raw christmas?

How can it be that after 7 months of cutting out grains, dairy and sugar, not to mention potatoes and now nuts - I am still not feeling totally well? Well, I feel on top of the world, full of life and energy some days but others, urgh, I wonder if I'll be taking a trip to the A & E (which I did one night at 1 am, alone and anxious about my restricted breathing). So, I am doing something now I thought I'd never ever do. I thought (maybe in a silly superior way) that when it came to nutrition I had it sussed; I've read Nutrition and Physical Degeneration, Sally Fallon, Cholestrol Myths... and just about every connected book amazon chooses to pop up at you in relation to these. I have so frickin many nutrition books I fear my kitchen shelves will soon snap in the middle from the sagging weight.

And still. And still here I am about to.... dah dah dah!

Go kinda Raw.

To start with. I am cutting out animal proteins, tis' true, and feeling a bit elated and excited and a teeny bit nervous. These two women have stories like mine and both went into either remission or improved their auto immune conditions radically by cutting out or partially eliminating animal proteins. I don't totally believe that a diet lacking animal products (especially fat) is ideal. For normal folk, yet others like me who find themselves being attacked by, well themselves - something is not right. So things need to be considered from a whole different angle. Like why am I attacking myself? Do I do this in other areas of life?

I think I do, uncomfortably, yes I do, I criticise myself a lot, I don't love myself as much as maybe is good for decent mental health to reflect in the physical. I think changing the way I think about myself might be transforming. Can I just be kind and accept that I am not perfect? Can I accept my body right now and love it, despite it's medical/biological 'imperfect' state? Can I embrace this potential disease and try to live finding out more about myself and life on the way?

Just maybe this is something I need to experience in this lifetime to be the person I need to be. I don't much like the idea of having an 'illness' in order to be that person but maybe it is so, or that I need to look at it not as an illness but as expanding who I am and seeing my body differently. I am facing these thoughts more and more often recently. Not much enjoying the aspect of viewing myself, but also finding it liberating too. The uncomfortable comes up - like how does a person love themselves? Do they need to? Why?

Yeah, I know the physical theories about why the body does this - this auto immune disease stuff, especially to women - we're just finished with, we've reproduced and life kind of lets us slide. That's a theory. Not a very nice one, obviously but seems true enough: we live in one of two states, either we are eating in a way that suggests to the body that there is food in abundance and so our bodies step down from cellular repair and maintenance and instead start storing fat and upping reproductive capabilities. If we live for too long in this state (er, mostly I'd say from the looks of most women) then we suffer on a cellular level. On the other hand there's a loop hole. We can stop this by calorie restricting our diets. Not a very popular thing to say in the face of Kate' Moss's recent famous out-of-context comments, but still, the facts remain that those on calorie restricted diets are healthier and exhibit less disease than those who eat more. Guidelines for exploiting this loophole while remaining in good health and not starving (for goodness sake, please don't suggest I mean that!) are outlined in Primal Body Primal Mind. How this appears to work: our bodies receiving the message that this is not a good time to reproduce, food is scarcer, so we up the cellular repair and regeneration and wait to reproduce, until food is more aplenty. Hence improved individual health on a cellular level as our bodies decide to wait. Good trick huh?

So despite seeing and researching almost non stop the biological and physiological aspects of disease, healing, conventional versus alternatives, I feel like I want to look at the other side too, like how I think and feel effects the state of my body. It surely surely must, everything points to it being true.

Can I nourish myself with wholly live and uncooked foods? Can I love myself enough to eat this way (am I right to view it as such)? Am I turning into a total hippy? Will I feel hungry? Will it mean longer in the kitchen? Will I loose even more weight (I don't need/want to)? I plan on eating fish still 4-5 times a week for now. And I am still taking my colostrum and fish oil supplements. But. Yeah, the meat the chicken the eggs - it's all going. I am taking the first teeny steps. I am liking Shazzie's books and blog, mainly because she is so confident and inspiring. I have some of her stuff already (Evie's Kitchen is my favourite, a great recipe book even if you don't have kids!). And I have just ordered myself a ton of books from amazon on health and healing and eating this way, so hopefully I'll find inspiration and a good feeling to resonate with doing this. Feel free to think I am crazy not to be supping up my bone broth daily. I did that already and it has not helped me like I thought it would.

I am trying it. What have I to loose? (Or rather, what might I gain? :) ) If it doesn't work out I can change. That's the brilliant thing about diet and nutrition, it's all under my control, it's something I can *do*. Not suppress symptoms and try to slow down the progression of disease which is all I am being offered by the conventional medical doctors I see; it's all they know, mystifying, and I feel somewhat that by not following their advice I am walking the plank. But my hands are not tied, in fact I feel like I am running down that plank, and diving in, shrieking with abandon, welcoming the blue water, relishing the chance to swim. For how long? Who knows? But who knows about anything? Really? I hate the fact that I have been labelled and slotted into this box, which is how I feel when I visit my Dr.

And we have made of ourselves living cesspools, and driven doctors to invent names for our diseases

~ Plato

I don't like not feeling well. I don't like the fear. I especially don't like the fear. Why do I feel so much fear, why does my breathing get worse the more anxious I get? I fear dying and leaving my babies. This is supposed to be a jolly blog about jolly things, creative, happy, but what's the other side of that coin? The fear,the darkness. There can't be that lightness without this. And since I can write what I want here, Iam :)

I bought myself a jade ring and amazonite bracelet, so that when I see my hands I can remember that from now on I will view myself as a healing amazing person. Someone with health inside them. Someone embracing health, someone who is seeing and smiling and trying hard not to fear. Or accepting that fear comes with everything and just trying not to let it overtake me. I need to remember that the world is as full of fear as it is of hope. But really the hope should be bigger, shouldn't it? My hope is bigger than my fear.

And so - yesterday (ok, don't worry, back to reality) , here is what I ate, and felt, very very good :)

Breakfast: apple, green juice (celery, spinach, one pear - too hardcore for anyone else - ie, not sweet enough), sipped it on and off through the day, bit to hardcore for me actually). I'm going to stick with the greenness though because I wanna be green; mmwha, ha, ha! Some chia seeds left to set (like rice pudding) in coconut milk, with a little dash of agave.

Lunch: homemade red onion and flax seed dehydrated crackers with sliced avocado, salt and pepper, piece of coconut oil and tahini 'fudge', apple slices.

Dinner: large salad - with peas shoots, greens, cucumber, peppers, onion etc with a baked sweet potato and mackerel, plus my dh's eye watering mustard and garlic dressing.

~ More of my fudge as and when I fancied it during the day. Nettle infusion, lots of water, red bush tea and of course my supplements (many and varied).

I didn't feel hungry once, I felt full and never bloated or irritable, head achey as sometimes happens after eating.

I'll post about how this all goes for me :) I am picturing only health and a strong body from now on, no agonising bedside dreariness. Yeah, I anticipate the anxiety and doubt and worry still happening, but my aim is for that to be less.

I have no pictures to show of anything foody, but I do have a lot of this: Christmas in the making and crafting and cozying up in the chill. Plus a pic of The Beauty's stash, shhhhhhhhhh!