niece, knowing I put a huge amount of effort into eating a heathy diet, called me asking me for advice on what to eat. I had some basic suggestions, but today, in searching for specifics for her, I came across information on lectins in our diet and how they (lectins) are helping to make us fat. Lectins are found in those same nightshade plants that I have had to eliminate for the arthritis diet. Hmmm . . . Foods that are high in lectins appear to be related to leaky gut syndrome and having a leaky gut can cause the pain of arthritis to be more severe and if you are already quite overweight, it can make it almost impossible to lose that weight. I’ll not bore you with the details, but I’ll check back in with you in two weeks to let you know if this elimination diet has helped me. If not, then I need to add something called a pre (not pro) biotic. Eating should not be so difficult!
I went to the gym this morning, came home and canned the new batch of chicken mineral broth, and started a long-term project of choosing photos from around the world to put on the walls in my apartment. That should be a fun project. I’ll share my choices when they are made.
